Title screen!

In this update I added a title screen, as well as a small notice saying that the game is in development. This is so that when it’s deployed, people won’t get confused about why none of the buttons work on the title screen (they don’t yet). Speaking of deploying this, I put the current version on my site at https://burn.jmeow.net! Feel free to check it out, but be aware that the buttons don’t do anything just yet.

Next, I’ll probably be starting to experiment with WebAssembly and Emscripten, and try to compile NASA’s GMAT so it can run in the browser. (Don’t know what GMAT is? Read my first devlog for more about that!)

(Note: the screenshot attached is not of the entire page, the text isn’t this big in the real game. I cropped out the parts that aren’t interesting.)

I spent all day today configuring NeoVim (my code editor) and did not get much done so far. I did set up a web app with fun things like SCSS and hot reloading, and I made a cool splash screen (attached below)! Also made a simplified to-do list, which I’ll probably add more to at some point.

Fancy space visualization things!

I installed an open source piece of simulation software by NASA called GMAT (general mission analysis tool) which has a GUI and a scripting interface. (GMAT is really cool, though I sadly don’t understand much of it yet) It can output computer-readable files of where things go (among other things) and I made a demo program for reading these files (if GMAT is configured correctly) and visualizing the position of a satellite.

I’m planning to compile GMAT (written in C++) to WebAssembly so I can use its capabilities inside the game, for realistic physics. For now, I’m just pre-generating output files and showing them.

The image below is the path of a satellite being launched into orbit around the moon. Currently, neither the position of the earth nor the moon are shown, only the path of the satellite. The Z axis is also not shown yet, because I haven’t done much 3D graphics coding. The color represents time.

Disclaimer: This is my first time doing much with outer space and physics simulations, meaning I don’t know that much about it right now. I hope to learn more about these topics as this project continues in development!

TL;DR: GMAT = fancy NASA software for simulating/planning missions. I’m using GMAT for realistic simulations (currently manually, programmatically in the future). Image is of a satellite being launched into lunar orbit.