Questions ideas etc. about ships/ship interface.

[Aacron]

(Copy of post is on google docs, cause i just realized that this board doesn't allow cut and paste with formatting from openoffice)
link: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgmdq4pn_19hsvpz7f3

Hey,
I'm wondering if this is doable, and thinking of background stuff as I'm coming up with this idea. One of the things that has bugged me since the first time I played VS was the whole ship buying/upgrading interface. For instance, the Goddard. Only available with the milspec package, which is treated as one item instead of components.

So for some background information, I kinda need to know something. How is the player, ship, and installed ship parts handled? Is the player=ship as I'm thinking it is? Also, how are things handled by the game as far as Ships and the extensions/etc that are in the ship?

What I'm thinking is currently done is each item in the game that moves has its own thrust variables and such (cause the goddard has the military package that has attributes like thrust of 0 and such (which doesn't have thrust... are items considered ships by the engine too?)

Basically I'm asking if that can be fixxed up a bit, to make more sense, and for stuff like buying a new sensor package doesn't “break” the milspec package. I should be able to sell/buy parts if I wanna, darnit! New reactor/shields/whatever I want, FTW.

BTW, are items all stored/sorted in the game like...
Items by type, such as (small_laser.xml, medium_laser.xml, tradables.xml, amor.xml, ships/name.xml)?
Dunno... seems like some of the cluster---- that I've seen has to do with stuff being in so many places. Like there are two directories for a lot of the sectors and such. Savegames are odd. Lol the whole directory tree has me confused. Got to looking to see if there was something useful I could do to help out the game and speed up its development, and was expecting something like...

D:\Games\VegaStrike
Bin
Data
+Models
|-Universe
|-Systems
|-Missions
|-blah blah...
Save

Basically I'm wanting to help by doing... something other than playing. I know a little C, but not a lot past simple stuff. I'm actually better working with scripting engines than anything (I play X2/X3, and have a tangled mess of scripts in there for smarter AI, turret ai, trading ai, yada yada). I could do something useful like... hell I dunno! Someone would have to give me a basic run-down of what the mess is in the vegastrike folder for me to even start to figure something out that I can do.

Kinda throwing in a bunch of other ideas here:
Items are each a subset to the parent (I think). I'm probably missing a bunch of stuff like variables, but these are just ideas.

Universe:
Systems:
Planets/bases
Faction
Bar
Mission availability
Faction news
Cargo
Wares bought
Demand (Price. If they have a stockpile they shouldn't pay as much for more)
Wares generated/sold
Supply (Price based off of what the neighborhood demand is)
Ships
Can generate ships (yes/no)
Clone (Save) allowed
Player
Current location
Money
Faction standings
Current ship:
Hull type
Hull strength
Max armor type
Armor strength
Reactor type allowed
Recharge rate
Recharge priority (Shields/weapons/engines/jump)
Tunings
Engine type allowed
Thrust
Max speed
Tunings
Jump drive
Storage
Max shield type
Storage
Recharge rate
Tunings
Max Capacitor
Storage
Has X weapon placements
Size of weapon allowed
Can use tracking (yes/no)
Weapon mounted
Tracking angle (MAX)
Tracking speed (MAX)
Fire rate
Ammo (yes/no)
Max rounds in clip
Reload rate
Tunings
Has X turret placements
Mix/max angle (we aren't shooting through the ship!)
Turret Size allowed
Turret mounted
Turret max tracking speed
Fire rate
Ammo (yes/no)
Max rounds per clip
Reload rate
Tunings
Ship computer
Weapon tracking (yes/no)
Max tracking angle
Weapon fire vector prediction (cant remember what it is called)
Sensors
Max range
EM shielding (for those pesky nebula!)
IFF enabled (The heuristic thingumy)
Cargo space (ammo and trade-ables in here)
Owned ships
Ship location
Ship properties (see above)
Missions

[loki1950]

Have a look at units.csv with the tool in this threadhttp://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... =20&t=7143or OOo's calc (careful with saves if you edit with calc)that is where every unit in the game is defined with it's stats while master_part_list.csv gives things a price and defines whether a unit is purchasable in-game.Your file layout looks good but will it also work under OSX and Linux as we are cross-platform and there are some compatibility issues already so introducing an other may cause all sorts of problems source code side(differing code for each platform)in maintaining it.BTW AI is scheduled for a rewrite when it will happen is an other story and our scripting language is Python.

Enjoy the Choice

[Aacron]

Just curious, but why isn't price and 'buyable' in the same file? just curious. merging it might make life easier, since its in one file you cant forget to put it in the other file.

and is that a base price? would be cool if we could get VS to dynamically change prices based off supply/demand... (I'm beign a dork and looking at one of the things I liked in the X series)

Can I not save it with Calc? or is there a way to do so? maybe i could do somethign useful
-edit-
EEEEEk!! just opened that csv in calc... lots of this stuff.... dunno what it is erm... question though. noticed that there is a field called mounts, and the items are... listed individually. wouldn't it be simpler for editing purposes, and for future sanity to try making somethign like...
Mounts:
WeaponClass(1, 2, 3), Shield([1-9])
and then have a field with something like
Item Type | Class
Weapon | 4
Shield | 1

or somethign like that?

and is it possible to seperate the items in the list by what type of item they are and then have seperate files like:
ships.csv
shields.csv
light_beam.csv
sensors.csv
...
...
????
Seems like it might help in the future. Tidy things up. make the total file size across the csvs smaller since un-needed fields for certain items wouldn't be in that itemtype's csv file. Make it easier not to bork things by editing a wrong line or something.

I'm just throwing ideas around. if they aren't possible at all, then I can deal with it and see what I can do. just seems like I'd throw some logic and efficiency ideas around


BTW, I'm probably stepping on egos here... not meaning to... anything i say or ask is basically a question since I don't know. I tend to ask those questions and throw ideas around cause I'm like... that guy that tries to get something and make it better (hence the X2/3 scripting that I do on occasion to make the 'ok' things more kickass). Not saying "thing sare wrong", as much as saying "hey, would this be better". Hell I've been tryign to get the guys at egosoft (makers of the X-series) to ditch the SETA drive and do something more like SPEC is here.

[loki1950]

That file is strictly for code convenience not for humans but csv_editor v2 helps a lot(now to edit my previous post to get the link right )and yes it is a base price there are variations in-game.Our scripting language is Python have a look at the missions and modules folders for examples.

Enjoy the Choice

[V3N0M1300]

So far all I've seen appear to be fighters and light freighters. Are there any plans to add large capital ships?

[loki1950]

Welcome V3N0M1300 do you mean for player to buy the only capital ship available for purchase is the Clydesdale and it's available on Ice and Trantor class planets apart from that there are lots of NPC capitals specific to the various factions besides they all fly like bricks in molasses which is right physics wise but not very player friendly after all turning something 2km long on a dime is just not believable

Enjoy the Choice

[V3N0M1300]

would be nice to have an eve online/rts style interface for large ships so you can command them instead of directly controlling them

[loki1950]

ATM we are only support one active ship per player so that is a way off in the development though the auto-pilot will get you from point a to b even with the cap ships but the main focus of the game is not micro managing resources

Enjoy the Choice

[TBeholder]

As to in-flight exchange, i proposed to unify the screens we have on base and in-flight, though it was more about repairs, rearming your drones, this sort of things; though there's no reason to exclude cargo, of course.

Welcome V3N0M1300 do you mean for player to buy the only capital ship available for purchase is the Clydesdale and it's available on Ice and Trantor class planets apart from that there are lots of NPC capitals specific to the various factions besides they all fly like bricks in molasses which is right physics wise but not very player friendly

ATM we are only support one active ship per player so that is a way off in the development though the auto-pilot will get you from point a to b

Yeah. IMO capships have no buisness being "docked" at anything less than dockyard, and then it's for serious repair/refit purpose only. Small repair is up to repairbots or something, fighting is up to sububits/drones... And if there's some cargo to trade, it's a work for shuttles.
But to do this, they should be not only loaded, but also tasked to haul one ship's cargo back and forth, as opposed to flying to the other end of the system once they're free to move. That is, everything needs serious AI upgrade, as usual.

would be nice to have an eve online/rts style interface for large ships so you can command them instead of directly controlling them

...so that requires step up after having shuttles working right...