Sorry your browser is not supported!

Storyline:

I haven't finished writing the full storyline yet, but this is what I have so far:

Earth has been facing destruction for several decades as the sun's hydrogen was being depleted at a phenomenal rate, resulting in a premature red giant. Due to the expansion of the sun, Earth would become destroyed within years; some fled the planet in conventional spacecraft, but some stayed behind to find a solution or to live their final days. As the fate of Earth was drawing nearer a few remaining scientists discovered subspace teleportation technology which allowed for long distance teleportation. With little time remaining few ships could be constructed utilizing this form of travel. Instead, all power plants across the planet were converted to use this technology in the hopes of finding a safer star system.

Upon the jump, to the <haven't decided> star everything goes seemingly well. After the first few days of checking their orbit and making sure Earth wasn't at any risk from nearby satellites, an attempt to contact any nearby ships was made, as several fleets had been dispatched to this star many years ago. Days went by without reply until a small group of ships were detected several thousand Kilometers from the surface, all attempts to communicate with them had failed. They continued to approach the planet and it was clear these were not asteroids due to the numerous course changes they made.

As they approached the surface each of the unidentified objects took position evenly around the planet's surface, it was clear by now that these vessels were not from Earth and what remained of the military took action in case they were hostile. Further communications were met unanswered, they seemed to take no notice of our presence. Soon after they started firing large beams of light into Earth's surface, the ground shook and the military started attacking. All our artillery and missile file appeared to do little to no damage, the alien vessels seemed to not consider us a threat. Fearing Earth would soon be destroyed by these aliens a second subspace jump was initiated but the jump network was only designed for a single jump, there was little time to calculate precise jump coordinates so a blind jump was performed.

After the jump everything was pitch black, there were no stars visible other than one bright spot in the sky which appeared to be a galaxy. But the alien vessels managed to jump with Earth and were still firing toward the surface. After a more detailed study of their ships it shows that they were draining thermal power from Earth's core which is likely where the power to sustain their shielding came from. Land near the alien dig sites began collapsing at a rate that would kill the remaining population in a matter of days if they didn't freeze to death by then. Attempts to communicate to the alients via subspace were attempted but to no avail.

Hours after several huge vessels appeared above the planet, bright and golden in colour. They approached the alien vessels digging Earth and destroyed them with several blasts from their weapons. They formed a similar formation around earth as the other vessels but slowly formed some sort of shield around the planet. Once it was complete there was a bright flash and Earth appeared to have been transported to a solar system, all but one of the alien vessels departed and initiated radio communications on all human languages.


Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6eBuZRrfl8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW5g3dmuquY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QhuLCN77NM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqSEzyJkNT4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jpY864YcnA


Pics:

Note: These are in order of development, so the lower down you click the better and lower FPS.

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/7886/fexwip1zx4.png - Stars and saturn
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/3326/fexwip2ck2.png - A solar system star and Earth(before I added proper lighting)
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9584/fexwip3xk1.png - Self-Illumination maps
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/3663/fexwip4nl2.png - Close up
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6697/fexwip5uz2.png - Improved starfield(it's procedural)
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5147/fexwip6tp7.png - Don't remember
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/2201/fexwip7qj4.png - Starfield experimentation
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6864/fexwip8fi3.png - Ditto
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/263/fexwip9jz1.png - Can you spot the moon?
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/4796/fexwip10px7.png - You cheated didn't you?
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/2975/fexwip11wd0.png - Current starfield method
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5315/fexwip12dt8.png - Exhaust trail
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8273/fexwip13op6.png - Ship engines and trail
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9345/fexwip14vf8.png - Ditto
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/4170/fexwip15tl8.png - Changing the backdrop saturation
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/1280/fexwip16sl6.png - Ditto
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/917/fexwip17ka3.png - Laser weapons
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7814/fexwip18tm0.png - Atmosphere test 1
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9108/fexwip19wk0.png - Atmosphere test 2
http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/2750/fexwip20nh5.png - Ditto
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/4915/fexwip21yn8.png - Normal mapped + Self-Illumination mapped
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/3999/fexwip22wu8.png - Brighter Self-Illumination
http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/6374/fexwip23ue1.png - Ship lights
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/9731/fexwip25yv9.png - Finished ship lights(they periodically blink, with both random or synchronized patterns)
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/4061/fexwip26jd4.png - The Excalibur class battlecruiser in orbit over Mars
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3079/fexwip27to7.png - Dark side of Mars
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/3151/fexwip28ko6.png - A Rima class corvette firing guns over Saturn's rings
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/1840/fexwip29uc7.png - Earth's new atmosphere
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/5217/fexwip30wn7.png - With moving clouds / better colouring
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/6530/fexwip33rg8.png - Planetary subdivision(LOD) wireframe view
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/7168/fexwip37bc2.png - Comparison between a Cassini image of Saturn(bottom), and my own(top)
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/9193/fexwip38us3.png - Planetary ring shadows
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/3963/fexwip39aaou8.png - Saturn

Latest pics:

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9470/fexwip44xy7.png - Vigour class support ship
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/6823/fexwip43qr9.jpg - Saturn's rings


Overview:

Final Exodus : Online, is the sequel to the Final Exodus Single-Player game entered into the nVidia 2006(but if you count prizes being delivered then 2007 and soon to be '08) compo. Like its Single-Player counterpart this will be a space combat based RTS, however this will be online in a single game universe(not too dissimilar from EVE Online).

It will feature RTS and twitch based(in cockpit) gameplay like its predecessor but will be far more open ended and have more depth than just blowing everything up(though that will still be an important part). I have plans to implement first person shooter aspects to the game too, such as walking around parts of ships/stations as well as venturing around planets on foot however these will be added in due time.


Races:

Human - This is the only race you will be able to play as however you will be able to change your appearance to any race you come across. Humans don't have very advanced technology compared to other races, however their ships have very durable armour(no shields by default) and are proficient at reverse engineering technology.

Svarog - Like in the Single-Player version this race is a plague in the galaxy. They aim to steal resources from solar systems by any means they can, they have limited cognitive ability but work in packs. Their origin is unknown but they enter the galaxy via artificial wormholes.

Sopharan - A highly advanced pacifistic race who guard several solar systems, such systems are essentially safe spots as anyone attacked in them will get defended by their ships.

Agrippen - Like the Sopharan this race is highly advanced but chose a more military path due to the Svarog invasion, They haven't been spotted for hundreds of years however...

I have plans for a few other races but they would spoil the storyline if I wrote a small bio about them.

Also like most space games you will come across pirates(NPC ones) who will stop at nothing to kill you and salvage your wreck, pirates will use a wide range of ships and I hope to make the AI challenging; not just a group of morons that get more powerful guns the further you stray from the safe zones.


Planets:

Eventually I will implement travelling to the surface of planets, I will use a semi-procedural approach to them in that the surface textures/Heightmaps are pre-rendered but as you get closer it's more or less procedural(not too dissimilar from a Diamond-Square algorithm like approach).

Planets will also serve as more than just big asteroids, players will be able to construct structures on the surface, such as planetary defence weapons, hangars, mining sites and so on. Only small vessels will be capable of landing on planets so ground based combat shouldn't be too stupid, however larger vessels will be able to launch nuclear or biological attacks on a planet which will either kill everyone and pollute the place or change the atmosphere(so another race can survive on it).


Ships:

Line-up so far:

- Sopharan flagship, I don't really like the model so I may redo it eventually
- No idea
- Agrippen flagship, 6 side facing point defence beams with a mega plasma launcher thing at the front
- Svarog hive/base ship, launches a swarm of fighters/drones
- [Hydra MK1] Deep space exploration ship
- [Hydra MK2] Combat variant of the above
- [Obelisk] Ship belonging to a race I haven't disclosed
- [Rima] Haven't decided who constructs this but it will be a playable ship(atmospheric flight capable)
- [Vanguard] A heavily armoured support ship
- [Vigour] A heavily armoured support/battleship with advanced defensive capabilities

Note: All the above ships are designed/modelled/UVed and Skinned by myself and I have many other designs drawn, I just don't have time to make them yet. Also many of those ships are either not finished(Rima) or are just placeholders.

Ships will be the main form of transport in the game(the only other being walking which isn't all that fun across a 1:1 scale planet), they come in many shapes and sizes, from fighters to battlecruisers. In addition to the hull, ships will be comprised of many subsystems and parts. Once added, for the majority of engine/weapon or armour parts you will be able to position, rotate and flip a 3D model of the part on your ship to design what it looks like. However due to the potential client amount in any area only large ships will be able to have truely unique designs.

Current idea of how ships will be fitted(blueprint is of some trek ship):

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/530/shiplayoutmj2.jpg

Instead of warp drives/jump gates, ships will use Subspace jump drives(like the ones on BSG, the jump drive part at least) these will have an optimal jump distance and any farther will take exponentially longer to calculate. However each jump will take a minimum of 30-60seconds(depending on ship size) to calculate. Such jumps are faster to calculate if you have no other subsystems online(to stop someone jumping out as soon as they're about to die in battle). Also depending on your sensors you may be able to detect a subspace jump event and track its source(to follow someone) however finding the exact destination won't be instant but you can always jump at the current estimated position(but risk being off by a few Km or more). Lastly, when part of a fleet you can do a networked jump which will speed up calculations(beneficial for large ships).


Combat:

In addition to flying your own ship players will be able to stock up on drones and fighters. A player's ship will be capable of controlling a limited number of drones(for point defence/offence) or in the case of fighters a player is able to remotely control it(like a normal ship, just in first person through the fighter's camera) whilst still being in control of their main ship. Fighters cannot be controlled by the ship(only drones), however other people on board your ship can launch them(should you authorise them to) to help in the battle. Fighters are very limited and do not have any FTL capabilities, however they are cheap and designed to be expendable.

In combat, large ships(battlecruier/battleship etc) will serve as launching platforms for any docked ships and fighters, their only other main use is to take out other big ships or to orbitally bombard planets, however I don't plan to have any really huge ships, i.e. the Titans in EVE as in my mind they would realistically be useless in combat due to having 0 manuverability/speed so the maximum sized ship in my game will likely not exceed 1.5km in length(the Excalibur is already above 1Km). Because of this big ships will have some maneuverability and coupled with jamming devices a good pilot should be able to fend off weapons fire from other large ships.

Due to the potential size of battles, doing polygon checks per part is not really viable and would force the more hardcore players to make stupid designs to give them a tactical edge, because of this I will likely make it so that each ship has an oval shape that encompasses them(currently the shield size) and any weapons fire entering this will be a hit, but I will calculate which side the impact happened on to deduct HP from the shields or armour for that side. In addition to this each subsystem slot will be located on a specific side to a ship so if a user wishes to take out your engines they will most likely have to remove any shielding/armour surrounding the left and right sides of your ship(or rear if it's a smaller ship), however visually the engines can be located anywhere as I don't want people to impede their design efforts for the sake of conforming to the ship's part layout.



So anyway! Enough of the Raven style post, tell me what you think, how many decades it will take to make etc.

Havent read so much, but still, awsome! Will read more tomorrow.

Ho ho!

Exelent. I you.

sounds great, lots of good media.

Just make sure you put a tuturial into this one.

Hehee finally

Glad to see this came to wip progress already!
Keep it up Dark Coder

Sounds all good there, Dark Coder. I'm never unhappy to see a space related game come up.

*toggle*

Yet wait... wait for it... not. The game's looking good. You've got some nice looking ships there, I particularly like the 'Agrippen flagship' although of course we both know you have to fix the texture where the lights go.

Oh and congratulations on a post with so much content, I've never seen a WIP linking to as many screenshots as you have.

This game looks flipping amazing Keep going at it man!

Looks neat!

Could use a few metal shaders later on, when you get to it. I love shaders.

I have read all now, and I must say, Im impressed. If this turns out the way you describle, I just have to test it. Hope it wont be too demanding. My graphics card sucks.

WOW! I didn't bother reading the text but I looked at the last shots and saw the movies and it looks very very impressive

Jeez, why doesn't anyone take time to read it? It's a good read there.

I always read the entire first post of a wip, especially the good ones.

Off topic:

Really?

hehe...

impressive scale demonstration videos. i hope you can actually zoom out that far in the actual game, cause that would be really cool

Thanks for the comments guys, and Benjamin.



Oh I plan to, as this game will be much more complex than the other.



What do you mean 'metal shaders'? I plan to add a gloss map but as the normal mapping uses VS/PS 1.1 I think I'm very close to the instruction limit as my previous attempt to add it failed(or I just suck at coding shaders), I'll give it another go soon but it's not exactly high on my list of priorities.



Well the game will be an open beta, or at least once it gets to a playable state it will be so you shouldn't have to wait too long to play. Also I have two PCs here to test it on(good and crap one) as as long as it's at least playable on my second PC(I use it as a server), I'll assume that anyone will be able to play it. Furthermore I've heavily optimized the engine in terms of media handling i.e. models/textures only get loaded once and referenced from the original, each mesh has or can have unlimited LOD levels, I can also easily implement texture and model detail levels if users want higher FPS. Currently the only thing that really slows the game down are the lights on the ships as the current Agrippen Flagship has 19 lights which are scaled in realtime alpha blended planes, these too are heavily optimized but there's only so much I can do.



I could allow you to zoom out to view the whole solar system however I'm not really sure what the purpose would be, when setting jump coordinates I will make a special Trek style atrometrics view which will show you a list of all detected bodies in a solar system which you can jump to. But that isn't all, you need to specify an X/Y angle and distance to jump to in relation to the object or just an X/Y/Z offset or distance-to depending on how lazy you are. After all, when zoomed out you won't be able to select or see a planet's moons unless they have a very high orbit so selecting some items that way would be a pain.

This game sound awsome. The very fact that you can zoom out as much as you can is awsome too. The zooming scale itself is just so cool it justify its own existance. I think supreme commander and spring, where you litterally can zoom out so you se the entire map, no matter how huge it is, and plan and launch attacks on an very large scale.

And about my graphics card, its my only problem. With an amd processor at 1.8 (or 3500+) GHz and almost 2.5 gb RAM my computer can take alot... as long as the graphics card can. I would gladly have an new card, but its integrated into my motherboard and I cannot affort it.

This game looks great! I particularly like the way you have the ships, planets, moons and stars all in the right scale: it gives a real sense of the epic. I also like how you've made it so there's no friction in space: you haven't just made it like it's a fighter-jet, you can actually keep going without using any fuel, and turn mid-journey and look back the way you came! Excellent! Will there be sounds in space? Science tells us no, but you could have radio comms from the cockpit or something.

I shall keep an eye on this.

EDIT: Suddenly remembered stuff: Will you implement gravity from planets/ is it implemented already? Landing on planets sounds like it will really add to the game, but it would be odd if you get really close to a planet and never have any gravity act from it.

Looks sweet, I read the first post as well. Sick story!

This looks really niceill be keeping an eye on the development of this project.

Awesome! I want to see how you handle the player diving their ship straight through Saturn's rings though.

I plan to have two options here, the realistic option where you only hear sounds when inside your ship from impacts or your gunfire , or when in an atmosphere. The other option being sounds from anything within range.



Yes I will, and for this reason larger ships won't be capable of atmospheric flight; they will just continue to fall until they blow up.



I'm working on this right now actually, I'm making it so that the ring model fades out and gets replaced by a giant particle field resembling the ring's colours and as you get even closer I load up small asteroids, quite tricky code.

Yeah, I realize it's not very important, it's just something I tend to NOT forget. I was thinking maybe one or two of the ships could have some kind of a metalic shine on them, so that when the light catches it as it turns, it looks shiny and perhaps reflects the stars.

It's just a thought from a shader addict. It's seems funny that I didn't enter the NVIDIA contest...

That was my thinking too. Good luck! Getting that to run efficiently could be really rather tricky!

Dark coder, how is the development going?

I've been working on a few things, but nothing visual is done and people don't like to read eh .

I've been messing with ship HUD signature blips and as seemingly trivial as it may seem, getting one that looks good is quite hard to do. In the previous version I used 4 corners that expand to the apparent size of a ship and they eventually contract into a box. This wasn't bad, however it looked a bit 'ms paint like' as a few people told me. Once this is done however, I can work on locking targets then tracking weapons to targets and the fun should begin.

Also as some of you may know EVE online is soon going to release a new graphical update, and while my game won't be exactly like theirs, my project is quite young(thus easy to change core features) and I will be trying to get something that looks as good as or hopefully better than theirs(in theory). To this end I will be making another ship with the primary intent of it looking as good as graphically possible, so don't take the Agrippen Flagship as the best graphical quality I can achieve as it is an NPC only ship.

Also there's one thing I still can't fully decide. My original intent was to have the whole solar system as a single map and you can seamlessly travel across it and onto planets(eventually). However the more I think about it, this isn't really practical in terms of gameplay. Unless you tell someone your exact location in a system or trace someone's jump location you'd likely never see someone randomly, especially in a small vessel.

Furthermore due to the vast distances, especially on planets; ships need to be capable of at least 25-50km/s. But gameplay wise, you'd never be able to see someone/lock them and disrupt their engines in time. Considering ships will only have a 50-200km passive sensor range.

My current idea is that each solar system is divided into maps, every planet will have their own separate map as well as asteroid belts, comets and any other items of interest in the system. The only places you can jump to in a system would be these maps, once there you won't be able to see anyone in another map or travel to another one via ship engines. Each map would likely not exceed 1AU in radius(for stars/nebulae).

This solves many issues, mainly positioning. My current system uses a double float to specify positions of items in a system by AU, however this isn't all that accurate when a movement of 10m could be very critical in combat. So the idea is to separate the map into 100/1000Km segments so the server sends the client's X/Y/Z integer segment and their float offsets making it nice and accurate. Using the whole system as a map would require me to use two sets of grids due to the stupid sizes of systems(and who wants to travel for hours across a system for no purpose?).

However, doing this doesn't solve my ships zipping past the player issue. Ideally I want the combat map to be somewhat like Homeworld1/2(like the single-player version of FEX) so you'd think why not make it so you can easily detect ships flying very fast? This way you can jam their cruise engines and they go back to normal speeds. However this means you could potentially stop someone 200+Km away from you, which if you have a big ship could take ages to travel across and by then they could have jumped away.

Why can't things be like on TV shows eh? Everyone magically appears within shooting range of each other with their slow ships and never have issues about distances.

If you lot haven't toggled my post already then here are my current ideas which I'd like input on: You can detect someone using cruise engines from say 500Km away and scrambling their engines not only disables them, but also pulls their ship next to you at a distance that totally depends on the size of both ships and the power of your jamming device(Kinda unrealistic but solves issues). Or, Jamming someone's cruise engines knocks it offline but also gives you an instant FTL lock to their ship, allowing you to close the distance instantly.

ROFLMAO
*toggled*

I just watched your scale test video and i was like humm yeah.. Thats big

The whole project looks incredible! Keep it up!

This seems to be awsome. Keep up the good work.

This is the sexiest DBP game ever.

Good job!

Please finish it

You're wrong: Mike Intel won that.

You are wrong.. 1) Its not Mike Intel
2) They both came first!

Let's say I dislike the idea of pulling ships. I like it better with the problem of the other being capable jumping, that could make combat somewhat more intense. If anything, the auto-lock sounds good.

Shame about the seamless universe being dropped. It works quite good in Evochron Renegades.

Good luck on it - I'll be tracking this. If you need planet or backdrop textures... drop a line. If I have time, I'll look at them.

It clearly is Intel. You see, making his name Inel was just to hide the fact that is really Robert Noyce. That is why I always read his name as Intel.

O Rly? So thats why i were always afraid that intel hided something :o

Well now that I actual compute the figures, if I make each grid area in a solar system 100km and used an integer to specify which one an item is in, as well as a float offset; I can simulate a 1435AU radius, which means I can still make each solar system a separate map(though I still doubt anyone would want to travel across one without using FTL drives). I guess I could expand the maximum speed of cruise engines to something like 1000Km/s but have the speed you go at proportional to how far away someone can be to detect you.

Time to code in these changes!

can't wait to play it! To be honest i loved X2-THe Threat game so i am sure il love final exodus!

Hey, dark coder, you could always create an "master ai" that will give you missions. Like in Quake Wars. And then the "master ai" can plan military stratagys, which could lead to HUGE battles. That could be an way to solve the problem with not finding your enemys.

By finding enemies I meant other players, enemies such as AI pirates and the like will either already be in a system around planets or will randomly spawn near you every one in a while. However my issue with player ships is largely solved as you'll be able to perform system wide scans for non organic objects and jump to them, if they run then you jam their engine and jump to them and Pew Pew commences.

However finding ships won't quite be that easy, only if a ship is in open space(i.e. not behind a planet's dark side/in an asteroid belt) and/or has their main engines online, otherwise sensors will not be able to detect them(depending on distance), or detect them within a given few thousand Km, so any dedicated hunter should be able to track you eventually.


Also I finally managed to implement the sector system for each map, so I can currently fly around the whole solar system(though finding planets is amazingly hard until I add some system navigation menu). In addition to this I've been working on the planetary atmosphere as my previous approach of using stacked spheres wasn't fast enough for my liking, plus it didn't look that good up close and I knew I'd have to replace it eventually and so I did. My current method uses a single sphere with a shader for the atmosphere that does more than just give an atmospheric glow but has a nice atmospheric falloff on the land and loses very little FPS(higher FPS than my previous method too).

Anyway pics:

I haven't added clouds yet as you may notice, also this pic uses a 16k texture as I wanted it to look nice(though it was 90meg and took ages to load, and eventually I'll switch to semi-procedural planets so I'll never need more than 2-4k textures)

[Edit] Updated earth with clouds and a more tweaked atmosphere:


This is a comparison of my current Earth(without clouds) to a real pic:

Very, very tasty.

Ever play Star Wars: Empire at War? If you haven't, you should. They have a nice planet system where there's one map on the surface, one in space (around the planet), and you can swap certain units inbetween, and build things on the planet from space, as well as order missiles and reinforcements if you have a fleet above the planet.

Absolutely Sweet looking graphics! , Nice Work DC.

Wow! This just blew my mind away! Good job, Dark coder. Keep it up!

Mmm, if I need to be really honest, I think your atmosphere system still needs additional glow, it's not bright enough for a planet as close to the sun as ours. Then again, the sun is a red dwarf in your story, so the ambient color should be much redder than it is now. Actually, I thought Earth had turned to dust in the story, lol.

90Megs? You ever seen that 2GB Earth texture? Load that - is fun .

Oh, wow! That looks really nice, Darkcoder!!!

There is one??? *.*

Yeah, it's from NASA and a project called Blue Marble. It comes in TAR format and is available as bottom one on this page.

Whoa!
Gotta test out the jpgs first... heheh...

Ok I have a new update!

I've been working on getting my planets to recursively subdivide(Which isn't that easy in DBP) and finally managed to get it working without errors . So far, I only have the actual subdivision working, things like moulding to the planet's heightmap is not yet done, however you can fly to a planet and away from it and each tri will subdivide into 4 child tris making for some nifty LOD.

You can see a video of it in action here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=l1qMLy-Em-Q




There are still many optimizations I can do to make it run faster too.

Very nice work, dark coder. Keep it up!

Hey Dark Coder, Looking outstanding! Glad your continuing on your entry, I'm probably going to continue working on psychic jim some day (when I learn how to program)

That last video is very impressive! How on earth (no pun intended) did you do that?

I stumbled upon a shader the other day that may be of use to you. Its a post inner glow shader. It could be useful for your planets and/or ships. (I don't know if your already using one, but i'll give you the link anyway)
Link
There is also a post outer glow version:
Link
You may be able to combine the two.

Except for that the planet seems like a plain or a very crude sphere, that effect is perfectly integrated. I'd love to see it in action with some actual textures.

I was actually originally going to make the multiplayer version first but when I saw the compo I decided to make the single-player version instead.

The subdivision is achieved using two databanks(Matrix util's memblocks), they initially store the base geosphere from which I iterate through all the tris and compare the distance from it to the camera to the LOD distance for that level, if it's below that threshold then it divides into 4 child triangles. I use the first databank to store information about the tree structure and the second to store all vertex positions/normals(the memblock mesh structure) and mirror it across when needed.

This method isn't the fastest as you may be able to tell, one distance check per tri, and especially removing tris from the stack is very slow(requires all data after the deletion point to be shifted down). Because of this I will try and use a linked list instead which will allow for much faster deletion, but updating the mesh will be slower(as I'd need to remap most of databank all the time).

The cool thing about this implementation is that I can change the planetary mesh to anything such as a teapot and it will still work, however in-game I will probably have no more than planets/moons/asteroids that are semi destroyed or have holes in.

Also I already have an atmosphere shader but if I find it isn't good enough I'll take a look at those(as they aren't exactly DBP ready).

[edit]



It's an icosahedic geosphere, I've now implemented heightmaps so the subdividing planet deforms to the heightmap as well as recalculate the normals / UVs, however I haven't solved the seams issue where a subdivided tri is next to one that isn't and with the heightmap causes a gap. Also my current texture lookup isn't interpolated so mountains are a bit jagged, however compared to the radius of the planet it's quite hard to notice them.

You can see the subdivision here:

wah ! perfect ! good project !

Is it just me, or can I see the stars through the planet?

I assume that's just for this single screenshot. In any case, one impressive system and it appears you've got the atmosphere down perfectly!