FINAL EXODUS
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Final Exodus chronicle

Development posts collected in one place. English translations are added after review; each entry links to its Facebook source.

Translated from Russian

Should players conduct police scans?

This may not be news to those who follow development closely, but I've had an idea: should we entrust “police scanning” to players? In other words, in missions played as a fleet commander, should we add a separate layer for internal control, with its own ships, hangar, and team? These missions would involve fairly routine flights through star systems and checks of real players' cargo and passenger traffic within human star systems. The rewards would be points for developing the fleet and ship side of the game, plus potentially large rewards for catching a smuggler. Another advantage: a very low chance of combat losses, and a chance to play with corruption. What do you think?

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Translated from Russian

Video of the star map

Here it is! A video of the star map. Ignore the jerky movement; I'm pausing it myself. In any case, it will take another week of work to make the map functional, convenient, and smooth. BUT! You can already get a sense of the scale. Not all stars and routes are visible at once; more are drawn as the camera zooms in.

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Translated from Russian

Tests for Exodus Game: the Korolev spacecraft

Tests for Exodus Game. Object tests. The “Korolev” spacecraft, with no textures—or almost none. According to the game's lore, it is the first spacecraft built for interstellar flight. Notice the animated antenna. The spacecraft concept is by Seryoga, the model by Yura, and the detailing and animation by me.

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Kepler's equations now drive orbital motion

The second piece of news is very important. I finally mastered Kepler's equations of orbital motion and successfully applied them to the game's coordinate space. The unremarkable circle to the left of the star is a test planet moving precisely according to the data and the formula. This is a victory. Why? Kepler is not as simple as he first seems. The deeper you dig, the more problems you find. It was difficult. Using Newtonian calculations for stable objects is not an option. All the earlier tests showed that they were unsuitable for two reasons. The calculations are simple, but when dozens or hundreds of objects are involved, everything grinds to a halt. Also, rounding 64-bit numbers creates growing errors, and orbital parameters change, potentially causing catastrophic mistakes. We don't need that in our game. Overall, applying Keplerian motion to calculate celestial-body positions is one of the project's fundamental tasks, and it has now been solved. We will use Newtonian calculations for special cases, too, but those are details...

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Translated from Russian

A screenshot of the 10,000-star map

The first piece of news today is already out of date. I never got around to making the video, so here is a screenshot of the map with 10,000 stars, their names, different spectral classes (still at an early stage), and standard routes between them. Everything is in its astronomical position. The data comes from a catalog.

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Translated from Russian

Star map with names and ship routes

The result of last week's work: a star map that writes out star names and shows routes for ships. Everything is generated on the fly. For now, I've stopped at 10,000 stars, although the file has 45,000 records. I want to make a video demonstration, so the illustration will come a little later.

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A star map reaching beyond the Orion Arm

Looking at a map of our galaxy, you might think the project should have been called “A fuss in the Orion Arm” )))) But our current map contains 46,000 stars, the most distant about 3,500 light-years from the Sun. That more than meets our needs and potentially gives players unprecedented freedom. Our map actually extends beyond that arm, which explains the relatively sparse stars at its edges. We may not use all of this space, although... If we don't calculate planetary motion in remote and rarely visited places, which will make up around 95 percent of it, what do you think of the scale? Would you play it?

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