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CyberCrunch

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Posts posted by CyberCrunch

  1. I don't feel like the stories are missing anything. For the setting and overall story ark everything fits together perfectly. Most importantly the scenario gives very realistic motives/explanations to the already existing DU-Lore. In my opinion NQ should consider making these stories an official part of the lore. It would give the universe of DU a lot more meaning/depth. It would make the game a lot more immersive by having a more drawn out background story than the one we currently have.

     

    Also @Ben Fargo: you seem to be quite involved in current real world AI research problems, especially based on your accurate descriptions in your newest story.

    You probably already know about most current AI Experts, but just in case I highly recommend the YT channel of my favorite AI-safety expert Robert Miles:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLB7AzTwc6VFZrBsO2ucBMg

    Maybe you can draw some inspiration from his videos for your current storyline...;)

  2. Another great story! Looks like you are going for an actual multi part series for this. Can’t wait for the next one!^^

    The way the interaction with AI is depicted reminds me of the movie Her. Seems you will even be going for the same type of ending… :'(

     

    Well, I really can’t wait to have my personal AI assistant in rl! Let’s see how that will work out… ;)

  3. That DevBlog is a great expansion to the existing save-zone system. I was never really happy with the Arkship-only-system.

     

    Considering the recent posts, I’d like to add that safe zones should ALLWAYS be rare…. Otherwise it would just take away the need to cooperate with others! It should be up to the players to build yourself a safe place, and NQ shouldn’t spoil us too much with safe zones.

     

    But besides that those MSAs will really be a crucial incentive to spread the playerbase outwards to other planets.

    They could act as seed for a civilization center around them; however there is also the potential that they will just be used as a resource-bank by rich players, who are able to just buy a territory there with DACs. It seems to me that NQ already considers this by providing special Sanctuary Territory Units. The information in the DevBlog is extremely vague. But based the topic of the post (“home sweet home”) my theory is that every player will be allowed to claim 1 Sanctuary Territory for free (or very cheap). Thereby preventing that multiple sanctuaries are occupied by a single player, which would e.g. give him a total monopoly on a certain moon.

    However with potentially millions of players I think not everyone should be able to find one! I hope MSA territories will still be extremely rare, like <10 territories per moon, so it’s more of an org-effort to get one. To spread the rare MSA zones more equally, and make them more rewarding for dedicated players they should also be hidden. It should require at least 1 week of dedicated scanning of the moon to discover one MSA territory.

    To me this sort of territory-hunting would sound like a very engaging endgame activity.

     

     

    Regarding organization territory I can actually agree with coke about the problems with building up large city areas. This made me thinking if we actually have a good system to promote these kind of projects:

    On 30.1.2018 at 7:50 PM, FleetAdmiralCoke said:

    I can't speak for other organizations, but I know that several of the larger organizations have talked about building cities as a project.  In a lot of cases, we're choosing the locations of these cities because of their geographic locations and those won't necessarily be predetermined secure areas.  Will it be planned to be able to protect these cities and creations later on when they are not in the designated secure zones?

     

    And to my understanding the protection bubble (force field) system would only work well on smaller scale, like for protecting a couple of important constructs inside one territory. But for a large city area, or even half a continent, using hundreds of little individual protection bubbles would simply not make for good gameplay in my opinion!

     

     

    Therefore I'd like to propose a system where large orgs can basically create their own safe zone:

     The idea is to reward people cooperative efforts by essentially upgrading normal territories to semi sanctuary level, once enough conjuncted territories are claimed in an area.

    Even if a war with another org is going on the buildings inside this upgraded territories cannot be destroyed so no force fields are required, however the territory can still lose its sanctuary status, if the org loses its claim on the surrounding territories.  This would even make large scale wars more interesting, as they would have a real frontline at the border, while the center of large cities still remain relatively safe. Battles would be drawn out around the fortified border territories, and not around where in the orgs territory someone has triggered another 48 hour bubble.

     

    Ok, having that many 100% no-PVP safe zones may be a bit drastic, so there should probably be a variety of gradations of “safer” zones without ever fully disabling PVP:

    - When a territory is fully enclosed by other territories it should gain tier 1 save-zone status, which would create an overall 150% defender bonus, and immediately flag any PVP going on in this area.

    - A territory enclosed by 2 layers of territories should gain tier 2 save-zone status, which would be almost sanctuary level of protection. However it should always allow limited AvA combat, so assassins and thieves could still operate in a huge city. But it will obviously be very hard to actually snipe a player there. Similar to EVEs system in high-sec, where you can still attack someone if you really want to.

     

    Here's a little reference to visualize how the border of a large organization territory would look with the different safety layers:

    hexSafety.png.8238bef8a10ddeb39560d4ad32ffe15b.png

     

    This system would force players to work together even more, and make it very difficult to maintain a small org with just 1 claimed territory. It may annoy some people that they can’t achieve that much with their small org of friends, but I’m sure it would be very beneficial for the overall atmosphere of the game. Small orgs can still be a legit playstyle if they move to some very remote area, and find a MSA territory. This should basically be like winning the lottery for solo-players/explorers.

    The goal for the safe-zone system should be to avert any possible Pay2Win mechanics, while actually rewarding cooperative efforts of players/organizations.

    I think my idea would fit very well to the already existing territory protection mechanics. It’s obviously hard to balance all this, and player generated safe zones should really have other drawbacks (which I didn’t come up with jet), so they are not totally op… But I definitely think NQs current 100% safe, or 0% safe approach is way too simplified to properly facilitate all the political dynamics that should be going on in the game.

     

    PS: sorry for the wall of text, it started out much shorter when I first started formulating the idea. :|

  4. It seems all discussions converge to the same old topics over and over again.

    Well that probably just shows how controversial the opinions here are.

    Regarding automated building I don’t actually think that’s an issue worth arguing too much about. NQ already confirmed that there will be factory units, and the benefits of that have already been discussed in other topics on this forum. However they will of course be limited(e.g. less efficient, slower) compared to manual building, so conventional builders won’t lose their jobs. ;)

    Adding a system to auto construct capital ships using robot-drones wouldn’t be a big deal, because it’s based on the same limitations as factory units. Besides the fact that recourses still need to be gathered manually; this is a far bigger hurdle than the actual building process.

     

    One genuinely new idea I take away from the OP is a free camera system for building.

    This would actually be a huge improvement compared to the current building-system. So many times I fiddled around with the character-movement system, just to get my cursor on the right voxel. An advanced building interface where you could freely move the camera around, and even fly through voxels would be a great help. Essentially providing a typical 3D CAD camera interface in the game.

    Ingame it could be implemented through a little drone item that has a nanoformer attached to it.

    Maybe NQ is already thinking about some drone systems, as I hope this thing ->drone.jpg.c9eece94cd52db7a1ec997e0aaeec62e.jpg will do more than just look good...

    This should only be intended as a late game item used by high level builder. For small ships a CAD-system would be a bit overkill, but builders on a large scale project would definitely benefit from this!

  5. “No, I found her program on old archives and brought her online. She’s done more to

    develop the New Hope and its drive systems than I have.”

    Best Quote of this story, in my opinion!!

     

    Of course those incredible technological breakthroughs would've never be achieved by mere humans, there had to be some sort of AI involved! xD

    This would also explain why humans on the Arkships forgot how all the advanced technology works. It was technically not even developed by them in the first place…

     

    This story is really great; however it could be even better if you would've let a native speaker proofread the story first. As Kurock said there are a lot of small errors, which are a bit weird to read. The ending seemed also a bit rushed, but I guess you were just forced to publish it in time.^^
    It would be great if you could upload the story again in a more polished form. Preferably with your original formatting, using a link to sth. like GoogleDrive, to avoid the 500kb limit. It really deserves to be presented in a proper form.

  6. Yep. this just kills the actuall discussion, as always... I'm really sad this is the way it works on this forum.

    (EDIT: this was a respons to this post...)

    On 13.11.2017 at 12:56 AM, 0something0 said:

    @blazemongerJust don't respond. I don't want this quickly deteriorating into a salt mine.

     

    tl:dr 

    Lua is for assisting players with macros, not total automation, and JC's vision is people working togather.

     

     

    @0something0 A short comment on your initial thoughts:

    It's not at all contradictory to limit automation!! I think NQ would want to give us as much freedom in DU as possible, including automation! However they are essentially forced to limit certain aspects of it for gameplay reasons. The core gameloop is based on competition, and you wouldn't want to play a game that just feels unfair(pay2win).

     

    It's a bit difficult where to draw the line, but thats exacly why we are discussing this.

    Also the term automation has a very negative bias in this community because the only thing people can think of is guns and PvP.

    But just like in RL automation can have many benefits. It would help manage the economy in big organizations (e.g. building ATMs), or enable new ways of mobility by scripting a sort of car-sharing service. Also for recreational activities you could build very complex minigames or amuesment parks with the help of automation.

    I'd really love to get more into detail about this topic, but I don't want to write another textwall, and this forum isn't the right place for it... <_<

     

    In conclusion I think NQ is doing a great job so far, as they implemented amazing scripting possibilities in the game already. I'm sure that stuff will only get limited, if it's actually harming the gameplay.

  7. 1 hour ago, 0something0 said:

    Yes, but warfare should also be about quality, not only quantity. People who invedt in higher-quality weapons system should get better results. In fact, the lack of automation may lead to the "big  guns" senario as people try to cram as much firepower per person. Minmaxing will happen either way.

    The thing is automated turrets would be able to get spammed on a huge ship, and be basically make one invincible = Pay to Win

    I don’t see a problem with the “big guns” scenario, because NQ can limit how big those guns will be, so they won't really be "unfair".

     

    Also as others have said before realism should not be a reason to support automation.

    The top1 priority for NQ should be to design this universe so it is fun to play for everyone. All other aspects of this game e.g. the Lore, are only designed in order to support features which are actually “fun”.

    That said IMO its fun to play/coordinate together with other people, and we should thing of features how to encourage that. So instead of automating everything on a huge ship we could think about mechanics to give the crew meaningful tasks to do. Organizing a ship with 100 individuals should be very complex, as this is part of the fun!

     

    A mechanic that gives an individual player (with enough Quanta) SIGNIFICANTLY more power over other players should be prevented. The 2 especially delicate aspects are:

    - For military: using automation to increase the amount of DPS a player can deal is a no-go

    - For economics: using automated mining to basically create a Quanta printing machine is also a no-go

     

     

    Now on the other hand there are aspects of the game where automation would make sense:

    For me it’s not fun to invest countless hours into building a huge base, just to have it all destroyed over night, without even having the chance to defend it.

    -> NQ agrees to that and will provide features like shields, and maybe limited auto turrets for base defense. This will have to be properly balanced, so that attacking a base should also still be fun!!

     

    It’s also not fun to have to rebuild your ship by hand every time, because it’s been destroyed for the 10th time during a war against another org.

    -> That’s why NQ provides factory units for automated ship building.

     

    Even flying a ship for hours could become a bit boring, so NQ allows us to script an autopilot in Lua for that.

    The important thing is that none of the above examples is giving an individual player a significant advantage over others.

     

    I hope it’s clear now that automation is not a yes-or-no question. It’s rather a question of finding the right balance. -> NQ should use automation to encourage the fun parts of the game while preventing boring, or unfair situations.

     

    Actually I think even fully automated turrets are kind of a gray area. If NQ could find some game mechanic so that a player won’t gain any real advantage by having auto-turrets, it could work.

    Wizardoftrash made an interesting suggestion about this a while ago:

     

    I don’t want to repeat everything, as this post has already gotten too long… this topic has been popping up for years even though NQ is still far away of implementing these PVP features.

    Unfortunately automation is somehow a buzzword that gets Twerk triggered, but I hope this discussion won’t get as heated as last time…:rolleyes:

  8. 2 hours ago, Captain Jack said:

    The consequence of finite resources will no doubt be war. Civilizations will rise and fall. Economies will thrive and collapse. Eventually it's gonna be Mad Max on a galactic scale. In the mean time though, day 1 through say day 12, should be a lot of fun.

    Agreed. Scarcity of ressources should actually be a feature, if everything is regenerating there would be no reason to fight for the best spots! And when when one spot is no longer valueble it would give the perfect incentive to move to another planet, or solar-system! ;)

     

    Ok, I’m not saying we should ever be able to run out of basic resources like iron… but even in Minecraft you never have scarcity of iron. It’s sth. you can collect along the way without thinking much about it. But what you really care about in MC are the diamonds, which can actually become very hard to find in a crowded server...

    Similarly I think “Endgame” resources of DU should be hard to get. You will probably not even find these resources on Alioth, but only on a few moons on distant planets. And that’s where the fighting will start.

     

    So in conclusion:

    - Beginners should have no trouble to get into the game. They essentially dig a whole, get some dirt, and build their dirt ship. = basic resources are pretty much infinite.
    - Competitive players however should go hunting for the best spots to be able to produce the highest tier of engine/fuel/gun/ammunition.
    This concept is also very scalable. So in the first month the hot-spots might be on Alioth, in the first year on some moons, after 3 years on another solar system, ect..

     

    Of course the issue Warden has stated should also be kept in mind. If a 50k org manages to get control over the only moon which supplies an endgame resource this could collapse the economy.
    But I think I remember in some interview JC said they want to use asteroids to balance out these resource shortages, so players will be able to mine from asteroids instead of the moon, which is temporarily looked down.

     

     

  9. 6 hours ago, blazemonger said:

    (...)

    This is Pre-Alpha, which means you need to expect a _lot_ of things to go wrong and your purpose should (IMO) be to try/test as many things as you can, see what breaks and report on this. Not until Beta should you have any ideas of stability or actual gameplay (loops).

     

    I'm not saying you are, but if your idea/mindset is that you can start playing DU, I'd strongly suggest you wait and not log on next week.

    While I support the intention of lowering the expectations for actual content of the game, I think we should still try to have fun in the pre-alpha events.

    Of course NQ does these events mainly to get feedback to find problems with the game, which we as the community should definitely report.

    But even in this current state there are so many things you can do / build in the game. I don’t like how so many posts basically tell people to stay away as if DU would be practically unplayable at the moment!

     

    I was actually playing an earlier version of DU at Gamescom last month, and had a lot of fun!

    As long as you can keep your mindset to be: “all the bad parts of the game are going to improve” you’ll still have a great time...

     

    Regarding the time zone problem, I’d suggest NQ extends future pre-alpha events to be 24 hours. There should be no problem leaving the servers running a bit longer, and the oceanics won't get screwed next time. ;)

  10. This is really a well thought out and structured idea to simplify recruitment on the forum.

    However I doubt that it’s going to see much usage, due to the fact that only a small fraction of players actually register to the forum. The few people who post on the forum especially to get themselves recruited mostly don’t read much other topics beforehand, or want to do a more free introduction of themselves. So even if the post is pinned, it might be ignored by newcomers.

     

    However I agree that the current organization recruitment system might is very limited, and a centralized job board would definitely help new players and orgs.

    Maybe NQ can integrate your forum-post as a template for a future job board on the community portal. They would just need to add another tab for people looking for orgs, in addition to the already existing tab of orgs looking for people...

    This should not be too hard to implement, it would be enough if newcomers could fill out the template, which is then automatically deleted after 1 week to not overcrowd the job board. Also if the player joins an org on its own the post should also be automatically deleted.

    >No moderation from mods necessary. ;)

     

     

    This is more relevant once the game picks up speed, so it might be far into alpha/beta  before NQ will implement this… But I definitely hope it’s on their roadmap.

  11. The thing about mass production is that it should not give you an unfair advantage over new players… players that want to “craft all the little parts” can do so, and still be able to compete against ships from the production line.

     

    Using a factory unit should help you save time to build a ship, but it should also be more costly. So the factory should have high maintenance costs. Also the higher the core-unit-level the more expensive the factory unit…

    Being able to produce smaller elements with “sub-blueprints” would also be a neat idea. Then you would have to manage the logistics of a whole line of suppliers to build a capital ship.

    Maybe there could be a sub-factory only specialized in producing different capital-class engines from sub-blueprints.

    This system will probably not be in release, but could add another level of depth to the industry-game. ;)

  12. 3 hours ago, Sharknoon said:

    Really happy to see the cool new UI, I played the old one at Gamescom. While it was usable, the keybindings and the readability weren't that good. But the old UI was just a placeholder. The new UI seems to be way better.

    Exactly that! I was a bit worried that what we saw at Gamescom would be the "design" they would go for pre-alpha release... but the new stuff has a much more "polished" feel to it!

    I wonder why they didn't show us that build at Gamescom... probably they just finished it a few days ago! xD

     

    Also that autonomous drone is amazing!

    ...to make it follow someone around is neat, but I wonder if you could program a fully fledged autopilot using that new radar unit shown in the end. (e.g. navigating to a certain waypoint using collision avoidance) Ok, they said automation will be very limited, but we'll see! ;)

  13. On 24.8.2017 at 5:20 PM, Lethys said:

    All in saying is that there's no need for such mechanics as orgs can already do that, even without a game. It's not as convenient, true, but possible. 

    And as NQ won't go for multiple currencies because of said problems, I can only see this happening via some virtual currency.

    Actually it could really help us if NQ would provide some mechanics for that...
    To my understanding the goal of creating a cryptocurrency for DU would be that you can program it to have certain properties, so that the currency is useful in DU.
    NQ would not need to actually provide dedicated cryptocurrency system. An API to get some relevant ingame values would be enough...

     

    With that players could program their own currencies externaly to generate coins based on values from this API where the value is tethered to the amount of Quanta an org has, or iron, or DACs, or any other value you can get from this API.
    Possibly you could also create a currency that rewards players with coins based on there ontime. (ok, that would probably not work out xD)

    Since the value is practally "hard coded" into the currency it would be very reliable asset for trading.


    But that’s only the beginning. With smart contracts even more things are possible. Maybe someone wants to create a DAU in DU. ;)


    I’m actually a big fan of Ethereum myself. They also provide a very simple way to create so called ERC20 tokens based on the Ethereum-platform.
    https://www.ethereum.org/token
    They seem also quite successful as there are currently 5892 different currencys based on ERC20!
    However it’s actually tied to the ETH-blockchain, so you have to pay “gas” for each transaction which might be a bit tricky for a game-currency...

     

     

    I never heard of Open Transactions but since yama said in his cryptocurrency-topic...

    Quote

    OT can solve the off-chain transaction issue


    This might even be a much better platform than with ERC20 tokens. I’m not really an expert on this, but I look forward to see yamamushi will come up with for our DU-cryptocurrency!

     

  14. @RightBigToe unfortunately construct shadows are limited to a few 100 meters, and will probably not be visible from orbit.

     

    But if I remember correctly at Gamescom planetoids do obscure the sunlight on a global scale.

    I think I actually saw an eclipse where the moon of Alioth was shaded by the planet while the sun passed behind Alioth!

     

    However since all planetoids are static, eclipses should happen at exactly the same time every day! It would be actually a very unique and pretty feature to have on a planet. xD

  15. @_devu_  Well to mine something would be a bit pointless because we had unlimited resources. (i did not try out the resource sensor either)

    But I did build a couple of constructs, which was actually most bugy part of the game, (EDIT2: Wrong wording! It's actually working fine, I just meant that it's not that intuitive to learn for the first time!)

    but lets first describe how the system woks:

     

    All constructs start from a core unit (blue = dynamic ; yellow = static), which creates a cube shaped building area around it (e.g. 64x64 meters). In this area you can place any components you want... you can even place sth. into the ground, which will still count as part of the construct.

    (Edit: I forgot to mention that it was kind of hard place some componets were you wanted (e.g. for building sth. underneath it), but JC told me they plan to implement some feature, that allows you to move the spaceship around while designing it!)

    I actually build a whole spaceship using a static core unit, but when trying to testfly it didn't move...

    All in all I'd say their current building UI is the biggest weak-spot of DU! :(

    It's not responsive at all, and its hard to figure out how to turn sth. the way you want it. (e.g. I placed a programming unit upside down, and a screen unit in the wrong direction without noticing it)

     

    Also you get a bunch of numbers and information when building a spaceship, but it feels like you have to study a manual to figure out what they actually mean, or why your first spaceship just did a nosedive into the ground... xD

    ...ok, might also have had to do with some problems they had with the server. But the building has to become much more intuitive! Nyz also told me they are working on tutorial videos prevent the frustration that you get when you just don't get why your construct doesn't work!

     

    Also that is what he replied to me regarding the UI:

     

    20 hours ago, NQ-Nyzaltar said:

    (...)

    On the User Interface aspect:

    The unfriendly feeling comes (in our opinion) from 2 points.

    First, there should be tooltips when you select a tool, to ease considerably the understanding of the mechanics.

    Second, many elements and/or tools are not well organized and we will make a lot of changes in the coming month.

    While we won't be able to simplify the UI to some extreme extent, there is room for big improvements.

     

    (...)

     

     

    This might sound like bad news, but I'm sure NQ really thought through this complex building system... in such an early (bugy) stage it’s just normal that it can cause some frustration when you see it for the first time.

  16. Well there was not that much at the booth worth to take images from, as I think we were not supposed to take pictures from the pre-alpha gameplay... (honnestly quite bugy)

     

    Also there were not many people trying to visit the both, which actually allowed the fans to talk to JC for hours! xD

    But I think this Gamescom was not the best promotion for the game to new players... probably because the game still feels a bit like a prototype with lots of bugs.

     

    I just posted a topic about what I took away from Gamescom:

     

    What really amazed me was the amount of features that are already working in the game! You could play for 1000s of hours only in pre-alpha!! ;)

  17. The DU gameplay at Gamescom was really amazing. I learned so many new things from talking to JC and actually playing the game that I would like to share them with you.
    I’m very surprised no one else started a topic about the Gamescom jet, as there were people who spend much more time at the NQ booth then me…

     

    Disclamer: None of this information is official! It’s just my interpretation of the conversation I had with JC. Also none of the features are final! I got the impression that a lot of details are not fully thought out and will be changed during development.


    I hope we can freely discuss features “as seen in the Gamescom” without violating any pre-alpha NDA… I just think this will be interesting for those who were not there. ;)

     

    Orbital mechanics:
    In space there are actual physics calculations like in Kerbal Space Program! I managed to catapult my ship into orbit with atmospheric engines, but it was pulled back in a parabolic curve by the gravity.
    JC said that atmospheric engines are actually a bit overpowered, as you could reach escape velocity with them and fly straight into space… without any control… because the engines only work in atmosphere… xD
    I have to say that I really liked the atmospheric flight mechanics; they felt very realistic just like a real airplane.

     

    Damaging system:
    Functional parts get damaged on impact and are supposed to lose their function until they get repaired by hand. (currently tweaked as it’s a little bugy)

     

    Lua Scripting:
    We already know about the minigames you can create in DU, but what about the multiplayer capabilities? Interestingly enough it’s already possible to connect multiple programming units together by just using global variables, which are shared inside one core unit.
    Thereby multiple sup-components on a big ship can be interconnected and exchange information between each other.
    In theory it could also be possible to communicate to another construct using the same mechanic, but with a growing distance the update rate of the data would be decrease…
    They are thinking about creating a component that can be accessed “globally” by any programming unit in range… but the whole topic about distributed systems will be another milestone that has not been considered jet.
    Another thing I asked was if we could use an external IDE for programming, as the ingame one was kind of limited… JC said in theory you could import an external library in the ingame interface, which should access the Lua scripts directly from your PCs hard drive.(not sure about the Lua limitations inside DU though)
    Or you just copy the code over to the game for testing.
    The Lua development is also tied to the ingame IDE as each connected component actually provides predefined event-function-blocks that are triggered by certain events (e.g. a switch has an on, and an off block) and you have to place Lua code in the corresponding function blocks.
    I’m sure in the long run NQ will develop a fully fledged IDE for the game, so this will become no issue at all….
    The breakout minigame was also simply some code executed in the “start” function that was able to receive keyboard inputs and generated svgs that were displayed on the screen-unit.

     

    Rendering/Performance:
    Ok, the game is not the prettiest rendering wise.
    All vegetation and functional components get only rendered up to a certain distance (few 100 meters) than they get de-spawned. Also all lighting and shadows are only active up to this distance.
    Further away voxels also get simplified a lot… I honestly don’t care about the visuals that much, but I’ll admit the space station looked kind of squashed from far away.  But JC said they are working hard on improving the rendering.
    On the flip side flying around was very smooth! In god-mode I flew to the moon of Alioth in 2 seconds without any noticeable frame drops!

     

     

    So, that’s all that was new/interesting about the game for me. Maybe most of this was already known, but it wouldn’t hurt to share it here…
    I actually did not have enough time to cover all my questions. But others are probably able to share a lot more insights from Gamescom, so feel free to post them to the rest of the community!

  18. Welcome to the community Ultragamer,

    the arkship pub is probably the right board for this, as promoting a discord server to exchange 3d models and designs should counts as community advertisement. ^^

     

    I think creating chat rooms and orgs to help inspire each other is a great idea for now.

    But in the long run I hope NQ will be providing some kind of platform to exchange designs based on blueprints.

    This may depend on how blueprints can be exchanged. If you could just download  a design we might see sites like for Kerbal Space Program, or Space Engineers

  19. Thanks for all the feedback.
    I posted this topic to discuss my thoughts on how improving real world language skills could work in DU. So I should probably clarify that these 3 possibilities I mentioned are actually very different approaches to learn a language:


    1) This is more like visiting a foreign country: you just try to integrate yourself in the daily life and participate in normal activities with other people without any direct lessons. (works only if you are already able to speak the foreign language quite fluently)


    2) Just 1 on 1 language exchange. This approach would depend on the participating people: you could do exercises to learn the basics, but also do normal everyday conversations to practice speaking fluently.


    3) For this suggestion the goal is to create a sort of language school system where you would organize lessons to learn with multiple people together.

     

    These are just the possibilities I that came to my mind. We could easily organize these things “on demand”, based on how many people want to learn a certain language. If there are only 2-3 people, we could just add each other on hellotalk and do a 1 on 1 exchange. If we get 10 people together we could form a class… and so on.
    To get this started: I am fluent in Italian, German, and English (and already have basic knowledge of Spanish, and Chinese (I also did Latin in school = huge waste of time -.-)
    I’d like to learn Spanish, Chinese, (and i currently have growing interest in French) ;)

     

    @huschhusch Of course most orgs are focused on actually playing DU, but here’s an example situation: a fellow student of mine from Peru is currently learning German. Would you (hypothetically) welcome him to your "Sammelbecken", even if he would need to ask for a word every now and then?
    I just hope there will be a more open atmosphere towards other players in the game. In the end we will all walk around on the same planet. ;)


    @Fitorion I think it would be quite useful to implement a google-translate function into the chat, but I'm against the use of sample phrases as this only limits the conversation.
    In the end English should always stay the lingua franca which everyone should understand without the need for translators. (I mean it’s even a mandatory subject in schools of every major country)

     

  20. I’ve had an idea for a while, but I’m actually not sure if such activities would work out in a competitive game like DU...

    Heck I’ll just DU it! ;)Let’s see what you think of my proposal:

     

    A problem when learning a new language is to find native speakers to practice by actually speaking the language.

    Since DU will bring players from all around the world together, this could be a perfect opportunity for a language exchange.

     

    Of course most players will be very engaged in the work with their own orgs, but sometimes there may be some spare time for other activities. Especially as there will be a lots of grinding in DU. I mean even when NQ is trying to make resource gathering more interesting, it’s essentially just about digging holes for hours.

    During these monotone activities of the game you could join a voice chat with a native speaker of a foreign language and practice with him. (essentially what platforms like hellotalk.com, sharedlingo.com, ect. are providing)

    You could do some vocabulary exercises, play some language learning games, or even do a discussion about DU in a foreign language. ;)

     

    Now what could we do to further promote this in DU:

     

    1) I highly encourage organizations operating in the native language of their members, which have come up a lot lately! We could create a list of all non English orgs to provide a “language map” of Alioth. Players could use this to find speakers of their own language, or where to go to improve their foreign language skills. This should work like a language exchange travel guide.

     

    2) We could also provide a platform to bring different language learners together. You would be able to search for people that are willing to teach language A, and learning language B.

    e.g. someone speaking German who’s learning Spanish would want to find someone speaking Spanish learning German.

    We could create jet another discord server dedicated to that, however it’s probably better to use platforms like hellotalk which have much better features, as they are especially designed for that purpose!

     

    3) Furthermore we could create a nonprofit organization in DU dedicated to promote language exchange. This would probably not work like a normal org as, would not participate in claiming resources/land or military. But we could build a "language exchange forum" close to the arkship, to inform other players about this project.

    If the org-mechanics are flexible enough we could use sub-orgs to better organize different language groups. E.g. a sub-org “Spanish learners” could get together to organize weekly Spanish classes.

    If this becomes popular enough we could even create language exams, to check people’s language proficiency level.

     

    I would be very happy if we could gather some interested people to develop this further, but honestly I would probably not be the best person to actually lead this project due to my inconsistent on-time... I’m just a guy interested in learning more languages, and it would be awesome if there would be a platform that combines language learning with gaming. xD

  21. @Ezghoul I think you deserve some feedback on your suggestions:

    This ASP-concept is very interesting to enable designing ships together with other players in the actual universe.

    However I am more in favor of the VR-Pod suggestion that twerk made a while ago:

    ... mainly because it would allow to test-fly the design freely inside this Dual-VR-Univesrse. Also the VR universe would be very useful as a "tutorial" environment for new players!  ;)
    I could go on with the pros and cons, but basically you should just read this discussion yourself, as it sums up everything quite well.

  22. I think what Nyzaltar is describing is basically a resurrection node, as it is already implemented in the game, so that would not even break the lore! The only difference is that one can voluntarily “die” in one dimension, so that your consciousness is brought to another dimensions resurrection node that you choose. (so not à la Star Trek at all)

     

    The other idea to fly through pipes for short travel like a “pseudo teleportation” is also very nice. Maybe there could be different levels of pipes for shorter/longer travels. It could even be possible to build a giant “hyper-loop” all around the planet, so you could travel to the other side of the planet in just 5 minutes!

    Ok, I agree that ships are a much nicer way to travel and also look much better than some tube, but it’s just a matter of balancing things.

    Transportation pipes could be an “endgame” feature, that costs insane amount of resources to build and maintain… But if an org manages to build such a thing on their home planet it would be an incredible achievement. It also has big military value, as you can transport large amounts of players around your base in split-seconds!

    A cool scenario would be if the enemy manages to shoot a hole in the hyper-loop, which causes the whole thing to implode, killing everyone inside! xD

  23. Yes, I’ve read this post, and I guess a lot of ideas about comm-arrays have come up over time...

    This post also had very interesting idea on how to create an “internet” inside of DU:

    Communication Units will be a big topic in DU, and NQ will probably provide all sorts of Components for different use cases. Maybe a big “Master Node” component which can be only be build as attachment with a TU, to provide all those different comm-features at once would be nice.

    We’ll have to wait and see, as this probably not their top priority right now.

  24. While reading this controversial discussion about Lua sockets:

    I thought about why not combine an API system with an actual ingame component.

     

    Ok, this will be technically 2 ideas in one post, but they are very much related to each other...

    Basically the problem is how to “manage” ingame information. yamamushi suggested Lua scripts should provide HTTP access to their ingame data, so it can be processed by external applications.

    But would it be the best way to rely on a "separated" server-client system for that? The problem to access data also exists if you try to build an app inside the game. (e.g. a display unit for a local market)

     

     

    This is a kind of complicated topic, so I'll just try to focus on the brief concept:

    We have DPUs which are the central hub for ALL data in DU. E.g. I assume the trading system and ship management will also run on DPUs.

    To exchange the internal data of DPUs we could just connect a special API component that takes some specified variables and makes them available to the PC that is actually running DU.(e.g. using a JSON-RPC or similar to EVEs API system)

    Thereby external applications can simply access ingame data without a dedicated API server.

    You might think it’s quite limiting to only be able to access data that is right in front of you, but this is where the comm-array idea comes in...

     

     

    The component for API access would actually be a sort of “Communication Unit”, but unlike previously suggested antennae-concepts it would provide general purpose input/output capabilities.

    This antenna would be able to connect to other antennae, but be limited by range and  number of channels. So each antenna would be able to manage the following I/O data:

    - current DPU variables

    - API-channel variables

    - X other DPU-channels variables

     

    To define which variable is send to which channel, NQ would have to provide an interface to “wire up” each channel. Channels can be opened and closed dynamically, but new connection requests always have to be approved by the player operating the DPU.

    As all this data will have to pass through the main server, the number of possible channels should be quite low. Maybe the most expensive comm-arrays would provide up to 10 channels and be limited to have only 1 on each TU. But 1-channel-comm-arrays could be relatively cheap so they can be integrated in each ship.

    This would also correspond to the demand, as only big trade-hubs will be able to produce these large amounts of data.

    Another way to reduce server strain is to have a slower update time from 1min – 1h. Also the sending of data should only be triggered by data changes.

    Even if you want to access data from far away DPUs, you would be able to build an arrays of comms just to relay data back and forth.

    Here is a little picture to illustrate the idea:

    Comm-network.png.385d5cb55963c69e36bff82528bd4e95.png

    So in theory if we would build a global Network of comm-arrays you could access the status from all trade-hubs around Alioth in one place!

     

     

    Conclusion

     

    The main idea of this is that any accessible information inside DU (with or without API) would need to go through an actual network build by players. This would not only make it easier for NQ to channel the dataflow, but also allow exciting ingame scenarios: e.g. a spy might try to infiltrate the enemy’s comm-arrays to steal valuable military information.

    Of course this is only a general concept. There will be other limitations to consider, e.g. not every kind of data should be allowed to send to the API-channel. The trade-hubs are also a bad example, as this is another controversial topic.

    But on the long run I’d say this would be a very good system for DU, as it also fits their philosophy that the players have to build their own infrastructure.

     

     

    Such a system would probably take NQ a lot of time to develop, so I don’t expect this to be ready at release.

    Maybe the other suggestions about an API system could also coexist, or be integrated into this system… but there’s really too little information about most game features right now.

     

     

    The only question I have is would this actually work? I’m sure I forgot some aspects so please tell me! :)

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