Skip to content

README.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
171 lines (116 loc) · 10.4 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

171 lines (116 loc) · 10.4 KB
Raw

Destination Sol

Gitpod Ready-to-Code Discord

This is a personal development fork of Destination Sol (v2.1.0), forked from MovingBlocks/DestinationSol. It incorporates upstream bug fixes and open pull requests not yet merged there, along with additional crash-debugging improvements and gameplay fixes. See todo.md for the full change log and known issues.

Destination Sol is an arcade space shooter originally started by Milosh Petrov and a small team on Steam. After releasing as an indie title, the team moved on to other projects and open-sourced the game. The open source group MovingBlocks behind Terasology stepped in to maintain it.

Destination Sol is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License (except the soundtrack — see its section below).

You can download the official release on Steam or the Google Play Store. To build this fork from source see the section below.

Gameplay

You start at the edge of a solar system as a pilot in a small ship. You are free to explore space, land on planets, fight with enemies, upgrade your ship and equipment, hire mercenaries, mine asteroids, and so on.

Enemy ships are orange icons, allies are blue. Enemies can be marked with a skull icon - beware! They are likely stronger than you. Improve your ship and equipment and fight them later!

Your ship has a certain number of hit points (your armor), which will recover if you have consumable repair kits in your inventory and stay idle for a short while. You may also have a shield that takes damage first. Each is vulnerable to different weapons, both on your ship and others.

Weapons and special abilities often need consumables to function (like Bullets or Slo Mo Charges) and take time to rearm.

You can destroy asteroids for easy money, even with the starting ship's ammo-less but weak gun.

Warnings get posted if you get close to dangerous ships or may soon collide with something on your current course. Blue dots along the edge of the screen indicate a planet is nearby.

Watch out about buying a new ship if you can only barely afford it - you might need to buy new compatible weaponry too!

Mercenaries will follow you around and start with a compatible weapon. They'll pick up items as well and keep them, greedy little buggers! But then they drop everything again on death, so ...

Controls

Note: You can select either pure keyboard, keyboard + mouse, or controller (in the settings). Exact details may change over time. Below are the default key mappings (no mouse). You can change these in-game.

Main screen

  • [Space] - Fire main gun
  • [Ctrl] - Fire secondary gun (if equipped)
  • [Shift] - Use ship ability
  • [Left,Right] - Turn the ship
  • [Up] - Thrust. There are no brakes! You have to turn and burn to change direction or slow down
  • [Tab] - Show the map
  • [I] - Show inventory
  • [T] - Talk (interact with a station)
  • [ESC] - Menu / close screens

With map up

  • [Up, Down] - Zoom in and out on the map

With inventory up

  • [Left, Right] - change page
  • [Page Up, Page Down] - scroll up and down
  • [Space] - equip / unequip item OR buy / sell if talking to a station
  • [D] - discard selected item

Building and running from source

You need Java 11 or newer (Java 17 recommended). All other dependencies are downloaded automatically by Gradle on first build.

Run all commands from the project root directory (where you cloned the project).

Quick start (Windows)

Two convenience scripts are included in the project root.

1. First-time setup — checks for Java (installs Java 17 via winget if missing), then downloads all Gradle dependencies and compiles the project. Only needed once after a fresh clone:

setup.bat          (Command Prompt)
.\setup.ps1        (PowerShell)

PowerShell note: if you see an execution-policy error, run this once and retry:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

2. Launch the game from source:

run.bat            (Command Prompt)
.\run.ps1          (PowerShell)

Both scripts print the log file path before launch and remind you to check it if the game exits with an error.

Manual steps (Windows, Linux, macOS)

Verify Java:

java -version   # must print version 11 or higher

Download dependencies and compile (first time only):

# Windows
gradlew.bat :desktop:classes

# Linux / macOS — make the wrapper executable first if needed
chmod +x gradlew
./gradlew :desktop:classes

Run from source:

# Windows
gradlew.bat :desktop:run

# Linux / macOS
./gradlew :desktop:run

Logs and crash reports

When running from source, the Gradle run task automatically enables debug-level file logging. Everything at INFO level and above is written to destinationsol.log in the project root (rolls over at 10 MB, keeps 3 backups). This is the first place to look after any crash.

Unhandled exceptions that reach the top-level crash reporter also write a timestamped crash-<date>.log to the same directory.

Other Gradle tasks

Task Command
Compile only gradlew :desktop:classes
Build distributable zip (no bundled JRE) gradlew :desktop:distZipUnbundledJRE
Build distributable zip (with bundled JREs) gradlew :desktop:distZipBundleJREs

Troubleshooting

Symptom Fix
'java' is not recognized / java: command not found Install Java 17 from adoptium.net and re-open your terminal
Build fails with UnsupportedClassVersionError Your Java is too old — Java 11+ required, Java 17 recommended
gradlew: Permission denied (Linux / macOS) Run chmod +x gradlew first
Game crashes immediately on launch Open destinationsol.log in the project root — the full stack trace is there
Gradle hangs downloading dependencies Check your internet connection; corporate proxies may need configuring in ~/.gradle/gradle.properties
.\setup.ps1 blocked by execution policy Run Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser in an admin PowerShell, then retry

IntelliJ IDEA imports the project automatically when you open the project directory — a pre-configured Desktop run configuration is included. Create an empty file named devBuild in the project root to tell the engine to load assets directly from source rather than from the compiled output.

For Android a little extra setup is needed. See instructions here.

Steam Release Process

Contributors

GitHub contribution stats Contribution Leaderboard

Apologies in advance for any omissions, contact Cervator if you believe you've been missed :-)