Traceur
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Posts posted by Traceur
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Dude are you kidding me. Can you imagine, you breach the hull of my capital ship, entering the hangar and Bama, theres a giant T-rex waiting for you. After fighting you way past and loose half your men you get into the corridors where I have packs of raptors roaming and waiting for you. Then I genetically modify a massive dinosaur whale for my support ships and they just eat your smaller vessels.
But ARK is good, I agree the optimizaion sucks, but its Alpha (or do they call it Pre-Alpha) either way its not finalized. They are doing good things and rapidly adding content. But its still not what DU is going for.
Well, depending on how intricate the mechanical systems can get...
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If you have a doubt, ask the involved persons before accusing them.
Alright, hijacking this advice for my own doubts - which are actually not regarding scam but regarding technical capacities.
In the interview with mmorpg.com you guys describe how the single shard will split the server spatially based on the number of players (and I am guessing the size and level of details of structs?). I would like to know how this would effect syncing between those servers, when in dense player populations even the most basic interactions can end up running on more then one server. If I fall in the middle of a shopping mall where each floor has enough players to count for its own servers, would I end up freezing every few meters? Can a ship in a large battle shoot a missile at someone in another server? What about path-finding for NPCs? How far are you in developing the server architecture to support this? have you managed to stress-test the system?
I'll buy a hat especially so I take off my hat if you pull this off, but this is currently my biggest source of doubt about the game. I do want to believe in good faith, but I have just never heard of anyone doing this successfully.
(I would also like to know on whether the mechanical joints shown in Dual's facebook concept art art still planned for the game, but at that point I might be getting greedy with questions)
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And who exactly is this Miquel? The crafter of the landmark engine or... Someone else?
The coding genius behind the landmarks engine.
Short story long, I was working on the code for generating procedural database summaries out of clipboard references for work, and thought the exact design (though probably not the exact same code) can be applied to voxel maps.
For the general idea, imagine for instance if you saved two blueprints of two nearly identical buildings, except for the number of floors. This could in turn isolate the blueprint of a floor and let you place that kind of building at any given height. Change the roof of the second building from a flat one to one with an antenna, and the next time you place that building you could scroll through the two roof types. The result would be kind of a "family relations" between blueprints which adapts to increasingly larger scales - from your style of housing with architectural elements you came up with expended to building to city and cities.
I wanted to test this and have a look under the engine's hood, or at least some feedback on whether it was doable. It wasn't so much a game idea as much as it was a programming experiment that didn't go through.
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I heard something about them using the same "crafting" engine... but isn't that a good thing, last I checked were Landmarks crafting quite... well, deep
It is. Except Miguel Cepero is a tool who doesn't answer his email. Amazing coder, but still a tool.
(Long story)
edit: I meant it is a good thing if it is the voxel farm engine. I don't know if it actually is the voxel farm engine.
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Yeah
speaking of which, will the whole game only be designed in voxels? So the ships will look a bit... well... I guess Robocraftish? Like without THAT much detail and such?
In the dev' blog they describe rounded tools, so at least there's that. It probably won't be quite as blocky as Space Engineers or RoboCraft. Think more EverQest: Landmarks construction style. In fact the building tools look almost identical to Voxel Farm used by EQ landmarks.
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as I state earlier
I would LOVE to have Courtney gears from Ratchet and clank as my AI voice (maybe even model, if they would allow a holographic body) She was my first video game crush xD
That.. Might not end up sounding quite like that...
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Well living shape designs are a pretty old trope of sci fi:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LivingShip
How far this can go in a voxel building game is another question. I wouldn't expect to see flopping skin and animated soft tissue, and I doubt they'd build gameplay around actually growing ships. But voxels with organic looking textures,though probably no actual organic properties, would have a pretty low barrier. Organic looking counterparts to the prebuilt ship elements would be a slightly higher one, and actual organic systems would require quite a bit more development time, but might still be justifiable.
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I guess I was late with the post about the actual topic (subscription model)...
The game can be an investor scam, or it could fail it's kickstarter campaign, or it could fail in financially planning the development process once financed, or the server architecture could fail later stress tests end the game will end up a shadow of it's promised glory, or it could be all it's promised and get released only to end up unsuccessful and get canceled a couple of months after because another game targeting the same market audience outshines it or the market changes and people get sick of the minecraft trend, or an asteroid hits earth right on their studio, or trump gets elected.
Approaching it with a grain of salt is wise, approaching it with a tinfoil hat is just bad fashion sense.
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Their model actually works really well: Most people either have a job or a lot of free time, and it rewards both types.
That's being said, there is growing 3rd market of people who have irregular income. If you do freelance work, or if your income is reliant on the growing share-economy, you are going to have better months or worst off months, and it's harder to commit to a luxury (Which an MMO essentially is). What I would like to see is some sort of limited capacity for people to play without paying. Perhaps the building tools aren't available, perhaps you can't increase your character skills. A smoother transitions between pay and non-pay mode would allow people to participate on different levels depending on how they are doing. Someone is undercutting your web design clientele? Nobody is renting your airbnb? Perhaps this month you aren't going to build your own ships, perhaps this month you'll be the crew in someone else's.
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Just a random thought : what prevents people to build mini-games?
Scale.
In Space Engineers people have designed everything from mini golf to cart racing to Tetris and Space Invaders, but it's all gigantic and far too expensive for anyone to incorporate within a survival mode space station. In Dual Universe everything is in survival mode. If they want to allow us to build our own mini-games, we are going to need some really small voxels.
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No Man's Sky will die because, although its multiplayer, you don't spawn close to anyone. At least anyone you want to be near.
I don't think it will die, but it will certainly have an overhype blowout and be much more of a niche game then it's current community is expecting. Essentially if don't enjoy exploring procedural worlds for the scenery, you are not going to enjoy NMS.
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As long as it doesn't end up like Starforge, and becomes a better version of Starmade, I will love it. I don't think it would ever be like Ark in space. There hasn't been anything hardly even said about there being creatures on these generated planets. But, it would be cool to be able to ride some alien animals.... for about 5 minutes, then it would be, wtf am I doing?!? I have space ships!
And this is why making interaction with fauna interesting is probably one of the hardest thing to do in a sci-fi game, where artificial materials are expected to be a lot more useful then anything nature can provide. I can already see this happening to No Man's Sky, where interesting and diverse fauna is one of the biggest hype factor in the presentations, but from all indications will have little to no purpose beyond naming animals and trying to not get eaten by animals.
If they do focus more on developing procedural fauna at some point, then I hope they can figure out a use for having them around and discovering new ones. Maybe some animals can be "uplifted/enslaved" to serve as an alternative to droids, or maybe you could collect DNA samples from them to create various buffs that can help you survive in certain environments.
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The devs confirmed that there wont be phisical aiming, at least not like in fps. Instead you will choose a target and your weapons or the weapons assigned to your specific station (multi crew) will fire on that target
Honestly this is a worth while trade off.
even with auto targeting systems, the current design and resulting requirements on sever architecture are still ridiculously ambitious. And there are plenty of ways a game can still incorporate skillful tactical thinking into an auto targeting system, we've seen that everywhere from eve's combat system to ultima's old magic system. It's not quite as immersive, but neither are separate shards, and when most of the interactions and content emerge from player interactions and creations, the benefits for having the entire game community in one universe are too valuable to put aside (If they can pull this off. I will probably still play the game if it doesn't pass the stress test and they end up dividing it).
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Yeah, possibly :3 could make it a very interesting class of a ship... and maybe you could like "direct" its growth, to create your own design when it came to these biological ships.
I think it depends on how deep are are they willing to go in regards to multi-block structures:
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/566-multi-block-systemweaponry/
Since organic systems would sort of naturally be a multiblock system, they would face the same challenges of having algorithms checking multiple elements and ship voxels. That's being said, it would go hand in hand. If you can code an engine with it's own fuel pipes, you can code a hull with it's own blood vessels.
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What specifically about Ark are you concerned about it replicating?
I haven't played Ark, but I've watched a couple of let's plays and have generally heard good things, I am just not really quite as interested in camp building and dino training as I am in designing ships and in social organizations.
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That's why I'm personally hoping it isn't a requirement. If it is, well I guess I would have to deal with it. I would probably just stock up on the cheapest food for long journeys.
Come to think of it, what would be the cheapest food to grow in space?
Here on earth it's often wheat, but I've heard wheat has difficulties when it comes to hydroponics. Maybe rice?
I'd suggest potato's but I don't want Matt Damon to sue DU...
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maybe add AI (like that says "Good evening captain, currently our fueltanks are on 80%. The weather is fine and the skies are the limit") or such?
Ooh I didn't think of that: If they could license something like https://www.ivona.com/ or another text to speech software - perhaps somewhere higher on the kickstarters goals - we could use LUA to send it strings for different triggered events. I would love to use the Raveena voice for my dream capital ship.
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I am all for it, but I would like a more elegant design that doesn't put it in the center stage.
In games where survival-horror is the focus, it makes sense to have multiple bars and have the player freak out on the currently lowest one - the most nearing cause of death - but in a game where you want this as an enrichment rather then a distraction, you could simplify it into a supply unit you can craft, made out of the basic supplies you would need within a certain time frame. Instead of dying the moment it's gone, it could have an incremental negatives: once reaching a certain line within the supply bar your suit automatically starts budgeting your supplies more and more and you get certain negative effects on your health and attributes.
This should only be a factor when you are trying to survive somewhere out there or in encouraging players to build life support systems. While you are in the safety of arkships, your supplies should be completely provided for.
Potentially this can be combined with a fuller survival system as well: Have the multiple bars thing and multiple actions to reduce each of them, but then hide and replace the bars with the general supply bar when you have a supply unit on you.
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I think from this standpoint, we will easily be able to make biological ships in Dual, and create our own back story for them.
Bingo. I wouldn't mind organic materials to work with that might have certain properties and look (healing, requiring food, a "digestive system" element to connect too, etc), but I don't think this is a game about the dev's creating cool ships for us, biological or otherwise. They give us the tools to create our own.
Come to think of it I am surprised Star Citizen - which is almost completely financed by selling ships to players - hasn't yet tried cashing in on a Moya.
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You mean having building materials like these:
(Minus the horrible music, and... Graphics, and limited block based building tool)
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One main problem is that we are waking up on the arkship, so there wouldn't have being time to form factions with deep lore and a history of conflicts. That's being said., a post-Armageddon Arkship breaking into factions can be done well if you use earth-bound ideological differences, and in fact it has being done, really well, with quite a lot of character, if I may take the risk of rose tinted nostalgia glasses:
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If I understand the delegation mechanics correctly, wouldn't both members starting organizations with everything they own and then delegating to the other equal access pretty much do the same? Everything they are doing is sandbox oriented, as open of a contract system as it comes to apply how we please, why not here?
Besides, a direct translation of a relationship isn't always the best fit. I've met my RL ex-wife in an MMO, and it started by her constantly trying to kill me.
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Well given that there is confirmed FTL and StarGates, I'm betting that the possibility of having a uncapped speed limit are quite possible. Especially that the constructs you make are solid, not separate parts like what SE had, once it's made it is a single entity in itself so that it can travel at top speed i imagine.
But like you say, we'll have to wait to see what NQ come up with, I'm hoping that the speeds are not limited at all, acceleration depends on your thrusters and topspeed is infinite (in game terms).
If you mean an uncapped speed in terms of distance using some sort of FTL jump/warp/hyper drive, or any other medium of travel where you aren't likely to meet anyone on the way or make any turns, then yes, it could be uncapped, or capped only by energy usage and other game mechanics. But If we are talking about traveling within normal space, where things on the way need to load on the screen, where you can change the direction and completely ruin any server side prediction on what's likely to need loading, and where you could very well have the unfortunate incident of your spaceship deciding to cuddle with someone else's, then unfortunately - even if they don't hard code a cap themselves - it will have the very hard cap of hardware limits. In that scenario not having some sort of hard cap would also have gameplay balance ramifications for an MMO, such as natural speed limits changing depending on your internet provider.
E3 ships not made in engine? (debunked)
in General Discussions
Posted
Come on, NQ-Nyzaltar pretty much instructed us to ask the involved persons (The dev's) before accusing them. Why isn't everyone else jumping on this? It's like an open call to Q&A. Think of all of the things you have wanted ask but never stopped to put on a tin foil hat and make a troll youtube channel.