Lots of Pulsar Kick improvements! I’ve incorporated the physics engine that has been in progress for some time, which has unblocked features I’ve wanted to implement for a while like collisions between the player and other objects, and being able to fire projectiles at asteroids. Also new are UI elements and SDF rendered text which began life a few years ago which allows for me to start naming things which makes it feel more like an actual world.

While play testing I realised that 6 degrees of freedom doesn’t really work on a touchscreen device, and I re-evaluated what controls are practical, opting for a system with an oriented plane (though you can loop by pitching and be ‘upside down’). The idea here is to keep left stick for pitch/yaw and leave right thumb for control buttons since there are no shoulder buttons and using the side of a thumb isn’t practical on a touchscreen.

In getting this movement system to work, I decided to restrict in-atmosphere movement to a single orbital height to allow for fast movement across planets but without having to worry about orientation, and I really like the orbital transitions I’ve implemented.