CodeGlitch0
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Posts posted by CodeGlitch0
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Greetings fellow future space colonist!
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This also, I mean what natural sink could there be when the only NPC we know of is most likely a AI in the starting Arkships..... wait a tick.... what if we mine the currency such as 'gold' for a example and we have to use this gold to build some of our machines and such. That would give us both the way to get currency and the sink that it will go into. Also would give us a reason to build big-ass machines to dig into the earth looking for more of it all the time. Purpose to leave a planet when it's run dry and not just stay in one place..
I still wonder what the currency is thought and what connection it has to what the players plan on doing.
nora,
My goal is to become a big-time trader from early start in the game by building and selling useful (scripted) tool and transport constructs. To help with this, I am mulling over the idea of creating a small "Resource Token" construct (the size and shape of a coin) that players will be able to trade with me at any time for product.
For example, I might not have a lot of money available at game launch, so I would give out these "resource tokens" to other players instead of money for the resources they give me. Later, once I have built items for sale, I would allow players to trade the resource tokens for finished products instead of game currency..
In essence, my resource tokens are suddenly an alternate form of currency that players can trade on the game Markets for game currency if they so desire.
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You and I both!
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@CodeGlitch0
I don't think you'll need a DPU to lock the renter out of the ship - the tag grants the player the right to operate the ship and once it expires, the power to operate the controls is gone with it. Look at the tag like the keys to a car.
Something to watch out for though is hacking. It's not a feature they're currently working on but something they have planned for the long term. So there might be a way for some players to hack the controls (hotwire?) and steal your ship. You'd need to factor it in as an irregular expenditure :s No idea how hacking will work though.
Yes, I get the concept of the tagging system. I am talking about having code notifications when a timed-expiry tag expires.
Anti-hacking, I can deal with. Anti-griefing defensive tools (read: personal security systems) were something of a specialty of mine in my Second Life days.
EDIT: For an additional example. Let's say I issue someone a tag to allow them to fly my spaceship, but because in this fictional dimension I'm a jerk, I decided to create a self destruct system on the spaceship that activates when I manually revoke a tag.
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The Player driven economy:
It’d be nice wouldn’t it? Sadly, I just don’t see myself positioning my character at a wooden stall or on some square to wait for someone to buy my damn iron. I also don’t really want to sell all my stuff to an NPC vendor because he needs to make Profit off his sales, otherwise he couldn’t pay me next time I come around and want to sell more stuff, which means I make less than I could. You could, off course, say that he can just sell it for what he paid me and just pay me whatever the current stock price is. Well my dear, that won’t work because it would generate in-game-money. Imagine that everyone just sells to the vendors but the vendors never get to sell, money would be generated and overflow the market, which in turn would make money worthless.
But continuing on to the next problem, who’s going to mine the trillions of tons of iron I need for my Fleet of 10 destroyers 16 support frigates 8 missile boats and that supercarrier I always wanted to have which can carry 500 fighters?
I’ll tell you who, not me. I don’t have time to do that.
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Let’s move on to a less serious topic: Scriptable Ships and Constructs
Oh boy, what to say. I understand how dev’s might think that a Script isn’t that big of a deal but, well it is, for me at least. I never learned how to program anything, granted I did tech myself some .cmd a few years back for fun, but that doesn’t nearly compare to anything I’d need to script a damned ship! Space Engineers did the exact same thing, and I see the awesome stuff like lock-on cruse-missiles and the likes, and it just makes any attempt I make laughable in comparison, it takes away the thrive to create something new and innovative. If you do scripting, next to it make some sort of easy to learn module connector platform. Where people like me with no programming experience can quickly and easily learn to make the basics work, for example a simple trade route, move from here to here, dock there and done. Or try to make a missile “script” in that sense.
Software development is my profession, and I have done a bunch of Lua scripting in games like Second Life and Legend of Grimrock I & II and scripting in other languages such as Javascript for games like CodeSpells. As a result, I will likely gravitate in a huge way towards construct building and sales. I will also be trying to get into the earliest possible alpha / early access program they make available through Steam or Kickstarter or whatever. As such, I hope to grow a huge manufacturing and sales empire in the game. From this perspective, I have a few comments:
- It is probably inevitable that certain resources will become dirt-cheap (literally) in the markets, others will have greater value. As a builder, I would rather spend my time constructing and coding, rather than mining and gathering resources. I would prefer to leave resource gathering to newer (or more dedicated who can handle that grind) players and just buy them off of the markets. Depending on how many people gather resources, I may pay more or less for them on some days. At first, I probably won't have much cash on hand, so I'll focus on smaller items that I can build and sell quickly in order to generate the revenue for larger products to put up for sale.
- According to the DevBlog, much of the markets will be automated. You post a buy order at specified price. Someone who has the resources posts a sell order. If the two line up on cost, it will automatically post the transaction for you. You shouldn't have to babysit the location for sales to go through.
- As to scripting the constructs, I will certainly be one player developing scripts constantly to make things bigger and better. I may even contract myself out to players from time to time to code private scripts if they can't do it themselves. So there will be at least one, but probably many people to assist with that sort of work. Contracting for script coding, means I will have more capital to buy more resources so that I can build more products to sell later.
- My product prices will be based on the amount of work I have to put it to develop the prototypes and cost for resources plus a bit of profit. From my perpsective, that will balance out nicely as I won't short-change myself.
I plan to set up a base right near the Arkship so that all of the new players will be able to find me right away and Know I am the one to go to for the best constructs.
EDIT: For the grammar police.
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Wow. That was a very specific example. Coin-operated spaceships
Well a tag giving the right to operate the rental ship would certainly work. I believe you can have time-based tags as well, so 24-hour expiration should be no problem. To have the ship autopilot back to the shipyard after expiration could be a bit trickier - it would definitely have to be coded into the ship's script, but since time-based tags would be temporary, you couldn't have it permanently coded.
Unless: there would be some way for the ship to detect the presence or existence of the tag (or token).
Example:
If "SpaceFighter953_rental_token" = True, "SpaceFighter953_controls" = True. Else, "SpaceFighter953_controls" = False and "SpaceFighter953_Return" = On
Or something to that effect. I am by no means a programmer. As for the DPU's ability to log tag expirations, I'm clueless.
Yes, maintaining all of that in the Lua code would certainly be no problem with the timedEvent(..) type of function that is planned, it would be much better to be able to make the DPU listen to a specific tag for expiry. It would give many more options in addition to the specific example I gave.
So tag listening events are the primary point in question. Hopefully the devs are listening and can provide an answer.
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Let's say I want to operate a spaceship rental business in-game for newer players that can't afford their own ships. I would want to implement some sort of Rental DPU / construct to assist with automated rentals (so that I don't have to be there in person to babysit the ship rental business).
You mention in the DevBlog about expiring tags, but will it be possible to get tag expiry events on the Rental DPU?
For example: Player Joe walks up to SpaceFighter953, which I currently have available for rental. Joe then deposits XX currency into the Rental DPU and it issues a "SpaceFighter953_rental_token" tag to Joe, which will expire in 24 hours (or however long depending on how much currency deposited via the rental DPU). Once the tag expires, Joe will be locked out from controlling the ship, unless he deposits more currency into the Rental DPU. And finally... 15 minutes after the last expiry, have the ship autopilot back to my shipyard to become available to the next renter.
Will it be possible for the Rental DPU to get a notification when the rental tag expires, or would I be required to track the time events in the DPU itself within the Lua code? If I can process a tag expiry event, then I could issue tags to allies to allow them to use my fleet temporarily and arbitrarily based on the tag itself.
PS: Yes, I am currently envisioning those coin operated airplanes/rocket ships for children outside of your corner store pharmacy.
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I really like this idea, it almost seems like a required feature for any useful short of base or ship defense. Ie. One radar device, transmitting enemy locations to multiple turrets controllers.
But yeah, hijacking and jamming the signals would be a problem if generic/common communication channels are used. The solution would be to use command codes (secret key) signatures to each message. Simplest and fastest method for devs to provide would be to append a keyed MD5 HMAC hash for each message. Then anyone with the commands code can verify authenticity to prevent hijacking. This could be part of a "security" construct DPU.
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Thanks for the vote of confidence. I hadn't seen that posting yet. It is good info, though to sad about the insta-shoot solution. I think that'll take away from the realism a fair bit, but I am sure they will come up with some acceptable lore piece to describe why the universe only has laser style weapons.
As I mentioned in my getting post earlier, I am really looking forward to trying DU out when it goes alpha, as it is almost a perfect match for a hobbyist game I have been working on, but will probably never finish. As a result of that game, I have a ton of ideas for things to build that fit well with DU, from what I've seen.
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I have a specific, but sort of general, question about sensor granularity when it comes to DPU events and functions. What level of granularity can we expect from various sensor systems for things like developing an AI-based targetting system?
For example, in the Lua DevBlog, the radar was mentioned with an enemyAt(x, y, z) event and the inclinometer would have our ship's getPitch() / getRoll() functions. Let's say I am building a targetting AI for a laser-based weapon. I would simply use the current enemyAt(x, y, z) position for the target location as it would be very unlikely to combat at or near light speed.
But if my ship is using a projectile weapons system with a bit of delay before reaching the target, I would need to program the AI to use the enemy position plus their current direction of movement and velocity, combined my my ship's current direction velocity to compensate and lead the gun appropriately to hit the target if they maintain their current speed and vector.
So, will things like getEnemySpeed(id) and getEnemyVector(id) functions be available from the sensor systems? Or will the gun DPU system have basic targeting and appropriate aim leading code already implemented for AI and human firing?
On another note, would there be a mechanism for rayCast targetting from a gun? ie. Checking in the direction the gun is pointing to find the collision position and ensure it isn't a point on my own ship, or a friendly ship before firing?
Sorry for all the technical questioning, but thanks for listening!
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I will likely be specializing in base and ship security / defense / weaponry when Dual comes out to alpha and beyond. If you will need those services, keep me on your contact list.
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Hmm, but what if you manage to find a way to break into the DPU using third party programs or tools and have a way to manipulate the lua outside of the protection of DU servers?..
I understand your question, but my concern is about it being safe, I'm more than happy for it all to remain on the server if it means that nasty people can't cheat. But as we don't know the in depths parts of your question i'll leave it to Nyz to respond correctly to you.
If they manage to make a locked system on a local machine, what does that mean for people who don't have the greatest of machines in comparison to those who have top-end machine. They would be limited in their game play by how good their computer is. I don't know if i would enjoy that. I have a top-end machine, but i don't want to win or have the advantage simply because i'm capable of doing more lua/dpu things than other people.
If that makes sense. I like things to be fair, and i think having local machines would imbalance it.
nora,
That's why Lua interfaces are typically sandboxed objects that are being interacted with. ie. The "Engine" DPU that you plug into isn't the actual engine, it is a proxy exposing access to the game engine DPU events and functions.
This would prevent hijacking of the game engine on servers.
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One question about the constructs and DPU devices... Where will they be executing? On the user's local machine if they are in the area, or is there a hosted cloud / server service for processing all of these DPU events?My question is largely because if run locally, the effectiveness of DPU code would be higher on machines they have stronger CPU power, giving a possible advantage to more powerful machines as they theoretically can run more DPUs at once without lagging down the game.
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Hey everyone!
I just heard about Dual Universe yesterday, and my interest is piqued. I currently play CodeSpells, which seems--in some ways--like the magic/wizard version of Dual Universe and have also tinkered with building/scripting in Second Life in the past. Dual sounds like it might be an interesting combination of Second Life and space, which definitely has me interested. Especially since all the junk you find in SL should be largely impossible in Dual.
On another note, I'm a full time professional developer who has been dreaming (and partially implementing on the hobbyist side) a space game which has very similar goals to Dual, by the descriptions given. I'd love to get in contact with the devs at some point to discuss ideas, but in the meantime, you will likely find me lurking around these forums.
Looking forward to see how this project pans out!
-CodeGlitch0
EDIT: My role in the game would definitely be artist / builder / space engineer.
Cryptographically Secure Market Features using Open-Transactions
in Idea Box
Posted
I'm not 100% sure if this is an advertisement or a feature suggestion for in-game?
Either way, I do not believe NQ is intending to have any real-money transactions in DU. Someone can feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that real-life (RL) money transactions would almost instantly break the game by making it Pay To Win.