war
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Posts posted by war
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Lua scripting could provide this ... it could also be plugged in to some sort of ship identification module or something that provides the equivalent of a black box ident.
Interestingly though pirates could abuse the system by faking the ident info just like in the real world.
Or maybe this is something that NQ could offer up as an element so it can't be tampered with.
I'm still curious to see how blueprinting will work ... for example if I blueprint a "radar system" then sell a radar unit to you ... how do the following things get confirmed ...
- I didn't write some script that empties your bank for turning it on
- You can use this thing and trust it to work as described
- The internal workings are my IP so you can't copy them
Having solved those sorts of questions I think there's a ton of potential for lots of ships systems like ...
- Shielding controller
- Weapons controller
- door / loading bay controller
- Auth systems (to protect access to certain areas on a ship)
- General "mapping systems" to help people find their way around a large vessel (think star trek, wall mounted computers that can give directions)
- Radar / Identification systems (this post)
- News systems (connected information from the fleet or external sources) e.g. the sort of information my org would serve up https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/alioth-media-group
I'm am sure there will be tons more stuff that would come up but the key is in the implementation of the blueprinting system IMO.
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Didn't JC already talk about this being possible in one of the dev diary posts ... but it's not something that NQ will provide ... someone is going to have to build that stuff with LUA and component parts like pistons.
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meh ... I'm with @Haunty ... Let them focus on the good stuff instead of pandering to our impatience
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+1 yes please
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On 9/16/2017 at 9:58 PM, GJKeller said:
I was a bit disappointed to hear that right now there is only 1 day where we can play the game for a few hours during Pre-Alpha, and I'm worried that this system of opening the servers for one day every month will continue. Do any of you guys know if the servers will be on more frequently during Alpha?
At least you got in on that one day, i've been keeping an eye on NQ since before the kickstarter but apparently because i haven't been active much on the forum here I don't qualify.
Just take it and be happy!I'm not too pissed about it though (jealous but only a bit) ... as @blazemonger puts it perfectly ...
On 9/17/2017 at 1:26 PM, blazemonger said:You really should not have the idea you will be able to 'play' the game. This phase will be a lot of downtime, crashes, slowness, lag, bugs, freezes and more nasty stuff, you need to expect to have interruptions.
I suspect we should all be looking to really get stuck in some time in the new year when most of the really horrific kinks are worked out.
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Thanks @Shockeray ... exactly that, I could get more technical but the idea here is that any conclusion we come to it would be nice if it benefited the masses not just the few of us that understand complex algorithms like Dual Contouring.
@Captain Jack It's not that I don't understand these things, maybe i'm just not explaining it well ... but given the length of my last post if that's the only mistake I made it's not all that bad surely!
The fact is Voxel technology has been around for some time but has never made it in to the MMO world and for good reasons but as things like Minecraft become more popular people don't understand that Voxels are expensive, but I really don't think DU is using 1 meter cubed size Voxels and that's part of the reason why it appeals to many.
I guess if anything my question boils to ...
What is it that NQ have solved that the rest of the world hasn't?
There's clearly a break through here which is seriously cool, but i'm grasping at various ideas in how they may have put the pieces together to get my head round why this works at all!
It should also be noted that I have never claimed to be a game developer (written some game code before but i'm definitely not a game dev).
6 minutes ago, Captain Jack said:Heavens no, I was not insulting his use of grammar, nor his person. I withdraw my comment and will crawl back into the hole from which I came.
Be nice, offer some ideas!
1 minute ago, Shockeray said:I'm sorry, I didn't mean that your opinions weren't valid, just that your approach was not constructive. It would be helpful for you to point out where you think his logic is flawed rather than just claiming he isn't knowledgeable on the topic with a blanket statement. We can't all be experts in everything.
I second that, maybe someone has some insight i'm missing here?
Put another way ...
1. Minecraft (big Voxels, the low detail makes the work load achievable on the CPU)2. Space Engineers (smaller Voxels, newer tech, they or other engines like Voxelfarm likely use the GPU to handle the Voxel workload processing)
3. There were games like used other techniques in the past (e.g. Outcast) to acheive the render load but no networking or editing was involved back then.
None of these have any form networking that can handle the scale we are talking about here and likely will never do so.
So how is this DU doing what seems like the impossible?My gut feeling:
Maybe the answer is simply ... not handing around raw Voxels, and instead only handing round deltas / changes / some other form of data makes this work.
but in an MMO where simply keeping everyones position in sync is hard work (aka large battle in eve) handing around "the shape of an object" is a major feat!
If this makes me seem somehow less credible as a developer to someone on here ... tell me exactly what i'm missing don't just rant that I know nothing!
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dig dig dig dig dig .... oh look a floating ark ship!
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They will likely have something similar to how Minecraft does water ...
simple physics applied to a large mesh that represents the volume that they can distort over time.
With modern GPU tech, this kind of thing isn't overly taxing and each client could handle this on their own and at various detail / quality levels based on local setting. -
17 hours ago, MaximKammerer said:
It seems you are expecting players to see these 10 million voxels at once. But that would require maximum LOD over a distance of several thousand voxels. That doesn't sound like a realistic assumption.
Yeh I see the confusion now.
I'm obviously (with the lack of input from NQ at least) making assumptions that may or may not be true.
I also understand why NQ would not want to explain the inner workings of their tech ... they've basically got the holy grail of all things gaming going on here.
But I will try to explain myself ...
By this comment I meant something like (based on assumptions I was making about how "typical Voxel code i've seen works ") ...
day 1:
No data in the database, all planets, moons, asteriods, ect can be "procedurally generated" by client based code.
Server load is trivial, clients can simply "compute their view on the fly" and all NQ serves up is "function trees" for use in compute operations (which could be downloaded as part of the client install).
day 7:
Lots of edits on the surface of a planet, each "Voxel instruction" resulting in a "net change" to a subset of an area of the starting planet (Alioth).
Server load is higher as each user within range of those changes needs to be fed that data in order to compute the meshes on the client.
......
Then my perception changed.
I went from thinking ...
"NQ will serve up raw Voxel data to clients"
... to thinking ...
"NQ will compute mesh data and serve that up to clients, edits all happen on the server and clients get the resulting mesh and thus never see any raw Voxel data".
....
day 7:
The changes have been applied gradually, each change results in a "server side mesh recompute for the affected chunk at various LOD's".
Server load is reasonable as over time, those that come across the changed area are simply fed the updated "pre-computed mesh info" .
day N:
Massive changes to the planet, massive mesh changes, huge structures built (like space stations) all of this stuff is "pre-computed as various LOD meshes" and stored on the server.
Server load per user remains effectively constant with the calculation of that being something like "meshes in range * number of LOD's" where range is "configurable" by NQ.
Mesh data further away can be served up much slower than mesh data near by and there's only so much you can get in a scene but also unless a mesh is edited once a player has it they have it.
My thoughts now:
Over time, there's effectively (due to the nature of Voxel tech) an unlimited number of possible meshes that could be generated and storing that data could be pricey (in terms of raw drive space.
But if NQ are smart ... a bunch of TB aint that bad ... the real issue I see here is "sharing that mesh information on demand in real time on top of normal network load".
So consider this scenario ...
It's now about 2 years after release, Stargate's have been a thing for a few months and I am early adopter of the Stargate system so i've migrated way from the bulk of Alioth to pursue some venture elsewhere.
I'm in a Large org and my org needs me for a large battle ...
So I jump in to my ship, pop through the nearest Stargate to Alioth and make my way to area where the battle is taking place.
There are several things I need in order to render this battle ...
1. it's near the planet so I need mesh information of the view of the planet from space
2. I've been out of touch with the local market so I likely need a bunch of ship models
3. There's probably a new station near by I might or might not have seen before so I need that mesh data.
All the while the same thing is going on for the 10,000 other users in the same fight but what they need may be the same set or a different set of data but we are all asking for what essentially amounts the sum total of either all or a portion of the scene in which we just entered in to.
This work combined with the actual battle means ... Network load goes through the roof.
So my question was more ...
How is NQ going to handle this as there's only so much an "average internet pipe" from the server and too my machine that can be handled?
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... and it shall be called "Nexus" ...
I love this idea ... lets make it happen!!! -
I'm ever hopeful
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On 11/09/2017 at 6:07 PM, Captain Jack said:
anyone ever hear of the Big Bang theory?
It's about to become the big bang fact!
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I wonder if that means they can literally "rolling updates" whilst the universe on the whole stays up.
Kinda cool -
MECHS!
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Like a Pheonix he rises from the ashes ready to fight the holy war!
Let there be light ... <insert some sort of game of thrones dragon or something in here for effect if ya like> -
Not just the game but the server too but you have to consider the build he has right now is basically bare of features so the final version on release day will likely be a bit slower for that reason.
That said ... by then the core engine will likely get performance tweaks to help improve the speed at which the features they currently have run so it could balance out "somewhat".
I can't wait ... stable or not ... it'll be interesting to pus h the tech to its limits and break it so we get a stable release version.
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I think NQ had it right ... you either have time or money, either way you can play in a P2P game.
If you're saying you don't have time or money, then you shouldn't be making DU a priority in life, you should work on resolving that issue first so you fall in to either the "has lots of time" or "has lots of money" category.
I don't think it's unfair for NQ to expect a small fee to help them run the insane amounts of infrastructure DU is going to require. -
6 hours ago, Lethys said:6 hours ago, Captain_Hilts said:
Of course that is an option for people with lots of time to play; and their reward for building up the game universe.
That could work for a kid living at home with nothing to do. Doesn’t work so well for people with families expenses and limited time for playing games.
If you have a family, expenses and limited gametime but can't afford 10 or 15€ per month, you shouldn't play video games. Get your life sorted first.
Pure gold ... -
I'd like to see C# used as a scripting language too
mainly because I like it and live it ... but also because it works well with C++ and the native compilation process actually uses the C++ compiler so it's workable and dam powerful -
Much watching to do I have!
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To be honest ... I don't like seeing advertising anywhere but it's reality these days, and I see no reason why advertising wouldn't be a thing in the new DU universe even though the whole universe is basically being built from scratch.
Given that we are all used to seeing advertising if controlled it could be a good revenue stream for NQ.
Given the player led nature of the content maybe this is something players may choose to do in order to generate revenue to fund their own subscriptions.
I would say ... make it possible, but not a requirement.
If you don't like someone's advertising ... there' always the "declare war" option right?
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ooo good catch ...
That means as a pirate there is more inherent risk as "being in the same boat as the person you grief puts you at risk".
This online offline thing means that no-one can just take you by surprise then disappear.
That could open up some interesting side effects.
as is the case in Eve, I would like there to be a market for a "reputation database" ... happy to build that myself ... using LUA pushing data to and from an external web server to build that DB if it's an allowed option in the game ... that way I could "sell" a rep tracking computer or something that can be installed in to ships to be used by both sides to do a "rep scan".
Unless maybe the game exposes this as a default feature somehow?
Would be cool to build though
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logout on a foreign construct, log back in in a jail cell on that construct.
LMAO ... since players have no edit rights to the construct that player could be held indefinitely in that cell ... not a bug much ... honest!
I like the "you can't logout on a construct you don't own" approach, if you get disconnected you log back on in the nearest construct you do own or th nearest stellar body like a planet or moon.That might leave you stranded though ... depending on game mechanics.
The History of DU
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good point ... love that!