Few things i'd like to see, and do if i had the time

[safemode]

Right now, time is a resource i really dont have any of. Working more than 70 hours a week leaves absolutely no time to do anything on the computer. Lots of my pet projects are on hold for me and that's frustrating to no end. With any luck, my work spell can settle down some and i get back to VS.

One thing i haven't had time to get going is the ray collider. I really want to get that in and functional and really simplify collisions and collision detection. The ray collider would also be used for AI functionality, creating better maneuvering and smarter AI ships.

Cubemap support. Remove spheremaps and implement cubemap DDS direct loading support. Most of this is done already, it's just the tiny pieces that patch the present features together that is lacking.

Alternate artwork support. This is done, but not actually used yet. What i wanted to have was your standard data set, then a set of artist requested high quality uber textures selected to make the game look extremely good without a lot of unnecessary duplication. This has been semi-done as hqtextures. In addition to this though, was supposed to be the opposite texture pack. A texture pack consisting of solid colors and very small dds files. This was to allow for the Retro mode to be fully functional and useful on slower machines with less ram, not requiring even faster machines than running the game in hq mode. Right now retro mode simply uses the smaller mipmaps within the regular textures, but caches the entire file.

Dynamic event subsystem. An event being an AI command packet. This can consist of a single command or a list of commands. I wanted to implement this system in parallel with the current way things are done, then push things into using it one at a time, with the fallback being the regular way. Basically, dynamic events would replace campaigns, AI routine scripts, missions, and quests. A dynamic event can be as dictated or ad-hoc as the author of it wants or needs it to be. They are generated and received through any number of ways, either direct transmittance to units or triggered by some game state event. Units would process each dynamic event and decide based on their programmed characteristics how to respond to each event, giving the range of reaction to each event a certain degree of uncertainty, yielding the wider outcome of sequences of dynamic events (campaigns, missions and quests and such) a sense of unscripted AI. I've got a general API figured out.

Faction level AI. This is an AI that is given no unit, but has access to the game state and a list of associated units to the faction. It would also have a list to the other faction AI. What it does is send events based on the game state and faction level personality characteristics. The faction AI would be driven by individual role scripts,and it would be able to trigger campaigns, some that may or may not have been triggered by some direct action of the player. The faction AI's play somewhat like Civilization. While the directive of a unit is to do what it's commands tell it to do and survive, the faction AI's directive is dependent on it's role script and personality. A role script is simply a set of commands to get things started. Once things get going, personality and various dynamic events controls everything from then on. You would be able to see diplomacy going on between factions, wars started, ended and trade agreements made. You'd also be privy to seeing backstabbing, deceit, and sacrifice. All of this would have the same level of range of control that dynamic events allows units to have, since the faction AI would communicate through dynamic events as well. Most of the benefit would be in coordinating massive epic scale battles.

Multiple base single planet. This allows for multiple bases to be attached to a single planet. It seems obvious, but it's currently not the way things are done. A single planet, even in the far future, can't be assumed to be homogenous. Habitable worlds would be fairly accurately assumed to have a range of ecosystems and thus centers of trade. In addition to offering more variety and a more immersive game experience by multiplying the destinations without increasing the size of systems, we also would offer a way to hide bases. Hidden bases would be used by pirates, and by governments utilizing secret installations. In addition to all of that, we can include the idea that some worlds aren't as stable as others on the outskirts. Worlds can have "civil wars", or wars within themselves, and landing on them could be temporarily disabled.

Blockading. That is to say, that the lack of trade over time will cause real consequences in-game. While not all rendered in game, bases serve a faction's day to day ability to function, and removing that base would cause a cascade effect that would reduce or destroy a faction's ability to work. Ship construction requires materials. If i blockade a base that processes ore for a significant amount of time (couple days or so) then the faction is going to get very agitated as ship production comes to a halt. The faction AI will then decide on what kind of action to take. Factions can be completely crippled with some strategic blockading and coordinated attacks. This requires that each faction have a balanced economy that's realistic and functional. Obviously no small undertaking.

Make spec more realistic. No visual distortion, no external camera modes while in spec (it wouldn't make sense anyway). HUD overlay maps your current location in relation to the normal universe (it's best guess anyway). No radar, no ability to be shot or shoot. SPEC capacitors will once again be put to use. Ideally, i'd like to see something like Andromeda's slipstream procedure used for spec. Once you spec (since you are forced to cockpit mode) your hud transforms into a rapidly updating grid showing the immediate gravimetric topology of the system around you. You use special controls to route through the best path. The idea being, ship AI is less capable of navigating the semi-random fluctuations of the gravimetric topology at such small scales than the living brain. This routing is done in coordination with the navigation of the ship across the system. The tweaking doesn't effect your position in relation to normal space, but it does effect your speed as you traverse the system's gravity topology. Better pilots will be able to spec faster. Voila, now you're doing something in between bases.

Update warp procedure. No accretion disk. Gradual non-pausing transition from normal space to wormhole where the game can then pause the graphics as it loads new graphics for the new system. User would be unable to see this pause and a moment later you'd gradually exit. Warp openings should also do neat things like distort radar or render it garbled with interference.

Faction centric News. This being the idea that each faction would have a media organization or government sponsored media outlet that shapes the news for their particular interests and motives. Pirate radio news would exist, but the official internet streams would be censored and filtered within the bounds of each faction's control. This would provide various spins of a particular event or the lack of news available in one system that is available in another. This would entice the user to explore around to get the full picture. The pirate radio type news adds another aspect of this, providing another sub-faction of ships that would be seen as outlaws even within their own faction if caught participating by a narc.

Towing. Ships get stuck out in space. tractor beams are great for bringing in small cargo, or temporary attachment of two ships. But if you want to haul something a long distance because it's stranded in the middle of no where, you need a way of getting it back to base. A sub-class of ship could carry out the task of towing these stranded ships back to a base for a fee. Basically, a specially constructed cable could be shot from a tow ship and attach to any other ship (very large ships may require more tows). When you are stranded due to damage or lack of fuel, you would hit a button to initiate a distress signal. If you're lucky and you're somewhat close to neutral or friendly people, you'll be rescued without having to abandon your ship. Careful though. If the tow people can hear you, so can the pirates.

Nebular systems. Some systems would exist within a nebula. This would replace our current retarded way of handling nebulas. Things are hidden in nebular systems. Nebular systems are dangerous, and could cause ships constant immediate damage via radiation or debris. This is the type of system that hides some of my pet mission plotlines.

That brings me to the idea that some stars in a system would be rare. While statistically, you could probably travel system to system your entire life and see nothing but standard looking stars like ours, it's rather boring to recreate that experience. I wanted to be able to recreate extremely close rapidly rotating binary star systems, where you can see the atmospheres of both being transferred to eachother. I wanted to show some neutron stars, red dwarfs, giants and maybe even a black hole.

Anyways, that's just some of the things i'd like to get back to being able to get working on, in addition to the non-game side of things like cmake and organization and such. Sometime in the future hopefully.

[Deus Siddis]

Wow, that is a really impressive list, you've really cut some work out for yourself.

Nebular systems. Some systems would exist within a nebula. This would replace our current retarded way of handling nebulas. Things are hidden in nebular systems. Nebular systems are dangerous, and could cause ships constant immediate damage via radiation or debris. This is the type of system that hides some of my pet mission plotlines.

That brings me to the idea that some stars in a system would be rare. While statistically, you could probably travel system to system your entire life and see nothing but standard looking stars like ours, it's rather boring to recreate that experience. I wanted to be able to recreate extremely close rapidly rotating binary star systems, where you can see the atmospheres of both being transferred to eachother. I wanted to show some neutron stars, red dwarfs, giants and maybe even a black hole.

I am really starting to sound like a broken record, but the way asteroid fields are handled is also currently retarded. Maybe you could put 'asteroid belts' on this list after nebula systems but before exotic stars.

[safemode]

half of the stuff is stuff that's already started, halfway implemented but not used or still in the planning stages. The other half is stuff that is still being tossed around as an idea to get used.

Asteroids is definitely something i forgot. The technical problems with an asteroid system that is realistic is handling the multitude of objects. If we're going to have them being some physical obstacle that is important to the layout of a system, then it would have to exist not only for the player but also for the other AI ships in the system (negating only near rendering).

The solution i think is in dynamic detail generation, like in the seamless flight thread. Basically, far away an asteroid is a rectangle. AI ships can collide with these rectangles and they can collide with eachother. Closer, detail is given to the rectangle based on a collection of height maps that will allow various forms to be generated from the various sized and dimensioned rectangular asteroids. Hopefully rectangles dont put too much of a load on the system, even 10,000 of them.

But yea, that's the jist of the asteroid problem. It's not that we can't do it, or dont want to. It's that doing it anywhere remotely right and to the point where it serves any real purpose other than eye candy is really really problematic for most systems to handle.


edit: I was also thinking of how rare it would be to have enough of a density of asteroids in a given area to actually be a hazard in space. Most you would think would get spread out across an orbit or fly out in random directions. Within a nebula is about the only place i can think of where you'd see a high enough density of asteroids for them to be more than just a random object passing by.

One thing i can really think of in the function of asteroids within a normal system is in mining. Perhaps it would be advantageous to retrieve smaller asteroids and sell them to mining bases based on the amount of the various elements detected in it.

[MC707]

Sorry for large post

Blockading. That is to say, that the lack of trade over time will cause real consequences in-game. While not all rendered in game, bases serve a faction's day to day ability to function, and removing that base would cause a cascade effect that would reduce or destroy a faction's ability to work. Ship construction requires materials. If i blockade a base that processes ore for a significant amount of time (couple days or so) then the faction is going to get very agitated as ship production comes to a halt. The faction AI will then decide on what kind of action to take. Factions can be completely crippled with some strategic blockading and coordinated attacks. This requires that each faction have a balanced economy that's realistic and functional. Obviously no small undertaking.

RedAdder's dynamic market economy really seems to fit with this idea like satan being in hell.

Make spec more realistic. No visual distortion, no external camera modes while in spec (it wouldn't make sense anyway). HUD overlay maps your current location in relation to the normal universe (it's best guess anyway). No radar, no ability to be shot or shoot. SPEC capacitors will once again be put to use. Ideally, i'd like to see something like Andromeda's slipstream procedure used for spec. Once you spec (since you are forced to cockpit mode) your hud transforms into a rapidly updating grid showing the immediate gravimetric topology of the system around you. You use special controls to route through the best path. The idea being, ship AI is less capable of navigating the semi-random fluctuations of the gravimetric topology at such small scales than the living brain. This routing is done in coordination with the navigation of the ship across the system. The tweaking doesn't effect your position in relation to normal space, but it does effect your speed as you traverse the system's gravity topology. Better pilots will be able to spec faster. Voila, now you're doing something in between bases.

add to this idea the fact that bots shouldn't lag-spec. This means they should not press the a (autospec) button on and off every half a second. I've noticed this when I change the camera to live feed of my target, when I press t (target) some bots spec on and off like hell.

Faction centric News. This being the idea that each faction would have a media organization or government sponsored media outlet that shapes the news for their particular interests and motives. Pirate radio news would exist, but the official internet streams would be censored and filtered within the bounds of each faction's control. This would provide various spins of a particular event or the lack of news available in one system that is available in another. This would entice the user to explore around to get the full picture. The pirate radio type news adds another aspect of this, providing another sub-faction of ships that would be seen as outlaws even within their own faction if caught participating by a narc.

I once (always actually) saw a news item that said "aera suck bla bla bla..." whilst I was inside an aera asteroid base.

Towing. Ships get stuck out in space. tractor beams are great for bringing in small cargo, or temporary attachment of two ships. But if you want to haul something a long distance because it's stranded in the middle of no where, you need a way of getting it back to base. A sub-class of ship could carry out the task of towing these stranded ships back to a base for a fee. Basically, a specially constructed cable could be shot from a tow ship and attach to any other ship (very large ships may require more tows). When you are stranded due to damage or lack of fuel, you would hit a button to initiate a distress signal. If you're lucky and you're somewhat close to neutral or friendly people, you'll be rescued without having to abandon your ship. Careful though. If the tow people can hear you, so can the pirates.

hmm no a cable doesn't sound realistic, since the towed ship has no moving capability. Therefore, the ship can be towed, but when the tow ship stops, the towed ship crashes the tow ship because it can't brake. Tractoring to a hangar bay of a larger ship sounds more proper, or something like this could also work. Also, and more importantly, "If you're lucky and you're somewhat close to neutral or friendly people, you'll be rescued without having to abandon your ship" sounds improper, since most of the times you will end up crapped in space when lurking enemy territory.

Nebular systems. Some systems would exist within a nebula. This would replace our current retarded way of handling nebulas. Things are hidden in nebular systems. Nebular systems are dangerous, and could cause ships constant immediate damage via radiation or debris. This is the type of system that hides some of my pet mission plotlines.

Yeah Starflight!

[RedAdder]

Well yes with my economy in place you could split manufacturing and resource production between planets and mines for example. And then you'd need automated traders who shuttle resources between places. And a blockade would consist of shooting down all shuttles. Which would also give you the opportunity to break the blockade yourself and make profit. Or you could have allies who profited while you shot down the shuttles on a multiplayer server.

My economy isn't that predictable when producing single very costly units, because I needed to include a minimum production rule to keep the economy going and prices moving(so it might lead to very costly ships being produced), so you probably would accumulate ship production points for a consumer(government/military/traders) and when reaching a limit you'd put out a new ship. Or you could turn off the minimum production rule by setting ProductionOption.sectormin to a value between 0.0 and 1.0.

[Keller]

You wouldn't have to per se model and track all the asteroids in a belt. Only the largest ones. There are presumably enough asteroids in a belt to make navigation a pain, but whose individual units wouldn't show up on long range scans. This would make it sufficient to create an asteroid zone within your system model. The zone would have a density which defines the probability of damage for units crossing it. (or the probability of blocking scanners from other ships) Then you'd only have to concentrate on rendering the section of the zone nearest the player's ship. (say the part with which he could interact in the next 5 seconds or so) Outside of that, the rendering degenerates to the previous homogenous zone again. The additional fact that asteroid belts have gaussian cross-sections isn't a problem either. Your zone would have a center band with a primary density, then falls off as one moves away. The zone would have 2 spreads: radially (i.e. within the system orbital plane) and transversely (across that plane).

[safemode]

I really doubt you'd be able to find a system with a density of asteroids to make things hazardous to piloted craft. That is to say you would be dodging asteroids left and right for a while. You might interact with 1 or 2 when crossing a belt, but that would probably be about it. The vastness of an orbit would reduce the density of even a planet's worth of asteroids to a fairly sparse level. The only time i can think of where you'd have that much material in a small area would be in nebulas or perhaps in gravity dead zones around planets.

[Deus Siddis]

I really doubt you'd be able to find a system with a density of asteroids to make things hazardous to piloted craft. That is to say you would be dodging asteroids left and right for a while. You might interact with 1 or 2 when crossing a belt, but that would probably be about it. The vastness of an orbit would reduce the density of even a planet's worth of asteroids to a fairly sparse level.

That would be the idea, a hazard but not a hell, and an environment to be explored, mined and hidden within.

You might even say that if your ship is heavy with cargo, the greatest threat in crossing such a place might not be the asteroids themselves, but the marauders hidden amoung them.

The only time i can think of where you'd have that much material in a small area would be in nebulas

Why would there be so many asteroids in a nebula? Would that just be in one part of it, or would there be asteroids densly throughout its whole volume?

I don't think you wouldn't have to worry about handling a high density of asteroids in that kind of environment anyway, they could only be visible at a close range because of a 'fog' effect from the nebula.

or perhaps in gravity dead zones around planets.

That's interesting, so then you would have any asteroid field 'ball' something like you see now, between a planet and a moon? That would make a good obstacle, and it might even be a logical place for a jump point, since the gravity forces are canceled out by each other.

[safemode]

Well, in the nebula because some nebulas are not yet formed solar systems. So there is more asteroid material floating around not yet forming into planets. Also, because there is generally just more material within them. A non-nebular solar system is all cleaned up. Any remaining asteroids would be significantly dispersed.

Dead zones are real too, the earth has at least 2 of them and i think we're sending a satellite up some time soon to explore one of them to see what's been caught in it. Basically they would act much like how we currently do asteroids.


I like the idea of being able to scan a small asteroid and tractor it (or pull it in your cargo bay) to a mining base for some cash. A mining base can't expect to pack up and settle on another asteroid every few years. Someone's gotta be pulling in new raw material and that sounds like a viable profession. Obviously, pirates and such would be a hazard for those people, as they would be slowed down considerably from the massive increase in mass.