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wesbruce

Alpha Team Vanguard
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  1. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Lethys in How will you prevent people from getting harassed, trolled and griefed?   
    Well if griefers and pirates annoy you, just get a police force up and running for YOURSELF and hunt em down. It's a sandbox. If you don't want pirates to be around, be the police to stop em and don't cry for guidance from the devs
  2. Like
    wesbruce reacted to croxis in actual physical targeting instead of locking   
    "Tab targeting" could target detected subsystems/body parts (shift-tab for example).
  3. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Kytheum in Mad scientist for hire   
    You could be extremely useful in the Empires Research and Development program. You get given the freedom to work on projects in the Facility and work with other Scientists and researches to create everything from ships to satellites to even AI. I hope to see you try this out you would be extremely useful.  
  4. Like
    wesbruce reacted to EmperorToch in Mad scientist for hire   
    Offers on the table but, if you wanna come work for the Galactic Empire you can. You can help us do many great things here. We got some cool facilities over here with shiny new toys (hehehe). No but seriously, you can actually help us alot if you wanted to. I don't have a head adviser for my R&D team and I feel like you would be a excellent person to lead the rest of the team into developing some sick new stuff for the Citizens of the Galactic Empire
  5. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Traceur in Engines Theorycraft   
    About warp bubbles:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKTgNCGhq9Y
  6. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Mortis in Creatures   
    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. 
  7. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Mortis in Engines Theorycraft   
    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. 
  8. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Jeronimo in What kind of elements (props) would you like to see in game?   
    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.
  9. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Vyz Ejstu in Live stock Cryopods   
    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. 
  10. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Hylios in Aliens?   
    I think it'd be pretty cool to discover the other ships that humanity left on, and maybe find some NPC human survivors that may or may not be dangerous.
  11. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Mortis in How do we refer to dates in Dual Universe?   
    OK math time. 
    The cryopod was built in 2536 AD. Earth destroyed in  2538 AD.  2 years to get clear of something that is able to obliterate whole solar systems. Ouch that's cutting it a bit fine! 9,854 in cryo so the date is 12390 AD. 
    In a few other SF's I've seen this kind of number recorded and 12k390 or M390 where precision is not needed. Ie above 10000 use a greek mu written M.
    As for months and dates there is no data in the lore yet.
    Most cases it would be moot because if you have an AI plugged into your head it can make all the the date systems you want. Months since lading, European month, Hebrew calendar, Chinese calendar. All interchangeable from each other at a voice command. With real time language translation showing up this year  then by 2536 there may be no real language barrier.  They may all be speaking different languages and not know it.  

    Alain Damasio's character Sohan Decker is counting days, week month from landing. At worst that would put you 6 months out. The Gregorian and Jewish calendar already does that. Nobody cares. 12390 AD should work. 

     Alioth needs to be fleshed out a bit. How do you define north, south? Magnetic or planetary rotation? 50% chance they don't match Earth. 
    How do you define longitude? What do you define as you Greenwich?  On earth it's Greenwich England or Paris France. People still argue. The SF tradition is highest point or first landing point. Both can change to become nonviable. 
    Are those plants alien natives or has someone done some tricky terraforming. [i have a story planned on the lore page. ] Are they a mix of both?  
     
  12. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Cybrex in Dual Universe FAQ/Sources   
    This is a "General Knowledge" thread to help provide newcomers with a list of hot topics, answers, FAQs, videos, and other miscellaneous information that pertains to Dual Universe. This thread will not contain everything about DU, but merely help to point you in the right direction. I have done my best over the years to keep this thread up to date for newcomers, so if there is something you think is missing and should be added, just private message me with the information and sourcing.
     
    You are also encouraged to join the Official Community Discord for Dual Universe if you have questions, or just want to be involved in the community. 
     
    PSA: Use the SEARCH FUNCTION in the forums before making a thread if you are new. Chances are, it has already been discussed and beaten to death.  
     
    _____________________________________________________________________________________________
     
    -> Release Roadmap & Alpha Announcement <-
     
    Official Links:
     
    • FAQ from the Main Website
     
    • Trello Community Suggestions
     
    • DU Gamepedia (wiki)
     
    • Developer Blog
     
    • Kickstarter Page
     
    • Youtube Page
     
              • DU Community Discord
                    • Official Discord FAQ (Forum Link)
     
              • Soundcloud/Soundtracks
     
              • DU Reddit
     
     
    Forum Links:
     
    • "Ask Us Anything" Thread by NQ-Nyzaltar
     
    • Forum Rules thread by NQ-Nyzaltar
     
    • Pre-Alpha FAQ and Rules by NQ-Nyzaltar
     
    • DU DevDiary Video Guide by Shockeray
     
     
    Other (Non-Official) Media:
     
    • Dual Universe Explorers (Podcast)
     
    • Ark Central (Community News)
     
    • Dual Insider (Community News)
     
    • Dual Universe Sleepers (Fansite/Blog)
     
    • Outpost Zebra (Blog)
     
    • Community Org/Player Map (Community Tool)
     
     
    Common Topics: (NOTE: All information below is subject to change at any time. Official responses from the developers, and sources, have been linked to each subject.)
     
    • Price Model will be Pay To Play
     
     
     
    • "Virtual Simulator" for builders to build in peace
     
     
    • "The Economy"
     
     
    • "Scripting" Dual Universe will utilize LUA Scripting and Distributed Processing Units  
     
    • "FTL Travel" answered by NQ-Nyzaltar in the Ask Us Anything thread
     
      • "Unigine 2" Dual Universe will be running off of the Unigine 2 Game Engine
     
     
    • "Single Shard Server" In Dual Universe, all players will be playing in the same server
    • (Video) Server Technology review by JC Baillie
     
     
    • "Active Lock On Targeting" In Dual Universe, combat will not be twitched base
     
     
    • "Character Progression" There will be no character levels in Dual Universe
     
     
    • "Survival Gameplay" Currently NovaQuark are still considering adding survival elements
     
     
    • "Territory Control" In Dual Universe, you will be able to own pieces of land
     
     
    • "Rights And Duties Management System" Sophisticated system for managed roles in your organization
     
     
    • "Stealth Technology" Stealth tech is currently being considered by NovaQuark
     
  13. Like
    wesbruce reacted to GalloInfligo in Kickstarter Sep. 7th (Wednesday)   
    a few others could be,
     
    Naming one of the other starting planets or moons.
    Naming a close by system.
    Naming some of the animals.
    A special tag or title for all your characters.
    Your name included in the lore story.
    Having you help pick additional names in the lore story.
     
    none of those would be game breaking obviously, but a lot of other kickstarters use them and they are quite successful.  
  14. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from GalloInfligo in Kickstarter Sep. 7th (Wednesday)   
    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. 
  15. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Anaximander in What are skills? and how do they work?   
    I was thoughful as you are sir, but the thing is the way the envision it makes sense, both lore-wise and as a gameplay function. The higher you get to a tree, the more invested you are to following said path.
     
     
    Let's say I wanna play as a ground trooper.
     
    (The following skill names are on the top of my head, they are meant as an example).
    I have to invest in Steady Aim. Then some in Combat Awareness. Then Battle Endurance. That allows me to upgrade some skills to unlock a certain branch of the skill tree I pursue.
     
    Steady Aim leads to Sharpshooting.
    Combat Awareness becomes SitRep or Intelligence Gathering.
    Battle Endurance becomes Spartan Training.
     
    Each upgrade thereafter takes more time and I can't upgrade any other skill in the meantime. Which means that time I invest in upgrading one skill, makes me more willing to follow the tree to the final traits.
     
    Which leads to unlocking some sort of amazing skills like Vanguard or something.
     
    But a guy who goes for building, is a better builder than me, the same I'm suited better for combat.
     
    Sure, I can make a house, but the builder has access to more refined tools, like Sharpen/Smoothen tools. My constructs will look blocky, his/her buildings will look like works of art. 
     
     
    Same applies for pilots and any other skill tree they implement (fingers crossed for a Hacking skill tree )
     
     
    It's a really clanky and silly mechanic in a point and click adventure like EVE, but for a game like Dual it's a really fun idea. Let's you specialise into things that not many would involve themselves into. 
     
     
    For a slight comparison to WoW in the old days before dual-specialisation, a healing class could go out in the world and fight, but against a PvP specced player, he wouldn't do much. Same idea applies for my example. 
     
    Hope I didn't confuse you much
     
  16. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Cybrex in Kickstarter Sep. 7th (Wednesday)   
    News just came out, and the kickstarter begins on September 7th on a Wednesday which is next week.
     
    Time to pull the wallets out.
  17. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Violet in DevBlog - Organizations: build your corporation, faction, nation or empire!   
    Arguably one or two organisational schemes are doomed to fail but not disallowing them will be half the fun. But the dev's should expect some serious acrimony when the Red System Socialist Republic collapses in a screaming heap. Technically all org taxes would be club dues; not totally enforceable because you can leave the organisation. The same with some other ideas, minimum wage, etc.  
    Unless an org is able to actually trap players in a system and enslave or tax them these governments can't exist in any game.
    It would be fun to watch some idiot try.  
  18. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from riesen25 in How will you prevent people from getting harassed, trolled and griefed?   
    A 70 km radius planet has 61000 square km to mine. A solar system will be bigger. Sensor ranges will not be infinite unless its a really big ship. You should be able to go out and mine if your sneaky. Don't pick the closest, easiest, most obvious place to mine.
    Ship stealth should be a major part of PvE game play. Be the asteroids not a big target near it.
    In the videos the main dev seems to have a focus on teaming up but talked about solo play. Hiding in a hole or having a fast sneaky ship with rear firing turrets. Let the pirates fly into a hailstorm of exploding rounds while chasing you. Solo is not his first option but it is a option. In some eve systems I spot mine, don't loiter long enough for them to track you down. Grab and run. Fast mining will matter in DU space. 
  19. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Traceur in Engines Theorycraft   
    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. 
  20. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Majestic in DevBlog: Builder gameplay, Voxel Tools & Elements   
    This is a key feature of the technology and it is where landmarks microvoxels started but there is a catch. If you create a lot of these odd shapes it must record more data per voxel: orientation, smooth level, centre of smooth, off set if you use that. It turns into a lot of data per voxel and too many such odd voxels will load slower. Landmark solved this, I believe, by turning the most common microvoxels into independent meshes. 
     
    For those that don't know how these non minecraft voxels work read these wikipedia pages. 
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_cubes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_tetrahedra 
    Someone has maliciously deleted a key paragraph and pictures from the Marching tetrahedra wikipage degrading it badly. 
     
    Many people use the Marching tetrahedra now because marching cubes has a hole but that hole should not be a problem in a 25 cm voxel system. The hole would be 12 cm, too small for a player or anything with a bounding box greater than 12 cm to fall or glitch though. It would be visible though. It is easily fixed if you are using the right lookup table. http://i.stack.imgur.com/i4Yyt.jpg
    It is caused by the 3 to 6 ambiguity. 
    http://users.polytech.unice.fr/~lingrand/MarchingCubes/algo.html
    Minecraft builds a mesh over the voxel but the mesh is centred on the voxel. For the smooth voxels we see in this game and a dozen others the voxels appear to be at the cubes corners.  
    So when you place a cube of material you are defining all 8 corners to be that voxel material when you place a wedge, two are defined as air (orientation says which two).
    In the kind of complex shape fragments Majestic is talking about, only three or four voxels are set to polymer and the rest set to air. It can be simplified by referencing two materials and the cube configuration, one of 12 orientations and a smooth curvature +/-. If it's marching cubes you also need a test to look for the hole and add 6 more cube configurations to plug it.  
    What JC is doing looks simple but there are pages on code under the hood. In every game memory is always lacking and bandwidth always limiting. 
  21. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Kael in How do we refer to dates in Dual Universe?   
    The only thing that I've wondered about it time. If it will mimic real world time or shorter (maybe 6 hour for a full cycle for example)
     
    If it mimics real world time then there would be a lot of people always in the dark when playing maybe as we all start from the same location? I don't know, just a thought
  22. Like
    wesbruce got a reaction from Ghoster in What kind of elements (props) would you like to see in game?   
    That's a very steam punk list Kiklix. 
     
    I would add.
    Stone, grass & dirt doors that hinge like an aircraft door on the bulky arm/ arms. For hiding your base. Uses the terrain texture on the out side. Active element.  Scoop nets. A net mesh that has reduced collision damage so that a astronaut boarding a moving ship has something to catch that wont kill him. (CaptainShack just got run over by Wastedspace in Star Citizen as he tried to board the later's ship mid combat.) The net puts you in the ships frame of reference. Place near or inside a door. Real clear force field(or utility fog airwall) door, voxel and seamless thin plane. This can be used to keep the air in and allows views out. A touch of glow at the edges. Not bullet or player proof but just for keeping the air in the hangers. Simplifies hangers and airlocks a lot. Requires power to work. If a force field suffers power loss it disappears to air or vacuum, explosive decompression sucks! [it's still there though so it is back if repowered]. If utility fog it goes cloudy, solid and impassable but very low hit points. Active element though technically an Emitter element. Rear view screens. Showing what's behind or below you. A landing aid and combat aid if your being chased. Active element and not easy to code. Landing lasers. Four different coloured lasers that define a landing pad. If you can see all 4 your in the wrong place. If you can't see any their behind you. Get two in view. Also tells you if you will fit though the hanger door! Off if the pad is occupied. 100 m range. Emitter elements. Helps JC land.  Ranging lasers. Two harmless parallel laser beams, different colours. Not the same as above. Reflect off surfaces with a glow. Tells you how close you are to the space station, asteroid or underwater rock and tells you if you will fit though a gap of they are on your wing trips. Also helps with weapon aiming but if your that close you both in trouble. These are used on research submarines and space docking already. Emitter elements.  Seat Cushion. A simple pad mesh with a sit activation. Can be placed anywhere in a voxel structure to turn any voxel surface into a seat. It should be small so you can hide it in a more ornate chair, motor cycle seat, etc. It should be white but can be dyed like a voxel. It should not be a control station (This is the passenger seat or brig seat; you don't want them controlling anything and stealing your ship). Active element.  Simple signs with an arrow: Exit, Turret, Power, Bridge, Stair, Ladder, Danger!, Shops. These will require 6 directions: left right, Up Down, Above below. These should be embossed ceramic not a powered sign. Cheap signs so people don't get lost on your mine, ship or building. No power requirement. Ideally multilingual symbols. Superficial elements.  Voxel turret. Two linked meshes- one element that rotates around a common but empty centre. These allow a voxel turret to be built in the centre producing more superficial turret diversity but its still a standard weapon. Can be used as a fixed wing weapon. Bigger version for spinal mounts. Active element. Race flag and token. Skii race type coloured flags that mark racing tracks. Stay between the flags keeping one colour on your left. Double ended MUCH bigger curved version for air and zero g racing. These define a race track. A race requires an token item bought from a market unit. If tagged on another player with a token a timer starts. Delivery to another market machine win/ buys the prize. Superficial elements. The token is an active item with a target market location maybe an instruction file lookup. Race token may be the prize creating a staged race. "Go orbit", "go planet" and "Use stargate" flags for space and interstellar racing. We can create player made quests with these if allowed.  This should give some dev a nervous breakdown. 
  23. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Anaximander in What kind of elements (props) would you like to see in game?   
    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
  24. Like
    wesbruce reacted to Kiklix in What kind of elements (props) would you like to see in game?   
    As most of you are aware Novaquark is laying down the foundation for Dual Universe. They need to get the game in a strong alpha state before they launch their kickstarter campaign. This means that some of the purely aesthetic aspects of the game will have to come later on, like outfits, player customization etc.
     
    This thread is for those who would like to dream of the kinds of elements or "props" as they are called in some other games that they would like to see in dual.
     
    There are many different types of elements.
     
    • Active elements: Elements that have a function and will most likely be scriptable (rocket boosters, guns, conduits for energy transfer, etc).
    • Superficial elements: Elements that are made for decoration only. These are to help add atmosphere to a construct (pots/pans, soda cans etc).
    • Superficial Working elements: Elements like stoves, sinks, toilets. Elements that "work" in game with opening doors, flowing water etc, but have no function outside of immersive aspects.
    • Emitter elements: Elements that give off an effect such as lightning or electric arcs, waterfalls/flowing water, steam vents etc. These would fall under active elements in most cases.
     
     
    List what kind of active or superficial elements would you like to see ultimately in Dual Universe?
     
     
    I will start off with these:
     
     
    • Active elements:
    Ramp doors. Doors that extend outward to allow for easier ingress/egress into a ship style construct. Shield windows. Windows that have closable blast shields.  
    • Superficial elements:
    Desks Chairs Soda cans  
    • Superficial Working elements:
    Rotating fans. Fans that rotate at various speeds, couple well with steam vents. Spinning gears. Gears of various sizes that rotate to make mechanical looking machines.  
    • Emitter elements:
    Steam Vents that blow gusts of steam. Electric arcs. Heads up displays with the ability to change the color of the hud.  ​
  25. Like
    wesbruce reacted to nietoperek in DevBlog - Organizations: build your corporation, faction, nation or empire!   
    Can we stay on topic?
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