OrboROS

Orbital rendezvous objectives simulator It’s a snake! On orbital planes!

This is a no-engine game based on raw Vulkan SDK and some Haskell libraries I made to load stuff. The source code is on GitLab.

I haven’t figured out how to build it on Windows, so… At least the Linux build should work out of the box on anything older than Ubuntu 18.

The gameplay is a Snake - you move around and collect stuff. The twist is the playing field is actually 6-dimensional, as in 6 orbital elements. See below for controls.

Controls

The controls are not intuitive. I had difficulties with rendezvous missions in Kerbal Space Program so I made this to grok it. It should be even more difficult with limited fuel, time and other restrictions.

The controls are two-fold:

• To actually change your orbit, activate (and hold) [space].
• To lock spacecraft orientation use:
  • [W] - orient prograde. That is, towards your next position, “forward”. This will raise the opposite point of your orbit.
  • [S] - orient retrograde. Turn around, engine-forward and prepare to brake. This will lower the point at 180° around your orbit.
  • [A]/[D] - orient “inside” and “outside” orbit. This is where things get funky. Those are slow burns that shift your orbit around.
  • [Q]/[E] - orient perpendicularly to your orbital plane. This will adjust your inclination, however unintuitively. Even slower burn.

That’s it. Things will get faster the closer they get to the planet. Red color indicates the greater speed and lower altitude.

Extras

• [←]/[→] - rotate camera around the planet to get a better look.
• [P] toggles game time. You still can do your burns though. This is to simulate more powerful engines and give you some time to think.
• [1]/[2] - spawn more containers to catch!
• [Backspace] - jettison your score and yourself to restart.