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Random Info I Learned From PAX


yamamushi

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I feel like a broken record going over these things over and over, so instead, I thought I'd just write up some of the more interesting things I learned at PAX this week. 

 

Now, I certainly am not at liberty to discuss everything I learned from PAX. It's also worth pointing out that many of these things are likely subject to change:

 

  • Ships have 3rd person view (at least in pre-alpha). 
  • We may see more complex forms of linking elements, aside from Lua/power/fuel (no promises, and not going into details, but fingers crossed regardless)
  • "One Week" means "One Week" :) 
  • The number of TCU's we get in pre-alpha will probably be limited to 3-4, or thereabouts. Much smaller than the several thousand available to players at PAX.
  • Ship combat will not be automated. If you see a ship with 30 cannons on it, it's likely there are 30 people onboard manning those cannons. 
  • Avatar combat may have some automation in the form of simple base defenses that fire on people who aren't allowed in your territory.
  • The game will be roughly a 10gb download, and those with pre-alpha will likely get a day or so to pre-download it.
  • Flying in the first-person mode is much easier to get used to rather than 3rd person mode. 
  • Celestial bodies like Asteroids cannot be moved, which is to say that attaching several rocket boosters to an asteroid won't just make it start moving.
  • Asteroids will be in pre-alpha
  • The scroll wheel is currently used as a speed throttle in ships, which takes a little bit to get used to. Fingers crossed that this changes, as it's a bit weird.
  • Atmospheric and Space thrusters are two separate items. Just because a ship can fly in the atmosphere doesn't mean it can fly in space. 
  • In the same vein, Atmos and Space fuel are two separate things. 
  • Star probes will not be physical things flying through space, so no tracking them down to destroy them as they fly through space. 
  • A question came up about how far they are along with the skill system, the answer is "almost zero". They're just not at that point in development yet, which is understandable.
  • Digging to the center of a planet should result in players bouncing around like a spring around the absolute core. However, we'll have to test this to see if it actually works. 
  • Of course the closer you dig the center, the harder it will be to reach because of the way that territories stretch all the way to the core. 
  • Planets were not rotating in the PAX Demo, unclear if this will change in pre-alpha on the 30th or if that's planned for Alpha instead.
  • Coming up with crafting recipes is difficult because of the balancing required for them. 
  • Making ships is not going to be easy, people are seriously underestimating just how difficult it's going to be to get into space. Even in creative mode people had a very hard time doing it. 
  • Water is extremely difficult to get right. The water in the pre-alpha is just a placeholder texture for now, and their plans for water sound awesome, it's just not an easy task at all.

 

 

I'm sure I'll have more info to add to this thread as I remember it over the course of the day.

 

As for my thoughts on how the pre-alpha played at PAX....

 

  • Many people who didn't know anything about Dual Universe sat down to play it and were kind of left dumbfounded as to what to do. The open world aspect of it without any tutorial was a bit overwhelming, and people were left clicking random buttons and walking away confused. Those that did understand Dual Universe, however, seemed to have a blast playing around in the world.
  • Despite complaints I've seen to the contrary, I didn't find the UI to be overly complex or confusing. Just looking at screenshots is pretty self-explanatory. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of things, and there are certainly some terms you should be aware of, but it certainly wasn't this monstrously complex thing that warranted the complaints I've seen.
  • On the topic of building ships. Many people sat down expecting to just have their hands held building a ship. It's not easy at all, which I think is a good thing. If it was such a simple process that any random person could do it in 5 minutes, it would be a whole lot less impressive to actually build one that works. I am happy with the way this works out. Not everyone is going to be able to build a space ship.
  • The game played rather fluidly. There were some trivial bugs here and there, but nothing that brought down the server (which is the key point here). 
  • Again, building a ship is not a process that someone can just explain to you in 5 minutes. If you're expecting to just jump into the pre-alpha right away and be flying off the planet in a few minutes the first time, it's not going to happen. 

 

 

Overall I was very pleased with what I saw at PAX, I think that anyone coming into pre-alpha with leveled expectations (not a complete game) will be very happy with how far they've come. It's going to be a very fun time for all of us. The game has a learning curve, even at this point in creative mode, so if you're expecting something where your hand is held and everything is as simple as WoW or No Man's Sky, you're going to be disappointed. I know others will disagree with me, but I found it just as easy as learning to play Everquest Landmark.

 

 

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Thanks for the summary.

 

Are you saying players will each have 3 - 4 TCUs, or that there will only be a total of 3 - 4 TCUs for everyone in the pre-alpha? Just want to clarify. 

 

 

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Thanks for all informations. It's great that we can create atmospheric-only ships. I would like to create small and cheap atmospheric fighter for defending planets :)

 

It's also good I think that construct working spaceship won't be easy. But how hard it'll be? Do You think someone who is not handyman but was able to construct working things in games like SE or Kerbal Space Program would be able to go to space after few hours of building in DU pre-alpha?

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4 minutes ago, AUTO6PL said:

Thanks for all informations. It's great that we can create atmospheric-only ships. I would like to create small and cheap atmospheric fighter for defending planets :)

 

It's also good I think that construct working spaceship won't be easy. But how hard it'll be? Do You think someone who is not handyman but was able to construct working things in games like SE or Kerbal Space Program would be able to go to space after few hours of building in DU pre-alpha?

 

I think so, games like Empyrion/Space Engineers/Kerbal, will probably help for sure. It just definitely won't be as easy as building something in Minecraft. 

 

You've got to consider that at PAX, it apparently took 3 days until someone wandered by that was actually able to build a flyable ship in creative mode. 

 

It won't be impossible, it's just not going to be so easy that anyone can jump in and do it in their first few minutes in the game. 

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While I was playing at PAX I encountered a bug for a while where I'd get into a ship and immediately get back out.  Needed a game restart.

Also they were experiencing a problem where inventory's would fill up and prevent you from deleting erroneously placed elements while building a ship...

 

Those bugs conspired to prevent me from seeing if the ship I built would work...  but... as an experienced Kerbal Space Program player.  I did not find the principals behind building a ship hard at all.  Everything seemed logical and straight forward.  I'm fairly confident my ship would have flown... as I looked at other functional pre-built ships and everything looked correct.

 

The one thing that people were having an issue with I saw is confusing which "core" to use.  Static ... unmoving...  buildings use a regular core.  Ships use a Dynamic core.

 

The Core is the first thing you place to begin building anything.  So everything you add after the core is "connected" in game terms to that core.  You can't say... attach a core to a planet or asteroid.  If you mine out the ground under a static core building... the building will just float there unmoved.  And same for a ship actually... physics doesn't get applied to a ship until you get in it... Physics remains applied if you get out of it... so it'll fall or continue on it's orbital trajectory if you get out of it.  Physics ceases being applied if you start flying another ship or log out of the game.

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I encountered that ship bug as well, but I'm content with bugs that are easily remedied with a client restart at this point.

 

I'm assuming that since it was encountered by numerous people, that it probably is getting prioritized as something to fix. 

 

The version demoing at PAX was not the same build as the version from Gamescom, as they had fixed issues reported there in the version we got to play. So it's probably safe to assume that the pre-alpha that releases to backers will be even more stable. 

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4 hours ago, yamamushi said:

I encountered that ship bug as well, but I'm content with bugs that are easily remedied with a client restart at this point.

 

I'm assuming that since it was encountered by numerous people, that it probably is getting prioritized as something to fix. 

 

The version demoing at PAX was not the same build as the version from Gamescom, as they had fixed issues reported there in the version we got to play. So it's probably safe to assume that the pre-alpha that releases to backers will be even more stable. 

 

Yes.  Bugs are to be expected it this point in the game.  JC said that some of the bugs in that build were already fixed in their internal builds...

 

So expect all new all different bugs when we get into pre-alpha.  I'm already getting my bug finding mind working on ideas to break the game.  That's what Alpha is for.

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So, ships'll be hard to build? That's fine by me. Means I'll get some laughs as I try to take off...

 

 

And crash into a mountain because I accidentally put a thruster somewhere I shouldn't have.

 

Normally, when I mess things up, it leads to a laugh, which I don't mind. I'm sure we'll be able to figure out how to escape orbit.

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5 hours ago, Cybrex said:

Are you saying players will each have 3 - 4 TCUs, or that there will only be a total of 3 - 4 TCUs for everyone in the pre-alpha? Just want to clarify. 

 

 

Sorry about my ignorance but what "TCU" means? I searched in google but was unable to find a proper explanation xD

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4 minutes ago, Demonneo said:

 

Sorry about my ignorance but what "TCU" means? I searched in google but was unable to find a proper explanation xD

 

Territory Control Unit. It's what we will use to claim tiles in Dual Universe as your own territory/land. 

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1 hour ago, Ezghoul said:

@yamamushi sorry, I'm not sure if you answered this in discord the other day, but will things like Micro/Anti Voxels be possible?

 

Thanks in advance!

-Ez

 

IIRC, they've looked into it but it's not something currently in the game. Their voxel devs definitely know about them in Landmark though, so I wouldn't be surprised if they show up one day. If they work now, I imagine it would be completely unexpected and not behave in a consistent manner. 

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Many of the pre made ships had mini/micro voxels in them.  The railing of the carrier ship's ramps up to the cockpit were made of them... and a bunch of ships had pointy bits.

 

So they were in the build at PAX.  I asked JC about them and told him how they were a little bit of a problem in Landmark... where if there were too many of them in a claim it could lag the game.  He seemed to think that wouldn't be a problem.

 

Not sure about anti voxels... or some of the really twisted stuff you could do in Landmark.  Not sure if they have the "borrow an extra vertex from a neighboring voxel" tech that Landmark had.

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3 hours ago, Ezghoul said:

@yamamushi sorry, I'm not sure if you answered this in discord the other day, but will things like Micro/Anti Voxels be possible?

 

Thanks in advance!

-Ez

In the world of not broken games we call them "glitches". Landmark was just that, a collection of bugs and glitches :P

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It may not seem easy at first, like it wasn't at the beginning for games like robocraft, besiege, ... to build a flying construct, but over time people will learn and get used to it. Most of them will know how to build after a while, at least all the basic and small designs.

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3 hours ago, AUTO6PL said:

One more question - during ship construction were You able tu use mirror building mehanics (symmetry) or You had to take care for both sides of Your ship to be the same?

 

I didn't see the tool... but That could have just been me not understanding things and not using the tools properly...

 

I just copied and pasted the voxels from one side to the other.  Had to rotate them to get them correct.  I used an element as a reference point to position them.  Copy and pasting only copied voxels.

 

I found that you could "clip" voxels into placed elements... but if you then picked up that element... you couldn't put it back down in the same spot as it wouldn't let you "clip" an element through voxels.

 

This might change by the time we get to pre-alpha and I hope it does.

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