SpaceSimCentral

Hey Everyone

It might be too early to discuss this but for the past month or so I been trying to get Limit Theory (Old) working on Linux, which it is currently. And I am currently overhauling the engine/libraries and just trying to build a base I can then work off of. A lot of the functionality that Josh discussed in his videos is here, its just not enabled or linked up to the Apps so you can see it working. The engine is older now (12+ yrs) but I have now got it using latest GLSL, OpenGL, SFML, SSBO, GLAD, C++ 17.... so I have done a lot so far and going to be working for about 2wks on refactoring the macros that is used for generation in the core (its link links to everything, but they are fragile) so makes any changes to the APP's really easy to break.

I generally have all Josh's demo apps working now. And I created my own to test with. I have created unit tests, cleaned up the build/squashed all runtime errors. So a lot of work over the past month. My guess is that I need 1-2mos more of refining and testing of the engine and also to implement a lot of graphical updates (ie: PBR, HDR, Bloom, Particles, Fog, etc...)

So this is where I am spending most my time... I don't want to promise anything but I have internal goals for myself to document how to use the LTSL properly, get more visual aspects of the game updated, figure out how Josh worked with and used Procedural Generation with ships/stations/asteroids etc... and get this documented so as a community start building something nice.

The tough part about this whole thing is there is literally no documentation

If people want I can post my repo, but I wasn't going to post it until I thought it was ready to be looked at seriously as a game engine that we can make something with. already have over 70 commits so far haha so I been working... AI helps me a lot here but in a few short weeks this engine is working.

I was surprised there is really no projects (besides the Redux one) picking this up and running with it, until I dove into what is here and its hard to grasp without any comments or documentation. That is what I am aiming to solve first then we will see if we can make a freelancer style game out of this.... time will tell.

Was able to refactor and create a new app from old not working code (its in the 'old' folder in source its not wired into the build).

Is anything in the code resembling a game? Because I think the original developer, spent a lot of time and money, just building an engine!!

Most of the systems are here for the most part they would need updating but from what I found there is a trading/mining system, the universe builder can make large universes 200+ sectors, there is warp lanes... there was a few things from his videos that I don;t see which is more advance UI elements. Not everything is shelled together. But with a little time I should be able to figure something out. Right now doing mostly core stuff and modernising the engine, learning how to use or manipulate the graphics etc... there is lots to do. But this basically didn't work at all on Linux and now its fully working. Now its just figuring out what Josh actually left us.... and I am trying to reboot the original not the newer engine he was trying to build before he stopped.

I was actually surprised about how little people actually forked the code and tried to do something with it, there is a lot here. Hard to believe mostly one person built it all actually, have no clue how he kept track of everything haha. Maybe I can put a video together near the holidays depending where I am at.

Been mainly working on the engine (trying to make it easier for my newb ass to understand), working on the save/load system now. And when I get done with that going to work on implementing json for all config for everything so no more coding in the app itself it will call in the data right from json so less errors etc... its a fun project actually and it gets better every week.

I hope by end of sept I will have all the engine stuff done and then I will work on figuring out content and refining the gameplay... there is lots to do there, but just iterate through it all and eventually something solid will get done. Once I have it in a good state I will advertise it more so maybe I can get some help... right now its me and my locally host AI Agent working on this and maybe in a few months I will have something to show off

Good luck then.

From what you told me, josh had an older version of the engine almost ready and he let it by the wayside to build a new one?

When you make enough progress, you might contact josh!! Who knows? May be he will come back!!

All this AI stuff is very interesting. I would like to use it, to brink older games to newer engines!! (Starglider I and II for example!!)

That's why I am having a go at it, being verify methodical and work one small project/feature at a time. I create unit tests/and I manually test everything before it gets committed. There is a lot of older github projects out there that could have more life if people just dedicate some time to it. I just wish more and more publishers would opensource games after a set time like 10yrs or the moment the net income from a game title drops to a certain amount.

I am not saying this is a 'complete' engine and unless I find it in the code somewhere not all of the stuff we saw in videos is in this repo.... but there is a lot of the base mechanics that with time could be built into something.

I am doing it as an experiment and would be really cool if I could actually get something built from this engine that people can enjoy for years so we'll see... hopefully I will have some decent progress by xmas.

Just yesterday may sound trivial but just added quick load/save to the game and it works great this is new functionality that wasn't in the engine, now I trying to expand upon that to have like a manager so people can make custom saves ...

Very cool. I remember watching the progress on limit theory with much interest years ago. Nice to see someone picking up the mantle. Good luck to you in this daunting effort.

Great work on getting saving and loading setup! I read that you might be needing help updating the engine, the Limit Theory Redux Team spent quite some time updating the LT-New build engine which now runs on RUST and you're welcome to use our code on Github if it helps you out. It would be great to collaborate together as we each work on the different versions of Josh's code. If you ever want to collaborate or share findings we'd be interesting in what you discover. Working together could help both projects. Let me know if you want our discord or github link.

Best of luck on your work, we're rooting for you!

Lets see how far I get, my main setup is Linux so I am concentrating on that right now. And I am doing more documenting. LTSL is rough at times with syntax But I will not know what else is in here until I dig in, I also forked the 'new' code as well to see the differences. I am hoping I will have more to show around the holidays, if only Josh had used more comments it would have made getting around in the code much easier haha

I already have the engine least running the latest version of OpenGL/GLSL/SFML/GLAD, now I am examining the shaders and implemented JSON for easier manipulation of data and pushing it into the scripts. We'll see where I am in a few months.

One thing I will look into is building some sort of launcher when i have base world code working and transportation between the sectors working.

Well been a while since my last post on this, I have slowed down a little on the 'old' limit theory source (ltsl is a pain to work with ) and started looking at the newer source where josh was using lua instead of ltsl.... and I have actually have a lot of progress.... I have this working on Linux (Arch) and I have updated a lot on its engine:

- OpenGL 4.6
- SDL3
- miniAudio (still working the snd effects)
- Bullet Physics (latest)
- Multithreading
- Added god rays, nebula enhancements, film grain, auto-exposure, distance-haze (still a wip), hdr, sunlight effects, AO. A lot of graphic effects and upgrades to the graphics have been done
- Recently been playing the last two weeks I added like lightning to the nebula
- And I have a small demo of that node UI that I have started to recreate from scratch because I couldn't find it anywhere in the code. I even added some extras to it that when you click on a node it will display it in a window and that vector image actually matches the actual model in the game view. I hope to expand on this later after more of the world is built out.


Now that I have a rough working version of the node ui I am going to dive into procedural generation and planets. Since these sector can be large I might add more than one planet (looking into moons) and I want to see if I can get planets to rotate and possibly have cloud patterns and different biomes of planets.

There is still lots of mechanics I will need to look into, I just wanted to build out the game world itself before I dive into building UI and targeting/combat.... I am sure a lot of it is here I just haven't dug into that because I wanted to build a solid base first before game mechanics.