Solar Winds (alpha)

Solar Winds is a game about sailing stellar winds through deep space as an interstellar light sail probe. A 2D space simulation (and my graduation project's topic), this game prototype accurately models gravity and orbits, which you'll have to take into account when trying to get to your goal, a space station orbiting the central star.

Click Help in the menu to see controls and more details, tips and tricks.

Now in alpha!

v.0.0.2 changelog:

- Added timewarp - you can now use left and right mouse buttons to increase and decrease the simulation speed to up to 16x. Click scroll wheel to reset back to 1x.

- Added compass that allows you to see the probe's orientation, sail deployment level and sunlight direction at any zoom level. 

- Adjusted rotation kill behaviour - now it doesn't automatically switch off when it stops rotation, to switch it off you must press 'X' again.

- Updated the help screens  to show off more controls (though I still didn't manage to fit timewarp reset there) and to better reflect the updated state of the game.

- Increased the orbit visualization frequency to stop the flickering (though it still flickers a bit when flying past the planet).

- Slightly decreased the size of the station's docking collider, so that you actually have to get inside the ring in order to win.

- And some other slight adjustments

Now, as to the future of this game's development...

For the most part, it was meant to serve as my graduation thesis topic and something I could show of to people, but I have graduated now and while I enjoyed working on this, I have other projects I would like to focus on (not to mention that I need to find a job now, so even less time to work on this).

This means that I'm putting this project on hold. Maybe I'll revisit it some time in the future, maybe even finish it according to the original plan (tutorials, story, more solar systems, stations, probe upgrades etc.), but certainly not anytime soon.

If you're interested, you can follow me here, on Twitter (@AdamCZima), Mastodon (@adamzima@mastodon.gamedev.place) or Cohost (@adamzima) - I'm not very active at any of these networks, but I'll try to post updates whenever there's something interesting to post.