wizardoftrash
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Posts posted by wizardoftrash
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We have had so many threads about build protections and greifing, I recommend using the search bar to check a few of them out!
Basically there will quite a few options to keep builds and stuff safe. Anything outside the save zone can be potentially attacked, damaged, or destroyed, however it might end up being inconvenient enough to raid a well-designed base that this will be a non-issue except during times of war, and that would probably only really apply to large orgs with public assets.
Trust the devs on this one: they plan on striking a balance between PVP and non-PVP. Raids will be possible, but like Rust, it will probably be possible to build a base so inconvenient to raid that it wouldn't be worth it (except large orgs vs large orgs).
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OK, so the tech and crafting skills and availability of necessary resources will be our contribution to crafting, and perhaps there will be some basic customization of the standard designs such as colors and maybe faceplate opacity, but for vanity gear you pay real world money. That's fine by me. Now that you mention it, letting the Harambe Corporation design their own custom codpieces may not be such a great idea.
Pixels out for Harambe
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OH WOW, this is glorious!
Deff an impressive build for a pre-alpha! and to think, players are going to be able to build much much bigger than that in the actual game.
Voxel Element Blueprints would also speed this process way way up after some initial work making modular corridor sections and outer plating designs!
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Given that philosophy, why allow combat at all? I understand that given the lack of moral hazard, the impossibility that you could actually die, there are lots of people who indulge in gratuitous violence in games. I also understand that we don't want folks destroying someone's exquisite voxel palace with a suicide brick. But what's the mechanism that will prevent that from happening? It has to be explained somehow, not just say "it's a game" and break immersion without an attempt at worldbuilding and roleplaying.
Perhaps you can have nukes, but they don't work on planetary surfaces because making nuclear dampers is cheap and easy but requires access to geothermal power. So they can work in space and can be used to wreck space stations and asteroid bases but not planetside cities.
Nice slippery slope argument (only the 5th time I've seen that exact rebuttal in this forum). I don't even feel the need to answer this one anymore, since combat is already a planned feature and collision damage is not a planned feature. And yes, it's just fine to use "it's a game" to break immersion, every game does that. How many games force your character to go to the bathroom or sleep? "it's a game" is a great reason for a dev not to include a feature that just shouldn't be there.
The devs want this to be a game where we focus on building and exploration. They do want pvp to be a thing, but they have already explained the reasons why they don't want weapons of mass destruction to be a part of it. It is too much damage, without enough warning, without enough to prevent it, in too short a time.
Players will be able to destroy someone's excuisite palace, but they'll have to do it with lazers, railguns, and missiles. They will probably need several players, dedicated battle ships, and some time to kill: long enough that someone in the palace could send out a distress signal, fire up automated defenses, or warn org-mates to log on and man battle stations. Balanced PVP allows for that.
It kind of sounds like this is the game you really want to play, rather than DU
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Since this game will be player content driven, a cosmetics shop would, I assume, mean that players won't be able to come up with their own cosmetic gear? I mean, will we be able to make our own gear at all? We should be able to make weapons and armor and such out of voxels and elements. Or is character appearance going to be a customization reserved for the professionals?
We will be able to "craft" our own gear, but we won't be designing our own gear with voxels and elements. Character equipment (like elements) will be meshes designed by the devs. There will be options, we will be able to "craft" them, but it will be like any other MMO in that we won't sculpt them or anything like that.
The player driven end is the Constructs (ships, structures, stations, etc). This is not quite like 2nd life where players really can make their own everything, and that might be for the best.
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The most recent update shows the construction of a large freighter ship by multiple players, looks FANTASTIC
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I believe it was said that TU's were 1K^2 and that's it. There may be tools to subdivide it once you own it... but that I don't know.
But it was said that it was going to be difficult to claim a TU.
-M
Since Construction Units determine the size of what can be built with them, we might see a system where someone owns a TU, and sets up a bunch of Construct Units like City Blocks. The player that owns the TU might restrict the right to build new construct units there there, but sells the rights to the existing TU's, allowing payers to set up structures for homes and places of business within the TU.
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There will be game mechanics for build protection, and it will likely be a feature that is a part of TU's (Territory Units). Unauthorized players will not be able to build anything or edit voxels (for example, dig or mine) in areas where a player or org owns a TU.
And it is true, players will still be able to attack constructs outside a safe zone, but there will probably be additional measures a player can take to protect their stuff. There will be some mechanic for shielding, which will require power, but a well protected structure would probably be impervious to smaller avatar-held weapons as the rate in which the shield regenerates will probably exceed the rate of fire of the weapons. If a player will want to break into your base, they will likely need explosives or a type of weapon built to damage constructs (not unlike Rockets and C4 in rust).
The devs mention continually that they will be taking measures to balance PVP and Non-PVP, so it will likely be inconvenient enough to destroy structures and large constructs that a player will have to invest quite a bit of time and resources just to break into one, and may not be able to destroy the whole thing.
Similarly NQ stated that though PVP will be permitted in the game, Greifing will not. There will be some system for reporting players who harass and destroy without anything to gain other than making players suffer or for players who exploit game mechanics to trap players or make it otherwise impossible to play. They aren't inviting a murder-hobo culture in the same way Rust has, "Rebuilding civilization together" is the motto after all.
Plus there are several orgs that are planning on building big cities that are either in the safe zone, or that will be well protected from pvp-ers and greifers. Plus by the time players will have the ability to do Construct vs Construct combat (where you have the highest capacity to destroy structures), we will probably also have automated defenses of some kind to make greifing and raiding more challenging.
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How can you design the layout without building the construct?
Illustrations? reference diagrams? Notes on graph paper?
Talented builders usually start the planning process with physical sketches, scale info, layout diagrams. A user could produce those documents and have a player actually build the thing.
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1 - CvC (yes this is a point of contention, but it feels like a high priority).
2 - Robust Contracts, scripts that can generate contracts
3 - Cosmetics shop (more income = more features)
4 - Space TU's
5 - map function that includes TU's and territory groups
6 - saddle-mount cockpits (for jet bikes)
7 - flashy doodads, decals, and other construct swag
8 - easter-egg content
9 - non-weapon combat systems (tractor beams, target scramblers, missile countermeasures, etc.)
10 - non-character items in cosmetic shop (alt skin/coloration for ship shields, thruster vapor trails, decals, etc)
- Deacon and Dinkledash
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Perhaps in a world where the slogan isn't "Rebuild civilization together", sure.
games=/=real life
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I don't like the idea of training that is so passive that you don't even have to be online to train. Uploading a skill directly to your brain is like reading and watching videos about blacksmithing and then claiming to be a master when you've never lifted a hammer. You don't know the feel the hammer in your hand, the sound of properly tempered metal, the smell of forge, the heat on your face... there's a lot more to a skill than book knowledge. But that's just me. Maybe you want training to be fully automated, just plug your brain in to the ark and magic happens Demolition Man style. That would certainly be easier to code, but it would shut the door on folks who want there to be a value in experience and effort.
So... when you're training, do you set up a queue for training? Get all the level 1 and level 2 skills you want queued up, log off for a week and come back and you're as skilled as people who played 80 hours. I just don't care for that.
As someone who doesn't have a ton of time to play games, a skill training system that is mainly passive is ideal for people who work full-time. People who are playing actively will have plenty of advantages in the realm of resource collecting, building, and being able to protect their stuff by spending more hours not AFK.
Plus designing skill level-up systems that are tied to use are more technically demanding. Each skill area would need a list of activities that trigger xp gains. Players would have to spend time grinding an activity to get the skill high enough to do anything consequential, which will affect player behavior.
Lets say for example I want to train weapons skills so that I can participate in Law Enforcement. Will I have to risk my stuff to do PVP just to get my skill higher? Would I need to spend some time as a deepspace pirate just so I have stuff to attack? Would there need to be fight clubs built just for players to grind their skills? That all seems a bit odd to me.
And for building. Would I need to make a bunch of inconsequential structures out of low-tier material so I can actually build the base that I want to get my level high enough?
A use-to-improve system will force players to spend a bunch of time doing inconsequential things just so they can eventually do the thing they want to do. In Skyrim for example, the best way to improve smithing isn't to continue making better and better equipment, you just grind out iron daggers until your skill is high enough to take the good perks. They are designed to keep it immersive, but in practice they break immersion.
A system like the one that is currently proposed (more like Eve) will encourage players spending their time actually playing the game, instead of players grinding so they can eventually play it the way they want to. It will be enough to grind for materials
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Star Wars is more of an SF fantasy than real science fiction. You can certainly devastate a planet with enough non-fantasy weapons to make it uninhabitable without building an ultimate weapon with the requisite 2m wide exhaust port. Heck, all you really need is a nice big rock and enough time and rocket power to drop it on your target.
How could there not be nuclear weapons though? I could see there being a prohibition against using them on planetary surfaces, one which could be broken by a sufficiently evil organization of course. And an organization should be vulnerable to extinction, especially if they put all their eggs in one planetary basket. But if you can make a nuclear reactor you can make a nuclear weapon.
Besides if they made a planet wrecker, whats to stop someone from using it on the arkworld? Would the shielded arkship be all that's left along with a 20 km wide hemisphere of mined out soil?
The devs won't be adding weapons of mass destruction because the focus of this game is building, and players could lose too much too quickly. This has already been addressed pretty much.
To dish out a ton of damage, you'll need a ton of players, a ton of time, and a ton of weapons-fire (once Construct vs Construct is a thing). That way deconstruction is as labor intensive than construction (or more labor intensive).
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OHHHH MAN this looks FANTASTIC.
It reminds me of being able to build large structures out of Small Ship blocks in Space Engineers, but much much quicker because of the voxel tools they have shown us so far. I really dig this.
Question is, the way they paint-over squares in the video, will we be able to do the same with the edge of the slant shape (to "stamp" on a triangle)? And how would these paint tools work with subtracting from the construct using the erase tool? are the "painted" designs only surface deep?
I could see there being some really slick ways to add a ton of visual detail if painted on patters are only surface deep, as you could have a dark material color, paint on a light surface, and then "etch" a design using subtraction to reveal the dark underneath. I'm willing to bet that the paint tool is a shortcut for swapping out the material or block type for the voxel, so probably not going to work the way that I hope here, but still, so far this is looking fantastic!!!
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Hehe I was actually "blown away" by the qaulity of the avatars.
They were of much higher graphics qaulity then expected.
Secretly hoping that we eventually get the option to wear different style clothes.
I'm big into hats.
Nice jetpack pun!
Also, though it might be a bit silly for the style they are going for, but something like a hat would be a great thing to add to a cosmetic shop (inb4 TF2 had collection simulator).
But in all seriousness, running around with a colossal sombrero would be fantastic.
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The effect isn't about IQ, it's about the tendency of people to overestimate their grasp on a topic if they don't understand it well enough to know where the gaps in their knowledge are. I don't know where you got the IQ-connotation from, but that's not what it implies and that's not what I meant to convey either.
My whole point was not to target people's character (including IQ or credentials) but rather comment on the facts and structures in their posts. Are you deliberately misrepresenting what I said, or did you not read the block of text you're quoting?
That was my point as well; we don't know if we don't try. I was just giving an oversimplified, first-order estimate. And I don't care who you are or what you do, as I've already stated.
[EDIT: my proposed model is actually on the post after the one you quoted, but still, we agree on the difficulty/impossibility of intuiting performance impacts of rough ideas on an architecture that we don't know the details of -- seriously though read that post, as it may answer some of your worries]
This has been already addressed in the thread prior to this, so I will try to be brief. It wouldn't make economical sense to create ramming ships, ammunition will likely be cheaper. You can create new characters and grief in a whole host of ways. You can use the same argument against including any game mechanic that can alter the world in some way. There might be ways to mitigate the griefing aspect, like (bad example) ability to pilot being revoked based either on reports or blacklisting people that exhibit these kinds of behaviors and shoot on sight, or a whole bunch of different things you could think of. You might also simply opt to not have ship-on-ship damage, if you still deemed it to be a problem, and strictly keep to taking damage from collisions with terrain.
And that's an argument against discussing the idea in the idea section of the forum how exactly? It doesn't have to be the most important thing to enter into a conversation about. And I think it might be more important than some of the things you mentioned, like maybe animals or weather or whatever.
The focus of this forum is supposed to be on bringing up possible features and avenues of development, and pointing out potential pitfalls and then iterating the ideas based on problems that arise. Your input, and that of many others, seems to be focused on negatives and absolutes, with the focus being on making sure an idea doesn't happen in any form and isn't even discussed. How is that constructive?
I disagree =\= stop talking
Similarly, I would argue against the notion that scrutiny is not in the spirit of suggestion topics. You have heard your fill users asserting that this isn't going to make it into the game. You have dodged the assertion that collision damage was sacrificed to the altar of stable multiplayer (despite that being the dev's reasoning for not incuding it).
I can't prove to you on a technical level that what you are proposing is infeasible, and you disregard feedback outside of the technical as not constructive.
It kind of sounds like your mind is made up, and as such it seems like there is nothing left to discuss.
PS: have you considered offering to volunteer for NQ and desing their collision mechanics for them? Having an extra pair of hands might alleviate the strain of building the game they actually said they wanted to make.
Edit: spelling
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Update18 though, THAT is a tasty looking update!!!!
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What is even the point of this thread now?
Devolved really fast...
How about you guys vent somewhere else?
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The trouble with a game company trying to be really transparent, is that sometimes the unfinished pre-alpha looks like an unfinished pre-alpha.
This video is pretty much what I expected, except I wasn't expecting multi-player-construction to even be in their pre-alpha. It isn't pretty, but very effective.
- Dinkledash, Code24, Dhara and 5 others
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Also, the weapon damage model does take the firing angle into account, so it has to know where exactly the firing weapon is, and where the impact point is.
Isn't that also calculation heavy?
Luckally because it won't be tracking actual projectiles, it won't be quite as nasty as it could be.
Since there will be tab-targeting and direct fire, direct fire will likely have a back end snap-to feature to it. It'll be hitscan style, so it is may simply designate an impact area, and if that area is valid, checking your character's stats, the weapons's stats, and the targets stats to determine whether or not it hits and how much damage/size of damage. The snap-to will place direct fire hits from a larger area into a simpler, more specific area (not unlike bullet magnetism). "missed" shots will probably have the same animation as a regular attack, but will look like it missed and do no damage (since missed shots won't be tracked).
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My feelings? Not really. I'm just saying that if you want to be taken seriously, you need to structure your input in a different way, that's all.
I don't care if you have a piece of paper that says you're qualified or not, I care about whether or not a proposed model or criticisms of that proposal make sense and are logical, or not.
Oh and griefing will happen in a sandbox game, just about any mechanic can be used in that way so that's kind of a moot point, isn't it?
To bring us back on topic, here's my take on actual implementation:
So we know they must have some form of collision detection in place regardless. Why? Because if you don't detect when objects collide and take away their velocity or whatever your intended behavior is -- the objects will simply pass right through eachother.
We also know the bounding boxes used will have to be at least somewhat sophisticated(read: concave hull of some kind encompassing the voxels belonging to the construct), since the devs have said they're planning on having ships be able to enter things like bays in other ships, which won't be possible if you use a concave hull type of bounding volume.
I'd also assume that they'll implement collision physics of some kind, regardless of whether they have damage or not, since without collision physics, the whole "passing right through everything" thing still happens. The simplest model (barely even counts as physics) is that when two moving constructs intersect, you just zero the components of their respective velocities that point towards the other construct. In this model, objects that come in contact would sort of just slide off of eachother, or if they were moving directly towards one another, they'd simply stop. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that that would be ridiculous. A more sophisticated model involving forces, torques, momenta, angular momenta, friction and so on, would be required to have something that resembles real life. So if you want a ship to settle down flat on its feet when you land it, or if you want to bounce off of the surface you fly into too fast, you need physics simulated as well.
Given those two things, all you need is a damage model, which can range from very simple to very complex, with corresponding increase in computational cost.
A model on the simple end would do something like take the intersection point (already calculated) and apply damage in a sphere with radius proportional to velocity (maybe the square or sqrt, doesn't have to be linear, can have low/high cutoffs etc.) centered on that point. This would require very little calculation, but things like reads and writes to datastructures corresponding to the voxels and what have you would depend entirely on their implementation. Overall, if they do things "right" this model wouldn't have much larger impact than anything else in the game.
A step up from that would be to have falloff in the sphere based on distance from the center. This is not a big increase in complexity (I think it'd be O(n)).
To give an example of the extreme of the spectrum, you'd have things like material strength properties (tensile, shear, compression, all of that), you'd maybe have springs to simulate stiffness of the construct. Pieces could break off if they have enough force/torque exerted on them, you could have collisions within the different pieces. You'd also simulate tension in a rotating construct, where the tensile strength of the voxels and the angular momentum of the construct would determine whether it holds together or breaks apart. In terms of complexity and computational costs, this model is off the charts. It's almost certainly impossible, unless you make an MMO that's all about breaking things in realistic ways.
Between those two extremes exists a continuum of possibilities, each of which would have to have its viability assessed on a case-by-case basis. So unless you're refering to a specific model, don't come here and say "that's not possible" without even defining what you're talking about, you only demonstrate how poorly you understand the topic. Thanks.
First, your comment on griefing being unavoidable is correct, but that does not mean we should give griefers tools to make their mischeif easier. Griefing will be against the rules, NQ will be taking measure to make greifing hard, and to allow players to report griefers. The notion that it will inevitably occur some of the time does not make attempts to reduce greifing less valid.
Thanks for the essay, and though your response is articulate, it does not answer my core objection. I'm not objecting to whether or not collision damage can be implemented (which you are attempting to illustrate), I'm objecting to the idea that it should be implemented. My experience in game design is not as an engineer (could you tell?), but I'll try to articulate my technical concerns. And again, this isn't an argument it can't be implemented, it is an argument that it shouldn't.
So we can assume that collision mechanics are tracking moving objects, and seeing where they intersect to stop them. Before we start talking about damage, top speed and how often the server is checking for collisions are two key factors that need to be balanced.
->how often the server checks for collisions is going to determine how fast ships can go without passing through stuff and having a bad time. This is a major technical limitation for games with large numbers of players. More players means more moving objects, all of the data the server will need to track for collisions will be multiplied by the number of moving objects.
->top speed is going to be tied to this mechanic in some way, as the server will have to check for collisions often enough that an object can't cross certain thresholds in-between checks. If this is messed up, that's how you have an object passing through another object, or an object being stuck inside another object.
->depending on how player input during flight is taken, steering is also going to Bork up this process a bit. More responsive controls=more taxing to track collisions, because the server can't look as far ahead to predict collisions if course can rapidly change.
->If you don't have collision damage, and the server checks for collisions and finds an object inside another object, crisis can be averted: separate the objects in some way. If you do have a collision damage mechanic when the server finds an object inside another object, welcome to hell.
So now I'll gloss over some of the basic factors that would make for an immersive collision damage mechanic.
->Damage: for traditional Construct vs Construct damage, the factors are likely to be Player Skill (hit/miss/location), target size (hit/miss/location), target speed (hit/miss/location), Player Skill (intensity), weapon damage value(intensity), damage type(intensity), shields(intensity/cancellation), armor type(intensity). <--this is a guess for Weapons, which is a stretch goal as it is
->Armor will need to have Damage characteristics in addition to armor characteristics if it will be a factor in colliding. Non-construct objects will also need Armor and Damage characteristics as ships will crash into non-construct objects. This might need to include things like trees, types of terrain, players, etc.
->Momentum: Speed and Mass will both need to be a part of the damage characteristics for a collision, but there will need to be separate sets of factors for Structures and non-structures, as crashing into a huge rock would have a tremendous amount of mass but no speed.
->Impact surface Area: Wedge vs flate plane should feel different from flat plane vs flat plane. This hurts to think about, so I'm not going to try to figure it out.
->Splitting Force: Not all of this will turn into damage, an object ought to "bounce", especially if both objects are in 0g and mobile. Or maybe not, soft compressible structures don't really bounce. This also hurts to think about.
->Shields: should have an impact on collision. Stronger shields cancel more force? perhaps it just shaves off a hard value from the damage characteristic of the collision? good questions here.
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My point is that up there, there is a lot of factors to unpack, a lot of decisions to be made, and it needs to be balanced against Construct vs. Construct weapons and damage... which is a stretch goal
And that brings me back to my core objection. As it stands right now, collision damage is not something that is on the table for NQ. Construct vs Construct PVP won't even be a part of launch unless its stretch goal is hit, and they are only planning a few armor and damage types. If NQ set Construct on Construct PVP as a stretch goal, it is probably because it is a small staff with very limited resources. Implementing a mechanic like Collision Damage probably isn't something they have the time or resources to do well. I think most of us would rather have a game with less immersive collisions than a game that will either be next to unplayable for 4 years, or no game at all.
And damn it looks so good, so shiny 
8000 backer reward, its pretty awesome....
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Jet bike? Jet bike!