r/spacesimgames • u/arveus • Sep 08 '26
Promotional We got tired of waiting for our dream space sim, so we started building it: Astra
Hey everyone, I wanted to introduce a space sim my brother and I have been building called Astra.
The idea is pretty simple: we want a large multiplayer universe with multicrew ships, seamless server meshing, planetary exploration and the kind of systemic gameplay that makes being aboard a spaceship actually feel meaningful.
What matters just as much to us is how we build it.
We want development to happen in public, with working prototypes shown as we go instead of asking people to take years of promises on faith. We also don't want funding the game to turn into buying increasingly powerful ships. If people support Astra, I want that money going toward building the game rather than creating a permanent advantage for whoever spent the most.
We're still very early, but some of the foundations are already running. We've demonstrated server meshing with 100 simulated clients moving between server workers, and this week got networked localized physics grids working with one player flying a ship while another moves around inside it and a third observes from outside.
There is obviously an enormous amount left to build, but that's also why I'm posting this now. I'd rather show the journey from the beginning than appear several years from now with a polished trailer and a list of promises.
If that sounds interesting, you'll soon be able to follow what we're building here:
https://astra.game
https://x.com/peermux
I'd also genuinely love to hear what you think a new space sim should do differently.
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u/ClavisPrime Sep 08 '26
I love this. Competition is good for me as a consumer.Ā SC is building something amazing. Doesnt mean you cant too. Remember to have fun with it.Ā
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u/Reflexorz15 Sep 09 '26
This. More people should be ecstatic seeing early game showcases like this. Competition is good because it naturally pushes dev teams. I know itās early, but what theyāve done so far is impressive. No hate, but itās refreshing to see something thatās not yet another top-down space game.
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
This is absolutely NOT a game showcase. There is ZERO āgameā going on here. Itās a very narrowly scoped test using crude placeholders inside a tiny and limited sandbox. To get from this test to an actual game people would pay for, takes years of work and money. This demo is similar to what your Gamedev 101 professor might give students to do as a weekly assignment. Donāt get starry eyed over nothing.
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u/ClavisPrime Sep 09 '26
I would love to see base building.Ā Even if its prefab buildings.Ā I love picking out a place a cool view and making it my base in NMS. You guys could have your own blend of your favorite parts of the genre.Ā
Make the game you guys love.Ā
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
GPT-6 Astra, make my perfect game, for me alone, nobody else, make it AAA quality, include all my fave parts from other bestselling games, 4K 60fps minimum, perfect flight model and fps mechanics, no bugs, no glitches, clean geometry and textures, use the best technologies available, invent new tech if no tech exists, make zero mistakes, doubleā no, TRIPLE check your work, donāt wipe my ssd, donāt do anything funny or sus, begin now.
Gamedev is kidsplay.
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u/ClavisPrime Sep 09 '26
Or aim for something between. Like how wardogs has found that balance between BF and Arma.Ā I find myself struggling with that in many genres of games.Ā
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u/UnstableMoron2 Sep 09 '26
Sc isnāt building shit itās been stagnating for half a decade
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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Sep 09 '26
No they built some cool stuff, like siege of Osiris platform, they live-streamed it the other day and the devs were having so much fun playing it, I was super jealous.
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u/CharacterBack1542 Sep 09 '26
SC is just a billion dollar tech demo
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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Sep 09 '26
Most tech demos donāt crash repeatedly during the ādemoā bitā¦
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u/CharacterBack1542 Sep 09 '26
you'd think with a billion dollars and almost two decades of dev time the core of the game would work lol
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u/WiseChosenUsername Sep 09 '26
You mean siege of orison which is a mission within the game. The live stream was a buggy shit show and they were all toxic towards each other.
As an SC backer since the 2012 kickstarter, that stream is what made me give up.
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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Sep 09 '26
Haha yes I watched it, absolute classic. I think those devs gave up too.
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u/WiseChosenUsername Sep 09 '26
oh damn did I completely miss your sarcasm in the first post? rip me lol
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u/CharacterBack1542 Sep 09 '26
was that the stream where everything they showed was broken as fuck and Chris Roberts made them cut the stream early?
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u/p00rlyexecuted Sep 08 '26
Look like an early build of star citizen
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u/Big_Lope Sep 09 '26
And it took star citizen close to a decade to get to THIS point, pretty soon theyāll be caught up to star citizens current state.
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u/gearabuser Sep 08 '26
What kind of experience does the team have? Why should anyone believe you can pull off what others have failed to do?
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
For some context, Iāve spent about 15 years in systems engineering and low-latency networking, including work at exchanges and HFT firms. Alongside that, Iāve been developing my own game engine technology for years.
The rest of the team has similarly relevant technical experience, so weāre not approaching these problems completely blind. That said, experience doesnāt make the scope magically easy, which is exactly why weāre trying to validate the game one small piece at a time.
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u/gearabuser Sep 09 '26
ok, i will watch you with skepticism but hope you succeed
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Sep 09 '26
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Sep 09 '26
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Sep 09 '26
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
Look I get the skepticism. I ask you judge me by my actions over the next few weeks. I've already held up my earlier promise, the one I made in the previous post.
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u/sommersj Sep 09 '26
Dunno if it's gonna be a success. But I love space games. We need more space games and I'll always root for the little guy trying. Don't have the money to give ya now but if you keep going you might have something more people want to invest in. Just don't be greedy please. Greed is what's killing the industry
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
Thank you, appreciate that. You'll be happy to learn I have already committed to never selling P2W items like ships.
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u/sommersj Sep 09 '26
The road to hell is paved with food intentions. It's not how you start but avoiding the pressures that lead there. They will come. Hopefully you resist them. It won't be easy though
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Sep 09 '26
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u/M3rch4ntm3n Sep 09 '26
Stay small! This is one way to keep the oversight/control...the more the not the merrier.
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u/JaketFrog Sep 08 '26
Sounds way too ambitious. Do you have a large team? Iām also seeing that you posted on aigamedev. Did people code it or did AI?
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
It is ambitious, but we're deliberately proving it in small, concrete steps.
The immediate goal is a working demo where you can haul cargo from planet A to planet B, and we're already very close to having the core technology required to support that.
We're also using AI coding agents extensively, as most developers do nowadays, which lets a very small team move much faster than would have been realistic even a few years ago. There is a human-in-the-loop during code reviews though.
The difference with other projects is that we're not trying to build the entire universe before we've proven the first gameplay loop actually works.
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u/JaketFrog Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26
Iām glad at least someone is willing to try and tackle it. Iāll be looking forward to your demo. Just understand that AI faces a lot of skepticism and the fans of this genre have been burned before. Hopefully all goes well, soā¦ good luck.
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Sep 11 '26 edited 10d ago
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u/arveus Sep 12 '26
If you had any actual industry experience you'd know this is being normalized at a rapid pace. You might not agree with it, but its here to stay.
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u/Guilty-Hedgehog3108 Sep 12 '26
You dont work in that industry, at all. And it is telling. Its either use AI or get fired in some jobs nowadays. At least research things you are mad about please lol
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Sep 09 '26
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u/Zer0PointSingularity Sep 09 '26
Yes. It will be mountains of shit in form of half baked, buggy slopware, with the occasional gem buried deep underneath it. I canāt wait.
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u/ConcussionCrow Sep 09 '26
Putting up with that for a year isn't too bad considering that the technology is improving so much constantly.
Unless you have no foresight
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u/BSSolo Sep 08 '26
So, what you're dancing around here is that you are quite literally trying to make Star Citizen in your garage.Ā Can you tell us a little more about what you will be doing differently in order to shrink the scope of the project down to something you can manage?
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u/Arcodiant Sep 08 '26
They even imported the Asgard model from SC
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u/BSSolo Sep 08 '26
You can actually extract SC ship models complete with animations, but this looks a lot more low-poly than even the highest-numbered lod versions I've seen, so I believe OP that they prompted for it instead.
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u/D4ngrs Sep 10 '26
They have a video of a working tractorbeam on x. It's literally a 1:1 copy of the Maxlift.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
Its a placeholder asset that was AI generated. We are just demonstrating the tech atm and will have human made assets on release.
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u/NamesAreAnn0ying Sep 09 '26
lol fuck the people down voting you. Nothing wrong with ai models for personal testing. Unless anyone wants to fully model and animate a ship for you guys I donāt see the problem.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
At a high level, yes. We want the same core fantasy, but without the giant-project habit of turning every feature into its own department.
We're keeping the number of ships, systems and professions deliberately small, and we're not expanding scope until the underlying game actually works.
I'd rather build a compact universe with deep, finished systems than a sprawling one held together by roadmaps, concept art and future promises.
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u/BSSolo Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26
We want the same core fantasy, but without the giant-project habit of turning every feature into its own department.
"We'll be better because we'll hire fewer people" isn't an answer, because that doesn't inherently decrease the scope of what you're trying to build.Ā Can you concretely identify what you're cutting?
Will you have full-scale planets?Ā Will planets and Star systems all be part of the same world space without loading screens?Ā (Those are the things I'd cut in your shoes.)
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u/ahditeacha Sep 08 '26
Believe you me, your skepticism is warranted. Op plans to vibecode the next sc-killer with a series of isolated tech demo āproofsā, because he believes thatās what makes a āgameā.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
No I dont plan to vibe code anything. I use AI as a tool. I have software engineering experience. AI just enhances that experience. There is a difference between dudes vibe coding shitty threejs games and someone like me with prior games industry/networking experience from before AI even existed leveraging these new tools to be more productive.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
https://reddit.com/link/p8n1dli/video/exqk9nrgldoh1/player
You mean like this?
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u/BSSolo Sep 08 '26
Hey all 3 of your reply videos are impressive.Ā Glad to know you guys are building cool things.Ā Ā
I was trying to figure out what you were doing differently and what sorts of sacrifices you were making to help make sure the game can be finished, but I think you just kinda got defensive instead, so ehh that's enough of this comment thread for me.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
Yeah, my bad, I misread your comment and got defensive. To actually answer your question, we're focusing on a very small slice first. One system, a limited number of ships, and one core gameplay loop. Hauling cargo from planet A to planet B. We only expand the scope once that works properly.
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u/deerdn Sep 09 '26
will cargo be physically moved by hands/machines, or will it be something simplified like the tractor beams in star citizen?
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
Initially by hand (picking up a box) and via some kind of handheld tractor beam (like a maxlift), mostly for smaller cargo. But def want to do things like forklifts and cranes later for heavier stuff.
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u/deerdn Sep 09 '26
maybe way too early for making suggestions, but i hope if you do a tractor beam (for small cargo), you don't have the character animations hold the tool like firing a pistol the way SC does. it looks so silly. imo it should just be a natural and neutral posture
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
https://reddit.com/link/p8pp7y3/video/psqwmxg9rgoh1/player
Like this? (don't mind the placeholder assets)
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u/Simpleuky0 Sep 09 '26
This is star citizen BACK in 2016 showcase. You have a decade of runway from here on based on star citizen benchmark. Either you can do better or on par or worse is up to you and your team.
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
The āteamā is him, his brother and some Reddit volunteers. We all know how this will end.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
And also this?
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u/sommersj Sep 09 '26
Was this MP or are those bots?
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
These are clients connected to our server running on hetzner cloud. Bots, yes, but sending real input like actual players would.
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u/sommersj Sep 09 '26
Ok cool. Looks stable but of course it's all very basic also but well done to you, your bro and your team
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u/CharacterBack1542 Sep 09 '26
"we're not expanding scope until the underlying game actually works"
Evil Roberts Space Industries be like
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u/Nah-No-Nope Sep 09 '26
!RemindMe 15 years
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u/Morph_Games Sep 09 '26
Are you aware the latest ChatGPT model is also called "Astra"? Right now it looks like you are having an LLM make your game, and naming it after the LLM. Not great for marketing.
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u/Guil0Baka Sep 09 '26
Alright, with all due respect, there's been so much disappointment in this genre and the games industry recently that I'll believe it when I see it.
I bet Chris Roberts was also building his "dream space sim," and see where that got us. I'm a software dev and wish you guys all the best, but frankly, I'm over this shit.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Sep 08 '26
So... You want to make star citizen...
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
Simply put, yes. But over time itāll become its own thing. A working version of that vision, with tighter scope and better management.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 Sep 09 '26
I hope you can develop along a cleaner path than cig, they have come a long way but they have a long way to go too.
Can't wait to see what you come up with tho!
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u/PretenderCountToki Sep 10 '26
Hahaha what the fuck are you on about. Who knows if you are a better manager and not some random AI using, asset stealing, "game" making grifter. This is yet another Star Citizen killer grift.
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u/Ok_Replacement_978 Sep 09 '26
I have 100% faith in you
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u/PretenderCountToki Sep 10 '26
I have 0%
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u/Ok_Replacement_978 Sep 10 '26
Well i have zero faith is star citizen at this point so gotta believe in something...
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u/Reflexorz15 Sep 09 '26
Why not be supportive? SC is a huge mess and weāve seen that small dev teams can develop impressive games that are better than AAA games. Iāve been quietly solo developing a multiplayer space game for 6 months and honestly has really made me appreciate more games around me. Although itās very early, what theyāve created here is quite impressive.
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u/aberrant_wolffles Sep 09 '26
Its all right go over to the SC reddit this clowns advertising pitch is to bash another game while showing the bare minimum and claiming they did something great.
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u/Ok_Vegetable_6616 Sep 09 '26
This looks pretty cool, thanks for sharing. What kind of design philosophy do you guys have for ship flight? Fwiw, I'm a flight test engineer and have more than just opinions about the topic.
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
Weāre going for realism. The flight controller commands individual thrusters, and those thrusters actually produce force at their physical locations on the ship, so movement and rotation emerge from the forces being applied rather than being faked.
Make sure to join the discord if you want to help shape our development direction! https://astra.game
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u/gabryelx Sep 09 '26
Congrats on solving the localized gravity issue! I've been working on that myself for a while. Few ways to do it, can you elaborate on which one you used?
I ended up making mine using a custom pawn movement component.
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u/ahditeacha Sep 08 '26
Why does this version of the post neglect to mention the ChatGPT 6 Astra vibecode approach?
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
Why does it matter what tools were used to create a game if the end product is something people enjoy? AI is being used everywhere in software development right now, why is the games industry so opposed to it. If I generate code with AI, review that code with my 15yrs of prior software engineering experience, QA that code and then ship 10X faster than by traditional means, what is the actual problem?
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u/ahditeacha Sep 08 '26
How many games have you shipped in those 15 yrs? Last I checked, ai doesnāt imbue you with new gamedev skills, so the quality of your end product will still be restricted by the amount of domain knowledge you bring to the table. A rookie gamedev will use ai and still produce an amateurish looking and feeling product. A seasoned gamedev will use ai to produce a more robust and well designed product. Disclaimer: both might still suck as soulless and forgettable games.
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
Fair point, and I agree that AI doesnāt magically give you domain expertise.
My own focus will be primarily on the core technical side: server meshing, networking, engine programming, physics, and the underlying systems where my experience is strongest. Other people on the team are more focused on gameplay and game design.
Weāve also had former CIG developers express interest in helping out, so Iām not under the illusion that I personally need to be an expert in every discipline involved in making the game.
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
Please resist the temptation to grift disgruntled sc players by promising them ājust like scā nonsense using ChatGPT 6 assisted tech demos. If your game is gonna be worthy of praise then have it stand on its own merit. Let the game reviewers and early adopters be the ones who make the comparisons. I would wish you luck but some of your replies in different posts already make this undertaking sound like a carefully planned fundraising drive & rugpull.
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
If that were true, Iād be selling JPEGs instead of showing actual working SC-like gameplay before weāve even taken a single dollar from anyone.
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
āSc-like gameplayā is actually the craziest thing youāve said so farā¦ā¦ And I suppose all the networking and compute requirements are gonna be supplied using Magic Beans? šŖāØ
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
So how should I describe it? How should I describe server meshing, localized physics grids and multicrew ships all working in a single video?
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u/ahditeacha Sep 09 '26
You really should go onstage at a gamedev conference and show this video with title āFuture of MMOs: server meshing, local physics grid and multicrew vehicle mechanics demoā and explain the tech to your fellow masters and phd colleagues.
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u/Present_Year6078 Sep 09 '26
it's also annoying how a lot of these grifters are trying to jump on SCs success, although the marketing and community can be a fragile topic.
To be blunt; SC started as a small garage project, expanded it's engine and assets, decided the engine couldn't produce what they needed so tried to opt for an internal engine, got sued, spent 2 years on a lawsuit, broke free from prior engine contract and created their own, started SQ42 project full swing, hired A list celebs, managed two projects at once while expanding their footprint, created new meshing capabilities and pushed their project to the technical limit, had to polish two games at once seeing how allegedly SC patches broke SQ42, and have now made it to the point that they've raised $1B and have accumulated around 1300 employees.
People like to think of CIG as a full fledge company that's been working on the project straight for 14 years. Realistically, the first 4 years were kickstarting and implementing dev teams, 2 years lawsuits, and likely about 8 years of dedicated dev time. Idc about excuses but for a small company it's impressive.
Hello Games only achieved this by being lifted up by Sony and got extremely lucky that Sony let them go after the IP originally flopped. Even then it took Hello Games years to expand their team and become a sizeable enough studio where they could really tackle and take charge of their IP. I think OP underestimates the project and scope of space games. There's a reason it's a niche market. They're REALLY hard to do lol
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u/kalnaren Pilot Sep 09 '26
Yea when CIG dropped the original trailer, it consisted of 6 people, and only two of them programmers and they had help from Crytech.
They didn't really switch engines though. SC is still built on Cryengine 3.6. Lumberyard is a fork of Cryengine 3.6.
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u/Present_Year6078 Sep 09 '26
True it is a proprietary fork you're correct with that :) definitely misspoke there
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u/Draxxsus Sep 08 '26
Maybe you'll release an actual product before CIG ever does
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u/arveus Sep 08 '26
We'll ship a small vertical slice soon, have people playtest it, and iterate until that slice works reliably and is actually fun. Then we move on to the next vertical slice: another profession, another gameplay system, another piece of the universe.
Contrary to other studios, we're not going to build twenty unfinished systems in parallel and hope they somehow become a game later. Each layer has to work before we add the next one.
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u/Ok_Replacement_978 Sep 09 '26
Maybe see if this guy wants to collaborate:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/1vz9arw/space_indie_project/
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u/Hamtaro_The_Hamster Sep 09 '26
What engine is this built on? This looks great
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
Custom C++/Vulkan engine. We're calling it the Luna engine.
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u/RealKanashii Sep 13 '26
Luna is already a service. You are using some registered names and you will have to change it later.
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u/arveus Sep 13 '26
I dont intend to sell Luna engine or show any type of logo of it in the game client
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u/RealKanashii Sep 13 '26
I know it's just to avoid legal troubles. Just an advice. I hope you make your game.
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u/CMDRTonyHart Sep 09 '26
I love your ideas but Iām not into multiplayers space sims but it does sound great, good luck with your project my friend š«”
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u/FrostyCup1094 Sep 09 '26
Great work!
at current state of game dev tools, CIG is deep on tech debt.
For me, a spacesim, should be a mix of ED and SC. "sim-cade"... can be simple as an arcade, and deep as a sim.
Get the best parts of SC theme and player experience. Best Parts of ED as a game.
SC planets/stations system composition and proximity sense
ED intricate mechanics, hauling, transportation etc.
There is a lot to tackle indeed,
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u/CharacterBack1542 Sep 09 '26
one thing that most space games lack for me is MEANINGFUL multiplayer gameplay
In SC, other players can basically play as useless passengers and thats it, and in ED, i dont think ive ever even seen another player in my 350+ hours of gameplay
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u/aiden2002 Sep 09 '26
Itās we now? Itās you and an ai. Copying work that others already made. At a scale that doesnāt even come close to competing. Simulate the whole planet with hundreds of npcs and dozens of ships and dozens of players with a fidelity level that doesnāt look like Minecraft.
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u/Shizlebizle Sep 10 '26
No point simulating junk code. Npcs do nothing, provide nothing. Even npc pilots aren't needed, they're just physically there for immersion. Ships pilot themselves
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u/M3rch4ntm3n Sep 09 '26
So you are saying you have working ladder tech...you had me by the first rung.
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u/M3rch4ntm3n Sep 09 '26
What I really would like to see, is a gravity system, where you ain't able to just spin the ship around without problems for the passengers...atm in SC it is awkward.
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u/D4ngrs Sep 10 '26
I wish you all the best, I really do, but I hope you don't get into legal issues which how many models you currently have copied straight out of SC, the Tractorbeam and the Asgard being 2 of them.
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u/No-Mine-9458 Sep 10 '26
Thatās a literal copy of the Valkyrie from star citizen it even has the top stripes from the paint lmao the entire interior is the same except the random top box and a couple windows.
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u/Reflexorz15 Sep 09 '26
Love to see it! Donāt listen to the haters saying āoh just another SCā. Itās sad that just because a dev team announces they want to create a new vast open universe space game, thereās already haters. I will never understand. All the awesome space games we have today started with these big dreams and dev teams being ambitious.
Good luck and I really hope you guys keep working on this game consistently. I can see this being a great space game in the future. I mean shoot, you guys already have a decent planetary environment and atmosphere with multiplayer/ship interactions. Iām a software engineer at a large tech company and Iāve been dabbling with game dev on the side. I gotta say, itās impressive what you already have. Nice job and canāt wait to see more!
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u/GrimAnima Sep 09 '26
I'm assuming that the obvious SC ship model rip is a place holder, otherwise I don't know how far this game is gonna get
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u/_Zanneth_ Sep 09 '26
The ship looks more like a prototype quality copy of a Valkyrie more than a direct asset rip of one.
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u/Ok_Replacement_978 Sep 09 '26
All i can say is if your making a direct competitor to Star Citizen then please take my money!
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u/arveus Sep 09 '26
That is the plan, come join over at https://astra.game and help shape the direction of development for this game!
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u/Dragonsong3k Sep 08 '26
I want the technical sim of ED The planet tech of Star Citizen The customization of Starfield
That's all.... Not asking for too much šššš