Today I added a couple of major things to the game to enhance the feeling of exploration for the player.
Universe Features
First, I added the concept of UniverseFeatures to the universe generator. A UniverseFeature has a Circle and a UniverseFeatureType. Before the stars are generated, a number of UniverseFeatures are created. There are checks to make sure that these features do not overlap or extend beyond the edge of the game world. These features are things like Nebulas, Galactic Cores, Spiral Arms, etc.
If a particular point is inside of the Circle of one of the UniverseFeatures, it is part of the UniverseFeature and has the associated UniverseFeatureType. This can be used for many things, but currently the UniverseFeatureType is primarily used for determining the star density of a point.
When creating stars, the UniverseGenerator will now check whether a random point is inside of one of the Circles of the UniverseFeatures that are created first. If not, a default star density is used, otherwise the star density of the UniverseFeatureType will be used. The UniverseGenerator then checks the stars that have already been created, and if one of those stars is within the distance of the star density, it will be discarded.
When the GameScene is created, an image can be added to represent these UniverseFeatures, and the name of that feature is also added. Here is an example of a nebula feature:
Later, these features will have semi randomly generated names to increase their uniqueness for the player.
Fog Of War
The other major feature that I added is the Fog of War. I have previously tried to add this to a game using squares, but this time I created the fog out of overlapping circle textures. I think the result is a little bit better. As the player explores the map, the fog is usually permanently removed. However, one of the UniverseFeatures is called a Dark Zone, and if the point of the FogImage is inside of a Dark Zone, the fog returns and must be uncovered again.
