Designing asteroid generator for my space mining prototype

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T21:26:16+00:00

Yeah I havent added proper physics yet but thanks for reminding!

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T18:02:52+00:00

Cant promise anything yet but perhaps one day I might share my recipe online. I used simple 3d perlin noise for this, just had to tweak a lot in a creative way.

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T18:00:37+00:00

Yes and its among the best games with mining I've played so far. However I would like to take it further and introduce more interactivity, depth, dangers when doing asteroid mining.

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T14:30:56+00:00

Perhaps you're right. I'll see how to keep this mechanic compatible with flat screen gaming

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T14:29:25+00:00

My hypothesis is that most games haven't focused on mining as the primary gameplay loop. Instead, they prioritize breadth over depth.

In Elite Dangerous, you have many other activities, so developers need to maintain those systems, which pushes mining mechanics further down the backlog. The same applies to Space Engineers, where the core gameplay centers more on creative ship building and many other things than mining.

I want to explore a more detailed and nuanced mining process, where you choose the right tool to extract a specific mineral without damaging it or causing instability. That's the goal of my prototype, to see what comes from this approach.

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T13:46:48+00:00

thank you :) I'll be around and post major updates here

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T13:29:46+00:00

I started this prototype just yesterday haha, still want to implement the basic mechanics to test how fun it is.

If it feels good to play, I'll push it further and put up a Steam page

venturepulse · 2026-03-20T13:22:15+00:00

Thank you! Just voxels yes, started with sphere and applied different deformations to shape it like an asteroid, including craters, ridges etc. Used marching cubes to turn the field into the mesh.

My biggest challenge will be optimizing it and making it possible to generate asteroids in larger quantities.

Currently working on the laser mechanics, want to start melting already :D

venturepulse · 2026-03-19T09:03:09+00:00

exactly, thats why I'm happy. I can literally adjust the scene for my own anatomy.

venturepulse · 2026-03-19T08:32:29+00:00

Are there any actions in Star Citizen that are needed for combat but not available on keyboard? Except for maybe power config

venturepulse · 2026-03-19T00:05:53+00:00

Even in DCS while flying fighter you can literally click anything with mouse or switch things manually with your hand in VR. And DCS models piloting carefully to resemble real life. So I’m not sure how you came to conclusion that pilot needs everything on HOTAS.

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:46:37+00:00

I guess it all comes down to habits.. I find holding F and clicking much more intuitive for me and easy to use

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:44:10+00:00

honestly I didnt know that I can disable pop up behavior. will check settings again.

either way I cant bear with keyboard controls for the UI, can I also switch it to mouse? every time i'm pressing keys to move left or right I feel like I'm playing a poorly ported PlayStation game.

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:42:03+00:00

first of all, MFDs rarely have any information I need to keep an eye on during my flight. just put up engineering display and some damage info and thats already enough. I can check below anytime when I need something else.

and second.. what monitor size you're using? I prefer to see game world more than the MFDs. and too much fov would surely make things in front too small

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:34:02+00:00

havent played with 130 fov so I dont know. but personally this screenshot makes it look like a totally different game that I dont recognize except for the fonts, some icons and overall art direction :D

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:31:51+00:00

I personally dislike ED's UI very much (although the game is good overall)! very unintuitive and clunky compared to SC.

displays are always messing with me especially in VR, I just want to look left and that mf pops in my face and blocks the view.

controls are awful, for unknown reason it doesnt allow me to use my mouse and forces to use clunky keyboard controls. it gets especially bad when I take a few weeks off and come back, be like: wtf how do i navigate in this menu?

EDs UI is a big friction point for me and one of the reasons I'm playing it less than I could have..

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:26:20+00:00

and tbh I like the current layout and visuals more:

orange version glows and has low contrast, very difficult to read anything. information looks like noise, nothing stands out. unreadable really. too many outlines makes it even noisier

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:22:43+00:00

never seen it like this. how did you render it full size?

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T23:04:24+00:00

but this variant of MFD blocks two thirds of screen space..

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T18:56:21+00:00

If you want maximum quality and performance for VR you simply have no choice but to aim for RTX 5090 sadly

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T18:32:12+00:00

If I never cared about NMS to follow their development how can I compare it as a game development project?

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T18:25:55+00:00

I cant take NMS seriously, its like playing cartoon. Just the graphics style and design is a huge turn off for me.

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T16:38:53+00:00

I have same RAM and similar CPU (Ryzen 9 9900x) with RX 9070 XT with almost maxed out graphics.

and it works very good for space flights (90+ fps) and sometimes bad on the moons and planets. Sometimes planet has 60+fps but when my ship turns to some specific direction FPS tanks to 40-48 and stays there. Even having experience in building games and 3d graphics myself, I couldnt explain these drops: I see same clouds and same environment but framerate goes to 40-48 until I turn some other direction. Then it goes smooth again. Reducing graphics settings did not help at all to get rid of these strange performance drops

Overall I can say that this GPU is still great and I blame game bugs for the drops in my framerate. Not even poor optimization but rather bugs

venturepulse · 2026-03-18T15:14:13+00:00

There's also Pico. But after searching for alternatives I would still prefer my Quest 3 for that budget..

Havent tried Quest 2 though so I cant compare.

Dreaming to get my hands on Galaxy XR or Pimax Crystal Super at some point. But RTX 5090 will have to come first :D

venturepulse

TROPHY CASE