osp-magnum

This project is still deep in the pre-release development phase

OpenSpaceProgram is an open source initiative with the goal of creating a space flight simulator inspired by Kerbal Space Program. This project also works as a general-purpose library for space games and simulations with very large universes and multiple planetary systems.

Written in modern C++17, this project mainly features a custom game engine and a universe/orbit simulator, both relying on EnTT and Magnum. The universe and game engine are synchronized for a seamless spaceflight experience from a planet's surface to deep space.

By taking advantage of Entity Component System (ECS) architectures and Data-Oriented Design, this project achieves simplicity, flexibility, low coupling, and excellent performance. With these techniques in action, we can easily avoid spaghetti code and optimize for a high part count.

Features

Core

• Universe
  • Support for Universes that use a hierarchical coordinate system, allowing sizes that can be described as:
    • Big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts.
  • Arbitrary sized integers for coordinates within a particular layer of the hierarchy
    • We use 64-bit integrer coordinates by default, but we're interested to we what people try out!
  • Optimal data layout to support pluggable oribial mechanics algorithms, which includes
    • Patched conics simulations -- like Kerbal Space Program's gameplay
    • N-Body simulations -- like the KSP mod 'Principia'
    • Build your own simulation logic!
• "ActiveScene" Game Engine
  • Scene Graph
  • Configurable multipass Renderer
  • Straightforward interface for integrating any physics engine
    • Out of the box we integrate with Newton Dynamics 3.14.
    • PRs to support other physics engines welcome!!!
  • Wiring/Connection System
    • Resource flow between ship components
      • Fuel
      • Cargo
      • Life support
      • Tell us about your ideas!
    • Virtual control systems for vehicles
      • routable user inputs
      • PID
      • auto-landing
      • Write your own!
• Asset management
  • Comes out of the box with glTF as a part model format
  • Plugin-able ship part loader allowing arbitrary format support
• Extendable Bulleted List system to briefly present implemented features

Extra

• Newton Dynamics Physics Engine integration
• Rockets, RCS, and Fuel tanks
• Rocket exhaust plume effects
• Planet terrain, Icosahedron-based tessellation

Test Application

To act as a temporary menu and scenario loader, a console-based test application is implemented. It is written in simple C++, making it an excellent start to understanding the rest of the codebase.

Building

These are simplified build instructions for an Ubuntu computer. Windows and Mac OS X build instructions are slightly different.

See our GitHub Actions for examples on how to get building for your environment

Install some dependencies, configure the build, build the build!

sudo apt install -y build-essential git cmake libsdl2-dev
git clone --depth=1 --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules https://github.com/TheOpenSpaceProgram/osp-magnum.git osp-magnum
mkdir build-osp-magnum
cmake -B build-osp-magnum -S osp-magnum -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-osp-magnum --parallel --config Release --target osp-magnum

Run the unit tests!

cmake --build build-osp-magnum --parallel --config Release --target test
ctest --schedule-random --progress --output-on-failure --parallel --no-tests error --build-config Release --test-dir build/test

Run the game!

cd build-osp-magnum/bin
./osp-magnum

If you just want to test out the project so far, then see the Actions tab on GitHub to obtain automated builds for Linux or Windows.

Contributing

Our development team is very small right now. We need more crew to help to launch this project to its first release.

Join our Discord Server for the latest discussions. You don't need to be a professional C++ developer to be involved or help! Graphics, sounds, game design, and scientific accuracy are important to this project too.

Checkout Architecture.md to get started with learning the codebase. Feel free to ask questions (even, and especially, the stupid ones); this will greatly help with documentation.

Simplified development roadmap

• Step 1: Make a space flight simulator
• Step 2: Bloat it with features
• Step 3: ???
• Step 4: Fun!

Random Notes

• This project might be codenamed 'adera'. the name of the street the 49 UBC bus was at while the project files were first created.
• If there are problems with DPI scaling, then run with command line arguments --magnum-dpi-scaling 1.0
• As a general-purpose space flight simulator with no reliance on a heavy game engine, this project might have some real applications for aerospace simulation and visualization, such as:
  • Education
  • Amature rocketry
  • Small aerospace companies
• This project isn't intended to be much of a "clone" of Kerbal Space Program. As of now, it's mostly a game engine intended for space flight, with no real gameplay yet.