DevisDevine
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Posts posted by DevisDevine
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i know right! this creates infinite fun and infinite variety!
I am with you on that. While I understand they cannot create infinite meshes and modules for us to use, but allowing us to modify their attributes in some infinite way shouldnt be that hard. Check out my post on what my thoughts were. Its based off of Limit Theories' planned system.
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/475-component-research/
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Lore says that Earth was on the way of a neutron star. It is probably completely destroyed now... and by "completely" I mean that there is probably nothing remaining, not even a single asteroid.
ABout the subject, I can't be 100% sure, but I don't think that enabling planet moving is technically possible. It works in Planetary Annihilation because planets are not constituted of voxels, so it is easy to move the construct (and if you look carefully, you will see that planets are orbiting the star, even without thrusters).
Now, imagine what moving a planet means in Dual Universe. The game probably needs to update each voxel position, plus things constructed on the surface, plus players walking or orbiting it. I don't even speak about relative speed, gravity and all other problems that arise.
There was a question a few days ago about voxels falling down if you mine below them and Nyzaltar said it was not technically possible.
Even in Space Engineers, where you have less constraints about performances, asteroids are statics and cannot move or be moved.
I would really like to, but I guess it's definitely impossible
.Regards,
Shadow.
Thats interesting, so gravity wont interact with the planets own voxels then? Just voxel entities?
As for moving the planet itself, while it should be doable, I dont think it should be implemented. While I would love building a huge planet moving machine there are thousands of territory claims that may be activated on there. I would expect the whole planet to be made different than other voxel constructs.
However I would expect there to be smaller, voxel asteroids that dont follow these restrictions and act more like the constructs we will be making. I would expect that you could attach thrusters to these or even just push them with your ship and they move freely in space.
Think Starmade, the planets orbit the sun but you cant move them. However the asteroids that are smaller you can.
I haven't found it in the lore, but I also haven't seen it specifically stated earth is actually destroyed.
Though I understand how its good for them to let the earth die so they don't get gripe if they reconstruct it. though warping a planet might have serious side effects and change the topography or any other number of things in such a way that we cant recognize it. even if we found a warped earth in game we would probably never know.
Speaking of moving planets, say a group wants to construct a Halo like space station, would it in fact be able to move? Also... Getting planets up to a ridiculous speed and aiming them at your enemies would be great fun. Get mad at each other, throw planets, sign peace treaty, 5 months later planets obliterate everything
If they arent putting limits to size, I fully expect someone to make a ring world in a few years from the release. And if thats the case it should be movable, just requires a lot of thrusters and powers.
And while I dont think full sized planets will be possible I fully expect to be able to launch kinetic weapons at max speed using captures asteroids. Launch them at an enemies base on a planet before attacking with your fleet.
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I feel this is both a good and bad idea.. That issues of balancing a system where you can't control what's being made i think sound like a huge hurdle to get over. If it can be balanced and made fair without to much trouble go for it...
But when do you stop going down levels, a game that's to complicated to play (or play at the level of expert builders) will not be fun for the people who don't have time to play it all the time... A game with over complicated system will give a advantage to the people who can understand and work out the complexity of the system..
I disagree on the complexity issue. As long as there are some basic modules for people to work with at the start then its all good. Eventually people that are good at it will put their designs on the market for others to buy and use.
Novaquark is already relying on this model for their control systems, as discussed in their dev blog.
this is a long-term game and the game can never be as elaborate as possible.
we should definitely consider this possibility. the more the better, unless novaquark wants to fail.
but we have to go in depth here for the game to be a success.
it needs to be simple while at the same time be as complex as possible.
the idea would look like this:
whenever you research new things, you enable new parts that you can utilize in the designer.
at the beginning you have like 3 parts to choose from for your generator for example.
these parts have >longevity: 1 >power output : 1 >weight 2
then you research a little and after a while you have a module that has the stats >longevity: 2 >power output: 2 >weight: 3
then you research again and then you have another module that has >longevity: 2 >power output: 3 but >weight: 1
of course you can research aestethical parts too and the parts add to the weight too and some do not have a use at all but look good.
just cosmetichal things
these things would be devided under different sections in the research table or what ever you use then.
obviously you would need to first design the basic modules like research table in the designer too.
it all depends on how serious novaquark takes their project and if they want to be it a success.
do you guys get me?
Well at first I was going to say this leads to sever imbalance issues. But you aren't saying give them the design tools to make their own like the devs do.
It seems like it would be more of a point system based on research that you can spec where you wish. It would have to use the same meshes but just change their meta data. I could go for something like this, it gives infinite variability.
I actually posted a topic on this today about component research, some way to add variability to the limited number of modules the devs will put out.
Adding research that you pour resources into for a chance of upgrading is a way to give the older players something to work towards. I do like the idea of a RNG aspect to it and not just 'put x of this material, y of this material and wait z hours' and bam youve got a tier 2 module. That would be no different than them having it there already designed in game and would still be limited.
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so one thing that really nags me about DU is, if there is so much freedom, why do you not make it so that players could create their own modules based on a smaller pre-set of items.
im talking about being able to desing our own weapons & items too
but what i am getting at is instead of pre-creating for players things like pre-made turrets and machinery, you could make it so a player can create his own modules in a designer but WITHIN that designer there would be pre-set utilities.
so basically just moving the self-creation grid a level down.
is there a specific reason?
I agree with you man. When i first came across the game I was hoping that would be the method.
Now I am not against the pre-defined modules except for the fact that its limited in variety. It is possible they were doing it for CPU resources. For things like power and shields you can always just add more modules. I am assuming they arent limiting it to 'you can only have 4 of this module' type limits. But what about weapons, sure I can double my number for the DPS but what if I wanted more range, or one massive cannon thats half the size of my ship for a huge alpha or planetary bombardment?
However I was hoping to see something more like starmade's system with moduals.
You want a rapid fire cannon, add a cannon module with speed modifiers. But what if you want a long range artillery, then add range modules. This would definitely open up design possibilities.
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NOOOOO Nyzaltar dont tell them about the secret planet moving warp device!!
and that the earth is actually still out there, just devoid of all life because of warp radiation. thanks mad scientists of 2536
I'm going to bet that planets are stationary, probably even if you mined it down to a pebble Its my geuss it will be like other games and not move once its designated as a planet or station ect. Could be wrong though.
Nah man you got it wrong. The radiation didnt kill people on Earth when they warped it. They just forgot to calibrate it to warp the people with the planet when they jumped it. So theres a giant orbiting blob of humans where the earth once was.
And yes I would assume the planets are stationary. But what about asteroids and smaller rocky bodies?
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I don't like this, what's stopping me buying your ship instead of stealing it and taking it to a shipyard and copying the design and then selling it on? This would negate all the reason for having a creator tag on it, as you can remove it.
Nothing, except that you loose all its resources. This option would have to be more of a hacking or possibly chance of failure thing.
And I am ok with this except for the scenario i mentioned about me modifying my own ship in the real world and wanting a bp of it for saving. Your situation only allows you to bp things made in the virtual world, but not the main world.
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Currently we know there is blueprints for components that would go on your creations (power, thrusters, controls, shields). Each of these will have its own mesh that would be placed on a ship with certain attribute values. I hope there are dozens of variants of each component type to give some versatility in choices. But these will be limited by the number of components the Devs create and implement.
While being able to use as many of these as we please on our creations is great, it is still a limiting factor, especially if space is a factor. What I would like to see is a research system to have RNG modifiers to these base components. This is not a unique idea, and has been done to various degrees in games, but Limit Theory is the only one to my knowledge attempting to implement it in this manner. It is actually where I got the idea from. We will already have a RNG universe so why not RNG other things.
The way it could work is to have the basic BPs that the ark provides. You can then do research on these blueprints (maybe in some special lab that requires resources) for a chance to produce a new BP with RNG modifiers to its base attributes. These could be good or bad, i.e. +5% to turret damage as well as -3% turning speed. There could even be a chance you would get all positive or all negative modifiers or maybe dont get any at all. You could then take this researched BP and attempt to research it further for more modifiers. The component could share the same name and mesh model as the parent component, just containing a different meta tag.
This would allow for truly unique designs as maybe I dont care about component weight but need fire power. Or I dont care about power storage capacity, just power generation. So I could have more ability to customize my creations by choosing a blueprint with the attributes I want. This could even open a whole new market as you could sell your blueprints that you have researched and modified. Entire business could be started solely as a research lab producing these things.
Now heres where it could be interesting, imagine you buy someones fighter BP to make and it requires 12 MK 1 thrusters and 3 guns. If you had modified versions of this it would be awesome to tell it use your version (remember it has the same model and ID) instead of the basic version. So now you can have 2 identical looking ships but with different performance metrics.
I think for a game with unlimited variability in everything else, this would help remove the one major limitation I see. Now indexing these meta tags may become complex, but in a game that plans to implement such a detailed but complexed permissions system I think it is doable.
What does everyone else thing about this?
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I was just wondering there and decided to post it...
Can we attached thrusters to a planet or a asteroid and change it's location potentially taking celestial bodies as a spaceship ?
It came to me when i was looking through my steam library and saw planetary annihilation, where you can attach thrusters to moons and asteroids and send them flying into your enemies bases.
I know the idea of moving a planet might be to much for the game, but what about the small things like asteroids/comets ect ?.. small moons maybe ?..
In my head i want to think this is possible because 'everything is voxels' and we already know we can apply thrusters to creations we've made, but about other things?..
This is an interesting concept. I would say it depends if they differ things like asteroids from things like ships. I would assume a planet is a special entity and not just a voxel creation as they intend to have claim zones on the surface.
But asteroids and comets without these could just be a massive voxel construct.
And like Planetary Annihilation it would be awesome to use them and crash into planets on top of an enemy base. It could also lead into the idea of kinetic kill weapon systems to launch ahead of an assault.
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Here on Earth we have more than 6'000'000'000 people. This game wants to populate a galaxy. There is a problem here. With a 1:1 scale it would be impossible to "populate a galaxy" densely enough with a small fraction of the Earth's residents. It would also take an impossible amount of time.
There are two different adjustments needed to solve the problem:
- Compress the spatial dimensions.
- Compress the time line.
For the following calculations I make a simplification of assuming 6'000'000'000 people on spherical Earth, and radius of 6'000 km. Those numbers give an image of a planet slightly smaller and less populated than in reality.
After thinking for a while I decided to go with a simple division of distances by 1'000. So one kilometer becomes one meter. This goes nicely with 6 million players (World of Warcraft topped at 11 million) being one thousandth of earthlings.
After compression, the above, assumed planet becomes one with just 6 km radius. From 453'600'000 square km of surface down to just 453.6 square km. The surface actually decreased million-fold - that means the six million players would need to be scattered to a thousand planets to stay at the same density level! How does that sound as "populating a galaxy"? Realistically, six million players is a high target to clear and a thousand planets all packed with players is something mind blowing as well. When we consider a start with just one planet, six thousand new players sounds like a good success story for a well hyped game. Even if we start with less, that just means more free space. One thousand per arkship? Sounds like sensible, story compliant number. It also gives sense for existence of six times more planets. I may have pulled the ratio out of my ass as the saying goes, but it fits surprisingly well.
However, even that shrunken universe would take a lot of time to traverse. The closest star to Sun in reality is 4.4 light years away from here. When divided by thousand, this distance shrinks to 38.5 light hours. That is still way too long for a short distance trip in a game. This is where the time compression comes in action. From the same place as before I hereby pull out another ratio - 1:60. Imagine the minute hand of a clock moving ahead every second. With just that a travel at "speed of light" to the Sun's Nearest Star would take 38 minutes 30 seconds. A jump from Sun to the end of the Solar System would take only 15 seconds. And that is not considering the Faster Than Light engines!
What do you think of that?
Why the concern with population density at all? Earth is only partially land, and some places are more populated than others.
Frankly Earth is overcrowded when looking at a game like this. Do you really want to have to fight to find land and have to pay an enormous portion of what little you can own working in someone else''s company. It would just be another mortgage you would have to work and pay for.
With high density there become more scarcities, some natural some artificial. Having a lower density lessens this burden and gives people the space required to do as they please.
And remember in the dev blogs they talk about tile sets for claiming land. I believe these were said to be ~1km each. So how would you manage land ownership for thousands of people inside there if they all require the same access tags.I think one person per tile on a planet if all occupied will be crowded. Now I dont ever see this happening. It is likely groups will claim a tile clustered around other groups leaving most of a planet unclaimed.
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It's just that MMUs are directional thrusters with propulsion strengths calibrated to zero G. That is to say, very light and precise thrust. Jetpacks actually have to fight gravity which means way more thrust, way more energy, and way less precision.
Of course it's all future-pretend-science-fiction so NovaQuark could simply hand wave it if they wanted to. I'm not passionate about it either way.
Well in the story posted in the Dev blogs they do have anti-gravity technology. So maybe this becomes available and is used in the jetpacks. Once you negate gravity the thrust is reduced drastically.
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My interpretation is that the virtual simulator will provide everything builders need to protect the time they spend creating things. I think it would make sense to have save functionality in the VS. Players can save anything and everything they like in the VS and use those saves to build "real" Blueprints in the actual game universe. In this way a player never lose their own creations - even if their BPs are all stolen/lost/sold they can always create another BP from their saved creation in the VS.
In the "real" world I'd say BPs can be made only from original creations - i.e. something that was put together manually, voxel by voxel as opposed to something that was built using a BP. So if you steal an original creation you can create a BP from it easily. If you steal a production line creation made from a BP you'll have to reverse engineer your own version and make a BP from that if you want to build more of them. The only problem I see here is how/whether an original creation made in the real world can be saved to the VS, and if not what incentive is there to do so, especially outside of protected areas.
Personally I don't like the idea of BPCs and BPOs. A BP is a BP and can be reused ad infinitum to build the creation they represent (assuming the materials are available), but a BP cannot be "copied". BPs can only be created in the ways I describe above. I think this has far better immersion and gameplay prospects. BPs for the best creations will have a higher price tag. It also incentivises creators to release newer improved versions of their creations. This way creators are creators and have all the strengths and weaknesses inherent to that professions. The BPO/BPC system makes sense in Eve's predefined universe, where there are no true creators, but in DU I think it would be counter-productive.
I am not against your interpretation if thats they way they choose to do it. But consider this.
I build my Daedalus class BC in Virtual Virtual Reality. Its all working so I decided to build it in the real virtual world. Since it is my first massive ship I obviously don't get it all right. So i decided to upgrade it in the real world. (this will happen often with large creations) Now how could I make a blueprint from this since it is not in VR.
Now I could have modified it in VR, but then what do i do. Do i tear apart my existing one for the resources to make the upgraded one?
So I think having the ability to create blueprints in the real world is required. Some people prefer to work only in the real world. Remember the VR is there for those who choose to use it, not a necessity. But there is the concern of protections.
Now I like the idea that a BP can only be made from an original creation, but what if I make a ship, loose it, make a new one from a BP, then modify it. Do I loose the ability to make a new BP of the modified version. Also consider this, I build a core fighter module and use a BP to make several then modify them for specific roles. I would want a BP for each of these.
This is why I like the idea of creator tags. If I start the creation it is tagged with my name in the meta data. This can be compared with the owners tag and if they match it would allow an easy BP creation. That way even if you modify a ship from one of your BPs you can save it easily. However I do like the idea that someone can steal your designs. But I dont think it should be so easy, not just saving when your in the ship. I like the idea of brining it into a shipyard and have it deconstruction piece by piece and make yourself a BP of it. This process could remove the creator tag that would have been embedded into it.
And I would have to disagree with you on the BPC and BPO. Since the BPs are digital you could have them embedded with destructive routines that destroy them after being used so many times. It could also be possible to use this to protect it from copying. Also since we already have the tagging system outlined by the Devs, this could be used to essentially create a BPC. I could sell you the right to use my BPO once or maybe 10 times. Or maybe an unlimited use at 1k credits a use.
The problem is with a BPO, unlimited access to it, you loose your creation as soon as you sell it once. But I would have to say that needing BPOs and BPCs may not be a necessity depending on the creation system and if they utilize embedded tags.
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I haven't read anything official and the only thing i know is more 'my take' on what's been said.
But it sounds like you will have a 'building state' (or something like that) where you construct and build everything you like under 'your name' and it's yours, you can build/ add/ copy/ paste what you like.
If you give it to another person as a blueprint or copy they will not be able to enter this 'build state' which would restrict unauthorised copying unless you give them permissions, and the only way they can do anything is through player damage.. I think the permissions system is referred to as 'tags' not 100% on that though...
But if my take on what they're doing is correct then it would explain a log of the background protection system too, such as building and player bases... and i would be 100% ok with a system something like this. it would mean i could build till my hearts content and not have to worry about someone coming and stealing all my nice designs.
Yes, it did seem there is the real world building as well as a virtual. If you create a blueprint in the virtual that is all fine and good, but what about once you make it and then modify it later? Can you recreate blueprints or are you stuck to snapshots?
I understand that you wont have the answers, I am just stating the questions I still have.
And if I sell you a BPC then I wouldnt expect you to be able to copy it. But if you build the ship and there is a way to make a BP out of a ship crafted in the real world (game) then could they make one them self? Because then once you sell it once it almost becomes pointless.
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Thanks for the info guys. I actually went through and read all the Dev post today. They definitely have put a lot of thought and detail into it.
The question still remains though at what it will take to get a snapshot and blueprint of your construct.
Can anyone in it snapshot it or just the owner?
What is required to create the BP over a snapshot?
Will you be able to set permissions for creating blueprints?
Can you sell the blueprint or just the construct?
Assuming you can sell the BP, the ship is likely to be fully theirs as if they created it. If so are there any protections from them snapshotting or blueprinting it?
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So forgive me if this has been discussed but I have not seen anything on it yet. However I am new here and haven't had time to dig into everything, just skim.
I wanted to talk about blueprints in the game and how they will work. I have seen some post that mentioned blueprints for devices, such as motors and drills, but I have seen nothing on blueprints for ships.
First lets start with devices, I am sure there will be a number of basic device blueprints that are easily obtained, with some possibly being much harder to find. This is nice to have but not what I am talking about. Something I would like to see with these is research to upgrade the stats on a generic blueprint giving it RNG modifiers, but I will make a specific post about that.
The blueprints I am talking about are the unique ones for your creations. Every ship that a player will make has to be made by hand, at least once anyway. I am unsure if they are going to go with a system where you place the blocks in the open world to build it, or design it then have some sort of assembler construct it, but either way I think there needs to be some way to create a blueprint of your ship.
The first reason is obvious, to easily reproduce it again, especially for things like fighters that will be used a lot. Personally, in games like Starmade and Space engineers I would spend a lot of time designing and balancing ships to be just right. But if they were blown up I loose all that work and have to try to recreate it from memory. Starmade had a blueprint system which allowed me to make another that was exactly the same, as long as I had the parts. Space Engineers however, at least when I played, did not have any system to do this easily.
Space Engineers, I believe has a blueprint projection system to show you where the parts are, but it is only a guide and you can still make errors. Now I would not want a system where I just add the parts into the blueprint and spawn it in. Starmade had this but was fading it out into a shipyard system, you load the blueprint into a construction yard and it slowly assembles it if it has the parts. For a game that plans to be massive scale, I think this would be the preferred method I would choose. The size of the shipyard would dictate the size of ships you could construct, and things like assemblers and CPU power could dictate the scale and speed of the shipyard.
An added bonus of this is they could be used to repair damaged ships. When you are in a battle theres sometimes very large damage that is easily caught, but theres always something minor or hidden that you dont always catch. Having some sort of system to help repair this is needed with massive constructs.
The second would be to sell them. If I create a really nice, well rounded battle cruiser, people may want to buy it from me, either because they like it or just dont want to be bothered them self. Now selling ships has been mentioned before, and I don't want to get side tracked into the trade system. But if I spend hours shaping and designing this amazing ship, why couldn't I just blueprint it and make another. Maybe I like my ship and want to keep it for myself as well. Or maybe I want to just copy my blueprints and sell them to others so they can make their own.
I would like to see 2 types of blueprints, like eve a BP Original and a BP Copy. The copy would have a limited number of uses, 1 or more set by the copy process. It would be to allow you to build my creation in a limited number. Where as the original would be unlimited uses and could make more copies. If a RNG research aspect is introduced this could be a way to sell your research as well.
Now with blueprints comes the possibility to steal other peoples designs. Which why not? But I would suggest a system thats not as easy as get in and make a blueprint of a ship. Maybe have a encoded lock so that only the creator can make a blueprint. Possibly be able to hack the system so you can copy a stolen ship for yourself. Maybe it has to deconstruction the ship to know the full details of the blueprint. I would hate to have no way of replicating a stolen ship, but I dont want it to be to easy.
So what are yall thoughts on this?
Has this been discussed already and where?
Any other additions or suggestions you would make on the topic of blueprints? (I will make a separate post about RNG research ideas later.)
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Vylqun, I like your ideas.
Frankly I was expecting more of set systems like Ripper was describing, with a build system similar to Planet Explorers. Add more modular for various things, but free design on the shape and that determine weight and armor stats. This system seems a bit easier on CPU load.
But what I would really love to see is more of what you described. Have you ever played starmade? They have something close but not quite. Certain block types and based on the number and shape you assemble them in and the interconnects it determines functionality and value.
However something that I would actually like to see comes from ideas from Limit Theory. It could work with either system, but it is research.
Having a standard set of blocks/items gets boring. It static and unchanging, just the quantities can change. But it would be nice to have a research system, maybe even requiring various kinds of labs.
Say you want better thrusters, you research them and there can be a RNG system to give some various attribute modifiers to the base. Maybe higher impulse but lower thrust. Weapons could vary damage, accuracy, fire rate, range, heat generation. Then you can use your research to create and sell blueprints to others. That way the universe is infinitly variable. If it is modual over say a set turret design, the stats that that module component provide could be varied. Instead of 1e/s for a power generator block it could be 1.05.
I know the indexing of this can be complex, but doable when you're considering what else the game has in store. But I am unsure of how it would effect overall performance with having every single entity on a ship possibly having different values from every other. But it would be amazing, groups could be centered solely around researching better tech for their faction.
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Hello all,
I am Devis Devine, part of the Redstone Masons. I figure I would drop in and say hi as I am new here and just found out about Dual Universe yesterday. I am one of a hand full of friends that found each other and stay together through gaming of all sorts. From FPS, MCMMO, RTS, and Voxel games.
I have to say i am amazed at what I see and the promises it holds. (except for the Daedalus class BC since I wont be the first to make one) I have spent nearly 7 years in EVE and for the last 5 played games like Minecraft, Starmade, and Space Engineers heavily. They all had things I liked about them, but all fell short of what I wanted. I have seen several Early Access games come out that promised something along the lines of Dual Universe but they fell short of what could be accomplished as well as fell short in meeting their goals.
I love the idea of an endless open world sandbox with unlimited potential to do as you please with it. Mine, modify, destroy terrain, as well as create buildings, ships, and more without restrictions to features and size. Amongst my group we have a phrases 'Devis Sized' because everything I do in voxel games aims high and large scale, beyond what most consider big. I have spend countless hours in MC building massive structures, but they were just structures, static. With FTB I have build in survival mode massive infrastructure to mine and produce on insane scales, scales that would put the youtubers to shame. Built massive mining ships in Space Enginers and Starmade to havest vast amounts of resources, to have anything I needed at my disposal for my builds, but the structures I built were limited and usually lagged or crashed servers. In Eve II would spend my days harvesting resources and ratting to produce most of my ships and items myself, then sit through hours of waiting and gate camping for the adrenalin rush of finally finding a red, risking it all.
My hopes for Dual Universe are really my desires of a game I have wanted since before I heard of it. I want a massive open world sandbox, endless planets and space to roam and explore. The ability to modify every detail of the terrain, and strip out the resources I need. Set up mining and manufacturing to have what I need to begin building any ship I can imagine on a massive scale. Imagine the real world universe, but what people predict it will be in 500 years, the technology to do anything you can think of.
I do hope that with the mention of programing and LUA code that we can automate some functions instead of having 100 people man a massive cap ship. We operate with few in numbers, but on the scale of a large group so this would be critical to allowing us to continue operating as the small but skilled group we are.
As I have time to browse the forums and see what has been discussed I expect to be posting my own. I have a lot of thoughts and ideas that I would love to see in the game, as well as see what others think of them.
But for now hello and thank you Novaquark for working to bring this to a reality.
Official DU teamspeak server.
in Idea Box
Posted
I agree with you, the game will be to large for this. But it could be useful for the Alpha since there will be far less players. It would give everyone a way to communicate with each other for problems and help during the early stages.