insolent wrote:Hmm, I do see your point. It could become a little tedious if all you really want to do is land on the planet and do some trading, take some missions, or hire someone.

Ooh, I know! If the stretch goal is met, perhaps it could be a setting! Those who want it can turn on seamless landing, and those who don't can just get a load screen or cutscene. Most people would opt for seamless, I'm sure, but I don't imagine (also don't know) that it would be too hard to just allow players to remove that bit of simulation altogether.

You seem quite sure that most people would be on your side. Remember that just because a group is vocal doesn't make it the majority. Most Kickstarter projects are spammed to death by people who demand Linux and Mac support, yet when surveys come out, they only represent a tiny fraction of the backer community.
I'm not saying your view is the minority, though, for I have access to exactly as much statistics about that as you do (which is to say, none).

That said, there's even better than making it a setting: making it seamless but skippable, so that if you get bored with the landing sequence (which I imagine will happen to everyone eventually, at the very least on planets they've landed many times on).

Anoniempje wrote:Well we could look at movies and tv to see how the spaceship ascent en descent from land to air to orbit to space.
Figure out what makes it look cool and how long it should feel it should take to reach your destination. Even the fastet mission took 8 hours, 35 minutes to the moon.
So 'realistically' we should take a few days even to reach a planet.
So if you want to trade with other planets 'realistically'. it would be boring as fuck.
TO make it feel real bot not be realistic. we should adhere to the physics. For example, Dragons are unrealistic as fuck, but if the physics of the animal are similar to birds and lizards. we think of it as realistic. So instead of taking 10 minuts from take of to space and weeks to reach a planet. there should be a realistic way to make it look, feel or even be faster than reality.
He needs some mind tricks to make us players think everything that happens is explainable.

That's my point, though. If there's a way to make every landing feel credible and yet exciting at the same time, wonderful... I just can't imagine it. I'm pretty sure I'd be thrilled the first few times, but then get really sick of it... It's the same with most repetitive animations, though.

Picture an RPG where every time you want to look at the inventory, you see the character put their backpack down, open it and look into it. The first few times you'd go "OMG, that's so realisitc! So cool!" But after a while, you'd go "Come on! I just want to look at the damn inventory!!"

I don't see how to avoid that with seamless landing, unless it goes extremely fast (at which point it's not really realistic at all).

There is too much emphasis on the word 'realistically'.
Remember, this is a game. The real goals should be more akin to what 'works' & whats 'fun'.

Why the either or ?

Just have a game setting drop down option with values "Planet landing cut scene" and "Fly in planet landing".

There are always going to be people who much prefer one over the other and it may be what you want changes as you play the game more or the amount of time you have.

Both options should not take that much coding.

Jason Schupfer wrote:Why the either or ?

Just have a game setting drop down option with values "Planet landing cut scene" and "Fly in planet landing".

There are always going to be people who much prefer one over the other and it may be what you want changes as you play the game more or the amount of time you have.

Both options should not take that much coding.

Again, I think the ability to skip it is much better. That way nobody has to choose: you always start in seamless landing, but if you get bored, you can skip. Perfect.

Deej wrote:There is too much emphasis on the word 'realistically'.
Remember, this is a game. The real goals should be more akin to what 'works' & whats 'fun'.

That's kind of my point, really. Seamless landing is more realistic. I think it wouldn't be fun at all after a while.

Yes if there is an ability to skip the fly in landing that would be much the same effect. The important thing is that there is a choice with this particular aspect of the game.

Jason Schupfer wrote:Yes if there is an ability to skip the fly in landing that would be much the same effect. The important thing is that there is a choice with this particular aspect of the game.

Agreed. Now, all you seamless landing fans please remember what Josh wrote on the Home Page:

Are Planet Landings Seamless?

You decide! Right now, the plan is to have a transition between space and planetary surfaces. But if you'd like to be able to fly straight from space to the planet surface, without ever having to see a loading screen or fade-out, then help me hit that stretch goal! The goal will be announced when we get closer to the appropriate level.

Let's work to reach the goal and then on to stretch goals!

I don't think it requires that much more work to fly down to land as the engine has to have all the coding there for other things, perhaps though it would be an additional work load if cool things were done like flying through interesting weather, clouds, rain, lightning. You would have to start the procedural generation of the planet surface in advance if it takes several seconds which is something else to manage.

But a stretch goal, it does give people something to aim for which is a good fund raising thing in itself.

Atarun wrote:

Deej wrote:There is too much emphasis on the word 'realistically'.
Remember, this is a game. The real goals should be more akin to what 'works' & whats 'fun'.

That's kind of my point, really. Seamless landing is more realistic. I think it wouldn't be fun at all after a while.

Agreed. But the 1st part of my comment was 'what works'.
The fact that Josh has mentioned that it's not seamless (at the moment) is probably because of an existing technical limitation in the current engine.

So does Josh change his whole engine to make landing seamless?

Thats not our call to make.... (well, unless you drop 75K on the table then maybe it could be your call. )

Jason Schupfer wrote: But a stretch goal, it does give people something to aim for which is a good fund raising thing in itself.

Agreed. Interesting stretch goals are a very good "carrot on a stick".

Indeed, just for everyone speculating on it, seamless planetary landing is a pretty substantial chunk of coding and would require a re-work of several things. It's certainly possible (like everything!), but it will take time, which is, of course, a bit scarce In particular, it would take the most time of any stretch goals suggested so far, barring multiplayer.

Oh, and everybody should feel free to keep the ideas coming, because I love reading ideas ^^

Here's hoping for the stretch goal then.

Maybe seamless landing is something that could be added in updates post game release. Ya know once the millions $$$ start pouring in and you can afford your own dev team...

I've always liked the idea of space elevators. Ya know a station with some form of cable attaching it to the ground using centrifugal force to launch massive payloads into orbit.

This could be used in-game to avoid landing directly on planets. Just dock with the elevator station to drop off /collect cargo and interact with planet surface.

It would be a big investment for a planet so maybe only economically developed ones would have them while underdeveloped planets would require you to land directly.

Also, maybe orbiting stations could be upgraded with this elevator as a possible upper tier.

Meh! Just dreaming

Big dreams Kevin, I like it

Could stuff like trading or controlling a mining operation be done from space above a planet - by long distance communications or by meeting people on a satellite, while setting up a mining operation would have to be done on the surface (by seamless landing if it becomes possible). Also, its a bit more realistic as you wouldn't want to have to lift a spaceship back up off a planet if you could avoid it (for a big spaceship and planet you're into TeraJoules of energy to escape).

Another idea is to have larger manmade structures - Rings, O'Neill cylinders or similar. I think it would be cool to see these when travelling through space.

I would like the ability to unlock RTS style control once you acquire a fleet and board a flagship with a command-bridge.

For those going for the conquest route it's going to be hard to manage bigger fleets without a dedicated interface, supporting some kind of top down style view and select, dragging boxes + formations, issuing order quickly to large amounts of spaceships.


Something like what you would find in Sins of a Solar empire or Homeworld.