Hello everyone,

It's the first time I post here, so first things first, I will shortly present myself .

I'm Michaël aka. Drayan, an indie dev. From the start of my studies, I was very interested in game programming.

I work mainly on "concept" to reach my ultimate goal : bring "Space" to life.

But, what is "Space" ? Yeah it's not a very imaginative name , it's more like a "codename" for me. It's a game, I'd like it multiplayer or maybe massively multiplayer, in space of course. You have a spaceship, you could visit planet, etc, etc.

Spaceships will have a fully playable (and usable) interior. You should command your vessel from the bridge, like in Star trek .

Planets are procedural and you can land on them from space to the ground without any interruption. (Like in Infinity game).

I tried plenty of algorithms and engines. And now, after some work, I'm proud to post here the very first screenshot of a planet made with this awesome engine : Esenthel.

01 :


This is a wireframe view of the planet from space.
Now if we move the pov closer :
02 :


On this screen you can see the terrain subdivision. I used the chunked LOD algorithm. It is just a little modified to handle spherical version.



This screen show a normal version of the planet. You can see some glitches due to the fact that normal are computed for each chunk without count side chunks, this will be change.
You can also see some hole, some black pixel. This is another bug caused by the resolution level change. I plan to use "skirt" on chunks to cheat (hehe).

Finally I think I will use shaders to compute normal, with normal map, and texturing.

If you guys have some suggestion, I'll be glad to read them.

Have a nice day ! Thanks for reading !

Hi Drayan,

I am part of a team starting on a similar project (but with different aims to those you stated). I am an experienced programmer, but new to games with 3D graphics. I have been able to find some information on procedurally generating height maps, but am struggling with the spherical part of it and getting it seamless.

Obviously, I don't expect you to share all of your code, but I would really appreciate some hints and tips on how to get started.

Hello ressylou,

Actually, I'm writing a technical article on the programmation of procedurals planets. However, I don't speak about the implementation in Esenthel, it's a more general writing.

If you want, I suggest to tell you when the artcile is ready. And possibly answer your questions about its implementation with Esenthel.

I would love to read the article. Please post it here when it is completed!

The would be great. I look forward to seeing the article, and will be sure to ask you some more specific questions when I reach that point. At this stage we are doing a number of proof of concept samples before finalising and completing documentation of the requirements, so I am a little bit away from try to code that part of it.

I've always found procedural generation fascinating! Have you got any further with this?