Joey Kapusta

Gameplay Programmer

Traction

Summary

This game came from an independent honors project and experiment in procedural worlds in Processing Java. The game is essentially a sci-fi Terraria clone, with procedural, destructible terrain, biomes, and resource gathering. The sci-fi aspect comes in with the tools you're equipped with: a jetpack, gravity gun, and ranged mining laser. There is no real goal to the game in its current state. You can explore the terrain, destroy it with the laser or toss things with the gravity gun, and then build with the blocks you gather.

My Contribution

I coded all of the game's physics, and the functionality of all of the tools. I tried to make the physics code as much like an engine as I could, with base physics objects to extend from, that are affected by global gravity and collide with one another. There are static functions that can be applied to any physics objects in the world, and automatic updates to simulate natural interactions. This is best demonstrated with the gravity gun, which actually creates a point gravitational acceleration that pulls objects into an orbit around the cursor, letting you fling them like a sling. It's a lot of fun to play with.

Moving Forward

This specific version would likely not go anywhere. We already pushed Processing to its limits, and there is no reason for another game like this. It was a great experiment with procedural generation and custom physics, which has helped with future projects. We have considered changing the focus of the game to exploration and placing it in a 3D world using Unreal, but this idea hasn't progressed.