Overview / Usage

The idea behind Hyper Ultra Astronautics was to a create a simple but challenging local multiplayer game supporting a lot of players on single PC and able to run on almost any hardware, specifically targeting integrated GPUs. I also planned on adding support for as many different controllers as possible.

Now that the game is ready, I can say those goals were met. The game has received a lot of good feedback and has proven to run well even on mid/low-end laptops. It can be controlled by keyboard, mouse, a wide range of game controllers, and using a custom Android controller application.

I even built a custom arcade cabinet for Hyper Ultra Astronautics just for fun and to prove it can be done.

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Methodology / Approach

After more than a decade of hobby game development, I had an existing cross-platform C++ code base built on top of open source components. The game was developed on a Linux PC with integrated Intel GPU as that was the primary target hardware as well.

Being a hobby developer with no real deadlines, the development took about four years in total and involved a lot iterating and refactoring based on player feedback. I almost gave up with the project a few times over the years, but eventually was able to finish it.

Technologies Used

Following open source libraries were used:

• Ogre3D for rendering
• GLFW for window management and input
• OpenALSoft for positional audio.
• Ogg Vorbis for audio decoding.
• Bullet Physics for physics simulation.

Following tools were used to create game content:

• Blender
• GIMP
• InkScape
• Ocenaudio

Game was primarily developed on a Xubuntu Linux laptop with Intel CPU/GPU.

Other links

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Website
• Hyper Ultra Astronautics on Itch.io