Vega Strike Forums

I play a game called shattered horizon and it is one of the best games Steam has to offer in the multiplayer space combat spectrum... In fact the only I believe... Anyway, one of the grandest of features if the seamless anti gravity and 360 environment systems.

I think it would be an awesome feature to conduct a space walk. Leaving ship, to perform menial tasks such as setting up mining from asteroids for mineral, or just horsing around... Hoping your space ship doesn't float too far away that is... [perhaps a safety cord keeps you from floating off]

Anyway I know it's a MASSIVE stretch [in fact would probably wind up requiring a whole new engine to be written to run with the current in a "hand in hand" way], but walking around space stations, on small planes of planets, or just floating in space, I think it would be a lot better that being confined in the ship or having to just click your way through the space stations.

I still know it's a massive stretch, and though some of you may want to argue it's impossibility [though nothing is really impossible, it's just hard or time consuming], I still think it is a good idea and if even not accepted by the developers, is worth mentioning.

PS. If you have Shattered Horizon and have it on steam add me. pirate92a or if that doesn't work CaptJack92a [which ever steam uses for you to find me]

Does sound rather interesting, but would have to wait until *AFTER* we get 3d walkable bases/ships.

Right right. But still when this is possible, it would be a great addition

That was and is one of the main reasons for adding OGRE as our rendering layer it will also allow for configuration to be done in-game but as pheonixstorm says it a while off as yet check the road map on the wiki for details on the to do list involved.

Enjoy the Choice

Don't really need ogre, but it will make things go ALOT faster.

Just look at the other flight sims that already have planetary flight and walkable interiors. Most don't use ogre

While actually walking on the surface of something or preforming useful tasks may be, a "space walk" would not be that hard to add. Think of it as a cross between ejecting and launching/docking a fighter. Get the dock code working better, create a spacesuit with a MMU, and add a method of spawning your temporary craft.

Once that is done, all you would need to finalize it would be a surface search/match script to simulate magnetic boots or something. But that would be further down the road from even this. I can't imagine that would be an easy script to write.

Perhaps, but you still would be able to do little other than enjoy the scenery.

Depends on the tools(mounts) on that MMU or on a tool belt welding touch,laser cutter,access panel opener or any other tool useful on an EVA after battle repairs to external sensor nodes,armor plates and such that's if one has the necessary spare parts on hand or setting shaped charges on an asteroid for mining lots on things to do really just have to insure that they don't become tedious or boring because of GUI usability and other utility issues.

Enjoy the Choice

True, I was referring more to setting it up as a ship and doing a geometry match. There is lot's that you could do, but the easy stuff does not allow for it.

loki1950 wrote:Depends on the tools(mounts) on that MMU or on a tool belt welding touch,laser cutter,access panel opener or any other tool useful on an EVA after battle repairs to external sensor nodes,armor plates and such that's if one has the necessary spare parts on hand or setting shaped charges on an asteroid for mining lots on things to do really just have to insure that they don't become tedious or boring because of GUI usability and other utility issues.

Enjoy the Choice

Interesting.

A special "upgrade" could be a space suit with mobility. It would handle pretty much like a ship, albeit a lot slower, and have special mounts able to effect repairs.

I think that could work and not be too hard to implement. It would require a bit of a refactoring of weapon data, since weapon data currently contains a very hackish way of encoding special effects (like leech and such), so it would have to be de-hacked and tidied up a bit to accomodate other special effects (like repair).

The thing to ask now is... what does it do for gameplay? What kind of gameplay value does an EVA provide that a repair bot does not?

dehacking weapons would be a worthy endeavor regardless.

What value for gameplay?
Eye candy
External in-flight repairs at a fraction of the cost
(Eventually) surreptitious boarding of a hostile ship
Setting up equipment on objects mining, for example
A step toward a range of eject options. (survival suit, pod, mini-ship, etc.)

I don't know if it worth the effort, it is something that needs wider input.

I was thinking more down the lines of: "Maybe if a mission actually requires an EVA for something that cannot be done otherwise..."

Interesting...
Placing sensitive scientific equipment?
Do you have any thoughts on what may require an EVA?

travists wrote:Do you have any thoughts on what may require an EVA?

Not really, that's why I was asking

Boarding seems to be a nice direction... maybe accessing some derelict ship/station?

Don't forget we can already have a ship in cargo, launch it, and then take it over (forget how though) so doing a suit would not take much I think. Although we would probably want to change how the cargo works a bit to have a separate section for escape pods, eva suits, exo-skeletons etc. Would could use EVA for repairs (essential if in deep space and all thrusters/engines don't work).

In the other direction.. boarding actions (though this is more a docking issue, well forced docking anyway), EVA to plant charges, possible salvage of large derelict craft/bases... Kinda distracted atm (lil boys got a sugar high after sneaking into his easter candy) so i will try to get back here with more ideas a little later.

Possibilities: Mining, beacon repair, repairing friendly ships for credits, it would open the possibility of being able to walk/float around stations instead of clicking through them Floating sounds more fun/real, maybe for smaller stations/civilian/less funded that would not have artificial gravity?], faster/cheaper self repair, planting manual explosives [stealthily] on enemy ships, exploring asteroids as gravityless station types with cave/tunnels to explore and mine, opening possibility of walking on planet/driving on planet [parking ship and exiting/getting a small vehicle to mine, explore, discover, walk around bases] List goes on...

Also, I had another idea. What about building your own stations and planet bases for interest on the npcs that trade at your place and you can slowly earn credits to upgrade, or just do whatever with. This would give the planet exploring/in-atmosphere flight a really good purpose.

Let me shoot down (or, rather, pull back to earth) each of your items.

Pirate92 wrote:Possibilities: Mining, beacon repair, repairing friendly ships for credits

Given the possibility to mine with tractor beams, or repair with bots, I don't see a player opting for the EVA instead.

Pirate92 wrote:faster/cheaper self repair

I truly doubt an EVA will be faster than a repair bot. Maybe cheaper, but it would only apply in cases when you cannot reach a base to repair there - which is far easier and probably not prohibitely expensive. Again, I don't see much use for the EVA in these situations. It's far more usual to just blow up than be left for dead in a crippled ship.

In any case, for this kind of EVA to work, it would have to be part of a scripted mission, or we would have to make the AI stop attacking when your ship is dead, and make ships harder to kill (blow up).

I wouldn't mind making capships harder to kill (have them become dead in the water long before they explode). But that's a feature request on its own right (a feature request looking for a tracker item :p )

Pirate92 wrote:it would open the possibility of being able to walk/float around stations instead of clicking through them Floating sounds more fun/real, maybe for smaller stations/civilian/less funded that would not have artificial gravity?

No it would not. Walkable or otherwise navigatable 3D bases entail a lot more than just an EVA. The feature is so much more work than a simple EVA that having the EVA would indeed not contribute any significant amount towards the goal of 3D bases. 3D bases of any kind need, ostensibly, a truckload of new artwork. 3D artwork.

Pirate92 wrote:planting manual explosives [stealthily] on enemy ships

Not likely, given the speeds at which enemy ships move and accelerate.

Pirate92 wrote:exploring asteroids as gravityless station types with cave/tunnels to explore and mine, opening possibility of walking on planet/driving on planet [parking ship and exiting/getting a small vehicle to mine, explore, discover, walk around bases] List goes on...

Again, same thing as with floating around stations. EVA is not even a 1% of the amount of work needed for those.

Pirate92 wrote:Also, I had another idea. What about building your own stations and planet bases for interest on the npcs that trade at your place and you can slowly earn credits to upgrade, or just do whatever with. This would give the planet exploring/in-atmosphere flight a really good purpose.

All nice, but certainly not related to EVA. There are automated factories in VS already that can do the work, and even if they weren't there, I cannot see people actually building stations in an EVA suit. Simply not scalable as a game element, you'd have to spend days building. Though it may work for minecraft, where building is the whole purpose of the game, VS is about spaceflight - people don't want to spend days building a station, I'd go for something a little bit more automated.

Yes I realize, but a game isn't just functionality, it's eye candy as well. It's freedom. And a game like this has the potential to set new standards, if you are willing to put in all that work for the extra 'fun' stuff for the player to further enjoy their experience. Right now I am playing a game called Evochron Mercenary. I love it so much because it is almost exactly what this game is, but with all that eye candy, and extra fun thidlybits. You can't exit the ship, no, but what it can do so far is full of tedious and endless hours of programming to get a few bells and whistles to make the game more enjoyable. And though it seems like going into EVA mode as compared to what is already is in the game would just be less than what is already there. It's the thought. "I can get out of my space ship, float around it, I can mine even more by getting out an going into asteroids..." Etc. Yes, you would need to adjust things so getting out would compare well to what you can already do, and making EVA mode worth installing, but trust me, the game would just plain get WAY more interesting with that kind of 'freedom' and eye candy.

I know it's a TON of work and making one small update takes probably months, but these things make a game.

Then I suggest badgering anyone you know who can program to come help, or anyone who can model. Lots of code and models we need with no one to help

You know, I am a graphics designer. I can jump into my modeling program every now and then and send over a .obj, a .blend [blender3d file], or a .3ds, whichever you guys prefer [I think I have a few other options too, but can't remember them] I have one ship I use for my projects. It's not much but still pretty nice, I'm sure that if needed I could create some pretty cool looking ships for VS.

I'll gather a bit of free time and see what I can do. If things go well, I'll donate a model pack to the VS development. I'm still learning my way around texturing though, so I wont be able to give any of those. If you guys promise to at least try to use it, I'll even try to make a space suit model [but that's a maybe, humanoids are hard]

Model list [What I will try making]
*Interior of asteroid
*Interior of space station
*Space suit
*Ships
*On-Planet stations
*Land vehicle



No, I don't know these languages of coding, I am an HTML guy. But this isn't a web game isn't it? Ha ha!

I'm in if you guys are. What do you say?

Just post a picture of any work in progress in the Content Development/Content Vetting forum you should get lots of feedback fairly quickly


Enjoy the Choice

Pirate92 wrote:You know, I am a graphics designer. I can jump into my modeling program every now and then and send over a .obj, a .blend [blender3d file], or a .3ds, whichever you guys prefer [I think I have a few other options too, but can't remember them] I have one ship I use for my projects. It's not much but still pretty nice, I'm sure that if needed I could create some pretty cool looking ships for VS.

GRrreat

Pirate92 wrote:Model list [What I will try making]
*Interior of asteroid
*Interior of space station
*Space suit
*Ships
*On-Planet stations
*Land vehicle

I think it would be best if you picked a station to 3D-ize. If you give me models to start, I can code the basic support. It's almost (almost) there anyway for 3D ships.

The space suit will also be useful, since EVA is probably a grantable request. I'm just anal into trying to make sure all the features in the game provide some gameplay value because that's the way to keep the game's quality up, but I agree the possibility would be nice - it just needs to make sense in the game.

Ok so, internal of station and suit? What 3d format do you want them in?

Well, blender will work, as long as it follows game modelling guidelines. Check the wiki for some, although all our guidelines are tailored for spaceships, not for interiors, so you'll have to take everything there with a grain of salt.