It's been some time since the last update. We have working on various game subsystems, including the planet detection aspect of the game. In many 4x space games, when you explore a new star system, you pretty much know everything that's there.

In Sine Fine, your goal is to explore the galaxy, from your Solar System. You play the role of a self-aware artificial consciousness. Before committing the resources to send a probe to another star system, a mission that could take hundreds of years, it is best to first observe the target system to understand what planets could effectively be there.

One method that astronomers effectively use is called the "transit method". It consists in observing a star for a suitably long duration of time. Planets that transit across the stellar disk will cause a noticeable dip in the brightness coming from the star. However, there is clearly a differences in terms of order of magnitude between large gas giants and smaller earthlike planets. Planets that also take a very long time to complete a transit might not be detected with this method (think Neptune or Pluto). It is also necessary that the target system must be viewed as "edge-on" as possible. Imagine the orbital plane on which each planet orbit the sun. If a system would appear to be viewed from "above" from our perspective, no planets would effectively appear to transit across the stellar disk, as they would be moving on a circular path around the sun.

In gameplay terms, this can be thought of as a sort of mini-game, inspired by Elite Dangerous's full spectrum scanner as well as the actual process through which scientists effectively analyse the data. I was inspired by LightKurve, a python package that helps scientist analyse exoplanet transit data. We could say that the video is an artistic interpretation and a gamified version of the real process.

Now, you might be asking, the real process probably takes a few seconds to sift throught the data, because the computer is doing all of it. A-ha! In Sine Fine, you are the computer. So what you are doing is happening in the mind of you, the computer itself. The fact that it might take a few minutes for you is because you are experiencing time differently!

But seriously, I think this minigame has a few interesting aspects: it provides a bit of mystery to what is effectively in a star system. It has potential to introduce narrative aspects by introducing fake signals, or hiding easter eggs that don't show as easily.

The drawback is that it might become tedious if you have to repeat if for dozens of system. This might emerge from play testing. But technology advancements could help facilitate the process.

Question for you: from what you have seen in the video, what do you think could be improved? Does it feel too easy, too hard? In the video I know where the signals are, but in a real gameplay it would be randomised for each system. What would you change or add?

Also, thanks for playing the tutorial!

Here is a video of the new visual effects for the main sequence stars. Supergiants will also be coming soon!

With Sine Fine we do not "only" want to create a unique space strategy game. We want to primarily tell a science fiction story. What caused humanity's extinction? Are there are any survivors? Are we truly alone in the galaxy? Will an artificial consciousness care for the fate of an already dead civilization?

We will tell this story through both canonical events like you are used to see in other games of the genre, and more "cinematic" moments whenever the event concerns something that exists in the game, such as a space scene, spaceships or outposts.

In the video, two automated "extractor" ships are each going back and forth from two resource sites. The first goes to the asteroid 16 Psyche to gather minerals, the second goes to Venus to gather gas resources. Then they both come back to Mars to deliver the cargo, to two different localized resource "stores".

The lower-left panel is just a visualization to check that everything is working as intended. Line goes up!

I have just posted a new devlog about the "Art Direction" of the game and new details on how you will be able to build Orbital Stations in the game. Like for the spaceships, Orbital Stations will be fully modular and address a variety of gameplay challenges. In the devlog, I go over some more details including more screenshots about the other parts that you will be able to use in game to create your stations.

If you have played Distant Worlds or other games where the player gives high-order commands and then the agents / characters in the game execute it, I wanted to recreate that feeling in SineFine.

With the constraint of time-delay at slower-than-light speeds, it wouldn't be appropriate to have a "galactic warehouse" where materials can be instantly teleported. In the game, to travel from one star system to the next, it can take even centuries.

So GOAP seemed to me the best approach to solve these kind of challenges. In the video you see a sequence of actions the spaceship (the purple icon) takes in order to execute the high-level command (build a space station). Everything is dynamically generated on the fly depending on the capabilities of the agent.

For example the agent/spaceship in the video is intended to be a "construction / transport" ship. So it can identify where resource sites are in the system and collect resources from them, make interplanetary transfers, and build the station.

To make things interesting, the resource sites are scattered through the system. There is a "metal" resource site on Mars and a source of "volatiles" on Venus. As you see, the player has chosen to build a station in the orbit of the moon.

GOAP attempts to transform the initial state of the "world" to the desired state, expressed through a set of fulfilled conditions (sufficient resources collected, agent in the orbit of the moon). It will then try to check which actions it can execute. If it can (it cannot collect resources if it is not in the same location as a resource site, for example), it adds them to a queue of actions.

If there are multiple actions it can take it will branch out. If the current plan it is exploring cannot bring it to a desired state then it is dropped and it will go to the next available plan. I implemented a simple heuristic that tries to discourage the agent from "changing its mind" too frequently. For example imagine a plan that makes the agent want to collect metals, then the next actions it wants to take is to go to Venus to collect volatiles, then come back, and so on. That would be a very bad plan. So actions that require the agent to move or to interrupt an action it is doing are discouraged (for example, continuing to collect resources if it has space in its cargo is preferable to going somewhere else).

Once a plan is found "on paper", it is then executed by the ship. Ideally, this will allow players to see the galaxy come alive (although "lore-wise", in the story humanity is extinct, the player is an artificial consciousness). I would like to see automated transports coming and going from planet to planet (and even across star systems).

Collecting resources and transporting stuff will be half the stuff I can see these agents do, but I can imagine that some challenges will still need to be ironed out. For example, race conditions between agents. The plan is at the moment only "thought of" at the beginning (and assigned to a single ship), but currently it is not checking whether it can still execute it (for example, in case the ship got damaged along the way and it can no longer move or collect resources).

Orchestration of multiple agents toward a single goal will be looked at next (but probably from a simpler perspective, i.e. asking transport ships to only transport resources, rather than a "free for all" approach where every agent can do most things, otherwise I can imagine the solution space to be increased drastically.

Simon is an astronomy student, and is the author of what in my opinion is one of the best renditions of a real-time rendering of a black hole. I am thrilled to announce that he will be collaborating in the development of Sine Fine by creating more advanced visual effects of astronomical phenomena, starting with neutron stars!

If you like space, graphics and astronomy, his series is certainly worth a watch!

Here's an early mock-up prototype of the interface to build interstellar ships in Sine Fine. The abstract cubes will eventually be replaced with the actual components, once we find a skilled 3D modellers.

I'd like to hear from fans of the shipbuilding experience in games like KSP or Starfield: is there anything from a UI perspective, that would have made your life simpler or that you would have wanted? What features do you think are missing if anything or what would you like to see from this part of the game?

I would really love to enable players to build awesome creations in our game too, with the due differences between our budget and those of games like Starfield.