Planar
By Ward Dehairs, January 1, 2013
![](/assets/images/projects/planar/icon.png)
Planar is the first major game I completed. It is a 2D space simulator, programmed fully in Java. The game is available for Download, completely free on indieDB. The indieDB page also features a summary of the gameplay and physics featured in the game.
![](/assets/images/projects/planar/planarscreenshot.png)
The download includes the java source code. The reason for this is that the math, physics and programming that went into the game is more interesting than the game itself. I made it from the point of view of a physicist, rather than a game developer. This makes for an interesting, but unengaging game. I started work on this game when I was 19, during my second bachelor year in physics.
About a year into the development of Planar, I found out that a similar concept had already been established by a much bigger team, namely Kerbal Space program. I decided that -at the time- I did not have the skills or resources to turn the game into a viable competitor. That is why I stopped working on it, in favor of starting a new game project using a game engine in stead of a naked programming language. This new game finally became Drop Out 0.
Much later, during the summer of 2016 I decided to finish Planar anyway. I chucked out all my old plans for the game, including a rocket editor, advanced staging, randomly generated terrain, fuel management, rotation physics etc and replaced all that with a simple story line and some structured missions. I finished my work right before Drop Out 0 was greenlighted for release on Steam.