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wesbruce

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Posts posted by wesbruce

  1. Second Life does have some things to teach. I have cited it a few times. I was an early player and had 7000 primes at one point. Every kind of space station and some sea steading stuff and a mix of other experiments. We tried so hard to do a convincing space station in SL but failed. Somme of the open source versions now available are able to do amazing things. But you are  still locked to a 2 d plane. Build your own game on open sim. http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page 

    I do think sculpties would be a huge thing to add in DU. 

    http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_prim You could do that in DU but it may still have a current patent. 

     

    Second life also has a bunch of problems.

    • Don't do an ingame stock market if your game is based in the USA; the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shut it down. I lost a pile of pretend money. 
    • Don't allow porn skins etc if your not willing to feed 80% of your profit to the legal department every year.  
    • Above all don't tie the size of your memory allocation to a fixed space on the ground that's too damn small! 

     

    By the way Jeronimo, Second life is not the first or oldest game of that type. Active Worlds dates from 1997 and that's six years before SL and 'There' which is as old as SL. Active worlds solved the land problem by licencing the meshes them selves. 

     

    https://www.activeworlds.com/web/index.php 

  2. I doubt that any bullet based system emulates every single bullet in any game. Most I know of switches to a bullet box of x100  assumed bullets with a pre rendered cloud of dots or parallel stripes. The box is its self a huge bullet 10 meters long representing bullets all more or less on the same path. It still is an entity that must be tracked and handed off to each server and player node. When FPS games talk of optimisation this is what they are doing, bundling bullets either until they hit or until they get very close then it unbundles them and shot guns the target.   

     

    With tab targeting it's just a short sprite fountain and an out going vector at the firer with some sprites making it all the way at very short range. At longer damage the targeted player takes damage, may see incoming sprites vectoring to him (slow rounds) and may see bullet fall on the opposite wall. Both are local. Someone crossing their fire arc may also see bullets flying past because the game knows the vectors and can compute if your in the cross fire.

    Likewise if something solid gets in the way the bullets are stopped, that object gets the hit sprites.  The tab lock may or may not be lost, with or without a delay. It is even possible for the game to switch to another target, based on skill or luck because that target ran in fount of or behind your target. I.E. friendly fire or an accidental hidden target kill temporary target switching [nearest neighbour]. 

     

    In short in tab targeting you need to pass information to only 2 players/ servers in most cases. In some cases it may be four or five. It's never more than ten or all 1000. 

  3. You can emulate a PvP shooter in a tab targeting system but you can't emulate a tab targeting system in a FPS with bullet mechanics.

    To emulate fps simply have a narrow arc of selection and anything is tab targeted automatically but if you mouse off that target you lose tab targeting on that target. Both tab targeting and FPS can have area effect attacks so that does not matter. Homing attacks require some longer lock persistence to work but that's do able in both systems.
    Tab targeting with a narrow cone can do friendly fire too but it's more code. 
    Bullet drop is easy too by having a "reticule height above target" requirement at the time of firing. The same with leading the target. It already knows the range in both systems. 

     

    Knowing this I have difficulty understanding why people even bother complaining about the tab targeting choice. 

     

    All game systems, including all bullet based systems, have a dice roll somewhere in the mix to hit or damage. The gods of RNG are not fools.

     

    You can shoot the turret or the drive that is just a matter of how many selection boxes a ship gets or whether it has a roll to damage subsystem table with roll biases at each end for what your targeting computer is set to. You can even shoot the gun out of a players hand in a RPG style tab targeting system. Lets see you do that in bullet based code? (It is not impossible.)

    Here is a game with Tab targeting being switched to a FPS targeting in settings. 

    (It needs a little more graphics optimisation, Changed cross hairs, etc. )

     

    Hopefully DU will add a FPS emulation setting and the debate will end. Then we will see if my tactics and skills beats your twitch. 

  4. You're all doomed! I just figured out how to do player zombies in this game without breaking the lore. If early or later game play gets a bit uninteresting and grindy this may spice things up.

     

    Hint defective resurrection nodes. 

    No you won't be a super zombie ... at first.

     

     

    A low tech variant spawns you without a suit, nanopack and nanoformer but there is a build path to making them. Again late late gameplay if interest wains.

     

    I await the dev's comments eagerly. 

    Let the flames begin. 

  5. Really ?! You guys want some shitty Space Carebear game ? Great, just go play Hello Kitty Online then. You don't have a clue of what you are talking about, it's sad and hopefully the devs will never follow your idea of a game.

    Oh great, look what you've done to me now! I've ended up watching a hello kitty online game play video. SO much pink my eyes, my eyes. 

     

     

    Actually it looks good for a game designed for 5 year olds. Works well too.

  6. I can't understand why people can't cook up there own SF worlds and have to use star wars, star trek, etc, etc. I have created my own sf worlds several times over. I have 4 up my sleeve and since none fit this universe I'm working on my fifth. It is easy.

    1. Define the theme. 
    2. define the protagonists. This tells you how much of the world you need to flesh out. 
    3. define the world origin. 
    4. What is the key technology and is some key technology disallowed. (DU has no wheels; they are obsolete. Wheels on 25 cm voxels are that hard!)
    5. Is there magic or something that works like it; Psi, the force, Q continuum, ... wild nanites, teeny tiny aliens that are really humans in ships that got really messed up when a stardrive went wrong, pocket universes on your belt.
    6. What is the goal that your story is aiming for. 
    7. If it is a game guild or company or organisation in this game what are you going to use to attract players, keep them, involve them, and give them in return for their member ship. 
    8. Most importantly. Have you found and read the existing game lore here so your lore does not look completely ridiculous. More than one org seems to be making that mistake. 

    ​It is not hard. 

  7. Clearly orbital mechanics is a challenge.

    Making planets orbit the sun and rotate adds several vectors to the players, ships and everything that must be tracked and adjusted for. 

    I can see two possible solutions, one easy one hard:

    Daily Update: Once a day at a predictable time everything is moved together, with a planetary bounding box being used; the box would be 1 or 2 planetary diameters and it would be moved 1 or 2 degrees around the sun. Note if the sun is orbiting the planets, the easy option, this is really a change of angles of all of the worlds to each other while either maintaining their distance from the sun or adjusting it slightly to emulate elliptical orbits. Any ship in the way is moved 1.5 planetary diameters to the side, sun ward. If it is still in the way it is moved another half planetary diameter in the direction of the orbit. If it is within 20 km of another orbiting object it is moved 20 km away from the planet.  If it is not clear of objects now then you need a space traffic cop! 

    From the players point of view the sun seems to teleport but only once per day. If timed to correspond with night on the major planetary safe zone/ city, where most would be, it would go unnoticed. It would be a normal thing so would break immersion much less than a minecraft modded multiplayer day night shift which is quite common and often unnoticed. This would only be a 2 degree orbit shift from the point of view of the player seeing it.  

     

    Frames of reference: 

    Another method would be to give every player and ship a frame of reference state with 5 to 8 frames of reference. You need this for boarding actions in ship to ship combat and docking anyway.
    At some point the person needs to be 'In the ship' as opposed to being in space or in another ship.

     

    Why not planets, atmospheres. The frame of reference call is a velocity, vector and orientation call.  (The last thing will already be defined by a ship or stations gravity unit so may be ignored. If you want fancy space stations and ships where you can EVA on a belly of without falling off, the orientation call can be useful)

    The reference frames would be: star, planet orbital, planet equator or Planet by latitude, Ship, Inverted, station, space station centrifuge. All in the same frame of reference are given the same velocity and the same vector relative to the local down. 

     

    The star would not have a velocity or vector. A non moving space station is in the stars reference. a station is in the planets orbital frame. 

     

    Planet orbit is the velocity and tangential vector of the planet in orbit. It would effect all things in the planets gravity and stations within a few planetary diameters. 

     

    In the case of planet equator or Planet by latitude it would be the velocity of planets local surface & atmosphere [even on vacuum worlds. ] The atmospheric stickiness. It would have a primary component in the direction of spin and tiny downward component and a hand off component from planetary orbit.

     

    Planet high latitude would grade off as you approach the pole but would be the same value for all in a given latitude. Ships taking off in the direction of spin end up transitioning to the stars frame of reference faster. However this transition will only occur is at an altitude of 1.1 planetary diameters of the core. Like wise a ship entering transitions fast if going in the opposite direction to spin. To avoid ship planet collision we could add a bounce angle, a real thing in space. If you approach a planet at the wrong angle you bounce off the atmosphere at a shallow angle.

     

    In the case of Ship the reference frame is defined by the gravity unit and directional unit. Any one in the ship is given the ships vector. This is already planned so you can run around in the ship.

     

    In the case of inverted, which can be set on a station, this frame of reference is set by a inversion hatch or door element. Gravity is flipped but the vector is unchanged. If you jump from space to a ship/stations belly and these gravity inversion elements are closer to you than the gravity generator then you transition to inverted. Pass though the inversion hatch or door element it flips inverted to ship or station frame. A rotating tunnel or monkey bar may help the transition (purely cosmetic). 

     

    In the case of space station centrifuge this is a frame of reference generated by a special centrifugal gravity unit. (This is a long term thing not something I would expect in the game in alpha or beta or the first year.) This draws less power than a normal gravity unit and defines an axis. Down is relative to that axis and away from it. Gravity is proportional to radius in metres/ 1000. If the station has a static 1 RPM roll around the axis then the vector of the frame of reference is 16 m/s with a tiny down component. The floor stops you from flying off like a stone from a sling (until someone blows a hole under you). I've included this for completeness and future proofing.

     

    In short the frame of reference is a state with a velocity and vector that is pre-calculated for all in the same reference frame relative to that reference frames gravity direction and type. This is summed with the payers/ constructs active velocity and vector. All players, etc with the same frame of reference on a given server can skip the frame of reference calculations and treat it as zero relative to the ship/ planet. 

     

    Collision with a moving planet causes you to bounce off the atmosphere. Only crewed ships can avoid this bounce. (if AFK you bounce. )

     

    All movable objects may need the frame of reference component. Rocks and trees may need it (this may be a problem ). If it works for planetary rotation it should also work for planetary orbital mechanics.  

     

    OK now is time for a dev to shoot me down with the reason why this wont work. Both look obvious so I may be missing something.  :lol:

     

     

     

     

  8. I finally acquired a computer that could probably run the game. Sadly the GPU missed the make by one parameter as far as No Mans Sky is concerned. Owned the computer for a whole day and already need to upgrade something. Grrr. the guy in the shop had no clue what the gpu was I suspect. Need to fit a AMD Radeon 7870 in some where???

    While no parameters are published hopefully it wont break the bank to up grade. 

  9. Ok, long time ago from our time, colonists... and... creatures?

    Yeah, rly, will be some kind of creatures in game? I mean some types how: mammals, insects, fish, alien.

    1 and 3 - result of colonists work. I think people in future still need no-human friends like dogs, cats, fishes. Also animals for food (someone think organic better). 

    2 - result of random events when ship prepareted to start. Mosquitos, fly, bees and etc.

    4 - alien. I think, if planet can take on humans, she can have animals before they will come. Not every time, not in every planet, but still have chance. 

     

    And 2 questions:

    1) Do u think about this in game?

    2) And, if (1) - yes, can u add (mb at less time before release) in game?

    If you know the programming needed to create animate, track, spawn, despawn, loot and generally interact with animals then you know this is a huge job. Games like Wow have dozens of people on it at huge costs. At low technology it is all important but at high technology it's really hard to do good animals. They are also either cannon fodder or nearly indestructible in a world of ranged weapons.  

     

    I can think of and have posted on some flora and fauna game play. Live stock feeders that spawn and log them. 

    Transportable animal cryopods and resurrection nodes. However that really is just a form of corporation wrangled quest items with delivery contracts. 

     

    And yes any colony project would have bees and at least on species of fly pollinator and two non stinging mosquitoes on board as part of the fauna assets. 

     

    Animals and birds are hard.

    Insects are easy, just sprites and sound files.

    Fish can be both easy: a fish on the hook, sprites in the water, or some thing like a bucket of fry that you should deliver to water. 

     

    or harder bait balls (an animated mesh of fish animations), actual rigged fish. 

  10. Can the artists doing elements make 6 which function as animal cropods or animal resurrection nodes?

    Craft-able in three sizes and two types. Land and aquatic. High tech Cat box, dog kennel sized  box, charger sized box with hold and rattling.  

    I can do basic models or sketches. 

    These allow a quest like process of deploying fauna and fish to the new world. Org mediated. It need not spawn an animal; it's just a specialised form of nameable cargo to be delivered to a warehouse; zoo, farm, park.  

     

    An additional re-nameable 'seed' package would do plants. Get it to a location set by the contracting player or Perhaps a trade machine. 

     

    This allows a semi story element. "Restoring earths flora and fauna" to pad out the early play and as a cash flow tool.  This gives a player org something to weave their contracts around that is not resource focused. 
     

    Logically this would be a stretch goal not the main kickstarter goal list. 

  11. No NPC's and no quests ostensibly so initially no unambiguous aliens. That's JC's design idea. Like Planetside 2 with voxels and more factions. PS 2 has lots of alien backstory, odds and ends; archaeology digs, giant alien beast bones. 

    But its all man on man in the game. 

     

    I have a couple of posts on in the library of mankind that include the idea of other earth escapees but they are now quite alien to us and are played by other players. 
    NPC's and quests are hard work for a developer. Millions of man hours. Building a system where even the quest like  game play comes from the players is the great challenge. Markus Notch Persson cracked it to some extent twice Wurm online with Rolf and minecraft (the written books).

    Second Life had hundreds of player made quest systems and challenge maps.

    We have a trade system with contracts and it's all about organisations making these contracts.  

    Protect ship at location X, Y, Z :

     

    That could just as much be:

    • Transport livestock Cryogenic container type 6 aquatic and feed to X,Y, Z and deploy. Return with what you find. (A mundane ecological quest. )
    • or Investigate a ruin at X, Y, Z bring back what you find. (Player placed ruin and item. )
    • or The hive mind demands that you find the following player and infect them with the alien parasite. (The target gets an org invite if successfully tagged. Yep we will need a secret org category.) 

     

    We will find a way to either 'be alien to you' or 'alienate you'. lol.   
     

    Way too many idea's running around in my head right now. 

  12. OK This is a bit of lore on why there is grass and wood to be had just out of the Ark. Somethings take time, even with lightening fast nano tech and weird time space toys in your pocket (are your pocket!)

    Game hooks.

    • Plants, wood, seeds out there.
    • An intact egg with some valuable organisms to be found. 
    • blue prints to be discovered from studying a damaged hatched egg. 
    • Exotic nanites, just a few waiting to be found in the base of a 40 year old tree. 
    • mother hen out there somewhere an artefact of untold historical value to be found. 
    • Plants to be planted out. The ones that did not fit the eggs.
    • Insects, animals, fish and birds needed to stabilise this ecosystem before it crashes. 

    Hopefully this does not tread on any other lore masters toes. 

  13. Mother Hen.

     

    She'd left the ark many decades ago flying free. She had flown the coop. While the Ark decelerated, the mother hen did not. She needed to get there first, decades early, a century if possible. She needed to buy time for her eggs to hatch.

    To buy that time she doomed her self to eternal darkness. She could not decelerate early enough to make stellar orbit let alone planetary orbit. This was a flyby mission. She got only one shot at laying her eggs.

    She mapped the planet and planned her targets. The eastern hemisphere has a huge ice field on it. Could that be a frozen ocean?

    There were glaciers facing a huge flattish expanse. Good the eggs, if dropped there, could spread far without being lost in the ice field that she hoped and dreamed would become a sea.

     

    She checked the atmosphere again. Carbon dioxide, some nitrogen, Some water vapour at night. Just like Mars but thankfully much denser. A fallow world. Perfect.

     

    There were other stars, other worlds, other desperate fleeing Ark ships and yes other hopeful hens, but this was her world. Alioth.

     

    She saw traces of argon, radon, sulphur; the signs of hidden volcanism but where? She picked the most likely locations and targeted three pods near them. The pods were not her eggs, they held a million eggs each. There was 20 pods. She was a strange old chook.

    She fired each pod, carefully aimed at the planet. Each pod doomed.

    They plunged into the atmosphere; a trillion dollar shooting star. The atmosphere tore at them and boiled around them. They burned so brightly that it turned night into day on the world below. Their nest like shape and fins slowed them but they were going so very fast. They were doomed. They were armed. The eggs were ready.

     

    Then each pod fired 10 thousand rounds a minute for 10 minutes. Ten guns per pod firing backwards. The eggs were the ammunition. The eggs were in the plasma backwash of the falling stars for only a few seconds. Enough to defrost them; not enough to do much damage.

    The guns could fire backwards at almost the same speed of the falling star. The eggs still had a residual velocity of hundreds of metres per second but a survivable velocity. Drag slowed them down fast. 

    Mother hens job was done. There was nothing more she could do or say. She was too far from the Ark ship to even report success or failure. She folded her self up and settled to sleep. She headed for her eternal retirement a happy hen. She would pass a hundred stars before finally her meagre magnetic sail would bring her to a halt.
     

    The pods then burned up lacing the sky with tendrils of metal and ceramic dusts. As a parting gift they each released 2 tonnes of fluorocarbon greenhouse gases. 40 tonnes was almost a point less amount, a worthless amount, a mere gesture but the voids and foams and coolants had to be filled with something. Perhaps the hint would be taken somehow?

     

    The eggs fell though 30 kilometres of sky. Each was a hollow ball 5 cm in diameter and as thin as paper. Each was as light as a feather but stronger than steel. Each was laced with a tiny mesh of kyrium protecting its precious lining of seeds, spores and bacterial gels. Each egg had a slight tint of solar cells, enough to generate a few milliwatts and protect their contents from UV. They fell at terminal velocity and bounced!

     

    They were designed to bounce, to roll, to scatter and skitter across the target area. Some were caught by the wind and rolled for kilometres; others fell into holes, cracks ad crevices and stopped.

    As the eerie glow of the pods dimmed the sun arose.

    Each egg pulled in CO2 and nitrogen. Some had landed on ice; tiny chemical pumps first melted the ice and then sucked in the water molecule by molecule. Each became a tiny greenhouse. A minute pond half filled with water embedded in the ice. A waking seed bank. An embryonic sea.
     

    The bacteria and algae proliferated first. The rest were kept dormant. As the population rose the excess were pumped outside to die. Fertiliser. Some survived. These were from the icebergs and glaciers of the earth’s Arctic and Antarctic. They now painted the ice many interesting tints. The darkened ice melted and they spread. Other algae and bacteria took to the new trickles of water to find crevices and ice covered ponds. All made oxygen, some made shells of clear ice, some made ozone and released it. They began making an ocean and an atmosphere. It would take decades even at the equator.

     

    On land the eggs were at work too but it was slower. Unless they landed on ice patches they had to tap night frosts milligram by milligram. They did not create greenhouse ponds but were damp enough for their inside to become an tiny Terrarium. A bowl shaped ecosystem pumping out oxygen, bacteria, and lichen.

    As the planet warmed ever so slightly the weight of melting ice was lifted from its mountains and continental plans. Mountains groaned and creaked, earth quakes shook the world. The landscape changed but there was none to see. Long plugged and chilled volcanoes exploded into deadly life. Thin layers of volcanic dust further fertilised the world and most importantly darkened the ice causing even faster melting. Some eggs were lost but not enough to matter.
     

    Where sulphur was found and could be sucked in, a special family of bacteria, engineered for the propose, made Dimethyl sulfide. On the now long gone earth this substance seeded 98 % of clouds and rain, 99% in the southern hemisphere. Without it there could be no rain only dew and frost. It was made by algae in the ocean in response to salt. The new born oceans of Alioth were too sweet. Some day many years form now the rains would wash salt into some sea or lake and the Phytoplankton that made Dimethyl sulfide would seed them. These plankton were so important that they are in every single egg awaiting this opportunity.

     

    Finally 30 years after the eggs first fell the rains came. The ground burned where it fell. Many compounds: Magnesium, phosphorus, sodium react badly to water. In some places the rock itself burned brightly. Some eggs were fried, a little.

     

    The rivers ran. Tearing away at centuries old regolith. Turning jiggered hills into rolling hillocks, filing precipitous canyons and gulleys with deep sands, clays and gravel beds. Strata made in a month that would have seemed a million years old to an uneducated eye. Some eggs were buried, forever lost.

     

    The oxygen level rose as carbonic acid in the rain liberated a trillion tons of oxygen from various unstable minerals. Other chemicals now liberated, trapped and bound kilotons of carbon dioxide. Instant limestone, dolomite's and carbonates filled some valleys. Crude soils, sandy, dusty or muddy, began to form.

    Now it was time for the seeds!

     

    The mother hen had now slowed to the point where she could enter stellar orbit but the sun was far behind her and she was gong the wrong way.

     

    The eggs now truly hatched, folding open seed sized hatches and ejecting the seed into the bacteria rich soil. There were no flowering plants; they were for the hands of man. Few pollinators would survive the circumstances but that left many plants: mosses, grasses, sedges, and some useful trees: small seeded conifers, poplars, aspens, and cycads. Only wind and water pollinated plants with very small seeds. Nuts and large seeded trees were on the Ark as was a full set of all the eggs treasures.

     

    In the first few years the patches of green were too small to see from even a nearby hill. Yet year after year they spread fast. The world greened. The Sea turned blue. The waves Cyan. There were still Snow and ice, deserts and barren mountains, dead rivers but the first pioneer plants had been sown and life giving oxygen liberated from rock and ice. There was wood and food to be found.

     

    When the Ark fall came the world awaited. Mother hen, silently cruising a quarter light year way, would be proud.   

  14. From something JC said in a Q and A it seems that while you need stargates to travel to a system you do not need to go to and from the stargate or through the stargate to jump system to system. That is a totally new answer to both the free roam problem and the camping the gate problem. I.e. There is no bottleneck at the gate to be camped. 

    "Stealth: We plan stealth technology in Dual Universe (even if it's not planned soon).

     

    Afk cloaking is indeed a problem in EVE.

    Psychological warfare is interesting, as long as it involves activity from the player wanting to do it.

     

    From what we have analyzed, afk cloaking has been possible because of a few things:

    - the fact that all players in the solar system are displayed on the local chat. If you see someone you don't know, it migh be a spy, or someone planning an ambush.

    - the fact that a player can leave from a safe area (space stations) from a unique point (easy to ambush). 

    - the fact that a player wanting to leave the solar system generally needs to use a stargate (also an easy place to ambush).

     

    As Dual Universe won't work "solar system by solar system" and there won't be only one point of entry/exit for a safe area, this kind of abuse should have a lot less impact in Dual Universe. And if it still does... well, we keep your suggestions in our papers as possible ways to handle it   ;)"

    The question was on stealth. 

    https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/1122-dual-universe-faqsources/

     

    This give slow progression rather than quick scattering because the gate matters but your system is rather open and is a big big place. Guard your cities and mines not just your gate.

    This equalises the new players and the established ones, the PvE players and the PvP players.  
    Very smart. 

  15. Why would you ask for a griefer magnet on your name?

     

     

    "Oh look, a Kicstarter guy with a fancy ship, you know, we would grief the newbie over there, but our 300 ship blob will now gank THAT guy with the title, just so to piss his Kickstarter pride off".

     

     

    Titles and the such, are pointless. We can ask for our organisation's Rank to be shown in the title, that way it carries more weight along with the organisation you represent.

     

     

    Having "I backed the game" title only shows to people you believe you are entitled of respect in my opinion and the aforementioned titl-in-organisation showing, will outweight your Kickstarter title by far if the organisation is powerful.

     

     

    I want to back the game and I only ask for something more pulpable than hollow titles and part in a lore I didn't take part in (AKA, stories emerging from blowing up buildings in the game :V ) . 

     

     

     

     

    I want a functional game that can last me for years worth of playing it. And maybe a spiffy duster coat with the NQ logo on the back. Just for that bragging right in me to be satisfied.

    ha ha ha that is a risk I would gladly take. In one game I went by the name Bait and in Everquest 2 I was DragonSnack the halfling warrior. Yes I'll take the coat to. A duster coat over a vac-suit is a thing I discussed once in a space society chat on mars colonisation. It would actually work. 

  16. It is tab targeting and voxel mining so that constrains a skill tree:

    Sniper: as described by Captaintwerkmotor (can't keep a straight face while typing that name) above but I would use Steady [+accuracy], Sights [you can use better sights; longer range], Anticipation [Effect of cover reduced if it's only a few voxels and the target is moving; his foot was sticking out! ], Trick shot [ bonus to hit if there are elements around or as cover], Smoother reload [reduced reload penalty to accuracy], Incendiary [bonus damage to vehicles and elements], Decoy [false muzzle flashes everywhere ], Camouflage [reduced draw distance for you], Windage [long range shots more accurate], Head shot [more bonus damage chances at medium range], Clean gun [accuracy reduction for mud, water, dust etc reduced], Zero g [you know where to aim in different gravity. ].   

    Assault: Snap shot [+accuracy at close range], Anticipation [Effect of cover reduced if it's only a few voxels and the target is moving. ], Backstabber [+damage if flanking or behind], Shotty [can use a shotgun without blowing your foot off], Smooth feed [ more damage], Smoke screen [they see nothing], Head shot [more bonus damage chances at medium range], Trapper [you can rig a trap gun], Clean gun [accuracy reduction for mud water etc reduced], Zero g [you know where to aim in different gravity. ].  
    Heavy gun: burst [+accuracy at close range], Anticipation [Effect of cover reduced if it's only a few voxels. ], Leading the target [+accuracy if the target is moving], Blow though [single voxel cover goes away loudly], Enfilade [+damage if flanking, multiple targets ], Cover fire [wider angle of fire but lower damage; targets near hit target take some damage ], Smooth feed [ more damage], Dust and lead [they see nothing but a cloud of debris where they are], Shredder [more bonus damage chances], Trapper [you can rig a trap gun], Clean gun [- accuracy reduction for mud water etc], Zero g [you know where to aim in different gravity ].  

    Missiles: Tracking [missile track the target a bit], Anticipation [Effect of cover on tracking reduced if it's only a few voxels. ], Blow though [single voxel cover/ armour goes away loudly], Frag [you can use frag missiles in close, almost safely], Leading the target [+accuracy if the target is moving], Autodetect [+accuracy at close range (watch the blast)], Sensors [you can you technology to boost tracking accuracy and duration], Ghost [you can set a missile launcher as a booby trap.(WW2 troops took out Panthers by turning bazooka rounds into mines and IUD's. ) ], Zero g [you know where to aim in different gravity ].
     

    Crafting: Efficient [-% resources consumed], Hot head [+% bonus from foundry], Recycling [ elements can be scrapped getting % resources back], Mass production[+ bonus item chance if making more than 20], Decoys [you can craft decoy elements from stone, wood and a few base ingredient; they don't work but they are cheap decoys. And they don't stack], Building big [you can build big elements or use an Industrial Unit].
    Mining: Fast [nanoformer digs bigger voxel volume ], Low power [nanoformer uses less power digging], Prospecting [You can analyse dug rock to get a hint of the nearest mineral deposits direction], Geology [increases Prospecting range and detail], Bonus [you can get a bonus ore yield from the ore voxel you are mining. This may not be an additional voxel(There's an exploit)], Trace elements [ore yields a few other ore types in small quantities], Primordial [ mining yields refined metal not ore; vacuum worlds only], Booster [You can use booster element placed in a mine that boost or power nearby nanoformers], Ex Nihilo [Mining rock near an ore voxel yields bonus ore], Cave in [you can reset stone, dirt and regolith only to world seed state, Heal, noisy. ], Salting the mine [a little ore in a shotgun and you confuse the hell out of the people raiding your mine. Throws out prospecting results. ], Seismic mapping [gets a map of resources underground].

     

    Farmer/ logger/ gatherer: Steward [+% biological resources], Scythe [Grass area can be harvested for longer; higher ratio of plant products to dirt], Botany [% chance of bonus plant or seed. ], Green thumb [you can replant areas; resets the surface voxel and voxels above to world seed after a delay. A heal perhaps with a hidden placed item. ], Farm [can make and use farm units if any], Caretaker [can craft hedges, planters, flower beds (voxel with grass dirt and a specific plant on it. )],

    Beekeeper [ you can make and place items that support or spawn insects; not just bees. ], Zoology/ Rancher [ you can make and craft live stock feeders and deploy stock cryonics unit; You did save the animals right? ], Landscaper [you can lay down dirt onto rock, paint. ]

     

    Those last three are not likely early alpha or beta skill groups. Adding animals to the game will be long term if at all and maybe just crafting such things and placing them counts as job done without bothering with the animal mesh. Life is feudal does small animals nicely. 

     

    In most cases there would be several levels: ie Tracking level 1,2,3   Blow through probability percent. Yield %. 

    If you know pen and paper RPG's then you know most of tab targeting the computer works out if you have line of sight, range and it knows both parties movements. The rest is the same as the paper RPG or miniatures systems: rules, skills, weapon parts bonus or penalty to both, travel time of the attack and armour of the target. Then the computer throws in a digital dice roll at lower skill.   

  17. Do you think it's likely that at some backer level they will offer game time for the full release because I was thinking about what NQ could offer as pledge rewards and but I could only come up with early access and GTC, without it interfering with the game to heavily, due to how they want the game to play. 

    I can think of a few perks.

    • Special styled space suit. 
    • Up graded nanopack or nanoformer.
    • An art folder, some of the pictures in a bound form. 
    • Tee-shirts. 
    • Some starting currency. 
    • Seeds for the starting crops. So your trade terminal is the go to place in game for seeds. [would fit the lore. ]
    • Blue prints for some things beyond the base 10 or 15 elements. Others have to find them in world or buy them from you. 
    • A cool gun blueprint. 
    • Your name on a make and model of element. As the corp name or the inventor. 
    • An artefact that creates a small shielded area but can't be placed with in 6 km of the ark zone edge. 
    • A key component for a stargate so your corp gets a head start on knowing what to make. 

    ​Introducing things into the game world via the players fits the lore. Not pay to win because we are all starting out with very little. The playtesters will end up with much more than most anyway but I would assume a starting wipe of the planet and the builds. 

  18. I wonder if wood can survive space travel, the we would have wood space ships going around. 

    Be aware of termites though

    (crunch, crunch)

    Some space station components are carbon carbon which is as light and combustible as wood. So who knows. Carbon carbon makes good ablative reentry shielding because of its low heat conductivity; I suspect that that would be woods downfall, it has higher thermal conductivity. 

  19. I would like to see invisible(or small enough) and very elementary active elements such as:

    - invisible hindges, rotation axes

    - invisible translation rails

    - invisible sensors

    - invisible particules box

    - ship piloting seat without cockpit

    - engines reduced to mechanic parts without hull

    - cockpit ui elements separatly

    etc...

     

    all those to be able to customize better the look of my creations, not be constrained into a variation of possibilities

    The "ship piloting seat without cockpit" is already in the elements list, you see several on the space station video. 

    As for - "engines reduced to mechanic parts without hull" you may noticed that that is recessed a little so you can build a 25 cm voxel shell and even smooth it a little. All the bigger engines appear naked. It's early days.

  20. Perhaps Ion has multiple meanings

    and i think he mixed up hydrogen and uranium

    Ion drives used today use neither hydrogen or uranium. Low research technobabble. Marc Millers Traveller did a  better job way back in 1977. He only got computers wrong they weighed tons and had less processing power than my cell phone. Star trek made the same mistake at the time.  

     

    We have Thrusters, RCS, warp drive that allows fast sub light speeds and Stargates. If they had go anywhere hyperdrive they would not be in cryo. Stargate bottle necks can be fixed with a few escort cruisers, blockade runners, exploding decoy ships, minesweepers and Q ships. Any one that shuts down trade will find his trade terminals full of unsaleable loot in empty markets. JC has an interesting game design. 

  21. Uhm, while all the elements are cool, the emitter ones kinda don't add up on a setup of "cool effects", like lightning arcs, except if they are light sources, like lamps. Last thing anyone needs is some crazy person, rigging a lightning arc on firing at a loop of 0.01 secs and causing people to have seizures.. 

     

     

    On the other hand, having too many decorative elements could bog the server down with unneeded and unnecessary objects that 3D-meshes, at least, when it comes to ships. Perhaps the devs have thought out how to reduce said Elements on a moving construct. For the ground, I see no reason what's so ever to not have all those things on a construct. If someone got the time, they should build said house, or garage or anything.

     

     

    Control Units or interactive terminals are sorta confirmed on the LUA scripts DevBlog, and you COULD possibly change their colors. I mean, nobody likes the military green but everyone love spiffy violet pink. And if they don't give us the ability to change the Heads-Up Display, fear not, the Add-On knights of GitHub are coming. I know this, because I'm already editing the Borg Queen's lines and storing them to make a spiffy add-on that  reminds me of the futility of life :V. Unless you meant the Terminals' screens, which can be also changed in LUA (this remains to be seen, pending the release of the LUA API by the devs).

     

     

    The thing is, the Devs have to sacrifice superficiality on cosmetic purposes, for superficiality on working Elements in my opinion, just so the game can run smoothly and not like some other ForgeLight engine games that couldn't be handled even with 36 GB RAMs. Sure, they may not add a cosmetic arc emitter, but nobody said they might not add some sort of Tesla-inspired machinery that sends jolts of lighting between two spheres. I mean, I could think that, and I'm just an educated idiot, they can do so much better than me :P

    There is a way to do a complex 3d mesh as a simple 2d picture but I can't find anyone to write the code for me. 

    In simple terms you make the complex 3d mess ;) once and take a movie of it rotating with the camera focus centred on it. Then you play back the movie as a posterised still image with the player angle to the poster defining which frame to play. The player walks around the table and sees all 100 pieces of stuff on the table. Add or remove an item to the table it redoes the 'video' in a separate view and up dates it. 

    The key is to have a totally no draw background and a defined plane so it does not seem to be floating or clipping other 'real' models. In some cases you would need two or three extra camera angles if someone can look down on the thing or look up at it. Thus something that is too hard to do as a single mesh, a pile of stuff on a table or vegetation on a planter becomes just a 2d slow playing video image. This could also be used as a solution to very complex lod problems. 

     

    I have done a search the idea is not totally new but was impossible the last time someone did some work on it. Assuming I got the right search terms. This is far beyond my programming capacity or normal mapping. 

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