DWMagus wrote: That reminds me while we're on the subject, I want to officially request a 'roll re-orient' button. Most of the descent games had it, and you press it, and completely straightens you back out.

( Yes, I'm OCD, and since everything is pretty much on the same plane, I'd like to reset my orientation appropriately )

I'd suggest to populate sectors in 3D, not everything within a 5 km sliver on the vertical axis.

Just to mess with 2-dimensional people. =P

Why should anything be in a plane in a space game?

And while I'm at it: what is this yaw-thing anyway? (I'm still not really reconciled with its inclusion in Oolite.) A proper space ship is flown by pitch and roll, just like it was in Elite.

Strongly disagree!
Roll is a tertiary consideration based on what guns you want able to bear on a particular target.

You're in foreign space, air-breather!

<caution>the following is the rant of a grumpy person who grew up and got computer-literate in the eighties. Please feel free to ignore it and do whatever you please.</caution>

Gazz wrote:Roll is a tertiary consideration based on what guns you want able to bear on a particular target.

No, roll is the primary consideration based on where you want to go. First you roll so that your destination is either above or below you, then you pitch into the appropriate direction.

That's the flight model that made Elite so easily controllable via keyboard only, and with only four keys at that (basically all you need in order to manoeuvre your ship is the arrow keys). It has allowed me to play my favourite game for almost 30 years in many versions on many different computer systems without ever spending even a single thought about any kind of input device/controller other than my keyboard. For me, that's a high value even in and of itself.

I am aware that Limit Theory is another kind of game. Still I very much hope that it will be playable using nothing but the keyboard. I already know for a fact that I'm not going to buy a mouse, a joystick, or some stupid Gameboy-type controlling device for it (I have a laptop, thus I have a trackpad, not a mouse).

<end of rant>

Commander McLane wrote:No, roll is the primary consideration based on where you want to go. First you roll so that your destination is either above or below you, then you pitch into the appropriate direction. ;)

And there's your problem. There is no up or down in space and your "rudder" is exactly as powerful as your elevators.

Gazz wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:No, roll is the primary consideration based on where you want to go. First you roll so that your destination is either above or below you, then you pitch into the appropriate direction.

And there's your problem. There is no up or down in space and your "rudder" is exactly as powerful as your elevators.

Where do you get the idea that there's a problem—even my problem? The fact that I became "Elite" many times in different versions of Elite seems to indicate to me that there's no problem at all.

Of course there's no absolute up and down in space, but there is also of course "up" and "down" relative to the orientation of your ship. Which is why I first considered to put quotation marks around the words "above" and "below". But then I thought it would be clear that I was using the terms in relation to your ship's orientation.

By the way: there's also no left and right in space. And, as you rightly said, there's no up and down. So, are therefore pitch and yaw also "tertiary considerations", just like roll? If yes, I'd be curious as to what you'd call primary and secondary considerations.

Pitch and yaw are how ships change direction.
For AI ships these are equal.

For the player, yaw is primary because it's easier to track a target going left to right on a widescreen monitor.
For the player, roll is useful if it can translate pitch into yaw for this reason.

For player and AI ships roll can be useful to bring guns with a limited firing arc to bear on a particular target.
In any ship where all turrets face forward this is irrelevant and pitch/yaw are the only meaningful controls.

So yes, roll can be useful but it's not an integral part of maneuvering in the sense of getting from A to B.
It's useful for (capital ship?) gunnery or for the player to work around a hardware limitation - the widescreen monitor.


Somehow I'm getting the impression we're talking past each other. =P

Gazz wrote:Somehow I'm getting the impression we're talking past each other. =P

Yes, we do, but never mind.

As I said, I'm just a grumpy Elite veteran who has never played any other space game. Thus, yaw feels wrong to me. I instinctively refuse to believe that space ships would turn around their y-axis. It's silly, I know, but I can't help it.

Maybe if you turned your monitor by 90°...?

Gazz wrote:I'd suggest to populate sectors in 3D, not everything within a 5 km sliver on the vertical axis.

Just to mess with 2-dimensional people. =P

Hear hear!
What's the use of so much space if it's not used.

Commander McLane wrote:Why should anything be in a plane in a space game?

Perhaps for the fact that almost all known planets and bodies orbiting starts are aligned on a plane?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic_p ... lar_System

This is because planets, moons and bodies are generally thought to be formed from the same Protoplanetary disk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk

Ixos wrote:Perhaps for the fact that almost all known planets and bodies orbiting starts are aligned on a plane?

Roughly on the same plane - but not perfectly so.
What "roughly" means in astronomic terms? At 1 AU, even a 1° tilt of the ecliptic means that you have a "vertical" offset of 2.6 million km. Yah, just a skip and a hop. =)
If you're talking about a Saturn-sized orbit, the same 1° means +/- 23 million km. Douglas Adams had it right.

The Venus orbit is tilted some 3° to Earth's. Pluto is just whacky.
Smaller bodies? All over the place. Space is funny like that.


Long story short: if "sectors" are as vertically condensed as in X3 or similar games, it only has gameplay reasons: to make it easier on the many vertically-challenged players and to be able to display a sector more or less accurately on a 2D monitor....
It has nothing to do with actual astronomy.

I keep seeing all this talk about large ships and the fact that they take too long to turn. Here are my two cents on this- The ships are large, they are not designed to do loop de loops. I should not be able to turn my carrier as fast as a fighter is flying around me. The turrets should take care of that, like in Freelancer (which in my opinion it really didn't have a place in freelancer since all the ships that you could get were relatively small and it's hard to use a turret view when your ship has to be in constant motion) there should be a turret view. your carrier really should park on one end of the battle field and be able to fire into the battle at the other larger ships. if some fighters come at you, they are going to move faster then you regardless of what you try, so the larger ships might as well sit stationary while you blast the fighters to pieces in turret view.

I personally would go nuts if I had to use the keyboard to move my ship, the mouse just flows better for me, but then I feel the same way about first person shooters. I think most people prefer to play Halo with a controller, but I feel so much more in control with a keyboard AND mouse.

I think the only thing that's missing from the game so far is the ability to turn the ship left and right with the keyboard, but I'm sure that the master mind behind this universe made of ones and zeroes (insert funky Matrix sound here) can add that little piece in it's just one of those things that Josh has already mentioned, everyone has their own control preferences, it's going to be hard to get it perfect for everyone.

happyguy142 wrote:it's IMPOSSIBLE to get it perfect for everyone.

Fixed.

Gazz wrote:

Ixos wrote:Perhaps for the fact that almost all known planets and bodies orbiting starts are aligned on a plane?

Roughly on the same plane - but not perfectly so.
What "roughly" means in astronomic terms? At 1 AU, even a 1° tilt of the ecliptic means that you have a "vertical" offset of 2.6 million km. Yah, just a skip and a hop. =)
If you're talking about a Saturn-sized orbit, the same 1° means +/- 23 million km. Douglas Adams had it right.

The Venus orbit is tilted some 3° to Earth's. Pluto is just whacky.
Smaller bodies? All over the place. Space is funny like that.

It has nothing to do with actual astronomy.

Just like this game, so don't try to use actual astronomical distances to show how big the vertical distances are

The offset is still only 1-3 degrees, which means with the significantly smaller distances we do have in LT, most stuff still is located roughly on a plane.

Sin(3deg) = 0.052 which gives us a relation of 19:1 in horizontal : vertical distances.
Sin(1deg) = 0.017, a relation 57:1 in horizontal : vertical distances.

The important thing is most players can feel roughly at home, and most players do know the bodies in a solar system are on a rough plane so arranging them in that way in LT makes sense, with some freedom for maneuver up - down of course.