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no, they havent abandoned anything. universe sandbox 1 was complete. their only other product is this, which is still in early access, still being developed, and has never been abandoned.
I used the money that version made to hire a team, switch 3D engines, and build Universe Sandbox 2 from the ground up (now renamed to Universe Sandbox). We launched that version on our website in 2014 and on Steam in 2015. We have been releasing updates ever since. We have no plans to stop updating Universe Sandbox or to release a different title.
It's not at all fair to claim that we (from a follow-up comment) "... have a track record of abandoning [our] incomplete games and release a new version under a new name to get more money"
So you're not just a dev, you're the boss. Do you take requests? :)
Great game, by the way.
Not sure how you're defining "complete". Simulating the universe is a complex problem that will never be finished. This version of Universe Sandbox has been in development for over 10 years. There's no clear "done" for any of it, but we continue to release regular updates and have no plans to slow down development.
We really aim to make something that is fun for users of all ages and skill levels. You can have lots of fun exploring and experimenting without having to understand all the complex systems, but the depth is there if you want to go further.
And Steam does have a refund system if you want to try it out without risk.
Thank you!
for example, galaxies. galactic collisions have never worked, mostly because of the workaround implemented to make galaxies look about correct when simulated alone. they have remained in this state, mostly untouched, for years now. yes, i know you've said that releasing it like that was a mistake. and yes, you guys are making progress again, starting to work on things that have been on the to do list for many years, like materials.
then there's my personal pet peeve of physics and/ or collisions having broken in the unity engine upgrade, and never properly returned to their former state. this has been since 2014-2015 if my memory serves. i have been waiting many years to again be able to properly run the simulations i want to, while it seems most of the effort has been spent on better planetary simulation and letting players draw on planets. not bad things, in and of themselves, but not where i'd expect focus when the core of the program isnt working right.
keep in mind about steam's refund policy and early access: you may like a given early access game now. however, the devs can change the game in the future, and you may be unsatisfied with the product. then, nine times out of ten, you wont be getting a refund.
I think you have already heard about my suggestion for making orbital parents selectable so a planet's displayed orbit isn't around one of its larger moons.
Another one is a fully random system. I was very close to implementing myself by writing a visual basic text file editor that would edit the .json in the unzipped .ubox. (This is kind of a special interest here, so I'm sorry if I go on too long.)
I started with the assumption that ratio of the mass of the largest object to the 2nd largest object would tend to be similar to the ratio of 2nd largest object to the 4th largest object, the ratio of 4th largest object to the 8th largest object, and so on. That looked like (1-1/n)^x times the previous object's mass where n is the object number and x is adjustable. Then I added an adjustable random component to their masses along with an average target mass for the largest object, and adjustment for that ratio, and the number of bodies to simulate.
I then, randomly chose orbits going from most massive to least massive bodies in the system, discarding results based on my best math for determining orbital stability. The orbit is always based on a larger body that already has an assigned orbit and its hill sphere and Roche limit. More massive bodies are more likely to be parents, and there's a small chance of Lagrange points being chosen.
All these likelihoods are adjustable along with adjustable randomizations for eccentricity, inclination to parent's equator, argument of pericenter, longitude of the ascending node to parent's equator, true anomaly, obliquity to orbit, and argument of obliquity. This allows the orbits to be everything from all be circular right around the equator, to all being crazy tilted eccentric orbits. The intention is, the further from the Roche limit, the higher the likelihood of things like tilt, eccentricity, and obliquity. It should allow for large sparse systems where chaos doesn't lead to collisions, cramped systems where any imperfection leads to destruction, perfect systems where everything is in a single plane, and systems where objects are just as likely to be on their side orbiting backwards.
I'm sorry to go on for so long. I had this pretty close to working before I got pulled away. If I remember correctly, the objects and orbits were pretty well randomly created in Excel and I really just needed to get that data into the 6 axes of .json. I'm not a dev and just do this once in a while for fun, so I figure a real dev could whip this out in a few days, at least up to the point where debugging starts.
You describe some of this:
If you were given a list of properties/options to make a random system, what would they be?
- Random star or specific type?
- Number of random planets?
Do you have a screenshot of the code or interface you were working on?
Everything was based on mass. The mass of an object determines it's distribution of possible densities and whether it's a black hole, star, brown dwarf, gas giant, etc.
I used a complex formula in Excel to assign a realistic density distribution to every possible mass and used that to determine things like Roche limits.
I could share the spreadsheet with you, but it's really a scratchpad, and would probably take some explaining to make sense.
Number, Mass, Radius, Parent, Period
1, 4.48 solar masses, 2009634 km, NA, NA,
2, 73.9 Jupiter masses, 84087 km, 1, 59100 Years
3, 11.7 Jupiter masses, 70683 km, 2, 2.7 Years
4, 119 Earth masses, 53389 km, 1, 1.48 Months
5, 44 Earth masses, 43191 km, 4, 1.86 Months
6, 30 Earth masses, 43623 km, 2, 1.26 Months
7, 20 Earth masses, 27118 km, 2, 209 Years
8, 3.2 Earth masses, 9773 km, 5, 1.25 Months
9, 1.8 Earth masses, 7490 km, 7, 1.39 Years
10, 1.21 Earth masses, 7342 km, 2, 9.2 Years
This is all randomly generated. The Parent number is what body is being orbited and the period describes the size of the orbit. I don't have the other elements listed. I haven't touched this in a couple years and I don't know where that portion is off the top of my head.
Right away I see the code that discards unstable orbits isn't working. 4 has shorter orbital period around the star than the orbital period of 5 around 4. Had that worked, 4 and 5 would be a double gas giant planet. Maybe that's ok, maybe not, but I don't remember what I was doing when I walked away from this.
Otherwise the system is a 4½ solar mass star with a high mass brown dwarf in distant orbit and a gas giant in a Mercury sized orbit. The brown dwarf has 4 planets ranging from a high mass gas giant to a planet somewhat similar to Earth.
This is all totally random, so the next time it could be totally different: two stars in a tight orbit, one star with more traditional planets, or whatever. It's much more interesting when it's working and has more like 100 bodies.
Yes, VERY worth it. Very twice. I say Very very unto you.
Skip the big part if you dont need the long rambling answer
as a matter of fact i have created an entire YT channel recently in which i have began working on videos for this game only. I dont care that it may not be a popular genre for viewership but this game is by far the best universe sim i have found...I do sciencey stuff myself with it but i really love it as a relaxing meditative game it allows me to either get lost in my own destructive nature or try to cultivate a complex system that works...or I can use it to relax or amplify thought experiments making new ideas more accessible. I am by no means a genius of any sort but I like to exhaust my mind with endless thoughts that tear apart other thoughts to make new ones i dont know im rambling at this point but to make it simple I have allocated time for this game to create content using it and promoting it to possibly get more people into this genre that way the developing budget is increased and we may see incredible updates to this game. we dont really need another one when i play this I feel like it could one day (in the far future hopefully im alive) be called something like "Google Universe" or something with that kind of power. It may seem crazy but things like this happen lol take the MOBILE game called Game Of War Fire Age...their player tracking system was so advanced that they raked in over 2 million dollars a day at one point and New Zealand bought their tracking systems and implicated it into their entire country's transportation system...lol i say all this just to say heck yea! this game is worth buying for yourself and your friends and family and anybody you pass by thats looking up at the sky but if you are not rich enough for that just go everywhere and talk about it like me lmao! so many of my friends and family will be getting this game for their birthdays...i dont care if people get mad because its not call of duty or something lmao...
i may be a bit biased because i love simulations like battle sims and games like civilization and age of empires.