Alright, so this ‘farer lander iv’ business. Man, it’s been a thing. You’d think by the fourth go-around, I’d have this whole landing simulation down pat. But nope. Not even close, feels like sometimes.
I started this whole project, well, version one, ages ago. Just wanted to see if I could get a little pixel ship to touch down on a flat surface without, you know, exploding. Sounds simple. It really, really wasn’t. Version IV was supposed to be the one where I nailed all the fancy stuff: different planet gravities, atmospheric drag, the works.
The Nitty-Gritty of Trying
So, I dove back into the code. First thing, I reworked the thruster logic. My old system was too jerky. Spent a good week just tweaking values, trying to get that smooth, controlled descent. Felt like I was actually piloting the darn thing with all the test runs. Then, I moved on to the landing gear compression. Wanted it to look and feel right when it touched down. That meant a bunch of fiddling with spring physics, which, let me tell you, can get real messy real fast if you don’t watch out.
The biggest headache? The variable gravity.
- One planet, super light G. The lander would just float around if you weren’t careful.
- Next planet, heavy G. The thrusters could barely keep up, and it would pancake if I wasn’t spot on.
It felt like I was fighting a new battle with every celestial body I programmed in. I debugged for hours, staring at lines of code, trying to figure out why my calculations were off. Sometimes it was a stupid typo. Other times, my whole approach was just wrong.
I remember this one evening, I was trying to get the atmospheric re-entry effects to look decent. Not just functional, but to have a bit of visual flair. I hacked together some particle effects, played with shader code I barely understood. It looked awful for a while. Like the lander was shedding confetti. Frustrating, to say the least.
Why I Even Bother, Right?
You might be wondering why I put myself through this with ‘farer lander iv’. It’s not like anyone’s paying me for it. Truth is, I got started on the whole ‘farer lander’ series because my last big freelance gig just went completely sideways. You know the type. Scope creep, goalposts moving every five minutes, and communications that just… weren’t. It really burned me out. I needed something that was just mine. Something where I made the rules, I set the targets, and if it broke, it was on me to fix it.
So, I fired up my old development environment, dusted off the initial ‘farer lander’ concept, and just started building. This IV iteration, it’s become my weird little escape. My own mountain to climb, pixel by pixel. Sometimes I’m up till the early hours, chugging coffee, just trying to solve one more tiny problem. My wife thinks I’m a bit nuts, probably.
But then, last night, I finally got the lander to successfully touch down on ‘Xylos Minor’, a tricky little moon with uneven terrain and that weird gravity I mentioned. It wasn’t a perfect landing, a bit bumpy, but it didn’t crash. For the first time with that specific set of parameters, it actually worked. That little victory, man, it felt good. Really good.
So, yeah. That’s the current state of ‘farer lander iv’. It’s slow going. It’s often a pain. But it’s moving. There’s still a ton to do. The dust effects on landing are next on my list, and then I need to tackle the fuel consumption model properly. Always something. But hey, that’s the process, isn’t it?
