Galactica/TODO.md

# Specific projects

## Currently working on:
 - first: remove object array
 - first: sticky particles
 - clickable buttons
 - planet outfitter


## Small jobs
- 🌟 clean up and document short sprite sections
- 🌟 Better planet desc formatting
- Procedural suns
- 🌟 Back arrow -> reverse
- No wobble for ai ships & autopilot
- 🌟 User-configurable outfit space types
- 🌟 Sticky radar
- Configurable radar
- 🌟 Ship damage events, unify spawners
- Better landing animation (slow down)
- Land from farther away
- Ship collapse: damage + force events
- Redesign UI elements
- Background haze: 3d perlin?
  - nova dust parallax
- Motion blur
- 🌟 Generate outlines and colliders
  - Then: outline self in status
- Reverse engines + flares
- Turn flares (physics by location?)
- Angled engines & guns
- Fix effect interaction with sprite sections

## Misc fixes & Optimizations
- 🌟 Better errors when content/asset dirs don't exist
- Clear `// TODO:` comments
- Correct drawing order (player on top, landing ships)
- Faster handles (better than a hashmap?)
- Check for handle leaks
- 🌟 Log/warning system
- Clean up & faster frame timings
- 🌟 Handle lost focus
- User config file
- 🌟 Document content
- 🌟 Clean up content: one ship per file, autodetect
- CLI: pack sprites(?), check content, content location, logs, etc
- Better WGSL preprocessor?
- Projectile performance
- Starfield clusters, shader instead of an array?
- Collider groups for factions? (projectile optimization)
- Better error when sprite is missing from atlas

## 🌟 Player selection
- Planet name, ring, and distance
- Selection UI (around game object)
- Selection UI (radar arrow)
- Selection keys
- Select ships
  - Selection UI (HUD)
  - attack selected ship, even if friendly

## 🌟 Planet outfitter
- UI, show ship on land
- Money
- Display name != key
- then: non-removable outfits
- then: cargo space
  - then: collectible flotsam
  - then: mass from cargo and outfits
  - then: space conversion
    - then: heat + energy stats
      - then: damage type (heat, energy, disrupt, etc)
      - then: debuffs
- then: assign guns to points
- then: guns with consumable ammunition
  - then: enable/disable weapons


## Ship Spawning
- requires: Basic ship AI (disable collision for now?)
- requires: Fleets
- Spawn ships from planets
- Land ships on planets (destroy)
- Start with player on planet, respawn


## Debris (requires: flotsam)
- Destroyed ships leave debris
- Destructible & floatingdebris
- Orbiting debris: asteroids
- ES-style asteroid field (how should we do this?)


## Camera physics
- lookahead
- damping
- Don't jump when landing/taking off
- wobble / ship thrown when hit?
- UI/effects when damaged?
- Focus important objects

## Sprite reels
- Sprite reels in content
- Trigger sprite reel during collapse sequence
- Trigger sprite reel when firing (requires: non-removable outfits)
- then: ship tint
- then: frame timing randomness
- then: leaks during collapse (needs particle physics)
- then: passive engine glow, ease in/out
- Sprite color variation

## Texture loading
- loading screen & menu
- GPU limits?
- Cache direcory
- How to pack?

## Particle physics
- Particles should stick to their ships. How?
- Particle compute shader
- Land and unland particles
- Effect on fire gun
- Particle / sprite color variation

## Sound effects
- Sound effects
- User-configurable music (?, game config or user config?)


## Specific Jobs
 - Correct depth order
 - Land from farther away
 - Prevent collisions on unlanding
 - UI: text arranger
   - loading screen, menus
   - Indicators (planet names, enemy ship stats)
 - Start documenting
 - Check for handle leaks
 - Don't allocate each frame
 - Sound system
 - Ship death debris
 - Sprite reels
   - random start frame
   - ship leaks
 - Ship death damage and force events
 - Gun fire effect
 - Sprite color variation
 - Multi-particle effects
 - Better loading
   - incremental?
   - Higher texture limit (16 x 8096 x 8096 isn't enough)
   - GPU limits? (texture size, texture number, particle/sprite limits)
 - Particles when a ship is damaged (events)
 - Sticky radar
 - Arbitrary size resource names



----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------

# Ideas and long-term goals


## Features (not soon)
- Multiplayer
- Configure key bindings, controller support
- Save game state
- Dynamic relationships (get angry when attacked)
- Jump between systems
  - Story: how?
  - Conversations, trade, missions
  - Lightweight whole-universe simulation
- Documentation site & front page
- Dynamic lighting (planets & ships)
- Lens flare?
- Active abilities
- Galaxy date system, slowly orbiting planets
- Parallelize frame computations
- Advanced AI: avoid collisions


## Game & Story
- How to keep player in system bounds, what to do if they fly far away
  - Max chase distance, physics-enforced area?
  - (Soft limits, you shouldn't go too far unless you decide to.)
  - Enforce: silently teleport to the other end
- How to handle death -- save scum should not be the norm (hollow knight?)
- Locks and keys -> variation?
- Hard to get outfits you've lost (hollow knight's charms do this very well)
- Missions: hunt scary targets
- The world exists outside of the system you're in
  - (large-scale dynamics)
- How does information travel?
- Communication timer: destroy a ship fast, nobody needs to know
- Do we want to pay crew?
- How should ship capturing work?
- Enemy motivations
- Where does money come from?
- Changing map paths? How?
- Actions against one faction affect another, dynamic relationships

## Write and Document
 - Parallax
 - Starfield & tiling
 - How the game is drawn
   - transforming game coordinates to screen
   - how angles work
 - Computation flow
   - Physics pipeline
   - Outfit pipeline
   - Collision detection
   - Ship AI
   - Handles
 - Content specification and pipeline
 - How packer and optimizations work, and why
 - How big should sprite resolutions be? How about frame rate?
 - Naming: atlas, sprite, image, frame, texture
 - Outfits may not change unless you've landed. They might not change ever for CC ships!
 - All angle adjustments happen in content & shaders
 - Reserved texture: index zero


## Ideas
 - Improvements over ES
   - Better visuals
   - More interesting combat
   - More interesting missions
   - Big fleets shouldn't be broken (should the player even have a fleet?)
   - ES Enemies don't have a real motivation.
   - Death matters - save-scumming shouldn't be normal
   - More interesting trading?
 - Death penalty
   - Find your wreckage when you die (dark souls/HK)
   - Lose some outfits, lose ship? Real risk for going out! (HK does this well)
 - Damage to ship subsystems
 - Soft and highly armored ship points
 - Repair your own ship