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Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 8:38 pm
by NucNuc
Sry for - perhaps - being a bit of a buster to your enthusiastic thread, Beetle.

Up to 225 k, if Josh stays with the "stepping", he has already set the stretch goals, that - most likely - he has thought of by himself and being possible to incorporate to the game - in a timey fashion for release (we don't wanna have to wait for it up to 2016, do we ?).

As Josh stated already, the multiplayer option - an almost "must have" for about any other game of this genre, as it looks like atm - would require not only an overhaul or addition but a rewrite of the whole engine. Therefore THIS would commence imho THE BIG "stretch goal" if it hits 250 k ++.

It might enable Josh to hire/aquire some "co-workers", to get such a workload done in time. Don't forget : this is (still ?) a One-Mans-Show.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 10:36 pm
by croxis
N810 wrote:Fair enough, I'm not a programer, and know not of such things.

I assumed he was talking about the usual MMORPG type multiplayer being not suitable.
ANY multiplayer, no matter the size from a small 4 person game server to an mmog, has to be designed with multiplayer from the get go.

On the other hand, the longer Josh waits, the harder it will be to add it later :P

Multiplayer has a lot of other issues too that an sp game does not have. One example is client side prediction. A 100 ms delay between you and another player is a REALLY big deal when determining if you hit them or not.

Although, now I think about it. Josh, how hard would it be to keep it single player, but start splitting code to a simulation unit and a dumb client unit that talks over loopback udp?

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:04 pm
by Deej
I'm interested in playing SP only in LT.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:15 pm
by Dadalos
Deej wrote:I'm interested in playing SP only in LT.
which ias why if it were ever implemented it would be completely optional and i would assume on a small scale say up to 8 people dude to the amount of information the game tracks and uses to generate things in the game.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:02 am
by JoshParnell
croxis wrote:
N810 wrote:Fair enough, I'm not a programer, and know not of such things.

I assumed he was talking about the usual MMORPG type multiplayer being not suitable.
ANY multiplayer, no matter the size from a small 4 person game server to an mmog, has to be designed with multiplayer from the get go.

On the other hand, the longer Josh waits, the harder it will be to add it later :P

Multiplayer has a lot of other issues too that an sp game does not have. One example is client side prediction. A 100 ms delay between you and another player is a REALLY big deal when determining if you hit them or not.

Although, now I think about it. Josh, how hard would it be to keep it single player, but start splitting code to a simulation unit and a dumb client unit that talks over loopback udp?
x_x It's a completely different beast. I will let it swim in my head for a while, though :)

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:10 am
by Dadalos
JoshParnell wrote:x_x It's a completely different beast. I will let it swim in my head for a while, though :)
sometimes the fairy tale of a dangerous beast is better than meeting the beast irl. my suggestion is if you find Pandora's box leave it sealed XD.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:29 am
by Ixos
How hard it would be to implement I guess depends on what people would want to be able to do in multiplayer.

Full implementation is probably not possible as the engine isn't adapted for it.

But limited implementations like a limited 8 player combat/battle arena if most people are just interrested in testing out their own designs in battles versus friends might not be so hard to do.

Some kind of content sharing is even easier, sharing ship/station designs as well as star systems (through the same seed) with your friends is already part of the plan for example! So in that case it's just a question of a better ingame interface to support it. For example sharing a fully developed system (with all your ships, stations and fleets) in it is really not a far step away, even if you can't play together you could show off what you built and let other players explore it.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:36 am
by Bele
Ixos wrote:How hard it would be to implement I guess depends on what people would want to be able to do in multiplayer.

Full implementation is probably not possible as the engine isn't adapted for it.

But limited implementations like a limited 8 player combat/battle arena if most people are just interrested in testing out their own designs in battles versus friends might not be so hard to do.

Some kind of content sharing is even easier, sharing ship/station designs as well as star systems (through the same seed) with your friends is already part of the plan for example! So in that case it's just a question of a better ingame interface to support it. For example sharing a fully developed system (with all your ships, stations and fleets) in it is really not a far step away, even if you can't play together you could show off what you built and let other players explore it.
A 8 player battle arena runs into the same problem as a full implementation, the engine just isn't build for client/server segregation, I do think that it would be an amazing direction to take the combat prototype in though, and could be developed separately from the core game by someone else while Josh focuses on creating the full dream game we crave.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:18 pm
by Markyparky56
Is organic space faring creatures too simple of a stretch goal? Would make a change from the standard bucket of bolts spaceships...

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:21 pm
by Gazz
Buckets can be bolted together from generic parts quite easily.

If organic "ships" have to be created through PG... I dunno?

A ship "style" is probably more likely, such as an evil alien race with Spikes of Doom all over their ships.
With more eviler aliens, even the spikes have spikes.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:38 pm
by Dadalos
Markyparky56 wrote:Is organic space faring creatures too simple of a stretch goal? Would make a change from the standard bucket of bolts spaceships...
i dont think it would be to far fetched a thing. to be honest what your looking for is more a textures thing because you can design almost anything in regards to shape.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:20 pm
by kurush
I am not sure how high-end this would be, but here is a couple of ideas:
  • Ability to generate a universe based on known starts, including solar system. The same thing as what Frontier and FFE did, but preferably with seed-based randomization of everything not yet known. This would give us the Moon as a stretch goal :)
  • Some voice acting, may be radio chatter for the atmosphere.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:13 pm
by AussieMark
I like the post about fully syncrhonised multiplayer.

Not sure if you would want to go down this route but a few other games combine two genre's allowing you to get out of your ship and enter planetery battles on foot.

Space Rangers 2 was a top down, space game (single player only) and actually combined Space Combat AND RTS and I've seen a few other games do it recently, such as Salvation Prophecy (currently on steam green light). They also combine mmorpg I think.

Space Rangers 2 was initially just a game released in Russia so you may have not heard of it. They then broke a number of records around the world and the game went into a global release and was fully translated into other languages. They then released an expansion and will shortly release a High definition version of the game.

See: Space Rangers 2 Video: at 42 second mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... K6KQRft6lw

Salvation Prophecy swaps to RTS after about 10 seconds or so
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... J7sjN5T9SU

Just a few ideas though to get people thinking. It's only good if its done well, but curious to know how planetary battles would work (if it's along these lines or something different).

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 8:09 pm
by aspman
My idea would be complete sub games (procedurally generated of course) on the planets. This would need the players character to be able to walk about of course but some sample scenarios (not too spacey related these)...
  • Imagine GTA but with endless cities/planets to cause havoc in. Procedural Generated City with missions and tasks, ability to freely wander and interact, steal cars/hoverpods or whatever.
  • Imagine SkyRim for planets, maybe with the GTA example above as the towns within a larger map on the planet
  • Imagine War Games such as COD,MoH etc., find yourself caught up in the middle of a civil war and taking sides with the controlling faction or the rebels. Capture the enemy bases in epic ground wars using a variety of weaponry
  • Within the towns and buildings you can explore inside buildings and depending on the building type a mini game(s) within, for example a casino or bar could allow playing of poker etc.
Base all of that on Firefly type scenario, so a poor planet would be wild west with horses for transport (Red Dead Redemption), a medium planet like GTA, a rich planet with futuristic weapons, vehicles etc. but then threaded throughout all that the ability to take part in the planets own missions.

I know this is primarily a space exploration game etc and wouldn't want to detract at all from that initially (before you all flame me lol) but I just think this would be so cool once all the space exploration side of the game is in place.

We will get a bits of this with the Cities/business building and planet ownership but I want to see that extended to GTA,Skyrim,Red Dead Redemption and COD. Thats not too much to ask is it? :) If not a stretch goal for here, please consider for later versions.

Re: High End Stretch Goals

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 8:37 pm
by AussieMark
Hmm a few of the latest games have been looking at utilising the new virtual reality headset that was funded on kickstarter called the occulus rift.

Oculus Rift details:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/152 ... o-the-game

"What I've got now, is, I honestly think the best VR demo probably the world has ever seen."
John Carmack, id Software

"Needless to say, I'm a believer... We're extremely excited here at Epic Games to get the Unreal Engine integrated with Oculus."
Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director Epic Games

"I think this will be the coolest way to experience games in the future. Simply that... that big."
David Helgason, CEO Unity

"I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to program with it and see what we can do.”
Michael Abrash, Valve

"It looks incredibly exciting, if anybody’s going to tackle this set of hard problems, we think that Palmer’s going to do it. So we’d strongly encourage you to support this Kickstarter.”
Gabe Newell, President and Owner Valve