Open Mars

A pixel-art isometric colony survival simulator set on the red planet. Inspirated by games like OpenTTD and Surviving Mars. Relase version soon!

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Overview

Open Mars is an isometric colony-building game where you establish and grow a self-sustaining human settlement on Mars. Manage energy production, water extraction, and resource logistics across procedurally generated Martian terrain — all rendered in a retro pixel-art isometric style.

The game is currently in alpha (v1.0.0-alpha.1).

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Screenshots

Main menu with animated Martian sky	Custom world generation engine
Colony with solar panels and pipe infrastructure	Procedurally generated terrain with ice deposits

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Features

World Generation

• Procedural terrain using Perlin noise with domain warping
• Configurable roughness, elevation, and warp strength
• Ice deposit generation in natural basins
• Three map sizes: Small (64×64), Medium (128×128), Large (192×192)
• Seed-based generation for reproducible worlds

Buildings

Structure	Function
Solar Panel	Produces energy; output scales with terrain elevation
Pipe	Routes materials between producers and consumers
Ice Melter	Consumes energy to melt ice into water
Water Magazine	Stores and buffers water supply

Pipe Networks

• Automatic network detection and merging on placement
• Material-type propagation (energy vs. water — no cross-contamination)
• Pipe routing across flat terrain and four valid slope orientations
• Real-time resource transfer between producers and consumers

Simulation

• Tick-based resource production and consumption
• Inventory system with per-material capacity limits
• Adjustable game speed
• In-game calendar (day / month / year)

Rendering

• Isometric projection with height-aware tile picking
• Painter's algorithm render ordering for correct depth
• Slope-aware tile and pipe texture selection via 4-bit mask atlas lookup
• Ice tile variant rendering
• Custom pixel-art cursor

Save / Load

• Binary save format with full world state serialization
• Slot-based save system

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Controls

Input	Action
W / A / S / D	Pan camera
Mouse wheel	Zoom (anchored to cursor)
Right / Middle mouse button	Drag-pan camera
Left click	Place / demolish structure
ImGui toolbar	Select tool and building type

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Building

Requirements

• C++17 compiler (MSVC / GCC / Clang)
• raylib
• Dear ImGui + rlImGui binding
• CMake 3.16+

Build steps

git clone https://github.com/AdamCofala/Open-Mars-Colonization-Simulator.git
cd open-mars
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

The binary expects a resources/ directory alongside the executable containing the texture atlases:

resources/
├── tile_atlas.png
├── pipe_atlas.png
├── ice_atlas.png
├── cursor.png
├── solar_panels.png
├── ice_melter.png
├── pipe.png
└── water_magazine.png

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Architecture

src/
├── core/           # Game loop and state machine (main.cpp)
├── entities/       # Structure, Pipe, PipeNetwork, Inventory, Enums
├── structures/     # Concrete buildings (SolarPanel, IceMelter, WaterMagazine)
├── world/          # Map, Tile, World, WorldGenSettings
├── rendering/      # Renderer, GameCamera, TextureManager
├── player/         # InputManager, Gui, StartScreen
└── utils/          # PerlinNoise, Math, SaveSystem

Key design points:

• Map::rebuildNetworks() — full network graph reconstruction on every structural change; handles material-type propagation in a fixed-point loop before connection mask calculation.
• PipeNetwork::updateNetwork() — proportional resource distribution across all producers and consumers each tick.
• Texture atlas — slope and pipe variants indexed by a 4-bit binary mask derived from corner height deltas or neighbor connectivity.

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Roadmap

• Native file dialog for save/load
• Additional resource types and buildings
• Music and sound
• Colonist simulation
• Dust storms and environmental events
• Research tree
• Multiplayer (long-term)

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License

This project is open source and released under the MIT License.

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Special Thanks

• Jakub Sałata @JLetuce
• Jędrzej Tymiński @Kayla137

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Built with raylib and Dear ImGui.