OpenGL & Java Programming

OpenGL Software

I am currently working on 3D space simulator/adventure game in OpenGL. There are no demos or screenshots yet, but features are/will include:

• Planets:
  • Multiple Levels of Detail (LOD), somewhat like ROAM but with less continous scaling to restrict unnecessary CPU load. The reasoning behind this is increasing support for the theory that modern graphics cards do not need much in the way of CLOD as they used to, since they render in the millions of triangles per second. Instead of loading the CPU with algorithms to continuously merge & split a mesh (i.e. ROAM), the game will implement several fixed levels of detail, probably assisted by geomorphing between level transitions.
  • 3D clouds & other atmospheric detail - nothing very fancy, but should look better than multitexturing/2D approaches
  • Distance fogging & other atmospheric effects - e.g. mountains looking increasingly blue/less contrast with distance
  • High detail cities & other artificial structures
    
    
• An immersive, realistic and in-depth universe - I'm sick and tired of seeing awesome, stunning looking games that seem to have spent 10's of millions on visuals, sound etc, but only had the writers sit down and watch a couple of episodes of Star Trek as research for possible future technologies, scientific advances and cultural settings. Keeping up with modern scientific advances and reading some of the literature should help here... the game will include a detailed hypertext encylopedia that, while certainly not required reading, should greatly enhance the gaming experience and provide a much more immersive feel to the universe.
  
  
• Hundreds of thousands of star systems in a spiral galaxy. CLOD is an implicit feature here... Core systems will be tailored, but the majority will be generated dynamically from a 192-bit key composed of the galactic co-ordinates.
  
  
• Alien races - following exo-solar biology theories (it never hurts to read up on these things), only a handful of intelligent lifeforms have evolved, and there are vast generation gaps between species that make for very interesting plotlines...

Minimum system requirements will probably be something around a Pentium II, a decent 3D acceleration graphics card with plenty of VRAM and 128MB of system RAM.

For lots of information on OpenGL programming, visit my Links.

Java Software

To compile Java programs, you need the JDK. You can download it from http://java.sun.com for free. Type javac program.java to compile, and java program to run. I leave it up to the reader to figure out exactly what these programs do and how they work :)

Go.java
A rough implementation of the Chinese game "Go".

Space.java
Java clone of the old IBM PC game "Spacewars".

WebServer.java
HTTP 1.1 compliant mini-web server.

GalSim.java | Documentation
Galactic Civilisation simulator.