Planar

By Ward Dehairs, January 1, 2013

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.

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.