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Ben Fargo

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Everything posted by Ben Fargo

  1. My reason for voting no for gravity units is that I think being in space should be a different experience than being on a planet. I think the reason many game set in space have some form of gravity units is that we have become accustomed to them from TV and movies. When someone is filming a show, it is much easier if the actors can walk around the sets than if special effects are needed so they appear to float. Because of this practical production reason, even ships that always remain in space are designed like vehicles on earth. Everything is oriented so the same direction is "up". I think this has had a strong influence on games, even though they do not have the same limitations. I would like acceleration to be the only way of simulating gravity. In a stationary construct, there would not be any sense of up or down at all. That means all surfaces could be used as living area, so they could be structures unlike anything built on a planet. Ships would be more challenging since they would have an up-and-down orientation only while they were accelerating or landed on a planet. They would need to be designed to be occupied both with and without gravity.
  2. My plan is to start by mining and selling all of the resources to those who will be building refineries and factories, then to someone who plans to rent out dock space. When the components and the space are available and I can afford it, I will build a vehicle. After that, I expect to phase out the mining and focus on hauling materials. Of course, I may need to change my plans if that does not work.
  3. Even without jump drives, I think battles would still be possible. Each side could construct their own stargate to a system and use it to establish their own territory there. Battles would result when these territories encroached on each other. Many of the ships involved might be ones built in those territories. I am not against jump drives, but I think interesting conflicts can develop even if they do not exist. It would just be a different type of combat that would require a different type of strategy.
  4. Have the devs said they intend to include jump drives or is that just a feature people would like to have? The only things I've heard mentioned are FTL and stargates.
  5. I have been an individual member of the Cinderfall Syndicate since October. Recently, they added the Blue Moon Crew to their list of member organizations and I would like to thank them for that recognition. The Crew looks forward to providing transport services to all fellow members of the Cinderfall Syndicate.
  6. It is really the combination of features that excites me. I expect to spend a lot of time building and designing, but it is the interaction between organizations that will create the need for constructs and make them meaningful. I am not interested in combat in the kind games where every player has to pick a side and they are rewarded for fighting the other side and that can never change. However, if it is a real choice, it is very interesting. I am the type of player who avoids combat as much as I can, but I enjoy the challenge of avoiding it and I can only do that if it is an option. Organizations need constructs. Constructs require resources. Organizations are formed to trade, negotiate and fight for resources. It is not any one aspect of Dual Universe, but the way it brings all of them together that makes it so attractive.
  7. Dual contouring is a technique that existed before Dual Universe was started. I found references to it that are ten years old, so the use of that technique might be one of the reasons they chose the name. I would not be surprised if there was also a reason connected to the lore of the game...if it had a dual meaning.
  8. Welcome, Levaritie. I also write stories occasionally. One of them is an entry in the Novawrimo contest that ForlornFoe mentioned. I hope you enjoy your time in Dual Universe.
  9. Things may not actually work out this way, but for now, I envision these roles for the crew. My role will be the engineer. I will be the one to design the ship, build it and write the code for the scripts. There will probably be a series of ships, so we can start very small and grow larger, but never too large. I expect this to be an ongoing process of making improvements. A critical role would be the logistican. This person would study available jobs and market prices, then develop a plan of what jobs to do, what items to buy or sell and what route to follow to accomplish that efficiently. Another role would be the negotiator, who would look for opportunities were the crew could socialize with our clients and suppliers, then try to convince them to give us better deals. I think it would be appropriate for this person to be the captain, since that might give them more influence with the people they deal with. Much of the game-play will be flying the ship from one place to another. Depending on how complex that is, we may want to have a dedicated pilot or it may be something crew members with other roles can do. If there are crew members who normally play at different times, they might fly the ship in shifts, one group taking it to the first destination and leaving it for the next group to go further. We will not look for combat, but it will probably happen to us anyway. There may be times when we need to fight off boarders or defend ourselves from ambushes on planets. I do not want the crew to be only about business. There should be times when we go somewhere just to see what other players have built or take part in some event they have set up. The last thing I am going to emphasize is that this is a partnership. No matter what role people have, every member can express their ideas on anything and all significant decisions will be made by consensus.
  10. Thanks to everyone for your comments and encouragement. I am not thinking about giving up on the Blue Moon Crew. The reason for my search was something that happened to me in another MMO. Their equivalent of organizations were called fleets. I had started a fleet there, which no one had joined, but then I found out there was another fleet someone else had started that was really identical to mine--same concept, just worded slightly differently. So I shut mine done and joined theirs, because everything was the same. I did not expect that to happen again, but it was worth looking. Yamamushi, your idea for the Tempest Mission is fantastic. Your offer is very appealing, but since I am still going to pursue my plans for the Blue Moon, I do not feel I could not dedicate myself to being on the crew of that ship, and it will need a dedicated crew. I wish you the best of luck with it. Xplosiv, I do not think The Outfit would be right for me. When I talk about being independent, I mean it in contrast to being someone's employee, not in the sense of being outside the law. ForlornFoe, if you do decide to join the Crew, you would be very welcome. If you have any questions about it, I would be happy to answer them. Once again, thanks everyone.
  11. So far, no one has joined the Blue Moon Crew, so I have been searching the organizations in the community portal to see if anyone else has created a similar organization, so I could join them. By now, I would have expected there to be hundreds of organizations representing crews of all kinds, but that is not the way it is. I could have missed some, but I only found a couple that might have been single ship crews. (Those were either too mercenary for me or not accepting members.) Most were things like corporations or empires. Of course, there need to be those kinds of organizations, too, but it seems a little odd that more people are not forming crews.
  12. I agree people will try and sometimes succeed to take advantage of these scripts. There would be risks as well as advantages to using them. However, while they would definitely change gameplay, I see them as increasing it, not reducing it. As long as these are player-written scripts and organizations can pick which, if any, they use, then the scripts provide more opportunities to make choices that have consequences in the game. Players would choose whether or not they wanted to be members of an organization that used scripts. Leaders of organizations that were too large for them to evaluate each member personally would choose between using a script and delegating some of their power to certain subordinates. If they use a script, they would choose between writing it themselves or thrusting someone else to do it. Since this is a science fiction game, choosing when it is appropriate to depend on software to make decisions seems to be a valid theme for it. Some people find the challenge of writing the best scripts they can as interesting as some people find developing the strategy that lets them win in combat. Other people do not. Allowing these scripts would change the game for everyone, whether they choose to write them or not, so it is a decision that does affect how much the game appeals to different kinds of people.
  13. One way of implementing an organization standing system would be to say each character carries an identification device with them. This device could run Lua scripts, like the elements in constructs do. Each organization could designate a script that runs for all of its members. When the player does certain actions, such as attacking someone or trading with them, it would trigger an event in the script. The script might be written to increment a counter called standing or reputation, and when that reaches a certain value, the script could assign a new function (role) to the player. Using a script would allow this process to be as simple or as complex as the organization chooses. Each organization could decide what values the script maintains and whether it acts on them or just reports them to the organization. Organization scripts could be traded in the game, like any other script. Of course, an organization could choose to not use a script at all. The RDMS would determine who could view the code for the script, who could change the code and who could see the values it maintains for each member. There should be different rights for viewing and changing the code since, for example, some organizations might believe in open information and allow all members to know what code affects them, but still restrict changing the script to very few.
  14. I agree we do need some method that makes it easier to search for certain kinds of organizations. If types are used, they do need to be explicitly defined. For example, if I saw corporation and guild without any definitions, I would not associate them with being private or public. I would assume a corporation meant the organization was owned by people who were not necessarily members of it and guild would be focused on one specific activity, such as exploring, mining or trading. Someone else might associate different meanings with those words. A difficulty with types is the number of them will double with every attribute we use them to represent. I think instead of type, it would be better if we could attach tags to organizations. Then each attribute, like public/private single player/multiple organization could be handled separately.
  15. I do not care about post counts, but some people do. There will always be those who make posts just to increase their count, so it might be best to let them do it on those sort of topics.
  16. These are some things I would like to have: Vents, grills, gratings Balusters, brackets, braces Pipes, tubes (straight and curved) Dials, gauges Circuitry, wires, cables Cushions, pillows Shutters, curtains Bottles, jugs, pots When appropriate, these should be designed so they can be placed end-to-end/side-by-side.
  17. Right, I was not thinking of cubes. I was for shapes like this: That is just cones with the point cut off and another cone cutout to make a crescent. It is a relatively simple shape, but still too complex to hollow as easily as a cube could be. One way of avoiding the problem of hollowing out too much material would be to only apply the material to the shape after the cutting and hollowing was done to define it. Then a person would never need to have all the resources to fill the interior of the shape.
  18. One feature I would like to have when building is a hollow tool. The program I have been using to design concepts for my ship has this and I have found it very useful. Basically, it removes all voxels from the interior of a shape, leaving the outside surface as an empty shell. It does this even with complex shapes created by adding and subtracting simpler ones together. This would be very useful in Dual Universe, since eliminating any unnecessary voxels would reduce the resource need to build a construct.
  19. I did read the whole thing and I found it very interesting. Thank you and welcome.
  20. Happy holidays and good wishes for the new year.
  21. I was having some problems with my account, which is why the previous post of this picture now appears as Guest_Ben Fargo_*. The problem has been fixed, so please, ignore that post and consider this my entry.
  22. My account has been fixed. I should've waited one more day.
  23. Welcome to Dual Universe. Like you, I really enjoy seeing what people create.
  24. I would also like cockpits to be as customizable as possible. If a cockpit is composed of several parts, then even with a few variations of each one, that quickly allows for a large number of possible combinations.
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