Jump Points

[Heltarawa]

Blue spheres do we really need them. I know in all other games but priv if you came to a jumpoint there was no blue spere just a marker

[chuck_starchaser]

This was discussed at length long ago, and I'm lazy to cover all the details. Just quick summary:

Jump-points are natural phenomena, are invisible to the naked eye, and require special equipment to locate --which equipment is not publically available, but only to the Exploratory Services and the military.
The officially sanctioned jump points are made available to the public via a database that your ship's nav computer has a copy of. Your ship's HUD display creates the pretty looking blue spheres as a navigational aid. They are not "out there", but rather overlayed graphics onto your windows or visor.
The military traditionally shun such displays, and use buoys instead.
The buoys serve also as data relays, sending and receiving data through the the jump tunnels and relaying them to in-system comm units.

[spiritplumber]

I need to replace the current spheres with something more wireframe-y looking, so it's clear that it's a projection... or remove them entirely. I personally always preferred just having buoys, I have been using the color as an indicator of whom the star system belongs to.I personally vote for naked buoys (not too keen on naked boys, sorry not right now anyway ) but let me know... I think we should have vs.config variables for this. An option would be that the wireframe etc. only "lights up" when you are targeting the jump point, would that do?

[mkruer]

How about something like


Its all about being subtle, and if you want I can even animate it. So the grid slowly rotates, at the same time the perlin noise is animated. It not difficult and I think I would work.

Oh yeah we need to get the 2:1 working for textures having to scale it to fit 1:1 kills the quality.

[spiritplumber]

I like.

[klauss]

@mkruer: Just animate the perlin noise. Rotating the wireframe would be prohibitly expensive without composite animations (soon there will be... patience), and it can be faked by making the sphere rotate. And... 2:1 textures do work. Earth is a 2:1 texture. And it works. I'm not sure what's the problem when it doesn't, since I never had that problem. Really. Every time I used nonsquare textures, they worked.

[spiritplumber]

maybe it's some file format quirk. save them as jpgs?

[chuck_starchaser]

Frankly, a circle around it would be fine for me, and more intuitive in terms of the player understanding that it's an HUD projection, not an actual phenomenon in space.
But, how about having each ship computer manufacturer have its own, distinctive style? (Color codes should perhaps be standardized, though.)

[spiritplumber]

How about a circle (or octagon, or whatever) painted with the owning faction's color? i need to redo HUDs anyway.

[klauss]

Or a wireframe sphere like the wireframe thingies used by VegaStrike, only that the color is the owning faction's color. That would need some ugly recoding of the engine (ugly because it's very specific), but would be quite flexible, and nice IMO. And this way, we can have both: the blue sphere with the wireframe overlaid, or just the wireframe, or just the blue sphere.

If you like that, I could do it (the engine recoding). I know where those things are.

[spiritplumber]

not ugly at all, just check if isJump and make a wireframe of a different shape, then look at the faction color then have a vsconfig thing to turn it off or on. maybe even vs would use it.

[chuck_starchaser]

I still think each nav computer maker should have their distinctive wireframe; though, I'm aware of the fact that manufacturers of ships and components are not identified as of yet, but I think of that as a bug. I may adress the issue shortly, as I'm compiling a list of companies in Gemini and it's quite long already.
Anyhow, we do have names for radars: B&S, Hunter and forgot.

[spiritplumber]

Iris does black and white
Hunter does FOF color
B&S does full color

I think that to keep it simple we could draw a circle around the jumpable area (kinda like a docking zone, but circular rather than square) and color it with

The jump "unit" should be a nav buoy that can look different for that faction or, if we like, nothing at all. If it's nothing at all (unexplored jump point) it won't even show up on radar.... normal radar anyway i think this would solve a certain problem.

[mkruer]

@mkruer: Just animate the perlin noise. Rotating the wireframe would be prohibitly expensive without composite animations (soon there will be... patience), and it can be faked by making the sphere rotate. And... 2:1 textures do work. Earth is a 2:1 texture. And it works. I'm not sure what's the problem when it doesn't, since I never had that problem. Really. Every time I used nonsquare textures, they worked.

IS that a 512x256 texture or is it a 512x512 texture and you are only using half of it?

[chuck_starchaser]

Iris does black and white
Hunter does FOF color
B&S does full color

I think that to keep it simple we could draw a circle around the jumpable area (kinda like a docking zone, but circular rather than square) and color it with

The jump "unit" should be a nav buoy that can look different for that faction or, if we like, nothing at all. If it's nothing at all (unexplored jump point) it won't even show up on radar.... normal radar anyway i think this would solve a certain problem.

I totally agree about a simple circle. There are so many things for which detail is more important, why waste CPU cycles and GPU resources on mere markers? Plus, it makes it more obvious that it's an HUD generated display, as opposed to a supernatural thing out there. Plus, it will interfere less with the visuals, like not being able to see a ship you're trying to shoot because of all the swirling lines.

Maybe both: the jump circle AND the buoy should reflect faction color; let us remember that according to canon, the buoys can be destroyed, so you'd only see the circle; and the nav data may not be in your computer, or your type of computer not use markers for jump points, like traditional military nav computers, in which case you'd only see the buoy.

An unofficial jump point wouldn't show in a normal radar unless someone entered its coords into your computer, like the retro informant does. Additionally, jump points that exist, exist even if your ship's computer has no info on them, and if you were at the right place and press J you should jump, and from then on your computer will remember there was a jump point there. Thus, someone could, instead of entering coords into your ship, just say "fly to to the center of an asteroid field in the direction of the butterfly nebula from planet such and so, and jump".

[klauss]

@mkruer: Just animate the perlin noise. Rotating the wireframe would be prohibitly expensive without composite animations (soon there will be... patience), and it can be faked by making the sphere rotate. And... 2:1 textures do work. Earth is a 2:1 texture. And it works. I'm not sure what's the problem when it doesn't, since I never had that problem. Really. Every time I used nonsquare textures, they worked.

IS that a 512x256 texture or is it a 512x512 texture and you are only using half of it?

Earth is 1024x512 PNG (old version) and 2048x1024 JPG (new version), both used as usual with the sphere mesh. In fact, they're exchangeable.

[chuck_starchaser]

The only problem I see with a circle is that you wouldn't know whether you are close enough to it. Maybe a very simple regular solid, like a dodecahedron (12 pentagonal facets) wireframe would do?

[spiritplumber]

i'm also perfectly ok with a wireframe sphere ^_^;

[chuck_starchaser]

Okay, but maybe it should be low poly, like say 12 wedges, 6 rings. Like to make it really obvious it's a computer projection, not a real object in space, and so the lines don't interfere with your ability to see other ships.

[spiritplumber]

heck yea. ^_^; works for me.

[chuck_starchaser]

Here are your screenies:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... eenies.zip
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... eenies.zip

[mkruer]

I would love to have support for MNG files.

[klauss]

I would love to have support for MNG files.

I'm on it. But mnglib has a somewhat bizarre interface. But... I'm on it.

[mkruer]

I have been playing around with MNG files for the last few weeks, and I have found some inconsistency in the development tools. Whether this is just really old files on the MNG dev site or the development tools not fully supporting MNG I do not know.

Great example is JASC Animation Shop. It can export MNG files just fine, and they are readable by all viewers that support the format. However so some strange reason when you try to import an MNG file into JASC Animation Shop, it usually come up with an invalid header error.

[klauss]

libmng does have incomplete format support. It seems that the MNG format is huge. And I heared something about a tool creating invalid headers, and there was another tool for fixing those headers, but I'm not sure that's the problem you're describing.

Anyway, incomplete and all, mng support would be nice, for we would only use very few of its features.

But what's a must is jng support - that would come almost for free after having mng support.