Ship Type Organization

Talk among developers, and propose and discuss general development planning/tackling/etc... feature in this forum.
charlieg
Elite Mercenary
Elite Mercenary
Posts: 1329
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2003 11:51 pm
Location: Manchester, UK
Contact:

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by charlieg »

Care to elaborate?
Free Gamer - free software games compendium and commentary!
FreeGameDev forum - open source game development community
krainboltgreene
Star Pilot
Star Pilot
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:07 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by krainboltgreene »

Well not to be offensive, but the project looks a lot less organized and more hacked together from a UI/UX view.

I haven't looked at the internals yet, though. Not too thrilled about the use of SVN, but a tool is a tool.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by klauss »

krainboltgreene wrote:Not too thrilled about the use of SVN, but a tool is a tool.
LOL - and a short time ago, SVN was the latest hype.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
krainboltgreene
Star Pilot
Star Pilot
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:07 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by krainboltgreene »

I'm a Rubyist first and foremost, so "short time" is about two or three media cycles ;)

If I had to start a project this size I'd pick Fossil, or Git if I really needed to get views (Github).
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by klauss »

Size in SCM terms is number of active developers.

VS has veeery few atm. SVN is more than enough.

However, I've only heared good things of GIT. I just don't like its revision numbers (too big and impossible to remember).
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
breese
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 152
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:00 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by breese »

klauss wrote:Size in SCM terms is number of active developers.

VS has veeery few atm. SVN is more than enough.

However, I've only heared good things of GIT. I just don't like its revision numbers (too big and impossible to remember).
As I do not have commit privileges to VS svn, I use git to keep track of my changes locally.

With the git-svn package it is quite easy to use git as a frontend for the VS svn repository.

I did the following to set it up. Normally git-svn will copy the full SVN repository (all revisions of all files), which takes a long time. As I did not need the full history I copied only the most recent revision. If you want the full history, remove the "-rHEAD" below:

Code: Select all

git svn clone -rHEAD https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vegastrike/trunk/vegastrike/
Next you need to handle svn:externals. You can find them with "git svn show-externals". There may be a better way using git submodules, but this works:

Code: Select all

git svn clone -rHEAD http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/tags/release/Boost_1_28_0/boost/boost/ boost/1_28/boost
git svn clone -rHEAD http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/tags/release/Boost_1_28_0/boost/libs/python/src/ boost/1_28/src
git svn clone -rHEAD http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/tags/release/Boost_1_35_0/boost/ boost/1_35/boost
git svn clone -rHEAD http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/tags/release/Boost_1_35_0/libs/python/src/ boost/1_35/src
Use "git svn rebase" to synchronize with the SVN repository.

Use "git format-patch" to generate a patch, or "git svn dcommit" if you have commit privileges for the VS svn repository.

Apart from that, just use the normal git commands while you are working on the local repository.
krainboltgreene
Star Pilot
Star Pilot
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:07 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by krainboltgreene »

Brilliant, great reply. I'll have to bookmark this.
Shark
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:34 am
Contact:

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Shark »

One thing my mentor thumps into my head at ever chance when I'm working on Ruby is "Determine storage then determine use."
How about, "Determine fun then determine game?" ;)

That said, I think organizing ships into nested trees based on class/role/chassis/whatever is an excellent idea.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

After the next release, we have a much bigger content problem to consider regarding the game's fleet than how to organize it.

Right now there are ~200 ships and ~50 stations, most redundant or unnecessary and at least a great minority (if not majority) have never even been seen in game, for lack of content (let alone quality, modern content). Not a single completed ship or station model is anywhere close to modern commercial quality. Even with the smaller number of units in game so far, play balance between them seems to be largely unstable and bland. Even basic descriptions outside of class/role for most are totally missing, so we don't even know how they should look or play. And what about future content like cinemut maps, 3D cockpits and walkable interior spaces? We can't support with content, these quality features that could someday put us ahead of even commercial games, because we have so much useless quantity to service all of the time.

This extreme quantity-over-quality approach does very little good and holds us back in every content development department. We must have a major rethinking and subsequent huge thinning of the herd, like down to 20% of what we have on the wiki right now-- ~50 total ships and stations. Freed of this burden, we can really get down to the business of improving quality to the extent we want and need it for vega strike.
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by pheonixstorm »

I think the quantity of ships is about right for the number of factions in play. Even if we made the list smaller we would need a good 30 ships per faction to round things off. As far as bases.. well that will depend on what we actually want and what we need.

While there might be 200 ships that are supposed to be in the game even if all of them were completed and up to par with the quality we need not every one of those ships should be on the market for the player to buy.

As for 3D cockpits or walkable interiors we can reuse some items. Human bases will have a lot of areas that look the same. Same can be said of aera or rlaan bases/ships. Not everything used for these two topics needs to be unique. The only thing that needs to be unique are the ship classes. I think IF we had enough 3D artists the quantity or quality arguement could be more easily settled.

As the game grows both code and data side ship stats can and will be more balanced and not so bland and far more stable. Too much work and not enough worker bees.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote:I think the quantity of ships is about right for the number of factions in play. Even if we made the list smaller we would need a good 30 ships per faction to round things off.
Not necessarily.

You have Klk'k using Shaper Progeny interceptors in Cephid 17. For a couple canon reasons these factions are not close allies. And yet they share vessels. So why does each faction need it's own set of ships, or even warships if they all use each other's stuff anyway?

And there are already factions that don't have their own ships, like the ISO. We could just turn more factions into "minor factions" in this way. They use whatever craft or craft designs are openly available.

Similarly we could have all sub factions within a major species use primarily "open source" designs. For example LIHW or Merchant guild craft that all factions use for most purposes. But each major sub faction would maintain a few home brew designs of it's own.

On the other hand, maybe we have too many factions in the first place? Once again we might be choosing quantity over quality to too great of an extreme. The present number of independent factions is itself quite huge.
As far as bases.. well that will depend on what we actually want and what we need.
And that in turn probably depends on what specialized tasks we assume are needed or desirable to operate in space. And which factions need their own version of each task oriented station. Or station module if we make them modular (but even a module would likely be capital ship sized).
While there might be 200 ships that are supposed to be in the game even if all of them were completed and up to par with the quality we need not every one of those ships should be on the market for the player to buy.
But that doesn't mean they don't still have to be modeled, textured, integrated, balanced, and maintained like any other ship. And meanwhile other things are being neglected. 3D interior cockpits and bases (nonexistent), natural space objects (my asteroids are only a first step here), storyline character avatars (currently shitty placeholders only), particle textures (also shit), damage modeling (color value only, atm), high end shader maps (nonexistent), surface colonies and vehicles (nonexistent), etc. So many interesting and diverse details are not getting the attention they need in large part because of all this bloated demand for mass quantity in one area.
As for 3D cockpits or walkable interiors we can reuse some items. Human bases will have a lot of areas that look the same. Same can be said of aera or rlaan bases/ships. Not everything used for these two topics needs to be unique. The only thing that needs to be unique are the ship classes. I think IF we had enough 3D artists the quantity or quality argument could be more easily settled.
We would need at least 10-20 3D artists of advanced skill level, fluent in modern techniques and reliable in their output, for this much to be possible. Then each artist would be responsible for maintaining 12 to 25 ships and stations, with each not getting older than 5 years before being rebuilt to modern specs of that day and age. All done in free time. Just for ship and station exteriors and not including any concept or coordination effort.

That kind of workforce just isn't realistic for us, and if it was it could be used to much greater effect filling in other aspects of the game's universe that are currently almost completely empty.
As the game grows both code and data side ship stats can and will be more balanced and not so bland and far more stable. Too much work and not enough worker bees.
The complexity of balancing work does not go up linearly as you add more units though, it goes up exponentially, at least within "neighboring" role types. And having more than one worker bee focus on balancing at the same time can become very problematic very quickly.
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by pheonixstorm »

Deus Siddis wrote:
pheonixstorm wrote:I think the quantity of ships is about right for the number of factions in play. Even if we made the list smaller we would need a good 30 ships per faction to round things off.
Not necessarily.

You have Klk'k using Shaper Progeny interceptors in Cephid 17. For a couple canon reasons these factions are not close allies. And yet they share vessels. So why does each faction need it's own set of ships, or even warships if they all use each other's stuff anyway?
I don't think I made myself very clear on this so heres another try... I'm not refering to every single faction, just the main 3 factions.. or maybe species would work as a better term. Rlaan needs 30, aera 30, humans 30. Thats still about 100 ships
Similarly we could have all sub factions within a major species use primarily "open source" designs. For example LIHW or Merchant guild craft that all factions use for most purposes. But each major sub faction would maintain a few home brew designs of it's own.
Yes. I think this is about how the wiki shows most ships designs anyway. May have to reread the vessel wiki though as im not 100% sure.
On the other hand, maybe we have too many factions in the first place? Once again we might be choosing quantity over quality to too great of an extreme. The present number of independent factions is itself quite huge.
As far as faction RELATIONS I agree there are too many to track. But it also makes things more interesting at the same time
And that in turn probably depends on what specialized tasks we assume are needed or desirable to operate in space. And which factions need their own version of each task oriented station. Or station module if we make them modular (but even a module would likely be capital ship sized).
The usual.. mining bases in or near asteroids, military stations, refineries, shipyards... Most of which we already have I think.
But that doesn't mean they don't still have to be modeled, textured, integrated, balanced, and maintained like any other ship. And meanwhile other things are being neglected. 3D interior cockpits and bases (nonexistent), natural space objects (my asteroids are only a first step here), storyline character avatars (currently shitty placeholders only), particle textures (also shit), damage modeling (color value only, atm), high end shader maps (nonexistent), surface colonies and vehicles (nonexistent), etc. So many interesting and diverse details are not getting the attention they need in large part because of all this bloated demand for mass quantity in one area.
True enough. Sadly though we just don't have enough help to make any of this a reality. What we really need is to get with an art school or one of the game design schools and get some of the artists to work with us. We have a lot of work that needs doing and only one or two artists to work on it.

On the number of ships... Another thing that needs to be done is to rummage through the vessel wiki and check what is post as being worked on, open, finished.. and check what is now ingame and clean up the list so we can easily tell from the list what needs to be started or reworked.. whatever. There is far too much unfinished work, or half ass work to count. To make things worse there is far too much posted in progress works that we don't even have files for.. even some completed work we don't have files of.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote:Yes. I think this is about how the wiki shows most ships designs anyway. May have to reread the vessel wiki though as im not 100% sure.
No there is in fact great sub-faction redundancy. Look in the wiki under colonization:

Continuity (Purist)
Forebear (Shaper)
Jouppi (Andolian)
Tridacna (forsaken)

Those are all human ships, doing the same job that could seemingly be filled by a simple transport hull made by a single faction like the Merchants or such. And I didn't include the equivalents used by the major alien factions (like the two the Rlaan have).

Now look under resource gathering:

COMB (Confederation)
Cultivator (Shaper)
Diligence (Purist)
Miner MK351 (Mechanist)

Again that's just the human ones. Also notice the Andolians have a colony but no mining vessel whereas the Mechanists have the reverse imbalance. Why? The redundancy isn't even consistent.

You'll see the same sort of thing over and over from one role to the next. Look at terraforming, personal transport, support, etc.
As far as faction RELATIONS I agree there are too many to track. But it also makes things more interesting at the same time
But they weren't until I made them that way. You see before I rebalanced factions.xml, like in 0.5, there were essentially two factions-- the Aeran Ascendancy and the remaining universe. At least besides the small fringe factions, the luddites, pirates and ISO. All these many factions were tied together such that if one attacked you and you defended yourself, a chain reaction would be set off that would lead to everyone being against you except (strangely enough) the aera.

So really there wasn't much interesting about having lots of factions. They all use a mishmash of ships, they all work together against the player, all the game tells you about them are their names and a few one line responses.

And once again the reason the quality and detail level of the factions is so low is because of sheer quantity. Too many factions, just like everything else content related.
The usual.. mining bases in or near asteroids, military stations, refineries, shipyards... Most of which we already have I think.
We have none of modern, full quality. Most are far from it in fact-- something like a decade old.

We should think about what is not the usual. Medical stations, diplomatic stations, asteroid fighter bases? Are these really necessary or functional as separate objects floating in deep space. Hospitals are generally inside of cities for example. Not every faction needs an alternative fighter base that resides in an asteroid.
True enough. Sadly though we just don't have enough help to make any of this a reality. What we really need is to get with an art school or one of the game design schools and get some of the artists to work with us. We have a lot of work that needs doing and only one or two artists to work on it.
Again though, that won't be anywhere near enough to handle this burden. And the list of content bloat on the wiki could spread out their efforts thin over ships and stations we don't even really need.
On the number of ships... Another thing that needs to be done is to rummage through the vessel wiki and check what is post as being worked on, open, finished.. and check what is now ingame and clean up the list so we can easily tell from the list what needs to be started or reworked.. whatever. There is far too much unfinished work, or half ass work to count. To make things worse there is far too much posted in progress works that we don't even have files for.. even some completed work we don't have files of.
There was already something like this, very very big and long. But it is now abandoned. You can find it someplace on the wiki. Again there is too much to effectively keep track of. Each unit is a small project in its own right with multiple content features that must be kept track of (as the aforementioned list attempted to do).


Too much. . .
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by pheonixstorm »

I think for some of the hull types we can use a base design and just have add-on modules that can be strapped on to make them appear different.

I think part of the reason VS was abandoned was due to the fact that the Horns, JackS and the rest just tried to do too much with VS. Well... one thing at a time.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote: I think for some of the hull types we can use a base design and just have add-on modules that can be strapped on to make them appear different.
I think we will need to do this, plus have more roles done by general purpose hulls, plus have more factions not make any or many of their own ships, plus any other tricks that become apparent to cut down our current content budget.
I think part of the reason VS was abandoned was due to the fact that the Horns, JackS and the rest just tried to do too much with VS. Well... one thing at a time.
I think it contributed. The main issue was the code being an undocumented mess that was never fully refactored and documented.

But if the content and content development process was a lot more elegant and not spread so thin, the game would look and feel a lot better. And it could be much better balanced, making it play better too. These things help attract people to the project.
Shark
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:34 am
Contact:

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Shark »

I think for some of the hull types we can use a base design and just have add-on modules that can be strapped on to make them appear different.
I think having multiple versions of the same basic hull is a good idea regardless if it's just cosmetic.

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." - Henry Ford
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

Shark wrote:
I think for some of the hull types we can use a base design and just have add-on modules that can be strapped on to make them appear different.
I think having multiple versions of the same basic hull is a good idea regardless if it's just cosmetic.
That's totally the opposite idea and counter productive. We need less 'cosmetic' variety. We need fewer, higher quality models that represent noticeable game play differences and variety.

What you are quoting pheonixstorm talking about is to use minor changes to models to represent larger differences that are presently represented by entirely different classes of ships with their unique models. But instead in the future, we could 'dock' shipping containers to an Ox to make it a freighter, reentry pods to make it a colonization craft, missile pods to make it artillery, etc. That makes for less designing, modeling, texturing and even, to an extent, less balancing to worry about.
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by pheonixstorm »

That about sums it up deus. Although the main point I was really getting at is how ships are created in Galactic Civilations 2 or how units are built in Warzone2100 (though for us not done in game). For ship building we could use stock objects such as engine pods, landing bays, etc that we import to attach to our models while building them. Maybe a better example would be in the nwn toolset how different armor can have different models used for certain pieces. The armor is broken down into R/L shoulder, torso, neck, R/L leg, feet etc. though.

I hope I am trying to explain this correctly.. my ideas sometimes when blabbed about can and do confuse people at times.. (i do tend to ramble on and on...)
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote:That about sums it up deus. Although the main point I was really getting at is how ships are created in Galactic Civilations 2 or how units are built in Warzone2100 (though for us not done in game).
Ah I see what you are saying now and I think that flavor of system would be the most preferable. In fact I think we should work towards an even more modular system, but a step at a time:
  • 1) Build ship meshes out of standardized and reusable sub meshes (like turrets are already)
  • 2) Make sub meshes independently damageable, with damage affecting the corresponding system (engine model damage reduces thrust, radar model damage reduces sensor range, etc.)
  • 3) Make the sub meshes correspond to the individual installed upgrades. (ship with MX24 engines has MX24 engine models in it's engine bays, with Typhon MKVIII rocket pods installed you see models of said weapons attached to ship)
The first step is purely a content one and the code for handling weapons in this way is already implemented, IIRC.
Psyco Diver 69
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 130
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:32 am
Location: Here
Contact:

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Psyco Diver 69 »

Personally I would like to see color choice more than anything.

BUT I think it would be cool that instead of all ships being refurbished or milspec, maybe if you bought a new ship, you could buy the basic hull, add on different engines, thrusters, weapons pods, cargo holds, obviously within balance, that way you could make a cargo ship all about speed, or heavily armored, OR you could take that hull and make it purely a fighter. You could still do the basic upgrades like armor types and afterburners and such. OR you could buy prebuilt ships for cheaper, or buy refurbished ships that may not have the hull strenght or higher mass than when it was new.That maybe more complicated than worth it.

I would like to see New ships and Used ships, the new ships can be all new and shiney looking, some ships you could only buy brand new, and if they were used ones as counter parts, the new ones would be slightly faster and stronger while used ships could look more weathered, some ships you can only buy used
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by pheonixstorm »

As it stands you can do that in the units.csv rather easily. ship.stock can be new and if there isn't a code for it yet you could add ship.refurb for something older and worn. Either way the only way I can think of making a used ship slowe etc would be to have the arts (engine etc) start as slightly damaged or start the ship with lower grade parts. New ship would have say mk III engine while a used ship might use a mk II or mk I
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
breese
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 152
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:00 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by breese »

Deus Siddis wrote:
  • 2) Make sub meshes independently damageable, with damage affecting the corresponding system (engine model damage reduces thrust, radar model damage reduces sensor range, etc.)
I just wanted to pair this comment with the feature request for Targettable, destructible weapons and ammo tracking
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by Deus Siddis »

breese wrote:
Deus Siddis wrote:
  • 2) Make sub meshes independently damageable, with damage affecting the corresponding system (engine model damage reduces thrust, radar model damage reduces sensor range, etc.)
I just wanted to pair this comment with the feature request for Targettable, destructible weapons and ammo tracking
Pair it how, do you mean? Should this be merged into that ticket somehow?
breese
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 152
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:00 pm

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by breese »

Deus Siddis wrote:Pair it how, do you mean? Should this be merged into that ticket somehow?
No, I just wanted to include the reference in this discussion, so that if/when we get around to implementing this, then we do not forget the feature request is related to this discussion.
greenfreedom10
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2010 3:06 am
Location: Lost in an adventure

Re: Ship Type Organization

Post by greenfreedom10 »

Deus Siddis wrote:Ah I see what you are saying now and I think that flavor of system would be the most preferable. In fact I think we should work towards an even more modular system
Excellent ideas, Deus.

Another reason to reduce content: Debian has dropped VegaStrike because of (among other reasons) its size.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.deb ... games/4297

Perhaps getting VegaStrike back in Debian should be a priority after the next release. Had it not been packaged before, I would probably know nothing about VegaStrike now.
Post Reply