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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#31
Kvallning wrote:
rickelsen wrote:And that is that the textures dont scale very good. Or rather that the textures seams to scale together/linearly with the ships size.
Speaking of scale, that's sort of something I keep noticing in the videos as well: Whenever I see a big ship do hairpin turns, and quite quickly, something in me goes "...oh... " and "ho hum..." Yeah, I know, it's space, there's technically no weight, so I shouldn't be complaining about it, but screw realism damn it! When I see what seems to be a decent sized frigate doing quick manoeuvres like that, something in me screams for some semblance of heftiness, or drag, but I know we've had about seventeen thousand threads about that previously.
It's not even a matter of weight. It's a matter of mass. The more mass an object has, the greater its inertia and the less the acceleration a given force upon it should effect. So bigger ships (assuming mass monotonically increases with volume here) absolutely should turn slower. But this is something that can be balanced later on, or even perhaps modified by us using the mod tool Josh developed.
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#34
As much as I loved this update, I have to admit that out of all the updates so far, it was also the most opaque. It felt almost like awesome fan service, for those of us who have been following the dev logs daily, but I can imagine some distant backer watching the video and scratching his/her head about WTF is going on with the supposedly "great" interface (and all the data field names, et cetera) and how the AI apparently works. Not to mention complete outsiders.

Now I'm not sure if this is an actual concern -- it is after all a development update, the topics discussed are complicated and deep, and layman comprehension should not be a focus anyway. But I felt like airing the tiny voice just the same. There's a great game being made here, but for a moment there it felt more like it was a technical feat that was being showcased, not a game. And I feel that someone might get that same feeling and suddenly, intuitively decide that this upcoming game is too complex for them and maybe they should steer clear.
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#36
ThymineC wrote:It's not even a matter of weight. It's a matter of mass. The more mass an object has, the greater its inertia and the less the acceleration a given force upon it should effect. So bigger ships (assuming mass monotonically increases with volume here) absolutely should turn slower. But this is something that can be balanced later on, or even perhaps modified by us using the mod tool Josh developed.
Agreed! :)

However, we just need bigger thrusters! :) Make a huge ship and then attach huge lateral and rotational thrusters :)
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#37
light487 wrote:
ThymineC wrote:It's not even a matter of weight. It's a matter of mass. The more mass an object has, the greater its inertia and the less the acceleration a given force upon it should effect. So bigger ships (assuming mass monotonically increases with volume here) absolutely should turn slower. But this is something that can be balanced later on, or even perhaps modified by us using the mod tool Josh developed.
Agreed! :)

However, we just need bigger thrusters! :) Make a huge ship and then attach huge lateral and rotational thrusters :)
With big enough thrusters, you'd certainly have the agility to turn a large ship quickly, maybe even quick enough to see the hundred pirate ships your tremendous thermal signature attracted before you get blown up. :p
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#38
Must add that I have some small concerns about the 3d-nodal interface. And that is about images/visual representation.

Like for example if I go into my "fleet" data and select the ship "Python-Bomber-mk2" I would like to see some overview of how it looks like. In the old interface there where such a view, (looked kinda 2d shot from above). But in the new nodal-interface I don't know how that would fit in or be displayed. (Maybe in 3d with the "command-interface-shader" ?).

Images are not only cool, but they can also be pretty usefull, especially with jogging your memory and so on.

And I'd also really like to know how a gun looks like before buying it.

A similair problem would be textboxes. I didn't see any here. But I did see some textboxes in the previous nodal interface. (or the resarch-interface that was showcased last time). The problem with a text box (I guess) is that by it's very nature they kinda have to be in 2d...
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#39
rickisen wrote:Images are not only cool, but they can also be pretty usefull, especially with jogging your memory and so on.
This part wouldn't be so hard if the camera auto-zoomed in on the bit you are looking at.
A ship, an asteroid, a specific weapon...

As for text boxes... other than paragraphs of "written" text... one of those circular displays has room for tons of stats.
A researched technology could display 22 different stats at once.
May need to make the "value" of it visible as well but I guess that's a matter of polishing.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#40
Gazz wrote:
rickisen wrote:Images are not only cool, but they can also be pretty usefull, especially with jogging your memory and so on.
This part wouldn't be so hard if the camera auto-zoomed in on the bit you are looking at.
A ship, an asteroid, a specific weapon...
Yeah I guess, maybe...
But what if the object in question is in a far away system that isn't fully calculated at the moment.
And even if that was possible, wouldn't that kill the imerssion a bit?
Or what if it's a blueprint of a weapon that hasn't been constructed yet.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Idea of the circle or dot in the node tree (aka the icon representing the "node" it self) could be rendered as the 3d-model "command-interface style" of an object if there is a 3d model of it.
Kinda like the systems-map was displayd in the video.

So under Assets -> Fleet ( reprecented by dots ) there are a bunch of small 3d-reprecentations of the ships, and under those the ships various nodes apear as dots, but under for example Hardpoints (dot )-> weapon-hardpoints( dot ) you see small models of the guns in question.

So "non physical things" are reprecented by dots, but "physical things" have a shape.
Last edited by rickisen on Tue Dec 03, 2013 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#42
rickisen wrote:Yeah I guess, maybe...
But what if the object in question is in a far away system that isn't fully calculated at the moment.
And even if that was possible, wouldn't that kill the imerssion a bit?
Or what if it's a blueprint of a weapon that hasn't been constructed yet.

...
Ultimately I'm pretty sure that's what I'll end up with. There's no doubt that the holographic renderstyle from the command interface will be brought into the node interface. That's a must for your ship menu, even hardpoints I'd like to see, etc. Like you said, if there's a model, draw it. For OOS or objects of which you are not aware, no model, so just a node. Makes sense :thumbup:
Grumblesaur wrote:I noticed two interesting things:

Many of the placenames in this new video had syllabic Rs (that is, Rs unaccompanied by vowels).
Some ships have domes on them now.
The naming algorithm sucks and I would do well to study your posts :D

The domes, which I forgot to mention, are just placeholder models for the transfer units. I just wanted something big so that I could tell when an NPC had equipped a transfer unit. Of course those will be replaced with something that looks like a mining beam in due time :)
alpan wrote:As much as I loved this update, I have to admit that out of all the updates so far, it was also the most opaque. It felt almost like awesome fan service, for those of us who have been following the dev logs daily, but I can imagine some distant backer watching the video and scratching his/her head about WTF is going on with the supposedly "great" interface (and all the data field names, et cetera) and how the AI apparently works. Not to mention complete outsiders.

Now I'm not sure if this is an actual concern -- it is after all a development update, the topics discussed are complicated and deep, and layman comprehension should not be a focus anyway. But I felt like airing the tiny voice just the same. There's a great game being made here, but for a moment there it felt more like it was a technical feat that was being showcased, not a game. And I feel that someone might get that same feeling and suddenly, intuitively decide that this upcoming game is too complex for them and maybe they should steer clear.
Noted, and I think I agree with you. There was a certain lack of coherence to this update. It's honestly probably because I stayed up so late working on last-minute things that my the time I filmed, I really failed to film in a way conducive to a "coherent" overview of where the game is right now. By the time I got to overdubbing I was running on fumes. I need to figure out a better strategy for these dev update production hauls. My goal is for the Dec update to be strongly coherent and showcase, if not gameplay, then significant AI usage of gameplay :)
Matthew Cason wrote:Love the unity in the UI! It would have never occurred to me to carry over the node-based system into everything else but it is so simple and elegant and functional, that the decision seems a natural one. And even just that sample universe map you threw in was jaw-dropping in scope. Amazing!
Thanks Matthew, so happy to hear that :D
Gazz wrote:Right now there is no balance.
No real ship construction.
It's all a bunch of systems with rule-of-thumb data just to see if they add up the numbers in the correct manner.
It's even worse that that. I literally just freeballed a number for mass that was way, way, way off. I should really be less careless :oops:
Kvallning wrote:
rickelsen wrote:And that is that the textures dont scale very good. Or rather that the textures seams to scale together/linearly with the ships size.
Speaking of scale, that's sort of something I keep noticing in the videos as well: Whenever I see a big ship do hairpin turns, and quite quickly, something in me goes "...oh... " and "ho hum..." Yeah, I know, it's space, there's technically no weight, so I shouldn't be complaining about it, but screw realism damn it! When I see what seems to be a decent sized frigate doing quick manoeuvres like that, something in me screams for some semblance of heftiness, or drag, but I know we've had about seventeen thousand threads about that previously.
See above. I'm an embarrassment :shifty:
Flatfingers wrote:1. I miss the more angular, feathery structure from the initial interface look. I definitely do like the radial look, though, and I appreciate that there may be a valuable mechanical/control aspect to the new circular look. Still... any chance that other visual structures will be supported?

2. It might be an artifact of the video or YouTube, but the lines showing connections "behind" the current level of nodes seemed to fade out a little too quickly to see the deep structure of a set of nodes. If the final version could have a slider that lets us adjust the fade-out level, that would be spectacular.

3. The value of this UI for showing/navigating a pure hierarchical structure is apparent. But some data aren't purely hierarchical; they can have multiple belongs-to relationships. The "dusty" clusters of objects (presumably mostly asteroids) in a system node view suggest that the node interface can cope with things-attached-to-multiple-things. Is that correct? If not, should/could it be?

4. I wasn't sure, but at times I think I saw little flashes of light among the nodes. I'm hoping that this is a very early example of the node UI in "dynamic" mode, where changes to data are represented by visual effects among the nodes and connections. The idea of seeing the LT universe in a schematic view alive with fireworks of AI activity is extremely appealing. I would really, really like to see that -- a sort of game version of Indra's Net.

5. I would like that even more if it were possible to select which kinds of dynamic activity to highlight continuously in the node UI. To be able to choose to see bursts of economic activity, or mining, or ships blinking out of existence where jewel-like massed fleets collide....
Very happy that I pleased the Flat :D

1. Absolutely, I mentioned that I will continue to develop more layout algorithms for specific types of data, and I'm sure some of them will include more angular varieties. Ultimately the goal is to optimize interaction ease, and in some places angular structures will probably work best. Suffice it to say we will see much more than just the concentric ring structure showcased here :thumbup:

2. Definitely something that we can tweak. Another thing I love about this interface - there are so many things that you can customize to suit your tastes. Even things like how many subnode levels are unrolled (which controls the on-screen complexity). And certainly the transparency falloff, etc. are all easy things to make customizable!

3. Everything shown so far is a clear tree structure (the entities in a system, for example, all belong to one system). To display general graphs, we will need some more cleverness. Well, that's not strictly true - currently it will simply visualize a graph as a recursive tree (e.g. if you drill into a child, you can further drill into parent, but this is two levels below the original parent, which is the exact same). Yes, this needs to be dealt with more elegantly and I am actively thinking on it :)

4. Yes! Courtesy of graphics Josh :monkey: Each node can find itself randomly subject to an "eletrical impulse" that will travel along connected nodes, ultimately decaying. But it provides a lovely yet subtle feeling of life and electricity. These impulses could definitely be queued to events like damage, firing, etc. That's an awesome idea and I hadn't considered it! Graphics Josh is pleased to be of functional service :geek:

5. Me too. There's lots of stuff to be done in terms of node coloring, sizing, etc. based on what patterns you want to discern. Fun times ahead :)
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#43
Josh, what factors are the NPC's in your video taking into consideration when picking an asteroid to mine? You mentioned that with the revamped AI, the NPC's chose asteroids close to the station. What's causing them to pick different asteroids in your video rather than compete over the closest one to the station? Are they taking each other's proximities into account, or judging off of the size of the asteroids, or are they using mineral scanners?
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#44
ThymineC wrote:Josh, what factors are the NPC's in your video taking into consideration when picking an asteroid to mine? You mentioned that with the revamped AI, the NPC's chose asteroids close to the station. What's causing them to pick different asteroids in your video rather than compete over the closest one to the station? Are they taking each other's proximities into account, or judging off of the size of the asteroids, or are they using mineral scanners?
Interesting question! The first and most important explanation is that all the AI reasoning is stochastic, so although they are all "likely" to pick a "relatively nearby" rock, it is highly unlikely that they will all converge on the ideal one (at least, not unless they are clocked at a higher frequency. The AI is currently running on fairly low consumption :thumbup: ). Other than that, the "ideal" rock is defined relative to where you are, and the undock position is randomized a bit, so it's also possible that this variation causes the ideal to be different for different ships. Although, it's worth noting that they do generally launch off in several clustered groups :geek:

They do not currently have any kind of penalty in place for converging on the same rock, so there's not any explicit force preventing them from doing so, it's just that the stochastic nature of it all makes that unlikely.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Development Update #11: November 2013

#45
wellllll....thanks a lot Josh....now I'm going to have to buy an Oculus Rift that i can't afford.... :P dear lord do I love that interface, especially with the 3d map of the universe...reminds me of...I think it was Privateer 2 that had a 3d map kind of sort of like that but not nearly as fantastic looking!

Not that I have a touch screen but I think that if you could implement touch screen support that interface would simply be amazing! On top of that using pinch and the such like a tablet or smart phone uses...I could spend all day just dancing around the interface!!!!

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