Dreamstar

I enjoy watching from the shadows, how the times have changed on these forums from a few stragglers and now mighty factions are coming to the front.
 
soon though Ill have to play my hand, a firm.. iron grip, to show the people the proper path, far from the light shone by these self righteous democracies, for you know democracy is the cousin of anarchy...
 
 /maniacal laugh/
 
Best of luck, truly.

I enjoy watching from the shadows, how the times have changed on these forums from a few stragglers and now mighty factions are coming to the front.
 
soon though Ill have to play my hand, a firm.. iron grip, to show the people the proper path, far from the light shone by these self righteous democracies, for you know democracy is the cousin of anarchy...
 
 /maniacal laugh/
 
Best of luck, truly.

as i am new here i don't expect to have my opinions placed highly by the devs, or my fellow forum posters.
 
voxelmorph sounds much more Sci-fi than fantacy compared to voxelmancy.
 
i also like the more generic terms suggested by  Squishimus 
"more generic and less exotic and intimidating like fabrication or manufacturing"...ect
 
i do like the discussion taking place around "voxel boards" though i have very little experience in this realm (limited to that cube style game about mining...)
and i am not sure that even roughly qualifies. i might check out some of the other games to get a better feel of what is being discussed.
 
one thought that quickly occurred to me was that at least for building some things some sort of "space dock gantry" might be kind of fun and in that case might lessen the anti-imersion effect. picturing a scenes from star trek (and a few other) movies where the ship was seen to be built in a giant "cage". again this does not work for every type of build. and considerations would have to be made for size, and perhaps artistic protrusions that may not fit in a particular "cage".
 
perhaps a handful of size and shape choices for something like this? there are probably plenty of similar concepts that would work for other build types as well that are just no occurring to me at the moment or i do not like them myself so not wanting to share.... what the heck, it may spark a good idea in someone else. in many construction projects for buildings the actual structure is surrounded by scaffolding while the project is under way. one positive note on something like this is that it can be set up or configgured in many different ways depending on need.
 
this may be a nightmare to program but there may be something better to come out of the discussion.

I don't believe that person to person combat has been heavily discussed.
 
In some probing of Nyzaltar, some time ago, he proclaimed the game will feature targeting mechanics over fps style. So at the very least you wont be expected to dodge bullets with reaction times.
 
What can be said of it then. I think they will prioritize data between players that are engaged in combat, nearby combatants second, nearby non combatants third, far away combatants fourth, environmental fauna and building fifth, miscellaneous character movement sixth, ships and other far away renders last.
If they have a highly specified manager it should feel smooth enough. after all how many people will you be in combat with at any given time.
 
I assume they could slow time a bit, or even if you were in some kind of massive 500 V 500 battle, with a proper scale and or screen effects, they might be able to make it seem like adrenaline, you only focus on the people your attacking or being attacked by inside of a radius which is just slightly larger than the farthest reaching weapon, and using the list from before, updates from each tier are dilated and de-prioritized from lowest priority to highest.
With a focus on maintaining player locations, their skill queue, and chat. while actions outside of your immediate sphere are slown, and very far away ignored.
 
Hopefully the effect would be that at the very least the immediate people you are in combat with maintains an acceptable level of playability.
 
I cant say for sure, but planetside 2 feels like the server is about to blow when 600 players are fighting on any given continent, or a 200v200v200 fight i know they use population limiters now, per faction once they achieve over 150 or more players if i remember correctly.
 
edit: a similar theory could be applied to space / ship combat with spheres of relevant information, but also possibly by tonnage, if you are aboard say a cruiser, then it will prioritize player's aboard the ship 1 (i.e you or anyone thats boarding the ship), ships inside a small sphere around you 2 ( to prevent collisions and warn of boarders), ships with similar tonnage 3, ships with large weapons capable of the most alpha damage against you 4, and then all smaller ships 5.

(Posted Friday 24th of May 2016 on the DevBlog) 
 

 
Today is an exciting day! We are proud to reveal the first images of Dual Universe, our futuristic MMORPG where players coexist in a single unbounded game universe (with no instances or loading zones), with the added ability to modify the game environment in ways never before seen on this scale and in such great detail.
 
The images below are all the first publicly available screenshots of the Dual Universe, all images were captured "in game" and represent the game engine and gameplay features in its current pre-alpha state. To put this into context, all the constructions can be built in game by players, all the terrains can be mined and terraformed by the players and all the distant planetary systems can be reached.
 
It all starts on a planet called Alioth, where, as the story goes, you step out of the arkship ready to embark on your adventure and rebuild civilization.
 
      
 
 
As you can see, there are several environments on the planet, like dense forest and arid desert. If you look to the sky you will see neighboring planets with their own unique biospheres awaiting to be explored. While we update the game, we will also add more and more diversity to the many different planet types, so explorers can be sure to encounter a rich and varied world full of surprises (we won?t say any more, because, you know, they are surprises!).
 
Dual Universe is, among many other things, a game where players can get creative and build things. Here is a typical situation where a group of players are collaborating and working together on the construction of an outpost.
 

 
As player?s ambitions grow and the materials required become more obtainable, cities and building will be built. The images below shows how the end result may look.
 
 
    
 
 
Then come the creation of ships and space stations! For example, you can build small personal spacecrafts...
 
  
 
 
...in which case you get a Cockpit UI when you enter one of these.
 
  
 
 
But you can also build far bigger, multiplayer ships...
 
  
 
 
...to the point where you can build really huge behemoths! This is something that has never been done in any builder game that we know of, especially not in a continuous single-shard MMO.  When we say ?behemoth?, we mean a space station that is 1.5km long, entirely made with voxels, as in the images below.
 

 
Perhaps even more importantly than size, which of course matters, is the fact that multiplayer ships and orbital stations are inhabitable: you can walk in it, meet some friends in it, discuss, play and coordinate your actions with them.
 
You can see below a screenshot showing an interior command room of a space station.
 

 
Then, there is space. The big vast blackness of space interrupted by the enigmatic flickers of light from distant stars, each one representing a possible new world to explore and conquer. This exploration will most likely arrive in a later stage in the game, when players will have mastered the technologies for warp drives and even later, stargates. But we give you a taste of it, because we find it awe-inspiringly beautiful.
 

 
That?s it for now! We hope you like what you see. Again, remember that everything you see here is in-game, all constructions can be built and edited by players. Add the fact that everything takes place in the same continuous universe and we believe that we have a game that is really new and exciting. But the only thing that matters for us now is what you think! So feel free to give us feedback and suggestions. We won?t be able to integrate all ideas in the short time that separates us from the alpha, but we will keep in mind and care about everything you say.
 
By the way, we have a new official website.
If you haven't seen it already, you will find useful additional on it!
 
JC Baillie,
Project Lead.

Inde sandbox's are a dime a dozen these days. The tech behind Dual sounds like it can set it apart, but what are some features it could have that do as well? I know players will make a alot of the game, but what mechanics could be created to help nudge them to not just create things, but creat things of quality that are worth having great stories related to them?
 
FYI I've bee saying for years the greatest trick EVE ever pulled off was the shared universe which makes for a shares user experience with a real to player base history that is unique to it. Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed

I am happy to hear this.  
 
I do understand why other games like Elite Dangerous choose not to allow it.  The immersion of being in 1st person in the cockpit is awesome.  But i've noticed a funny thing that happens with the design of the ships in Elite Dangerous.  As the quality and price of the ships go up the cockpit on the ships extend further and further out from the front to allow for closer to a 180 degree view.
 
On the huge freighters your basically in a little glass bubble sticking out of the front of the ship.  It makes for a much better view but in reality it doesn't seem like a very realistic design.  Putting the pilot out there on the front of the ship like that, one little slip of the controls when your landing and you'd be a pilot pancake.
 
That just got me thinking about how it might really work in the future.  So we have backup assist cameras on SUVs now, so i would imagine on a spaceship in the future you could have cameras all over the ship and maybe even some kind of 3d composite view of all the cameras that might look and feel a lot like a 3rd person view in a video game.
 
So as much as i enjoy 1st person view sometimes i'm glad we'll have the option for both.
 
I was also thinking that the "Drone Camera mode" could be used for building.  I know initially there may only be a 1st person view for building, which i think will be tough.  If we could enter that same Drone camera mode when we're building with some sort of movable pivot point and no clipping, that would be great.  A building camera mode exactly like that is supposed to be in development for Landmark still i think.

If you want to build 100% MMO game, with large interaction between players......this is no place for instances, zones. Everything must be on a single server, each player sees any other player.

I dunno, I think many people overestimate the cost of a sub... Going to the cinema cost about the same amount as a average monthly game subscription... although watching the movie in the cinema will be like 2 hours where during a month you will probably find more then 2 hours to spend in the game...
 
I understand that it can feel like wasted money if you only play 5 hours in that month but it's quite misplaced  Unless you feel even more so when going to the cinema    

Well, we have of course considered this fact.
But the real questions are:
- Is the subscription model really on a decline that can't be avoided?
- What are the exact reasons why the model is declining?
- Is it just due to some changes in consumer habits as most of the big publishers claim?
- If there was other reasons, who would be less acceptable to the players, would the big publishers will tell them with transparency?
 
Don't get us wrong here. The idea is not to blame the big publishers.
But our stand on the situation is what is regularly said is biased, for economic reasons.
The more a game has a big budget, the more the investors risk a large sum of money, the more they want to secure Return On Investment.
There is no evil there, it's just life. And limiting the risks conducts inevitably to... copy something that have already worked well, hoping the success will be repeated.
If there are interrogations about why there isn't real innovation in the last decade on MMOs, from our point view, this is mainly because of this. And generally, indeed, players seems less and less motivated to pay a subscription for a game being a copy of another they played in the past.
 
We might be wrong, but as time pass, we are more and more confident that subscription model is the way to go for our game, for many reasons that will be explained in DevBlog post dedicated to the monetization model. 
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60utqXf5HQ

Subscription model works for me. I have always liked subscription models simply because the player more often than not has to make a conscious decision to play the game or not...or risk throwing away money. I think to some degree this helps bring in players who are invested in the game and react accordingly, this is not always the case obviously. 
 
I feel wows model is perfect. You get full reign of the content for a monthly sub, store items are pure superficial. Guild wars 2 turned me off because it seemed like in order to craft I had to spend real money. Farming in that game was not fun at all. It caused me to stop playing. SWTOR was fun when it was sub, but now that its free to play and heavy market items it just feels confusing and feels like its dipping a bit too deep into the pockets. I have tried free to play games, they rarely hold my interest past a day or two. 
 

Cryofreezing pets wouldn't have been possible. There was a very strict limit on the number of humans allowed on the Arkships, let alone pets. Not to be biased to humans or against animals or anything, but there would have been an outrage among the other humans denied passage. DNA samples is much more likely.

I learned how to fly in Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat mod with a mouse and keyboard. The guys all told me it was impossible to fly a helicopter (Iraqi Hind) with keyboard and mouse. After many months and countless crashes I eventually got the hang of it. I went from the worst helicopter pilot in our group of about 50 people to the best. I had people lining up to fly with me. I used to get the Hind up to a reasonable height, get it upside down and jump out and free fall with it. Then jump back in, correct it and then fly it going reverse skating the ground. None of that would have been possible with a HOTUS. I simply had too much fast sensitive control with the mouse. Sometimes I miss that game.

The one big game world is something that Im very pleased about,
My mind is really focused on the RDMS stuff right now, but I feel like somewhere they said something about how ship / vehichle controls might behave.
I hope though they come up with something thats less point and click than eve is all, one of my biggest gripes about eve.

The one universal currency is something I'd keep an eye on. It will be a never ending and inflating number.
 
There may be a way to make a currency of sorts. Since we know that we can apply tags to containers already. By structuring the tags in a certain way so that people other than the issuing party cannot change the tags, you essentially have a way to make objects with a date they were made and their initial value.
 
people might be able to steal the container, but they would never be able to change the tags unless they intend to implement such a thing. If its impossible to change the tags then the containers value will always remain. It might not be possible to use them directly as currency, as in say someone makes a vendor droid that gives you ammo in exchange for 'credits', it obviously wouldn't know what a container is or its value without some kind of tag detection system or some kind of script.
 
Who knows what kind of controls people will have over market units, I wonder if they will be able to detect the tags applied to units, maybe 2 items both use the model for Container A, but have different tags. Are those different commodities and able to have different buy / sell prices?
 
I still see the possibility existing to not use the default currency if that was something people were interested in, albeit more difficult since private currency may not be truly supported as you pointed out.

The one universal currency is something I'd keep an eye on. It will be a never ending and inflating number.
 
There may be a way to make a currency of sorts. Since we know that we can apply tags to containers already. By structuring the tags in a certain way so that people other than the issuing party cannot change the tags, you essentially have a way to make objects with a date they were made and their initial value.
 
people might be able to steal the container, but they would never be able to change the tags unless they intend to implement such a thing. If its impossible to change the tags then the containers value will always remain. It might not be possible to use them directly as currency, as in say someone makes a vendor droid that gives you ammo in exchange for 'credits', it obviously wouldn't know what a container is or its value without some kind of tag detection system or some kind of script.
 
Who knows what kind of controls people will have over market units, I wonder if they will be able to detect the tags applied to units, maybe 2 items both use the model for Container A, but have different tags. Are those different commodities and able to have different buy / sell prices?
 
I still see the possibility existing to not use the default currency if that was something people were interested in, albeit more difficult since private currency may not be truly supported as you pointed out.

In a previous topic, there was a brief moment where some of us discussed how the economy in Dual Universe will operate. I feel like this is a good topic to continue discussing, even now despite what little information we have. However, I hope that Nyz can shed some light on this. 
 
Before we begin, if you see anything missing from this topic, please let me know. I plan to update this thread with current economic facts, as well as discussion points. Thanks!
 
_____________________________________________________________________
 
Topics of interest! If you have something you want to be discussed, let me know and I can update it here.
 
Business Ventures - With a game like DU, whose scope is truly massive in its goal to create a living, breathing sandbox universe, the possibilities for all sorts of professions are near endless. What sort of ideas do you have?
 
Central Trade Hub - While this topic may be a little pre-mature, I am hoping as we get more information in the future anything we discuss on this can begin to be fleshed out. Eve Online has a many trade hubs, but THE trade hub is known as Jita. Anything and everything can be found there. While DU will be a different game in its own right, should we as the first players look in to trying to create a centralized trade hub int he early stages of the game? By a collective effort from the community, we could easily create said market. Or, we could let things happen naturally. The latter will happen either way, and throughout different regions. What are your thoughts?
 
_____________________________________________________________________
 
I am no economic nut, but it does excite me for whatever reason. The economy will be a huge part of this game, and I'd really like to get everyone's input on it, and start putting some ideas together so that come game day, we've got a plan and vision of what to expect. 
 
Right now that's all I have on my mind. I plan to keep this topic going, and I will update the thread as needed. 
 
Also, another jab at Nyz! Any insight you have on this topic would be appreciated. It will help guide the discussions somewhere relevant to what we can expect to see. 
 
DU ECONOMY FAQ:
 
? Auctions - Can be visibly seen locally (in whatever region the Market Unit is established.)
 
? Standard Currency - There will be a standard currency established for the economy. (Players will not be able to create their own currencies.)
   
? Newbie Zone Market - The starting zone will have an initial market hub established to "jump start" the economy, and provide some basic means for the players via NPC vendors. 
 
 
   
? Market Units - A buildable structure to establish a trading post.
 
 
 
? Information Units - A build-able structure to view local buy/sell orders on the market.
 
 
 
DU ECONOMY REFERENCE LINKS:
 
 
? DEVBLOG - From Barter To Market Economy
 
- Lego

Ima make a ship, live on the ship and operate on the ship. I'll touch down occasionally for resources, but you will most likely find me on the dark side of the moon.

Well, remember that there will be countless worlds for players to colonize. Could simply have one elected representative from each world be on a council, and from there said representatives would elect their own Speaker (IE: Emperor, President whatever floats your boat). Keeps in line with having a figure head, but still limits power to the representatives from each world.
 
Said "Speaker" would do nothing more than be a voice of wisdom, whose word could potentially carry more weight than the rest. Keep the elections rotated every 3 - 6 months to keep things fresh, and you have a functioning democratic space civilization. For the most part, each representative would control and maintain their own worlds (IE: Governors). If a planet would want to opt in to support an Imperial fleet, that is their decision.
 
Keeps each world autonomous, with a council of individuals elected by their own groups to represent them. 
 
Personally, it isn't the life for me. I made it quite abundantly clear on my stance of democracies within games, but this system utilizes both democratic authority as well as leaving the planets to govern themselves how they like. I suppose in an effort to keep everyone somewhat on the same page, that for a planet to have a seat on said Imperial Council, they must follow certain guidelines.
 
Just my 2 cents, and could be expanded on more but I'll leave it like this.

We actually have a few elite players here. They just never mentioned it. I may or may not be one of them.

Never know what kind of possibilities might open up, government sponsored piracy on the empires enemies... I mean that will never happen, the Empire is a place of Laws and Justice, Nobles and Knights and a gleaming beacon of hope and light in the universe!

Also, good thread. Like the thought you've put in to it already, but alas, it isn't for me.

Hello and welcome,
If you don't mind answering what kind of foods do you cook, do you specialize in some certain area?
 
Always good to have more people to talk sci-fi with, looks like you have a good creative mind, everyone here will be looking forward to future works you create.

Hello community,
 
I'm here to open some discussion on the workings of what will hopefully become a much loved or loathed Empire.
 
After several discussions with Astrophil, and friends which procrastinate on coming to these forums, I've decided to put the confederated empire idea to rest, for now at least only to return if more people think that would be better than a super strong centralized guild.
 
This new concept will revolve around the same basic principles as before, Nobility - Emperor - Senate - but instead of confederation of external and internal guilds within the empire we will adhere to strict Vassalisation of guilds.
 
The main power will be split between the Emperor and the Senate, so as to prevent burdening one group with too much responsibility. Powers that need direct reactions will be oriented towards the Emperor, and decisions that require time finesse or many opinions will be oriented towards the Senate.
 
Emperor - Managing nobility - Management of Vassals / placing vassals in charge of provinces - command of armed forces - managing foreign affairs (but not declaring war without approval from the senate),
 
Senate - Allocating budget and taxes on vassal's - Voting on code enforceable laws and non code enforced laws, managing a judicial / inquisition force to double check for compliance with non hard code enforced laws - Creation or destruction of internal guilds (Merchant guilds, Mining corps, Imperial Bounty Hunter Societies, Piracy//Privateer organisations, ect...) - Redrawing province / state / vassal borders.
 
Vassals - will be minor guilds that exist within the empire, either created by the empire or an external guild that is assimilated. The structure of these guilds might have any internal composition the players wanted, autocratic, plutocratic, or democratic, but they will all answer to the Emperor and his/her military force, and obey the laws of the Senate. They will govern some section of imperial land in the stead of the Emperor, or military commander, their assets will be their own but they will be expected to fight for the empire and pay taxes.
 
The Empire may have territory holdings it chooses not to place under the feudal system and management of vassals, it might govern these directly with military commanders that report directly to the emperor.
 
Back to how the Senate will work, in keeping with the general theme of Emperor / Royalty / Nobility, to run for an open Senatorial position you must be some form of Noble. To manage the ever growing an complex system of nobles will require a watchdog, I propose for this an Arbiter / Inquisition institution, which can gather information and present a case to the Senate which can Vote to remove a Noble from their elevated status.
 
Some side notes to consider and come back to, how will Senatorial seats be created or removed.
What pathways will be available to becoming a noble? advance through a knightly order? instant elevation by the emperor? buy your way in? Is there a better system for removal of senators?
Will the inquisition be in charge of monitoring laws passed by the senate that cant be hard enforced with the RDMS and hard code?
 
Looking forward to finding more like minded individuals, suggestions, criticism, or anything else, thank you.