High quality random starfields are scientifically plausible, as are randomly drifting close stars. Anything more accurate and more expensive needs to be justified by a concrete gameplay need; the simulation anxiety that makes you afraid to pretend and approximate isn't important enough to justify effort and (as already noted by others) it exceeds the practical mathematical/computational limits of what is feasible.

If you really desire to go all-in on accurate gravity simulation, you might drop the action or adventure elements and adopt the niche but established genre of interplanetary ballistic simulators: shoot a projectile with such a direction and velocity that it hits another planet.

To keep chaotic dynamics under control all examples I've seen are 2D, turn based (i.e. a succession of individual shots), with fixed planets (to allow trial and error) and with passive projectiles of negligible mass that are the only thing that moves.

On 27/6/2017 at 10:21 AM, LorenzoGatti said:

Anything more accurate and more expensive needs to be justified by a concrete gameplay need; the simulation anxiety that makes you afraid to pretend and approximate isn't important enough to justify effort and (as already noted by others) it exceeds the practical mathematical/computational limits of what is feasible.

Not to be rude or anything, but..... I feel I am the judge of that. If I want to make a silly little Mario-clone platformer with scientifically semi-accurate star backdrops, that would be my decision. Not saying that is in any way the plan, but since it's my game, I don't really feel I have to "justify" my decisions? Just my opinion. And it being my game, that is the opinion that the final verdict gets based on, after all....

22 hours ago, Embassy of Time said:

Not to be rude or anything, but..... I feel I am the judge of that. If I want to make a silly little Mario-clone platformer with scientifically semi-accurate star backdrops, that would be my decision. Not saying that is in any way the plan, but since it's my game, I don't really feel I have to "justify" my decisions? Just my opinion. And it being my game, that is the opinion that the final verdict gets based on, after all....

The gravitational simulations you are talking about placing in your game are extraordinarily difficult and expensive, and unlikely to improve any sort of game I can think of: if you don't convince me that your game benefits enough to justify the effort (and so far you haven't described any benefit at all) my advice can only be to avoid gravitational simulations or approximate them as cheaply as possible.

Instead, you sound like you want to simulate gravitation because you have celestial bodies in your game and anything less than a physical correct simulation would be somehow bad. This is an almost guaranteed way to suffer without producing a game.

While you need to justify your decisions to yourself, not to me or someone else, your decisions about allocating finite resources to the development of your game should be rational and based on what's needed to improve the game, not on what you'd like to work on or on abstract ideas and tastes.

On 1/7/2017 at 4:22 PM, LorenzoGatti said:

While you need to justify your decisions to yourself, not to me or someone else, your decisions about allocating finite resources to the development of your game should be rational and based on what's needed to improve the game, not on what you'd like to work on or on abstract ideas and tastes.

Again, sorry but I do this out of interest, so I do the things I like to work on. I get your point and advice, but.... no, sorry, cannot agree.