Bussard: programming spaceflight sim

[technomancy]

Hello everyone.

I've just released the latest alpha of Bussard: http://technomancy.itch.io/bussard, a space flight sandbox exploration game. While you can mine and trade cargo, a key mechanic in the game is the programmability of both your spacecraft and the space stations you come across--the configuration of your controls and display are all editable in-game, and you can write code that engages the engines and other ship systems. Space stations run a kind of Unixlike OS, while your own ship has a Lua console where you can run any code you write in the in-game text editor.



I make an effort to try to keep the physics realistic, (flight is inertial with realistic gravity calculations) and to try to keep the number of "crimes against science" in the universe to a minimum.

The game is still in development--the engine works pretty well, but the world isn't all that fleshed out yet. I have a fairly thorough
backstory plotted out, but I am working next to add missions and more story to the game. The station computers allow you to browse through in-game newsgroup postings, which can both teach you technical tricks for programming your ship as well as give you a window into what's happening in the worlds of the game.

Key influences include Escape Velocity and Kerbal Space Program as well as Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon the Deep. The game is licensed under the GPL, so it's free to download and play as well as free to hack on yourself. If anyone is interested in collaborating on it, I am open to that. Code is at https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard

I'm definitely interested in player feedback as well. In particular the introductory tutorial is pretty new, and I am not sure whether it
does a good job of explaining how the game works. But all feedback is welcome, either here or in the bug tracker or the #love channel on IRC.

[Beelz]

Nice game, although a bit confusing... It took a little longer than I expected to figure out. Anyways, I just wanted to post you a bug to look into.

This error was thrown when trying to login after forgetting to logout of another one:

bussard.png (10.83 KiB) Viewed 8053 times

Maybe setting it so if you drift away past the "connectivity range" it automatically logs out?

[DeltaF1]

First off: This is really amazing! It's everything I like in a game
1. Space
2. open World
3. SPAACE
4. programming

It's challenging, but the trajectory really helps. I spent ages trying to match orbits with the station perfectly before realizing I could let its gravity keep me nearby.

There do seem to be a few bugs
1. The mining laser doesn't do anything to the asteroids (or maybe I just need to wait longer)
2. trying to cat the newsgroup files results in an error "trying to read nil" in fs.lua. it doesn't crash the game, just displays an error
3. I just launched the game again, and the station suddenly wasn't supplying a laser anymore.
Edit: 4. Also the REPL and editor are VERY laggy. flight mode is fast, but something is really slowing down the editor

This is a really neat project, I might like to contribute to this!

[technomancy]

This error was thrown when trying to login after forgetting to logout of another one:

Maybe setting it so if you drift away past the "connectivity range" it automatically logs out?

Thanks for catching this. I don't want to auto-log-out because I think it would be too disruptive; in real life, SSH sessions allow the underlying connectivity to cut out and be re-established without forcing a log-out, and this is pretty important. I could add a timeout for this--if it's been disconnected for too long, it might log you out automatically.

But the condition you were seeing has been fixed on master; instead of crashing it just tells you that there's already an active session, and instructs you to log out of that one first if you want to initiate another one.

[technomancy]

First off: This is really amazing! It's everything I like in a game

Thanks! I know it's probably not the kind of thing that will appeal to everyone, but for a certain kind of mindset I think it really clicks.

Many of the "learn to program by playing a game" things that I've seen fall a bit flat because they just feel fairly contrived. My goal here is to create a world that's rich enough to be fun to play without much programming, but which has enough complexity that your play is greatly improved when you do program it. Basically I try to make it so there are "real world" problems you can solve with code.

I'm thinking of increasing the fuel burn rate; do you feel that it's already too easy to run out of fuel, or that the challenges are more about finding just the right orbits? With the game the way it is now it doesn't feel like there's a lot of incentive to upgrade your fuel tank.

1. The mining laser doesn't do anything to the asteroids (or maybe I just need to wait longer)

Argh; I meant to fix this before the last alpha release--the laser power is much too low to be practical. I'll have this fixed in the next release; for the mean time you can run this as a temporary fix: ship.cheat.laser_power = 8000. I've fixed it on master in git, and I may push out another alpha release soon. (The laser power will go back to its old value when you restart the game.)

2. trying to cat the newsgroup files results in an error "trying to read nil" in fs.lua. it doesn't crash the game, just displays an error

3. I just launched the game again, and the station suddenly wasn't supplying a laser anymore.

I've had reports of these two problems, but I haven't been able to reproduce them myself. If you could find some kind of pattern in when they happen, that would be helpful. I'm tracking 3 here: https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/issues/54

4. Also the REPL and editor are VERY laggy. flight mode is fast, but something is really slowing down the editor

Interesting. The only performance-killer I've observed so far is the trajectory plotting. If you turn that off (ship.trajectory = 0) do you still observe the slowdown? I have a very old laptop (core 2 duo from 2009 with onboard intel graphics) and the repl and editor run very smoothly for me.

[DeltaF1]

I'm not at the same computer that was having the REPL lag issues right now, but I'm building LOVE for this system and will test it on this laptop. This laptop is older and weaker than the other one, so if it can handle the REPL it might be a driver issue on my normal computer.

[technomancy]

So... been a long time, but I've got a new beta release of the game, and it's vastly improved over the last alpha I posted. If you're interested in spaceflight and programming, give it a shot! I'm particularly interested in hearing feedback about the quickstart/tutorial, if people think it's clear without being too verbose.

The main changes are that the editor is much more fleshed out now; it supports opening multiple files, and the console, ssh client, and messaging system are all part of one unified editor now, leading to much greater UI consistency and flexibility.

It's also the first release to feature any story, through the revamped mission system. I'm also very interested in hearing feedback about the first real mission; it does some unusual things that I think will surprise players, but I want to make sure it's not frustrating.

[technomancy]

I just threw together a trailer video last night: https://youtu.be/ARcQc_alg_w

Should give a better feel for what the game is like to play.

[Davidobot]

Looks great so far! A bit daunting sure, but I think it's fine for your target audience!

[technomancy]

The text editor is now spun off into its own independent project: https://gitlab.com/technomancy/polywell

Should be easy to integrate into other projects. I've also added a bunch of features like syntax highlighting, completion in the open file and buffer change commands, and rudimentary screen splits: