Okay, so Sentinel works perfectly well. All commands do not interfere with other apps as well as do their job perfectly. I had some issues with setting up nest, but once I restarted the container, everything went pretty smoothly. The guide was pretty comprehensive and walked through everything pretty well. I had an issue signing into nest though from the terminal. You should use the command ssh @hackclub.app. I think it told me to do something different.
Heads Up Display was just finished being built. Created a drawUI() function which basically calculated a bunch of statistics based off other variables in my code. Then it was drawn in a box on the top left. Two different statistics use color indicators to show when its safe to land. Speed turns green when it is below 2 m/s and pitch turns green when it is between pi/2 +- 0.25 radians which are part of the criteria for a successful landing. Additionally, I found it was helpful to include a minimap as the sandbox did not have limits for where the spaceship can go, so it was easy to get lost. By centering the minimap onto the moon and scaling down proportionally to the scale of the moon’s radius, we ensure an effective way for the user to navigate. We draw a line from the moons center in the minimap to the center of the lander in the minimap creating a way for the user to know which direction they should go down. Finally, I created a README.md file and updated it with information, so now I am ready to deploy Stellar Landing Simulator.
07/21/2026 - Gravity Upgrades / Collisions / Game Phases. Today I spent a good part of my time getting collisions working well between the lander (spaceship) and the moon. Used simple ray casting to determine if the rocket intersected the moon. Then was some gravity upgrades. Previously I just added gravity to the vertical velocity constant so it was very simple and did not always pull the rocket into the moon, so I altered it using something closer to real life where gravitational strength is dependent on the gravitational constant divided by distance between both objects squared (was too lazy to implement false masses of both objects). Lastly fixed some errors in the way the game determines winning. To win, the lander has to arrive at the landing spot with a sub 2 speed and 25 degree landing angle which makes the landing seem more realistic. A Heads Up Display should be viable to create tomorrow.
Built simple graphics and movement into this game.
Finished some basic movement. Working on basic graphic models right now.