Planetary Construction by Didactylos

made by Didactylos for LD 42 (JAM)

The Story

Space is really, unimaginably big, and Earth is surprisingly tiny.

Unfortunately, all the habitable planets in the galaxy have a massive over-population problem too!

More space is on the way, thanks to the mind-boggling intellect of the people at Planetary Construction (a subsidiary of Magrathea Corporation). If only they didn't have such a big order backlog!

Help them out with a bit of terraforming. Can you balance all the variables to find the recipe to support life?

Make enough space for all the citizens of the galaxy before the world population reaches 11 billion.

Game Play

Play by adjusting the planetary properties to match the requirements. If a planet is too small, or lacking resources, you can replenish them by smashing asteroids or other planets into the planet. Some changes take a long time - geological timescales. You can place a planet in an accelerated timewarp to speed things up.

The Jam game has only one gameplay mode - three quick planet designs in five minutes of gameplay. The post-Jam game will have more challenging objectives as an alternative game mode.

Procedural Generation

Except for the NASA Blue Marble imagery, everything is procedurally generated (even the music). Create a water world, an ice planet, or anything in between. I worked completely alone, and I really pushed myself with the code.

Performance Update

My post-Jam efforts focused on rendering performance. A few bugfixes aside, it's exactly the same game, but better. The texture rendering is done with a custom shader. The texture backend is done with a custom render texture (not a CustomRenderTexture, because that doesn't work properly with WebGL - I made my own). Result? Beautifully smooth animation.

Performance Update Downloads

HTML5 (web) http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42v2/index.html
Windows http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42v2/planetaryconstructionwin.zip
Mac http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42v2/planetaryconstructionmac.zip
Linux http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42v2/planetaryconstructionlinux.zip

Original Jam Version

HTML5 (web)	http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42/index.html
Windows	http://www.goodmorningfrom.com/ld42/planetary_construction.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/planetary-construction

Ratings

Overall	397^th	3.568⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Fun	983^th	2.818⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	199^th	3.636⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Theme	748^th	3.318⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	863^th	3.023⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Audio	752^th	2.295⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Humor	822^th	2.071⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Mood	891^th	2.738⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Given		29🗳️	3🗨️

Feedback

HYPRGLOO

14. Aug 2018 · 08:47 UTC

Fun game! This was really difficult to understand at first. For some reason I didn't make the connection that you needed to physically drag the planet into the 'orders' menu, and that cost me a few minutes of frustration (probably my fault). After fully understanding the mechanics I have to say, this game is incredible. The idea of building a planet from scratch, paired with your pretty UI and beautiful planet renderings is mind-boggling. My only gripe is that I wish the orbit sliders were on the same menu as the timescale button, so you could more quickly run through tests. I enjoy everything about this, this is a fantastic entry overall. Well done!

Hagrida

14. Aug 2018 · 09:02 UTC

8/10, would rebuild the world!

Nessa

14. Aug 2018 · 09:12 UTC

Cool idea! Took me some time to figure out the mechanics but overall really nice. Great job!

🎤 Didactylos

14. Aug 2018 · 09:14 UTC

Thank you, @hyprgloo - I definitely ran out of time for balancing and tutorials, so I'm really pleased the core mechanic is enjoyable.

🎤 Didactylos

14. Aug 2018 · 09:16 UTC

Glad you enjoyed it, @hagrida. Any suggestions for improvements?

🎤 Didactylos

14. Aug 2018 · 09:18 UTC

@nessa my original plan had a tutorial stage, but time was not my friend. Thanks for the feedback.

baconsenpaii

14. Aug 2018 · 12:56 UTC

As said before, it is hard to work out what to do at first, but the UI and graphics are really nice.

Fluffy_Kaeloky

14. Aug 2018 · 13:32 UTC

I tried the game and was quite lost for a few minutes. I quickly got the hang of manipulating the orbit distance to melt the Cryosphere and using the Hydrosphere to produce Biosphere. The one I had troubles with was Atmosphere, as it was very often too high, and using the asteroid would nuke the Biosphere. As HYPRGLOO said, I didn't get the fact hat you had to drag the planets into the orders. I was trying to meet them all with one planet. It wasn't until I read his comment that I realized what you needed to do ^^.

Apart from a couple hics like that, the game idea is a really nice one ! I'm just a little sad that the tilt axis doesn't impact the planet. Otherwise, once you got what you needed to do, filling the orders are just the right difficulty, and is overall enjoyable !

The UI is responsive and quite pretty, like the 3D feel to it.

On a programmer side, I also really wonder how you generated the textures on the planet to dynamically react with the planet's properties !

🎤 Didactylos

14. Aug 2018 · 19:21 UTC

@baconsenpaii the UI graphics took 10 minutes in Inkscape, and the planet graphics took many hours of experimentation and coding. There's still room for improvement.

🎤 Didactylos

14. Aug 2018 · 19:31 UTC

@fluffy-kaeloky I had to simplify the controls a lot from some of my earlier plans. In reality, atmosphere and biosphere are affected by a lot of different things, including each other. In this simplified version, the best way to lose atmosphere is to have a small planet and let the atmosphere just drift out into space.

Axial tilt affects the seasons, so it changes how quickly you can improve the biosphere. Currently it has no effect on the maximum biosphere.

Making the UI move around nicely was a challenge - I very nearly ran out of time.

The textures are generated in a co-routine (there is a texture queue because it takes a long time). The rest is just mathematics! There's an excellent tutorial here, if you are interested: https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/noise/

Naked Kiwi

15. Aug 2018 · 16:46 UTC

It's a nice game, with a lot of work behind. The only problem it's that it's a bit complex. I had a good time playing it.

SkyreX

15. Aug 2018 · 21:46 UTC

This game is perfect. Difficult to play but I accept the challenge and I'll play it tommorow and try to win it at all. Idk if I actually can do it but I'll try :D. Anyways good luck, good job

🎤 Didactylos

16. Aug 2018 · 07:35 UTC

Thanks for your feedback, @naked-kiwi - ironically, I had plans to make the whole game a lot more complex. The start should have been easier, though - and it will be when I finish the post-Jam version (if I ever do!).

🎤 Didactylos

16. Aug 2018 · 07:37 UTC

Strong praise indeed @skyrex! I will try to keep all the parts you enjoyed when I make improvements.

greenbluebit

16. Aug 2018 · 09:16 UTC

Hey, the game itself is complex and at first I was just sitting there wandering what I got myself into.
But I love what you accomplished. Has a nice god-game feel to it. And hey, I recognize catlikecoding :D I find that site as one of the best sources for learning.
Very impressed with what you got to in such a limited time frame. I bookmarked it, will play some more and show friends :D

karmafarm

16. Aug 2018 · 10:31 UTC

it was HARD... but I love the idea and it's really amazing what you did with it in such a short space of time. The procgen graphics were especially impressive!

Vulture_42

18. Aug 2018 · 10:09 UTC

I managed to fulfil all my orders, although it took a while to figure out I had to drag the planets to the order (even though the instructions were right in front of my face). I didn't really end up using the sliders for orbit/axial tilt, as I completely forgot they were there, but I did pretty well nonetheless.

It would be nice to have more orders come in after the first lot, as after they're gone you don't really have anything to do. It would also be nice to have some way to split a planet up if it's grown too big (although that may not realistically be an option). Does the population of Earth have any effect on anything else, by the way?

Joror

23. Aug 2018 · 14:49 UTC

Lots of dials to tweak on this one! I delivered all the required planets, but the experience was somewhat awkward. Would have loved to have more info when I hover over things - perhaps some color-coding and bars instead of plan percentages. :)
Fun concept tho - planets a-la-carte

Jakier

23. Aug 2018 · 17:04 UTC

The game needs better UI, there's a lot of information thrown at you, and a giant timer at the bottom. Green across the board does little to help realising what's what in the game.

The concept itself is super cool! I don't think I've seen something quite like it. Watching the planets morph is really something.

Great work