🌌 Starweave: Galactic Cartography Mainframe

🚀 Overview

Starweave is a dynamic frontend interface and procedural generation engine for a massive, unexplored galaxy. Built with React and HTML5 Canvas, it allows users to navigate a sprawling starfield, click on unknown stars, and instantly generate rich, highly detailed star systems on the fly.

Designed with a sleek, retro-futuristic terminal aesthetic, Starweave handles everything from orbital mechanics to complex atmospheric compositions and political alliances.

✨ Key Features

• Interactive Starfield: A fully interactive HTML5 Canvas star map with panning, zooming, and star selection.

• Syllabic Star Name Generation: A custom linguistic algorithm that dynamically generates organic, alien-sounding star names (Start + Mid + End segments) to ensure millions of unique, readable combinations.

• Deep Procedural Systems: When a new star is discovered, the engine generates:

  • Planets: Over 50 distinct planet types (e.g., Chthonian, Sub-Glacial, Magma Ocean, Gas Dwarf) complete with size and base-type mapping.

  • Atmospheres: Realistic and exotic atmospheric profiles tied to planet types (e.g., Helium-rich, Thin Martian, Plasma, Unknown Organic).

  • Moons: Up to 3 moons per planet drawn from a pool of 50 classifications (e.g., Tidally Locked, Irregular, Spore, Cybernetic).

• Political Alliances: Systems are dynamically assigned to one of 12 distinct galactic factions, each with its own alignment (e.g., Lawful Good Terran Federation, Chaotic Evil Obsidian Syndicate).

• Orbital System Viewer: Dive into a specific star system to watch planets physically orbit their parent star in real-time, rendered smoothly on a dedicated Canvas layer.

• Immersive UI: Built with Tailwind CSS and Lucide React icons, featuring a glowing, dark-mode terminal UI that makes you feel like a true galactic navigator.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Framework: React

• Styling: Tailwind CSS

• Rendering: HTML5 Canvas API

• Icons: Lucide React

• Build Tool: Vite (Recommended)

📦 Quick Start

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/mtickle/space-game.git cd starweave

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Run the development server:

   npm run dev

4. Explore: Open http://localhost:5173 in your browser. Click on any star in the field to initiate a deep-space system scan!

🧬 Data Structures

Starweave is built to be easily extensible. All generation data is separated into clean, modular constants:

• planetTypes: Array of objects defining type, color, weight, and base atmospheric type.

• atmosphereProfiles: Deep dictionary mapping elements and percentages to specific planet bases.

• moonTypes: Extensive array of lunar descriptors.

• alliances: Faction data including D&D-style alignments and UI colors.

• nameSegments: Syllabic arrays (starts, mids, ends) used by the generateStarName() function.

🤝 Contributing

This galaxy is vast and always expanding. Contributions are welcome! Whether it's adding new planet types, refining the orbital math, or integrating a backend database for persistent universe tracking, feel free to open a Pull Request.

📜 License

MIT License - Explore the cosmos freely.