4X Space Game - Dev Blog 1: Basic Procedural Planet Template

This is the first of many blog entries to come where I go from the very beginning all the way to a working prototype of a 4X Space game. This game will hold some similarities from games such as (Galactic Civ, Sins, MoO, and Stellaris). My intent is to do a polished release if the prototype turns out well, assuming there is enough promise of course.

As this currently is a solo project I’ll be touching on a variety of topics in my entries, so you’ll see everything from design concepts, graphics, and development.

To start things off I decided I’m going to build procedural planets which will allow me to generate a variety of planets in record time. I’m also considering a planet customizer in game by exposing variables for these textures. In order to do this I have to consider layers (water, land, clouds) – some may have sub-layers (ie. Land - > Grass, dirt, mountains, ect…)

My intent is to add in more variation to the land layer, but as of now I’m keeping things simple. I’ll need to build up mountains, areas of vegetation, ice, rocks, ect… but that will come soon enough.

With the above setup I was able to produce the following (NOTE: This is wrapped around a low poly sphere with smooth shading so the edges look a bit wonky)

I did another render which prior to adding some effects:

Full highlight around the planet without volume scattering:

For something with volume scattering:

The above are simply just concepts at this stage so how things will look in the game might vary. For the top picture I just put the planet with volume scattering together with a quick ship I made, and some stars to make a banner for this blog.

My next entry will go over planet options and some concepts on how to manage them along with your empire.