From Julian Cochran's memoir. He called this project the Star Game; it is named here the Xalaria Universe Simulator.
1 February 2001
The most significant news is that I have quickly become very involved in developing the Xalaria Universe Simulator, which I have had on the design table since my second visit to New York in September last year. I am working on it right now. I moved my computer outside, as it has been an unusually hot summer, and the evenings are perfect in the natural light.
One hundred or so pages of notes have been written, and already about 40 pages of code, but it has barely begun. The first stage has been 3DMatrix, my hand-built 3D polygon renderer and model creator, so that artists can start designing the space objects the game will use, in the right form, rendered the same way so the original design aesthetic carries into the game, and with only the options an artist needs. Often I work on paper in a coffee shop, and that time goes to new creative ideas, or to deciding the best way to build one. In front of the computer, I mostly write the code.
25 June 2001New York
Excellent progress. After finishing the sphere construction I added a simple starfield, and since then I have been working on controlling multiple ships, and finding the best solution is proving to be challenging. I have also been thinking about how to create atmospheres for planets, and decided on a complete solution, which is for the renderer to learn semi-transparent polygons.
10 October 2001
In any free time I wrote the solar system viewer. It lets the player zoom in and out of any point in the pseudo-randomly created solar system, with all objects drawn to scale and moving in real time.
I am now in a position to write the entire game following the initial plan, which is very intricate in itself but will not involve players flying next to each other. They interact by leaving messages in stations, and they all affect commodity trading prices, creating alliances, docking stations and other infrastructure that everyone sees. It is a very inspiring feeling.
24 February 2002
I continue to receive emails from people who used to play, or still play, my 1992 game Destruction Zone, which no longer runs at the correct speed. I decided to re-write D-Zone using 3D geometry while keeping the game-play identical to the original. It is an excellent intermediate step, because I will have to write more code in common with the simulator.
19 October 2002
Presently there is no concept of many models within one universe, no collision detection, and no way for robots to think in 3D. These are concepts D-Zone II shares with the simulator, and with D-Zone being much simpler, I would like to use it as the guinea pig for robots in 3D.
1 November 2003
I decided that my greatest desires relate to music composition, though I have almost as strong a desire, for bringing beautiful things to the world, to produce the Xalaria Universe Simulator successfully. Both involve applying my imagination, planning and reasoning to the best of my ability, and the success of each can be shared with others, as hundreds of thousands can find something inspiring in both the music and the game.
In 2004 he set the project aside. Looking back in 2018, he gave the reasons: D-Zone II had not had the reaction of the first D-Zone, and the world was moving from desktop computers to phones at exactly that time.