Further! (v16)

• Game
• Adventure
• Educational
• Simulation
• Physics
• Sounds
• Touch

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-08 23:26 (Edited)

3... 2... 1... Liftoff!

...and crash.

Upgrade your rocket to go further on your next launch!

Click here to read about the new features in version 16

Controls:

• touch the lever to control the throttle
• touch anywhere else to steer

Based on:

• traveling to space (original project)
• meteor strike (physics)
• infinite terrain (tile refresh)
• upgrades menu

Real-time rotation was made possible by my sprite rotation tool

My favorite newly made subprograms:

• SI_FORMAT: turns "10000" into the string "10K", it supports all SI prefixes on Wikipedia with magnitudes ranging between 10^(-30) and 10^(30). However, it doesn't use lowercase letters for the lower magnitudes.
• LOAD_BG_COPY: a BG COPY for the tile refresher. Which can be used to load structures, like the launchpad, at specific coordinates.

Inspirations:

• Into Space 2 (used to be an online flash game, but now most of the online distributions are buggy and it is impossible to reach the end goal, the PlayStore version is stable though)
• Spaceflight Simulator
• Kerbal Space Program

McPepic 2024-07-09 00:58

I maxed out my stats. Can't wait for the moon DLC! :)

McPepic 2024-07-09 01:19

Quick question, though. In the shop screen, it's normal for my money counter to display "-/,),(-*,(" right?

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 10:11

I'm glad you like it!
I think you may have gotten richer than the game can handle :)

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 10:44 (Edited)

Has any of you succeeded in lifting the rocket just a few micrometers off the ground? (The height display supports micrometers as well)

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 13:53 (Edited)

Update 1 - Explosions

• explosion sound when the rocket explodes
• flight termination button

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 15:03 (Edited)

Update 2 - Messages

• added a message system with a queue
• added message sounds
• added a countdown

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 16:04 (Edited)

Update 3 - Convenience

• each atmosphere layer is announced (apparently I spelled atmosphere wrong in the code)
• money now also uses SI scale prefixes to keep this flight display nice and short
• only the money earned on this flight is shown during the flight

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 16:27 (Edited)

Update 4 - Fixes

• to improve performance, the tile refresher is turned off at high speeds or altitudes. however, if it gets turned back on far away from where it was initially turned off, it will find a huge backlog, and the game will freeze for a few seconds. This has been fixed: in this scenario, it is better to do a full render.
• the background priority of the recently added flight termination button has been fixed.
• the upgrades menu doesn't wait for a tap, so if you had your finger on the throttle when the game ended, the upgrades menu's start button would immediately activate as well. This has been fixed.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 17:16 (Edited)

Update 5 - Slight Code Improvements

• The atmosphere layers are now loaded from arrays
• A searching loop subprogram is used to find the layer, this could be replaced with a binary search to improve performance
• the "athmosphere" typo in the code has been fixed

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 20:25 (Edited)

Update 6 - Where's The Moon?

• fixed a crash introduced in the previous version that would occur once the rocket is higher than 3 megameters.
• doubled the maximum amount of upgrade levels, now you can go way higher and, if you're patient, reach the height of the moon (300 megameters). By the way, enjoy the floating point error artifacts.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 21:18 (Edited)

Update 7- No More "-/,),(-*,("

• the shop now uses SI-prefix-scaled displays

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 21:39

The first version is boring compared to the latest version, even though the gameplay is the same! It's interesting what a difference those extra sounds and effects make.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-09 23:51 (Edited)

Update 8 - Home Sweet Home

• Added an arrow that points to the launchpad. Challenge: try to land back on the launchpad, you may need to upgrade the rocket's armor, before attempting to land.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-10 11:19 (Edited)

A merge with this rocket game and my vehicle builder would be cool, but it would be a lot of work

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-10 13:27 (Edited)

Update 9 - Heavy

• added rocket mass and fuel mass, the rocket now gets lighter when it burns fuel.
• added a mass reduction upgrade
• fixed the upgrades panel:
  • the last upgrade wasn't available.
  • a downgrade would immediately skip to the first row.
  • when the maximum upgrade is reached, you can't upgrade further, however it would display the price as if you couldn't afford it, so that has been changed.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-13 08:57 (Edited)

Realistic-ish Spaceflight can be kind of boring:

• the rocket is often traveling too fast to be able to react to and avoid most obstacles, but here are a few things I could do about that:
  • I could use the target arrows to guide the rocket through a crowded earth orbit.
  • Or, since the rocket is orbiting, it probably is going about as fast as the other satellites in the same crowded orbit, so it becomes possible to avoid or dock to other satellites. I could put the satellites in fixed bands so you don't have to avoid them all the time:
    • Low Earth Orbit
    • High Earth Orbit
    • Geostationary Orbit
    • Low Moon Orbit
  • or missiles or drones could be launched at the rocket because it is "violating the air space" of a country, but I'm not sure how the rocket is meant to avoid those.
• I could add weather balloons, satellites, and asteroids with loot: like fuel and valuable minerals.
• I could add futuristic infrastructure that you can use to get further.

What ideas do you have to make this game more interesting

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-13 12:20 (Edited)

Update 10 - Timewarp

• Added a timewarp button for any adventurer higher than 100 km.
  • This timewarp speeds up the time by two.
  • some intensive debugging has been done and some systems may have changed a little, so let me know if anything isn't quite right anymore.
  • here are some of the changes that were necessary to add timewarp.
    • money is now calculated differently
    • there's no drag above 100Km
  • It is tricky to accurately speed up my recursive physics (repeated additions). If this inaccuracy is problematic then I may need to switch to a non-recursive system once the rocket reaches space which is what most space flight simulators do.
• The target-pointing sprites are now actual arrows
• The message queue is now cleared each time the game starts

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-13 13:08 (Edited)

Update 11 - No More Floating Point Errors!

• the camera no longer follows the rocket's coordinates, it rather defines the position of the rocket sprite on the screen for any given velocity. I found a nice curve for this.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-13 14:12 (Edited)

Update 12 - Unflattened The Earth

• The earth is now round. More technically speaking, the plane of coordinates has become a cone, or the rocket's Cartesian coordinates are interpreted as polar coordinates. The Y coordinate is now defined as the distance between the rocket and the center of the planet minus the radius of the planet. The X coordinate is defined as the distance traveled on a ring with a radius of the Y coordinate + the radius of the planet. A full rotation on this ring has the same position as no rotation.
• I've added an arrow that points toward the sun so that you know which way to go in space... Wait a second, if the sun is down then it's supposed to be nighttime... oh well.
• background scrolling has been turned off whenever the tile refresher is turned off (during performance mode), so this background is available again.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-13 19:11 (Edited)

Update 13 - Faster Gameplay

• Timewarp now speeds up the game 10 times.
• Upgrades now scale exponentially, and upgrades have been rebalanced.
• Delta time is now the correct value of 1/60 (60 frames per second); now the velocity makes sense (if you look at the rate at which the position changes); and all physics parameters have been rebalanced (for anyone wanting to rebalance their physics parameters I recommend starting with the delta time, then the mass, then the gravity (with a drop test), then the propulsion, then the drag).
• The sun direction pointer has been moved up one cell to separate it from the timewarp button (and reduce potential confusion).
• The SI-scaled displays now have a fixed number of digits (and a variable number of decimals) to use the available screen space more efficiently.

SP4CEBAR 2024-07-30 13:21 (Edited)

Update 14 - Reach For The Stars

• timewarp now scales with your height allowing you to travel further into space
• I can't remember what changes I made to the physics engine in an attempt to add janky orbits

Update 15 - Quick Fix

• fixed timewarp toggling
• made the display disappear when the button disappears

Update 16 - Another Fix

• Fixed the timewarp not resetting between flights.