Ad Lumens A procedural galaxy experiment
What Ad Lumens is
Ad Lumens is a procedural generation project at an embryonic stage - an experiment if you will. It went online at the beginning of May 2024 and hopefully stays so for a while. :-)
The goal for now is to try and lay solid foundations for a procedurally generated universe: from galaxy, stars, planets, etc. to atmospheres, stellar winds and nebulae.
Ad Lumens tries to be different
The most important aspect of Ad Lumens is perhaps its authoritative server principles: it is not about generating galaxies and star systems on the client - rather, all procedural generation happens on the server and is sent to the client for rendering.
One major goal is to minimise the footprint of the application to a minimum and so Ad Lumens does not come with heavy client installation or repository cloning requirements to local execution. Just open your browser and you are good to go.
While these series of choices do come with advantages, they also bring several challenges such as server responsiveness, client interpolation, and so on. Another one is of course the limitations of WebGL/WebGPU when compared to their bigger, stronger cousins OpenGL or DirectX. Graphically, they can hardly rival them. All part of the experiment!
Current status
The experiment is at a stage where procedural generation is not finished: while in a reasonable shape (although you be the judge!), many "holes" remain and are gradually being filled.
The best way to check on progress and content is to head to one or all of the following:
- the data explorer: the place where several galaxies' procedural contents can be navigated, although not quite interacted with! This includes stars details, planets and their orbits. various entities and the embryo of habitability, climate and other physical characteristics
- the 3D explorer: where you can navigate the same galaxies as on the data explorer, only in a far more immersive way. New features are gradually added. The curious can head over to the first post of the 3D explorer mini series and start exploring from there
- the tech tree: the place where sciences and technologies are listed and sorted by tier or alphabetically. This section is under constant change so expect sciences to disappear or shift in nature!
- the log: where I try and cover various topics, from the more or less technical to the functional. Some are done, more are coming! Some are about procedural content generation, some are about ideas and general principles. Several posts are regrouped as mini-series because they touch on similar subjects, or plainly because they logically follow one another
- the Tools & Experiments page to toy around with parts of the engine. New tools are added in a more or less regular fashion
- the about page, for a very quick overiew
What it wants to be
When it grows up, Ad Lumens would very much like to become a game: browser-based and multiplayer - one night, during one of its crazy dreams, the word "massively" came up alongside "multiplayer". When it woke up in the morning, it remembered the dream and thought that was a great idea, but:
- It was only a dream;
- It remembered it was the child of a one-man band; hardly compatible with the "massively" bit;
What does this all mean? Well it means first things first, but keep on looking ahead.
As mentioned elsewhere, the dream is here and I am trying to build it. No guarantees, just a healthy amount of obsession! :-)
What it is not
It's not perfect. Many rough edges still remain, both in terms of concepts and pure coding; the former often impacting the latter is serious and deep ways.
The website changes frequently…
It cannot be called a finished product either, nor a product under any kind of pressure but my own.
It's not a game…yet
One day humans/users/earthlings can start interacting with the procedural universe and perhaps more importantly, leave their marks on it.