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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#32
Black--Snow wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:17 am
Dinosawer wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 3:13 am
Doesn't unity have issues with large size gameworlds? Or did they finally invent doubles in the meantime?
The basis of the system is still floating point numbers, but I don't see an issue with precision, really. If 1 unit = 1m, you've got a pretty significant field to play with, and the precision issues are realistically quite small, no?

You're not looking for systems more than a couple hundred kilometres apart, right?
Josh ran into precision problems early on when he tried to make planets bigger. While you can represent huge numbers with single precision the gaps between "neighboring" numbers grow with the size of those numbers.
Do you remember the water melon sized planets in Freelancer? They're as small as they are because they had to make do with single precision floats.
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#33
I imagine that another question would be:
Should the ships and stations be procedural or hand crafted?

Also:
I don't have any experience in software development (only fooling around a little bit with micro controllers and some stuff in Matlab) but to me it seems that Josh has done some major research on how to set up an engine that is capable of scaling to a big big universe with large numbers of NPCs.
I mean, at the end of the video series, when all the re-writing started ( if I remember correctly ) the world and NPC count didn't look TOO crazy, but he had enough performance problems to scrap it all.
So, either the scope has to be fairly small and narrow or his lessons and approach should be the main focus?

Am I understanding this correctly?
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#34
MP X10L wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:56 am
I mean, at the end of the video series, when all the re-writing started ( if I remember correctly ) the world and NPC count didn't look TOO crazy, but he had enough performance problems to scrap it all.
So, either the scope has to be fairly small and narrow or his lessons and approach should be the main focus?
Perhaps the question we should be asking is what the exact boundaries of the project are going to be before we discuss technology. If we have to choose between functionality and technology, I'd rather go for functionality if at all possible. There's no point selecting tech before we have a solid idea about the scale of the project, only to have to start over with tech selection once the scope is firmly established.

Edit:
FormalMoss wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:31 am
Considering the release of Gabe Newell's Alyx, would VR support be out of the question?
Also, would modding be in or out?
Modding definitely, I think. VR would be fun too, but IDK how technically complex that would be to implement off the bat. Maybe not dismiss it out of hand but deal with that later?
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#35
Shadowrunner214 wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:09 am

Edit:
FormalMoss wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:31 am
Considering the release of Gabe Newell's Alyx, would VR support be out of the question?
Also, would modding be in or out?
Modding definitely, I think. VR would be fun too, but IDK how technically complex that would be to implement off the bat. Maybe not dismiss it out of hand but deal with that later?
Totally!
I am thinking of modular plugins.
Have the ability of the JIT system to allow for additional input systems, one of them being VR.
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#37
FormalMoss wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:25 am
Nathan, what is the possibility of gaining access to Josh's engine?
Considering one option of creating a similar C-based engine, with Lua-jit.
I know there's legalese involved here, but do you have access to Josh's source?
Is there any time limit on accessing that, remember how he said if he was out of touch for x amount of time, the source being released, or some such?
P.S. kinda like a will of sorts, should something happen to him.
P.P.S. I'm just asking, not saying that we should.
Screenshot from my PC, taken today:
Image

In short: Yes, I have it. Am I allowed to spread it around? Is it ethical in any sense of the word? Would Josh be pissed? I have really no idea about any of these three questions.
FormalMoss wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:31 am
Also, would modding be in or out?
I agree with Shadowrunner that modding is more or less a must, simply because we're more or less crowdsourcing the production of the game.


RE: Unreal Engine: Everspace IS Unreal Engine, but they were exceedingly cautious both with the size of the levels (miniscule compared to LT) and the number of ships flying around (laughably low compared to LT). Unless someone can provide a better example, I think it's off the table. Let's not try to see if we can teach a wildcat to catch mice when we already have housecats we know will do the job.

BFett wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:27 am
How large do we really need the game world? Could ship speeds be slowed to simulate larger distances between two points?

Are there older games, such as the original elite which found ways around this problem when double precision wasn't possible?
As discussed last night in IRC, the scale of Josh's LT was more or less:
  • 1 units of length for fighters
  • 100 units of length for capital ships
  • 1000 units length for planets
This is roughly the same scale as Freelancer, and I'm wary of changing that up much, personally.
MP X10L wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:56 am
I imagine that another question would be:
Should the ships and stations be procedural or hand crafted?
Personal opinion: Start with a few handcrafted placeholders. We don't necessarily have to craft them ourselves, although we already have a small team of experienced modelers floating around (HowSerendipitous, CSE, myself, Black--Snow, Narwhalz, and others) so crafting them probably isn't that big a deal. If we want to expand to procedural later, why the hell not? But there's no reason to start out that way. Let's not make Josh's mistake of trying to tackle graphics first. :)

(That's really my opinion on anything graphical - gameplay first, graphics later.)
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#38
Talvieno wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:34 am
As discussed last night in IRC, the scale of Josh's LT was more or less:
  • 1 units of length for fighters
  • 100 units of length for capital ships
  • 1000 units length for planets
This is roughly the same scale as Freelancer, and I'm wary of changing that up much, personally.
https://youtu.be/KN3tKT0E0t8?t=251

It seems we may have missed this last night...

At least on the old engine, it was apparently at least 1:10,000
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#39
Talvieno wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:34 am
MP X10L wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:56 am
I imagine that another question would be:
Should the ships and stations be procedural or hand crafted?
Personal opinion: Start with a few handcrafted placeholders. We don't necessarily have to craft them ourselves, although we already have a small team of experienced modelers floating around (HowSerendipitous, CSE, myself, Black--Snow, Narwhalz, and others) so crafting them probably isn't that big a deal. If we want to expand to procedural later, why the hell not? But there's no reason to start out that way. Let's not make Josh's mistake of trying to tackle graphics first. :)

(That's really my opinion on anything graphical - gameplay first, graphics later.)
My intention wasn't mainly the graphical aspect.
Procedural assets have major gameplay implications too, don't they?
If you want to have AI researching and developing new ships and stuff, then handcrafted assets aren't the best fit for that, imho.
Sure you can add and expand that stuff later ... but that isn't what I would consider a precisely defined scope , as proposed earlier.
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#40
Eh, in placeholder, anything really works. Simply scale the models up ingame. put imaginary hardpoints on them. If they float, no big deal - it's all placeholder anyway. It's not about how it looks, it's about how it plays. Later we can use the same code to make actual pretty ships - be they procedural or otherwise.

But yes, I understand what you're saying. It's important to define the scope. I would say probably some form of procgen is probably the "best" fit... but am wary of it because of how notoriously difficult it is to procgen pretty ships.
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#42
Cody wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 12:27 pm
Talvieno wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:34 am
Am I allowed to spread it around? Is it ethical in any sense of the word? Would Josh be pissed?
Tricky questions, Tal - good luck finding answers!
Indeed. :problem: I'm going to type up the relevant NDA parts later today and see what you guys think about the legality aspect of it, and if we need to consult someone. I'll also try to get in touch with Josh again... and Victor too of course. Victor would love to hear about this. (Also I really miss the guy.)
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#43
Talvieno wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:34 am
In short: Yes, I have it. Am I allowed to spread it around? Is it ethical in any sense of the word? Would Josh be pissed? I have really no idea about any of these three questions.
Uff, I would be very carefull about this. Technically the source code is still his intellectual property, even if he said that he is going to release it someday (which is probably never going to happen, considering it didn't happen by now if we are honest).
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Re: Remaking Limit Theory - From the ground up

#44
Yeah, I know. I'm very concerned about it myself. I'm rather thinking it would probably be better to just start from scratch with everything. The code I have doesn't contain that much anyway. It has some of the procgen ship code, a little bit of the dogfight AI, some planet code, and (ofc) all the nebula/asteroid generation code. Beyond that, there's not that much in it. It's just the PAX South demo.
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