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Exodus: The Space Station 13 Remake That Failed

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MoonyTheHuman:
I've been designing it for about 2 months now (very little code, mostly documentation, design implications, and research). The core of the project is written in Pony using a custom spin on the classic Entity Component System
Massive project, and, of course, as the joke goes: It'll likely sputter and die; but who cares, i'm going to do it anyways :)

So, some of the things I'm currently working on for it:
Domain Specific physics engine (no objects can rotate, but they can have 'heights', and a few other abstractions for a faster engine). (Scrapped, wayyy too many objects per average map for this to be viable. Everything is locked to tiles now.)
Atmospherics engine (I'm trying to make a atmospherics implementation that is fast and hardy, but not too over the top and actually runs on modern computers; so, of course, MOAR ABSTRACTIONS).
Client <-> Server communication protocol (It needs to be fast/small enough to handle complex structures and information, due to the amount of variability, but simple enough that it isn't the biggest pain in the world to work with)

Of course, this is almost all still on paper, but eventually, maybe in a few billion years, i'll have a working prototype with source code to boot.

https://github.com/Exodus-Game/exodus-server
https://github.com/Exodus-Game/exodus-core

Khan Boyzitbig:
Well good luck because you will need it. Its good to have a project to work on and its a learning experience at the very least.

MoonyTheHuman:
I'm starting to work on the underlying tile-based game engine a little more, now that the design is mostly finalized.

Chances of non x86_64 support is basically nil, tho. I want to optimize some parts with assembly (SSE and SSE2 vectors).
So no trying to run a server on a raspberry pi ;)

But in all honesty, SSE and SSE2 are going to be my best friend for speeding things up, I can use them for more than just physics, but lighting calculations on the client, too, for example.

I've given the tile engine the name 'Typhoon' for now, until i think of a better one.

MoonyTheHuman:
Also, feedback request on the atmospherics design.

Spoiler: Wall of text on atmos (click to show/hide)Exodus's atmospherics will add a new 'layer' to the tile map, the MixData layer. The MixData layer contains associated information about each tile's atmosphere, with the (approximate) type of (RotationAccel, Vec<(ChemTypeID, AmountInMoles)>, Temperature).
RotationAccel is used to get a idea of where the air is going and at what speed; the Vec<(ChemTypeID, AmountInMoles)> is used to account for each chemical in the atmosphere, and Temperature (in kelvin) does what it says on the tin.
Why Vec<(ChemTypeID, AmountInMoles)>? That is used because Atmospherics and Chemistry will be closely entwined with each other, allowing for easy interoperability.
In order to define atmospherics, we need to know a few things:
1 tile is 60 cm in size, and is 2 meters tall, resulting in a volume of 0.76 cubic meters. The 'odd' volume size is, honestly, odd. I chose the size based on the size of the average floortile in my house.
Space (empty tiles) absorbs/annihilates the atmosphere in it at a steady pace, to prevent a issue in SS13 known as 'space wind', basically just the result of air entering space and suddenly moving absurdly fast, flinging people around.
Air tiles will be put to 'sleep' when its pressure difference between neighbors is >= 0.05 AND there are no currently ongoing chemical reactions in the tile (Even inside items. Items will interface with atmos a lot).
When two tiles are exchanging atmosphere, they will be averaged out at a rate depending on the pressure difference.
The atmospherics simulation is going to be based heavily on Ideal Gasses, with stuff like pressure (re)calculated on the fly.
TODO: Detail underlying algorithms and discuss possibility of GPU acceleration 

Khan Boyzitbig:
I would use the size of a (single) door rather than a floortile for the base area because doors are meant for an average person to fit through without it being a squeeze. A 60cm wide door would (for myself) leave about 6.5cm either side of me or less.
If you ever have anything like mechs or power armour they would not fit in one (60x60cm) tile.

Otherwise That design looks okay to me, though I'm no expert on atmospheric simulation physics (dabbling at best).

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