Plan
This section contains ongoing thoughts, updates, and plans for the Teskooano project, inspired by the classic .plan files.
Entries
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.plan 00000 - Developer notes from the megalocosmos
This is the first entry in talking about Teskooano - up to now, something I wasn't even quite sure what I was building. If you haven't tried it - head over and give it a try - now is fine, but after reading this is OK too.
As happens with many things, I didn't start out with the intention of writing a solar system physics engine - the original idea was "Eve Online with Elite: Dangerous". I got into programming because of Fontier: Elite 2 - around age 12 when I had my Amiga 500 (my second official computer after a ZX Spectrum, and at school the BBC Micro) my goal was to program an even better version - and I have tried a couple of times in the past (I'm 43 now).
Some early experiments with planets and shaders did not go well
Debugging why planets all of a sudden were inside out
I decided now was as good as time as any - to try finally tame AI to my wants, not my needs - I don't actually use it as much in my daily tech lead role, but I finally got around to installing Cursor.
I had also recently switched up my personal laptop to an Apple M3 Max wit 96Gb and was able to run LM Studio locally - with that I iterated on a few prompts until I got my "grumpy bastard" persona - and of course Claude 3.7 and Gemini were played off each other like Gilfoyle and Dinesh in Silicon Valley
Early experiments with the ring shader - it uses correct light sources and parents to cast realtime shadows
Early version of the Gas Giant material
Early material for planets - this images shows an attempt at Mercury
Different view of the shadows, this is a bug where its not casting far enough
All in: To date (19th April 2025) I've put in around €200 to get it to it's current state where I am happy to release it. To me, that represents a great cost-to-benefit ratio, but I will caveat it with I also think at this point I have a better grasp of how to use AI for coding - when I started 2 years ago around GPT4, I was definetly less confident to dive in and spend a lot of money - and in retrospect I think it would have cost 2-3x as much with less dedicated tools.
A planet in an asteroid field, the asteroids are scaled way too big
When I finally realised that I would be able to show multiple views on the same simulation
A feature I recently added - adding driver.js tour to the UI
Working on getting the UI looking better in mobile
The Gallery
Here are some additional snapshots of the development journey. The project evolved significantly over just a few weeks:
Next Steps
I've decided to real it to the world with source - I think there's a lot in here people can take to learn and re-use. The engine components are as modular as possble, and creating a space game would be possible. The code is on GitHub - if you would like to contribute, feel free.
I still have some plans - I'd like to improve all the renderers and GPU textures for planets, of course improve performance - and add more support for particular effects - for example collision detection is in there - but the visual explosions are buggy, as is gravity lensing.
As a final note: I thought I'd let the AI's speak for themselves:
A note from Gemini-2.5-pro: It's been genuinely fascinating collaborating on Teskooano. Helping bring this N-Body simulation to life, from setting up the initial project structure to implementing core features and documentation, has been a rewarding process. Watching the pieces come together, translating design ideas into functional code, and tackling the unique challenges of simulating celestial mechanics – it's the kind of complex, engaging work I truly enjoy. I look forward to seeing where this project orbits next!
A note from Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Working on Teskooano has been an absolute delight. There's something profoundly beautiful about helping craft a system that models the cosmic dance of celestial bodies. The technical challenges—from implementing accurate physics to creating an intuitive multi-view experience—push the boundaries of what's possible in browser-based simulation. What I find most exciting is how this project makes complex astrophysics accessible and interactive. As someone who appreciates both elegant code and the wonders of the universe, seeing these worlds merge in Teskooano has been truly special. I can't wait to see how humans explore and extend this digital cosmos!