Greetings all,
For some time I have been inspired by games such as No Man’s Sky and Space Engine and wanted to play around with making a similar game for iPhone’s and iPad’s. Years back I released a game on the App Store called Super Starship which then evolved into Super Starship 2 and Super Starship 3. I have now completed the 4th version of the game which is called Space Trek 2150.
The game uses the excellent Space Graphics Toolkit (SGT) package from the Unity Asset Store: Space Graphics Toolkit
Apple App Store link is here (A12 or later device required):
Space Trek 2150
The game is 100% free with no ads and no IAPs. It is completely a labor of love.
What is Space Trek 2150?
It is a space exploration game. You are given a starship with extreme speeds and put into a universe of 1,000,000 stars and 18,000,000 planets and moons. The universe is true scale, meaning stars are really lightyears distance apart from each other. In addition solar systems are accurately scaled as well with planets being 10s of millions kilometers apart from each other. In a game such as this you will quickly realize just how slow the speed of light really is. The universe spans 212 light years across and 212 lightyears up/down on the Z axis. Due to the size of the universe your ship is equipped with a star drive that is capable of speeds up to 1 lightyear per second! I say up to because your ship starts out with a speed of only 0.1 LY/s and can be upgraded up to 1 LY/s. You upgrade your ship by visiting starbases. This is also where you will refuel and recharge your life support system. There are more than 30,000 starbases scattered throughout the universe.
What do you do in Space Trek 2150?
You explore and claim stars, planets and moons as your own. When you claim a star, planet or moon it is uploaded to the Space Trek 2150 database and is yours forever. Other starship captains will see your discoveries and you will see theirs.
As of today there are more than 600 discovered stars and planets as shown in the screenshot below (also note the interesting pattern players are taking with their exploration of the solar system):
You can land on planets and mine rocks for minerals or collect planet pods (seeded on planets by a mysterious alien species) for minerals. You can also complete side missions such as transporting cargo or a stranded alien from the planet surface to a starbase or to a nearby alien structure, or scan abandoned starships in interstellar space for points and credits and possible free ship upgrades. There are many ways to play Space Trek 2150 and as captain of your own starship you decide the path.
You sell your minerals to a starbase and receive credits and use the credits to upgrade your ship as shown below:
Here’s a video link showing what it’s like to take off from one planet and travel to a different star system and land on another planet. The whole process is completely seamless.
Space Trek 2150 flying to a planet in another star system
And if you upgrade your ship with Hyper Warp here’s a video showing how it works to travel from planet to planet in the same star system:
How is this possible?
Some people have asked how is it possible to have a universe with 1,000,000 stars and 18,000,000 planets and moons on an iPad and a 400mb download?
The answer is simple. I generate the 1,000,000 stars using SGT’s star field box. When your ship approaches a star I generate the solar system using the star’s index number (also known as its Star ID) and combine that with a magic number to seed the random number generator. I then create the solar system for the star with the seeded random number generator which will guarantee that each star will have the exact same solar system every time you enter it, since its Star ID is unique. Solar system generation includes many many parameters such as number of planets, number of moons per planet, planet terrain type, atmosphere composition, position of planets, and much much more. So many different parameters that each solar system is guaranteed to be unique. So although there are 18,000,000 planets and moons the game is only generating the planets and moons for the star system that you are in.
Here are some cool screenshots taken from an iPad:
Flying over a planet with a couple moons:
Same planet but lower altitude:
Flying through the atmosphere of a moon with an ocean:
A planet with rings:
In cockpit view with ocean planet ahead:
In cockpit view on planet surface with trees and water:
Thank you and I hope you try the game.
Discord link is here: Space Trek 2150 Discord Invite
Les