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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#48
WARNING: rated 'H+' for harshness.
BFett wrote:
Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:15 am
At this rate Limit Theory will be in development for at least another year if features don't begin to be worked on immediately. I have to wonder just how many more tools are needed to get LT to the point where the game will actually begin to take shape.
QFT, again.

My big problem with this update is the same as all the updates for the last N years: they are proof that Josh has no plan.

In none of the updates before this has there ever been even the inkling that part of the development roadmap to get LT 1.0 out the door, is an IDE. Combine that with echoes of LTSL and how what seems like a good idea quickly becomes a limiting factor because you have to get the balance of features and functionality right before you can even START on making use of them in a day-to-day environment, and I'm pretty confident when I say we are not one step closer to LT 1.0 than we were a year ago.
And this is mostly, because Josh is not capable of producing a plan by looking ahead at what actually needs to get done.

As others have said, he's in love with the idea of something shiny that will aid productivity, but doesn't appear to have used any of those things to actually produce anything closer to a release.

Hiring extra devs was a big step and has mostly only resulted in a few more shiny tools and better Engine functionality/balance/optimisations, because there is no plan.

If there were a plan, we'd be able to tick things off or see where things are added on, and maybe - shock of shocks - even figure out when we might even see an actual release, and more importantly, Josh would be able to see when an item is not actually progressing to a release, but is a distraction. Without a plan, this shiny tool update is all we're going to get for the foreseeable future, just like the last 5 years.

The defence to this post is "But we needed Modding support, and this achieves it, so is necessary". To which, my rebuttal is that if Josh had thought about it previously, and worked out even vaguely how Modding support was to be achieved, and decided that an IDE would be necessary to do it and so included that on a plan, no-one would be in any way complaining - they'd be ticking another item off the plan, and celebrating. The problem is just that Josh HAS NO PLAN and that is directly equal to HAVING NO WAY TO MAKE LT. As in, at all. Ever. Even if he put some features together and made a release, without a plan no-one knows if it would be equal to LT 1.0 or 0.1 or 13.7.
I'm hoping we are done with tools and can now get started on game features.
Please let actual game content get started now. I don't want to wait another year before we see gameplay progress.
I've been quiet recently, silently disagreeing with all the updates that have come out and the choice of what work has been done, because none of it matters a damn.

I'm gonna crawl back under my rock now, hibernate for another year, when I expect to see a bunch of new shiny tools that will make developing LT a dozen times faster and easier and more intuitive - and the existing tools re-written, expanded, or discarded - and contribute nothing towards an actual honest-to-god release.
--
Mind The Gap
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#49
Do I trust Josh to build my perfect space game? No.
Do I trust Chris Roberts to build my perfect space game? No.
Do I trust anyone to build it? No.

I love Star Citizen...But it's light years from what I want.

Elite Dangerous gets about 20% right(for me).....I'd mod the hell out that game(and Star Citizen)......I'd yank all the 'pew pew' out of them (as I'll probably do with LT)

LTModiter for the win!!
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#50
FormalMoss wrote:
Sun Mar 11, 2018 5:42 pm
So, Lindsey (you lucky duck) :)
Does this mean that you can create a "mod" for ship creation, i.e. mod_fighter_ships.lua
.. and then create a new mod, that has a dependency on "mod_fighter_ships.lua", where you can create capital ships?
.. or, do you have a "mod_ships.lua", and create two new mods:
- "mod_fighters.lua" for the aforementioned (wonderful work) of the fighters, which has a dependency on "mod_ships.lua"?
- create a new mod called "mod_capitals.lua", which has a dependency on "mod_ships.lua", so as to re-use the ship creation tech, but expand it for capital ships?

of course, "mod_ships.lua" (which will be a part of core), possibly has a dependency for core?
Or, how does the workflow change for you now?

My previous "smiley" post, was because I had no access to a keyboard.. but I'm interested in hearing from both Adam and you on how this new tech will help you both on the next (and ongoing) stage(s) of LT.. content :)

As always, keep us posted on your experience of the new tech, as even the screenies from Josh's post, excites me (maybe it has to do with his colour scheme), but as I like to say, I'm a "twig in a forest, detail kinda guy" :ghost: :thumbup: :angel:
Closer to:
mod_fighters and mod_capital both depend on mod_ships

Utilities common to building all ships (like the shape library which made up the content of my first few devlogs) will be a part of 'core', as most people won't want to mod how I build a cube, for example. But that doesn't mean they won't be potentially moddable, as it'll still be in LUA. I'm not writing any heckin' C, that's for sure. So it's more of a soft-core rather than the hard-core, which will be in C. If that makes sense???

My workflow doesn't really change, as my greatest challenge is the content of the algorithms I write, not the structure of how they communicate, which is much more challenging for gameplay. The exception to that might be hooking up faction 'styles' to the ship generator. That tangle of communication is one of the big focuses that this tool aids with. Adam, Josh, and I will all write more about it when it's actually happening and we have real examples to show!

I'll be posting ship shinies again within the next month or so. Since last week, I've been working in the office after recovering (for the most part) from being seriously ill. I'm just not suuuuper happy with how the capital ships look right now. I know y'all want to see the ugly ships too, but I also need to post some good-looking ships at the same time or else I'll just worry y'all XD I'll get back to regular devlogs every other week once I reach that point and am comfortable posting again. I know that's not ideal, but it is realistic and honest, which I think is more important.

EDIT: I have been informed by Talv that y'all want to see ugly ships too, even if none of them are good??? Talv suggested I post them in a non-devlog thread for help/ suggestions on improving their appearance, so I might do that instead within the next couple of weeks or so.
Ship Inspiration Pinterest!! (send me stuff)

"You’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself... because it stimulates you to do things you haven’t done before. The whole thing is if you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says. And that’s death."
- Stephen Sondheim
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#52
LindseyReid wrote:
Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:52 am
EDIT: I have been informed by Talv that y'all want to see ugly ships too, even if none of them are good??? Talv suggested I post them in a non-devlog thread for help/ suggestions on improving their appearance, so I might do that instead within the next couple of weeks or so.

It's not possible to overstate the value Tal has brought to this forum.

He's been doing a superb job as the voice of the community. To whatever extent you're comfortable taking his suggestions, I hope you'll do so.

Side note: I think there's a visible difference between this community and the kind you'd get for a big AAA game. You can see that, even when we here disagree strongly with something, we're not just spewing insulting one-liners -- we're taking time to explain our beliefs and reactions. And I mention this to suggest that, where a AAA "community" probably can be counted on to savage any content they're shown that isn't absolutely perfect, I think most in this community understand what "work in progress" means. It doesn't mean we won't have some "ack - do not like!" reactions, but I'll bet most of those reactions will be followed by constructive feedback on what would feel more appealing. I think Tal's right, and showing "ugly" capital ships that are clearly labeled WIP would be OK... and a nice bit of red meat for the mob hungry for evidence of progress toward delivering LT. But obviously this is 100% up to you creators.

Also, I'm glad to hear you're feeling better.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#54
I would guess that they're not final right now, but that Lindsey has developed her primitives library and procedural algorithms far enough that she can start prototyping capital ships in parallel with the fighters. The different scale probably requires different design aims, and so it is better to start iterating on capitals to find out what works and what doesn't.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#55
Lindsey has already started work on capital ships, actually. :) The main issue she's having with them is that she can't get them to look as good as she did the fighters (in her opinion) so that's slowing her down some. She's needing to work on texture generation and new greeble-y things to convey a proper sense of scale.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#56
what i wonder: are there going to be just two general classes of ship sizes? thats going to be a bit boring with size spreads of 200x in all directions and only have to general scheme(complexes) to build ships

i'd very much expect a 50km mothership to look different than that 200m escort which just barely has enough space for a hangar bay
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#57
No, I think Lindsey and Josh plan to have a fair number of ship "classes". Capital ships are logically the next point to go - after you figure both the largest and smallest ships out, (most) other ship types can be built somewhere between those - depending on what it is you're making.

Mining ships, haulers, transport ships, etc. would probably need to look somewhat different, though. :P I would expect something much closer to the ships Josh had previously.

That's what Lindsey has said when I asked her, at least.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#59
I think you did manage that with a fairly level head, Distant, and thank you. I really agree with you, honestly. We've seen enough tools at this point. This tool is great, yeah, but we need to focus on gameplay now. If Josh manages to stick to his current plans, though (yes, I know), I think we'll be seeing some gameplay devlogs in the very near future.
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