Hi all,

first I must say, that I can't believe that I found LT just 3 days ago by accident. I get more and more excited by reading the forum, devnotes, watching the vids etc., and I am surprised by the scope of the game, but there are some questions which I couldn't find in the forum (could be that I have to search for three words in the search)

All the questions are mostly technical, and they concerning all the producibility and resources allocation.

As I read the space will be huge, and procedural generated , how will this work in the later game, when many systems are explored, many points visited etc.
How will the AI handle the economy when I am billions of parsecs away?

Are here any thoughts about this in the forum?

Cheers
WeirdCulture

Welcome!

The AI will "freeze" when you go far away, and "catch up" to you with efficient abstracted history simulation, when you come back. I'm really not sure about the memory footprint, but it probably will as small as possible through optimisation.

There will be several layers of AI and economy LOD, which simulate areas with ever lower fidelities the further you travel away.

The first 3 jumps might still be silumated in full detail (except for collision physics etc) will full ai and full fidelity economy.

When you travel further away it will get progressively more coarse, AI will approximated by "force" fields spanning space and should behave as if they were still simulated in full detail.

And on the furthest LOD the systems and AI get frozen to be speed-simulated when you come back, just like behemoth said.


I remember vaguely josh mentioning savegame size in some devlog, but i cant really tell anymore.
But it will increase in the months before release, as the economy gets flesed out and such.
Bht josh seems to be good at optimising things, as he ripped out the save/load mechanics code more times than i bother to count to refine it even more each time ^^

Cornflakes_91 wrote:There will be several layers of AI and economy LOD, which simulate areas with ever lower fidelities the further you travel away.

The first 3 jumps might still be silumated in full detail (except for collision physics etc) will full ai and full fidelity economy.

When you travel further away it will get progressively more coarse, AI will approximated by "force" fields spanning space and should behave as if they were still simulated in full detail.

I admit I am still wondering whether AI/economy LOD simulation can be applied not just outside the human player character's current location, but around the location of at least the player character's top lieutenants (and their ships) as well. That is, I'd like to see full fidelity for the people who work for me, not just my character alone.

Basically I'm hoping that full fidelity can be retained for as many of the player's employees as possible subject to the processing power of the player's computer. It seems to me that the distance at which LOD effects for AI/economy simulation kick in could be a direct function of the horsepower of the CPU.

Why not make LOD distance a dynamic setting (or at least Yet Another Slider in the game options) so that you always get the maximum fidelity your machine can handle?

Flatfingers wrote: I admit I am still wondering whether AI/economy LOD simulation can be applied not just outside the human player character's current location, but around the location of at least the player character's top lieutenants (and their ships) as well. That is, I'd like to see full fidelity for the people who work for me, not just my character alone.

Basically I'm hoping that full fidelity can be retained for as many of the player's employees as possible subject to the processing power of the player's computer. It seems to me that the distance at which LOD effects for AI/economy simulation kick in could be a direct function of the horsepower of the CPU.

Why not make LOD distance a dynamic setting (or at least Yet Another Slider in the game options) so that you always get the maximum fidelity your machine can handle?

well, one of the more resource friendly approaches would be to lower the LOD on player ships when the player is siply looking somewhere.

when im cruising around 15 systems away and i dont care about my assets they just get LOD'd as normal NPC, but as soon as i open up my map they get loaded up to higher fidelity as i "zoom in" on them

Cornflakes_91 wrote:when im cruising around 15 systems away and i dont care about my assets they just get LOD'd as normal NPC, but as soon as i open up my map they get loaded up to higher fidelity as i "zoom in" on them

I see what you mean here. But I'm suggesting not simulating what my direct reports actually do in the game world, not just what I can see on my node map.

I'm likely to interact with my lieutenants. So suppose they go do some trading. I'd prefer that their trades are actually carried out with individual "real" items, rather than simulated at a high level, because there's a high probability that I might interact with them to see what they're carrying.

That gets less likely down the chain, which is why I'm saying treat just my lieutenants similar to my character in terms of in-world fidelity. But optimally I'd like control over how much fidelity the game tries to support based on my computer's actual processing capability.

Flatfingers wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:when im cruising around 15 systems away and i dont care about my assets they just get LOD'd as normal NPC, but as soon as i open up my map they get loaded up to higher fidelity as i "zoom in" on them

I see what you mean here. But I'm suggesting not simulating what my direct reports actually do in the game world, not just what I can see on my node map.

i was meaning that to, but i dont really expect that to happen (with current HDD memory bandwiths...)

Flatfingers wrote:But optimally I'd like control over how much fidelity the game tries to support based on my computer's actual processing capability.

I wish that would happen for those who have it to be able to leverage their available computing power in order to increase fidelity. Unfortunately it doesn't provide a consistent experience for all players (namely those with lower-end hardware) and the people who do have the higher end hardware usually end up having to settle for that

Schank wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:But optimally I'd like control over how much fidelity the game tries to support based on my computer's actual processing capability.

I wish that would happen for those who have it to be able to leverage their available computing power in order to increase fidelity. Unfortunately it doesn't provide a consistent experience for all players (namely those with lower-end hardware) and the people who do have the higher end hardware usually end up having to settle for that

It's a single-player game, so I don't see why the system can't be designed to allow for people with high-end hardware to simulate at a higher level of detail.

ThymineC wrote:It's a single-player game, so I don't see why the system can't be designed to allow for people with high-end hardware to simulate at a higher level of detail.

Yes that's true. I would really like that. Allow my CPU to stretch its legs a little bit

ThymineC wrote:

Schank wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:But optimally I'd like control over how much fidelity the game tries to support based on my computer's actual processing capability.

I wish that would happen for those who have it to be able to leverage their available computing power in order to increase fidelity. Unfortunately it doesn't provide a consistent experience for all players (namely those with lower-end hardware) and the people who do have the higher end hardware usually end up having to settle for that

It's a single-player game, so I don't see why the system can't be designed to allow for people with high-end hardware to simulate at a higher level of detail.

That's my feeling as well, since we know there is a bottom-level case that must be supported for all computers that can run Limit Theory: full fidelity for the player and some amount of LOD simulation for every other character.

What I'm describing is allowing those whose machines can support it to enjoy a greater level of fidelity, optimized for the player character's minions.

I really hope that's not interpreted by anyone as encouraging some kind of "us versus them" features any more than features supported by higher-capability graphics cards do.

Flatfingers wrote: (tried to quote ThymineC and Shank as well... )
That's my feeling as well, since we know there is a bottom-level case that must be supported for all computers that can run Limit Theory: full fidelity for the player and some amount of LOD simulation for every other character.

What I'm describing is allowing those whose machines can support it to enjoy a greater level of fidelity, optimized for the player character's minions.

I really hope that's not interpreted by anyone as encouraging some kind of "us versus them" features any more than features supported by higher-capability graphics cards do.

I can't see how it would be construed as "us vs them" I think you are right, if you have the hardware why wouldn't you get to use it? Personally my machine while very capable is not bleeding edge, I don't begrudge anyone that has the bleeding edge gear though...

as a side note; has anyone else noticed how much MMO gaming has altered the way people (gamers) see games... everything seems to get related back to "fairness" and "Balance".. in a single player game those concepts are completely different than in a multiplayer game... shrug just a semi-random thought.

Maybe the GUI could offer the option to assign the title "Lieutenant" to NPC subordinates of the player, which would then cause the game to fully simulate the universe around those NPCs. That would allow the player to concentrate the simulation power around objects he considers important.

A somewhat ugly hack, but in the absence of unlimited computing power perhaps worthwhile .

Aarioch wrote:as a side note; has anyone else noticed how much MMO gaming has altered the way people (gamers) see games... everything seems to get related back to "fairness" and "Balance".. in a single player game those concepts are completely different than in a multiplayer game... shrug just a semi-random thought.

Agreed about fairness, in single player games the "balance" between player and AI can be a lot more flexible. To some extent, an "unfair advantage" for the AI can even be used to compensate for a weak AI. I remember Civilization2, which was only challenging at the "King" or "Emperor" level where the AI was allowed to cheat by building stuff cheaper.

Balance between different unit types, though, is still important. Otherwise, entire categories of units become unattractive. Such as battleships in real life. Since WW II, the aircraft carrier is clearly superior and nobody builds battleships anymore.

Side note to the side note:
Maybe LT can afford a few useless classes better than other games where every class costs the time of a developer. Procedural generation for the win

ThymineC wrote:

Schank wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:But optimally I'd like control over how much fidelity the game tries to support based on my computer's actual processing capability.

I wish that would happen for those who have it to be able to leverage their available computing power in order to increase fidelity. Unfortunately it doesn't provide a consistent experience for all players (namely those with lower-end hardware) and the people who do have the higher end hardware usually end up having to settle for that

It's a single-player game, so I don't see why the system can't be designed to allow for people with high-end hardware to simulate at a higher level of detail.

An interesting corollary seems to be that even after Josh moves onto something else, as computers get faster and faster, the game will grow ever more realistic. Or if you happen to have your own home supercomputer, you can simulate a whole galactic economy is high lod...

Hyperion wrote: An interesting corollary seems to be that even after Josh moves onto something else, as computers get faster and faster, the game will grow ever more realistic. Or if you happen to have your own home supercomputer, you can simulate a whole galactic economy is high lod...

You know the "galaxy" is infinent? No amount of processing power can simulate infinity.