Asteroids Unlimited

Over 1 million persistent, mineable asteroids. This Vectrex inspired space sim is a whole new take on the classic Asteroids formula.

The World

In the distant future, a completely isolated pocket of humanity struggles for existence in an unforgiving region of space.

The generation ship that brought them here has been long forgotten save by a few.

Various factions compete and cooperate for resources and technology with ship-to-ship combat a common way to settle disputes.

MECHANICS

The core gameplay revolves around mining asteroids for fuel. The player can tether asteroids and tow them into the mouth of the mothership to receive fuel based on their mass.

There are enormous differences in mass between various ships and between asteroids. Ships also have different propulsion, control, fuel and utility technologies making each type unique to fly.

The Simulation

The positions and velocities of the asteroids are calculated in parallel on the GPU. This allows for 1m+ asteroids to persist in world without the CPU having to break a sweat.

When an asteroid is spawned, its ID is used to seed an algorithm that generates its graphics, name and other properties. This ensures that no two asteroids are the same, while keeping memory usage low.

When an asteroid leaves the area of play, its velocity and position are updated in the texture, and saved to disk upon exiting. This results in a deep and persistent world with the player's actions having lasting consequences.

The depth and scale of this ambient mechanic helps facilitate suspension of disbelief in the player.

TOOLS

The Vectrex style graphics are authored using a custom point data editor also built in Godot 4.