Marry me Josh

Gazz wrote:

ransom.jpg

I only have 50

Hi,

Things are looking great but as I watched the video there were some random thoughts, ideas and questions that popped into my head and I thought I'd just write them all down and post them here. Sorry if some don't make sense from other people's point of view but these are literally just the ideas as they came to me without much in the way of filtering.

With regards to the AI: you do a lot of talking about it, which is what you've essentially been talking about in your daily updates. I understand that not everyone reads those and you need to speak about them in this update but what I wouldn't minded have seeing is actual AI going around doing things in the video. I've been reading all the AI updates and was really looking forward to seeing all of it in action. Would have liked to see a time-lapse of ships going to and fro from the asteroids to the station and other AI behaviour.

With regards to the nodal layout: I'd really like to see a more colour-coded layout to the individual nodes. Additionally, it seems that while things are nodal, it still feels linear and I would have thought that inter-related nodes would be able to link to each other even if they are not within the same heirarchy. Node 1a leads to Node 1b and there are multiple nodes linked to 1b at the lower level. However, let's say 1b-3 is not just related to node 1b but is also related to 3d (3rd linear node (3), 4th level/layer down (d)). I'd like to think I can follow the linkage over to 3d and then traverse the linkages back up through 3rd linear-node heirarchy. Or in other words if you have the star "Sol" and then you have Earth, Mars, Venus etc as sub-nodes under Sol, rather than having to go back up the heirarchy to Sol, you should be able to go direct from Earth to Mars, Venus etc

Does that all make sense?

Again.. all just off the cuff ideas..

darkhorizon wrote:

Gazz wrote:

ransom.jpg

I only have 50

dang that did not work out to well for me

Exceptional and unique. Keep plugging with the AI and UI.

What if... one set of nodes were to gravitate to another, forming AI groups of like-minded and co-operating ships - producing blended procedures. All this managed by one-or-more framework procedures that handle evolving discoveries (technological, social, political, environmental - e.g. PESTLE analysis) between groups and entities.

Then could we see things like ship formations and co-operative activities...?

Andrew

soontroll wrote:Marry me Josh

Yeah if I was female or other way inclined I may have quit my job flown to the states stalked Josh out and professed my undying love,that update was that good but as not to alarm Josh or any authorities he may wish to contact,I 'll just give a manly virtual bro hug.

rickisen wrote:It would be nice to see some small bright spots on the textures looking like lights from windows. Ships tend to look powered-down/dead without them.

They'd definitely benefit from windows, but for a different reason in my opinion. I know Josh is concerned with conveying the scale and "epicness" of the larger vessels (from a thread I was linked to earlier today about wake fields). The easiest way to do this is to line the ships with lights that represent windows, because then the player has something by which they can judge the size of the ship in comparison to a human being. EVE Online does this and I assume the lights are windows, and it just makes the game look that much more awesome.

Edit: Right now, I can't judge how big Josh's ships are. I don't know if they're big enough to fit 3 people or 3000.

HowSerendipitous wrote:Was that round thingy a space station?

Either that or it was the space version of...

Hmm, the node based UI is fairly interesting but I am trying hard to understand why everyone is so excited about it. (just keep a straight face Vic and suppress the urge to grin like the village idiot).

I actually got my kicks from that beautiful metal that was on display during the video. Sigh! it's just gorgeous. Ships are going to be great after all.

Another thing I just found myself wondering about was, how would you go about organizing an inventory with a system like this? It seems like it would be almost counter intuitive. Maybe having the inventory node lead to a table/spreadsheet with the ship's inventory? Unless that was just the editor's display of the ship inventory data, and is completely separate from what you've got planned for the actual GUI of the inventory, for players as opposed to modders.

If so, then totally disregard my rambling.

Kvallning wrote:Another thing I just found myself wondering about was, how would you go about organizing an inventory with a system like this? It seems like it would be almost counter intuitive. Maybe having the inventory node lead to a table/spreadsheet with the ship's inventory? Unless that was just the editor's display of the ship inventory data, and is completely separate from what you've got planned for the actual GUI of the inventory, for players as opposed to modders.

If so, then totally disregard my rambling.

You can see in Josh's video that a node can have an associated count (e.g. a node can represent 122 units of rochabite). An inventory could be displayed just by having an "inventory node" at depth n link to a web of nodes at depth n+1, and each of the nodes in the web represent a type of item in the entity's inventory along with the associated number of those items. Moving items around in the inventory or into different containers or cargoholds, or even things like trade could be done by dragging the node until it breaks apart from the web and then releasing it inside another web of nodes representing another inventory (a cargo container, or a "temporary inventory" that serves as a trade window, etc). This would build upon the work Josh did last time with the research tree where you could drag nodes to enact some behaviour (in that case, to perform research).

(edit) This could potentially be a much easier way of managing your inventory than with just using a spreadsheet, since a spreadsheet only gives a "flat" representation of the data, whereas with this approach you could exploit the hierarchical nature of Josh's UI and make it so that the items in your inventory are categorised and put within their own sub-webs, so that your inventory can be displayed and traversed in a hierarchical manner (e.g. if you had 100 heat-seeking missiles in your inventory, then you could have a "missiles" sub-web for all missile-type objects, and above that an "ammunition" sub-web for any consumable damage-dealing items, perhaps above that a "consumables" sub-web and then finally the general inventory web, which will link to the "consumables" sub-web and other first-tier sub-webs). An option to flatten the data representation would be nice as well, though.

ThymineC wrote:

rickisen wrote:It would be nice to see some small bright spots on the textures looking like lights from windows. Ships tend to look powered-down/dead without them.

They'd definitely benefit from windows, but for a different reason in my opinion. I know Josh is concerned with conveying the scale and "epicness" of the larger vessels (from a thread I was linked to earlier today about wake fields). The easiest way to do this is to line the ships with lights that represent windows, because then the player has something by which they can judge the size of the ship in comparison to a human being. EVE Online does this and I assume the lights are windows, and it just makes the game look that much more awesome.

Edit: Right now, I can't judge how big Josh's ships are. I don't know if they're big enough to fit 3 people or 3000.

Yeah I definatly agree. And it reminds me of something that has been bugging me ever since the switch to scalar fields.
And that is that the textures dont scale very good. Or rather that the textures seams to scale together/linearly with the ships size.
you can see that on the "plating" on the current ships. They really should be roughly the same size on the big ships as they are on the small ones in order to convey scale.

Just like bricks on a big brick house are roughly the same size as the bricks on a small wall. they don't scale linearly with the size of the object.

Of course it's not exactly that simple, since a big ship would probably use different materials for plating than a small one.
But the level of detail should not differ.

ThymineC wrote:

Kvallning wrote: (edit) This could potentially make it a lot easier to manage your inventory with than just using a spreadsheet, since a spreadsheet only gives a "flat" representation of the data, whereas with this approach you could exploit the hierarchical nature of Josh's UI and make it so that the items in your inventory are categorised and put within their own sub-webs, so that your inventory can be displayed and traversed in a hierarchical manner (e.g. if you had 100 heat-seeking missiles in your inventory, then you could have a "missiles" sub-web for all missile-type objects, and above that an "ammunition" sub-web for any consumable damage-dealing items, perhaps above that a "consumables" sub-web and then finally the general inventory web, which will link to the "consumables" sub-web and other first-tier sub-webs). An option to flatten the data representation would be nice as well, though.

Yup.. and hopefully that will be the end result. I am still wary of new and revolutionary UI designs though. There is a reason that the menu bar on pretty much every Windows application is the same layout (ie. File, Edit, View etc) and that the short-cuts/hotkeys are the same (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V etc) and that icons follow a certain styling and that reason is familiarity and a certain intuition built in to the design. Re-inventing the wheel takes not only a new idea but a very careful method of implementation so that it doesn't destroy the very nature of the thing that it is trying to do better.

I am confident in the idea that is being presented and I see the beauty and elegance in it.. I just pray that Josh can pull it off without destroying the nature of menu systems in general.

Very nice to hear a bit of additional detail on the AI. And as an old coder and project manager, it warms the cockles of my evil heart to hear that the code-rippage was so extensive there. Small is beautiful!

But speaking of beautiful things , the star of this update was once again the nodal interface. Wow. Did I mention wow?

I admit it; my first reaction to the surprise "twist" -- the editor went 3D! -- was "Heh. There's that 3D map I was hoping for, but which others argued against." I'm sincerely looking forward to hearing what those who weren't sure about the usability of a 3D information interface think now that they can see the first pass of such a thing.

I do have a few other reactions. These are just personal responses, not claims that anything in Update #11 was "wrong." I hope others will chime in on these and other suggestions.

1. I miss the more angular, feathery structure from the initial interface look. I definitely do like the radial look, though, and I appreciate that there may be a valuable mechanical/control aspect to the new circular look. Still... any chance that other visual structures will be supported?

2. It might be an artifact of the video or YouTube, but the lines showing connections "behind" the current level of nodes seemed to fade out a little too quickly to see the deep structure of a set of nodes. If the final version could have a slider that lets us adjust the fade-out level, that would be spectacular.

3. The value of this UI for showing/navigating a pure hierarchical structure is apparent. But some data aren't purely hierarchical; they can have multiple belongs-to relationships. The "dusty" clusters of objects (presumably mostly asteroids) in a system node view suggest that the node interface can cope with things-attached-to-multiple-things. Is that correct? If not, should/could it be?

4. I wasn't sure, but at times I think I saw little flashes of light among the nodes. I'm hoping that this is a very early example of the node UI in "dynamic" mode, where changes to data are represented by visual effects among the nodes and connections. The idea of seeing the LT universe in a schematic view alive with fireworks of AI activity is extremely appealing. I would really, really like to see that -- a sort of game version of Indra's Net.

5. I would like that even more if it were possible to select which kinds of dynamic activity to highlight continuously in the node UI. To be able to choose to see bursts of economic activity, or mining, or ships blinking out of existence where jewel-like massed fleets collide....

So, yes, I'm a gushing fan of the latest work. There's a right time for GraphicsJosh to help out a little, and this was it.

Very nicely done, as always.

rickelsen wrote:And that is that the textures dont scale very good. Or rather that the textures seams to scale together/linearly with the ships size.

Speaking of scale, that's sort of something I keep noticing in the videos as well: Whenever I see a big ship do hairpin turns, and quite quickly, something in me goes "...oh... " and "ho hum..." Yeah, I know, it's space, there's technically no weight, so I shouldn't be complaining about it, but screw realism damn it! When I see what seems to be a decent sized frigate doing quick manoeuvres like that, something in me screams for some semblance of heftiness, or drag, but I know we've had about seventeen thousand threads about that previously.