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Set the Helios System into Rotation!


Hirnsausen

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If all planets rotate around the central star, at different speeds, and the same with the moons around their plants, that would be sooo nice! Some orbital space stations, if not in an stationary (locked) orbit based on their location, would also have to rotate in orbits around. But maybe here, through the advanced technology of the future, they can still remain "anchored" in stationary orbits, meaning, they would not move. That would be up to the developers.

Distances would change dynamically instead of being dead and static..

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This would be epic, and I would love it, and it would take an enormous amount of coding for a relatively low priority feature that would annoy a lot of people with navigational issues stemming from things like the coriolis effect.

 

No mistakes, I want this feature, but it would be way too much work for far too little return at this point in time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/18/2022 at 6:27 AM, Hirnsausen said:

Well, let's see. There is no ingame problem that cannot be solved through programming. I am optimistic.

It's a gameplay issue as well as a technical challenge. If planets moved, it would be  more difficult to travel to them. I'm sure some people can make scripts, but the new player joining the game would have no idea what they're doing. Not everyone has a good understanding of planetary mechanics. Not to mention waypoints in global space become useless. It would also require redesigning very core features of the game.

A game like this (planetary scale voxel based) would be a possibility only in the far future.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

When looking at the coordinate system, I come to the conclusion that it would not be different from as it is now.

Already now, each planet has its own coordinate system, meaning, these coordinates are not universal coordinates defining a location on that planet based on its position in the universe, but only based on the planet. Setting planets in own rotation and in rotation around a star would therefore not cause any alteration to the coordinates of each construct or area of landscape. However, the space are would become significantly bigger - that is the only difference I see. Meaning, coordinate values would be potentially bigger, too. Only THAT would add to the burden of the server.

If a player travels from one planet to another, the player just enters the same coordinates as before. Only that the game now calculates where in its orbit around the star the planet currently is. Yes, warp cost can become bigger or smaller, but that is just how things are in real life, too. Mars is not stationary nor is the moon. Fuel demands to reach there vary. I want that in a good game too, so the player would add this to the own calculations when the best moment for traveling would be.

Space stations around a rotating planet would rotate, too, so they remain stationary above one location that planet.. Any space station that was placed in the same distance to the star like a planet, would also rotate around the star like the planet, same speed. Any space station that is between the planet orbits around the star or totally beyond, would remain fully stationary.

No one can fly too close to the star, therefore the star can remain in an acceptable size and does not need to become huge and take away too much own space. Any warp flight that would cross that "forbidden zone" would be curved around it yet the warp cost would be calculated as a straight line of flight.

So, we got varying distances, one single added calculation for each distance calculation (current position of own and target object), and an expanded space area. The last point is the only part where I expect a bigger amount of processing burden for the server.

Edited by Hirnsausen
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2 hours ago, Hirnsausen said:

...coordinate values would be potentially bigger, too. Only THAT would add to the burden of the server...

You seem to misunderstand what would be loading the system down.

 

Adjusting GPS coordinates for someone's game to find a single moving point isn't hard, the game already does that for friends that lock each other's locations to find each other. The problem comes when you need to adjust the coordinates for every single voxel a planet is made out of (and without causing desynchronization between the clients and the server). It isn't impossible, and again it is a cool idea and I want it, but it would not be worth the effort required to make it happen.

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Yes,I get your point. In brief, the processing burden to calculate the positions of millions of voxels.

But in my way of thinking, there is - maybe - no need to do that. I am at the very early stages  of a concept that would allow to bypass that, but it is incredibly hard for me to explain, as I am not a natural English speaker. But basically, working with textured spheres most of the times, those you see when you are in space or look into the sky when standing on a planet o other celestial body. Only when you are very near a celestial body, it changes to the voxel structure.  I am still working out the details of this concept, so I cannot say more at the moment. I don't even have much time I can spend on working out that first glimpse of a concept I have there, as I have many other things to do in real life. But believe, there is a way. It has to do with when to use a voxel structure and when to use just a textured 3D shape, so the voxel planets not necessarily have to move around despite that the game gives that illusion. Keyword: distance is your or the server's friend..

Edited by Hirnsausen
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Millions of voxels would be relatively easy, a single L core has more than 133 million voxels in volume (and NQ is working on keeping people using such numbers from breaking network-connection related things). Even if planetary voxels are ten times as large as construct voxels the number of them on a planet will still dwarf the voxel count on a construct by several orders of magnitude.

 

As for not loading the entire universe at once and just functionally showing you a colored sphere, the game already does that (if your connection is bad enough it wont always load distant planets properly, and the unusual visuals that result look really cool). Depending on your connection-quality you can watch it load the different spheres and even catch when it switches to voxel.

 

At a distance the game wont care, the problems would result from getting up close enough to the planets while they are moving to fully load the voxel, up close it would be constantly trying to recalculate an absurd number of points, and solving that would require such an immense amount of work for such a relatively small return as to make it wildly impractical. 

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No, you still don't understand the concept I am working on: the voxel-based planet would not move, only a placeholder for that planet. But again, I don't want to mention more at this early stage, as I am still working on my concept.

 

Edited by Hirnsausen
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If you are talking about something like "instances" where the planet exists in its own separate pocket-universe and just somehow having the access point for the instance being some invisible moving sphere with a planet-model in the middle, it would still require an immense amount of work even if you were just planning on putting an indestructible bubble around each planet with only a few access points (that would probably operate like the landing-pads in Elite Dangerous). 

 

Its a cool idea, but it just isn't practical for this kind of game at this point in time.

 

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If it were done by having large sheets/areas of transition where you hit the access point on one side and it moved you to a random location next to the connected sheet/area on the other side then it wouldn't be as bad as moving a planet's worth of voxel, but that would still be an egregious amount of work for next to no return.

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Sounds like a great idea. Every player, Ship, Station, Asteroid, Moon, Planet in rotation around Helios. 

 

Until you think about what currently happens when your flying in your construct near another construct that is rubber banding around. Now picture whats going to happen when your flying around a planet that is rubberbanding. 

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10 hours ago, RugesV said:

Sounds like a great idea. Every player, Ship, Station, Asteroid, Moon, Planet in rotation around Helios.

 Actually, you quoting me with something I never said or even meant. 🙂

Most of the space stations would remain fixed where they are. Only those in orbit around a celestial body would rotate. And though plants do rotate, they actually don't rotate. Did you read that before writing, RugesV? Only textured spheres as placeholders would rotate, not much server burden. And the current coordinate system can easily incorporate one single additional line that has the calculation of the current location.

 

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11 minutes ago, Hirnsausen said:

 Actually, you quoting me with something I never said or even meant. 🙂

I never quoted you. 

 

But you did say the planets are going to rotate. And by rotate I assume your refering to orbit. 

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The concept is probably similar to what "Elite Dangerous" is doing. There planets move and rotate. And if you come close to a planet you basically switch to the coordinate system of the planet. Actuallly i think in Elite it creates an instance for you of the planet. However I am not sure if the DU tech supports this.

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In "Elite Dangerous" it is actually a two step process. First if you come too close to a planet (or a planet comes too close to you) and you have a slow relative speed to each other, then you adapt the speed of the planet and get dragged along with it. In Elite however you can fly multiple times the speed of light, so "slow" is a very relative term. And Elite does not have orbital mechanics, so you do not orbit planets or something.

Then if you get into very close range there is the transition that you actually switch to the coordinate system of the planet which the last time i played can actually be seen visually because everything changes a bit. In Elite you can not build things in space, so there is no problem with buildings in the "border zone" where the switch happens. In DU that however would be a problem.

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5 hours ago, PleiJades said:

In "Elite Dangerous" it is actually a two step process. First if you come too close to a planet (or a planet comes too close to you) and you have a slow relative speed to each other, then you adapt the speed of the planet and get dragged along with it. In Elite however you can fly multiple times the speed of light, so "slow" is a very relative term. And Elite does not have orbital mechanics, so you do not orbit planets or something.

Then if you get into very close range there is the transition that you actually switch to the coordinate system of the planet which the last time i played can actually be seen visually because everything changes a bit. In Elite you can not build things in space, so there is no problem with buildings in the "border zone" where the switch happens. In DU that however would be a problem.

ED is cool, but I suspect that the systems are currently too different to attempt to copy any relevant mechanics more complex than the piloting hud. 

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