end of february progress

    February is drawing to an end, and so far I am roughly on schedule with my original goals. I have a lot that I am proud of, especially the progress on the asteroid belt simulation. However there remains a lot of work to do on programming the universe to be entirely random and realistic to some degree. I am still confident that my original proposal is realistic considering what I have done so far and how much work I have left. Progress up to this point has required consistent effort, with about 3-4 hours of work per week, close to what I predicted in my proposal. While little of the work I have done so far has been particularly painful or frustrating, it has been mainly creative rather than technical, and I can foresee  a decrease in productivity unless I begin to work in a more disciplined way as the project becomes more about small improvements and balance now that the large mechanisms are largely in place. At this moment, the simulation is made up entirely of asteroid belts and planets, the latter of which are currently represented by spheres while I work on gravity and loading objects as the player moves through space. I am planning to finish sun simulation by the end of next week, at which point I can begin to focus more on finalizing assets and fine-tuning the mechanics to bring the simulation closer to the composition of an actual galaxy.