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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#61
Flatfingers wrote: It hasn't been said out loud that I know of, but maybe what people are thinking is that the historical signals are just sort of taking up space. The requests for a "faster" scanner are perceived as a way to decrease the amount of time that historical data values are displayed.
I could be wrong, but my impression was the the 'faster scanner' requests were coming from those misunderstanding the scanner as a spatial representation rather than a historical one.

In other words, they want a faster radar sweep, not realizing they're not using a radar in the first place.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#64
the point of having history is that, once I implement time-varying emissions, you will actually be able to look at the pattern buffer and figure out what type of object you're dealing with!
A mini-game of signature memory with rotations? A lot of people are terrible at that, and even more will not like playing memory (even amongst those that aren't bad at it).

And if a simulated computer is ultimately doing the actual matching on noisy signals, it's more of a "probability of match" bar that is going to be interesting.

Just my 5 cents, though.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#66
Lum wrote:Not minigames for achieving a total unrelated goal. That's so... so... MMO... :lol:
Actually, I like minigames instead of an arbitrary skill.
I love how they /tried/ to make lockpicking interesting in Oblivion and Skyrim... Let it be something more than a statistic you're leveling.

I get your point though, minigames that don't really contribute to anything but making you spend more time ingame... those are worthless.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#67
Katorone wrote:
Lum wrote:Not minigames for achieving a total unrelated goal. That's so... so... MMO... :lol:
Actually, I like minigames instead of an arbitrary skill.
I love how they /tried/ to make lockpicking interesting in Oblivion and Skyrim... Let it be something more than a statistic you're leveling.

I get your point though, minigames that don't really contribute to anything but making you spend more time ingame... those are worthless.
I like them too, but there on that MMO corner of the gaming world! They're great to break the MMO-routine and it serves the purpose just right. But in a game like LT it would feel... errr... counter-immersive or something like that. Only if the minigames are really topic related and have a meaning would be OK for me, but only in that case.
I have been - and always shall be - your friend.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#68
Why a mini-game, if the way it works now emulates its "real" life counterparts? The game presents to you the same information that would have the pilot, and you must use the same skills that the pilot would need in such circumstances. Simple, elegant and functional. Because, well, this is a sim, and I want to have available the same information and options available to my character, nothing more, and nothing less.
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#69
Etsu wrote:Why a mini-game, if the way it works now emulates its "real" life counterparts?
Well mini-game is just an easy way of saying meta-game for most people. It's a smaller, encapsulated section of the game that usually has you completely involved in the process. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to be taken away from the game to play match-3 or tetris or connect pipe style "mini games" to accomplish unrelated tasks. It's just that when you go into certain "modes" of playing, you are effectively playing a "mini" or "meta" game.

So going into some kind of scanning mode, that is different to piloting the ship because you are now controlling the scanning systems rather than the flight-stick etc, could be more easily described as a "scanner mini-game" than having to explain, in great detail, the definition of the mini-game. The term, in its literal form, is just a smaller game within the game... every piece of the larger game is a mini/meta-game.. piloting the ship, docking, combat, trading, scanning, reading news etc all are meta games.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#72
Sorry to nitpick, but it's not a radar. You could compare it to a sensitive microphone that picks up background noise in the direction you're pointing. I know there's no sound in space though, this is an analogy.

The circle in the HUD displays signals with different frequencies. In a future version of this graph you'll probably see different shapes/colours that mean different things. The signals from an exhaust could be bright blue, while an iron asteroid could be green.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Development Update #13: January 2014

#73
I like the scanner, but... I'm kinda with everyone else that the polar plot doesn't really do it for me - polar means space, linear means time. That's pretty much how we're used to interpreting graphs.

I could get used to it in about five minutes of course, it's not that hard. But, frankly, if you're doing both time and frequency variant signals, the polar plot will be way limited. The most intuitive way to display those is with a waterfall plot or a spectrogram. Get a spectrographic analysis of a signal up and the human pattern recognition system means you'll start to recognise even complex patterns really easily.

And, entirely personally, I think spectrograms look way cool as well as being a totally badass way to display plot frequency variation against time.

Example, example.

Of course in theory you could wrap the time axis of a spectrogram around a circle, if you wanted. I'm not totally convinced that would be a better look at it if you wanted people to get into the mode of easily recognising patterns, though.

Although, really really, what you actually want are lots of different ways to present the raw scanner data to the user, that we can pick and choose. Give me a window with a spectrum analyser, a time series waveform and an FFT spectrogram and I'll be happy ;)

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