More pretty stuff: atmospheres and planet surfaces

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:48 am

i just got dial up after not having internat at all for just under a year...

i've learned better ways...

go mooch my friends DSL line at his house, put it on my keychain, and bring it home. the trip is a half hour round, with anywhere from 10 minutes to 12 hours over at his house (sometimes you sorta forget why you go there and just have a good time)...

-scheherazade

mikeeusa · Post by **mikeeusa** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:39 am

I can't wait to start burning people on the planet's with my ship's lazers... that or burning squirrels.

TestMan · Post by **TestMan** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 8:17 am

Looks like seamless planetary flight is going to happen in vegastrike after all.

Post by **MamiyaOtaru** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:34 am

Either that or it means the thread necromancers have struck again

It's been a while since anyone said anything about planetary flight, at least in this thread. It's an area I haven't been paying attention to though, so how goes it? It would be pretty cool it done well!

mikeeusa · Post by **mikeeusa** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:11 pm

I hope we get some penal colony planets with salt mines

. I'll make maps if need be, I used to map for unreal etc.

Btw any new screenshots of planetary flight? I hope this is commited to cvs soon.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:25 pm

I don't think that there are any screenshots of planetary terrain stuff yet. As far as I know, scherezade hasn't really made any progress updates on this in a while.

Shadowstar · Post by **Shadowstar** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:35 pm

mikeeusa wrote:I hope we get some penal colony planets with salt mines . I'll make maps if need be, I used to map for unreal etc.

Btw any new screenshots of planetary flight? I hope this is commited to cvs soon.

I doubt we will see this sort of "mapping", if the planets are going to be procedurally generated. However, prefabbed facilities and buildings may appear that could end up something like this. I doubt you'd be able to get out and explore the facilities on foot though, that might be a very tall order for the engine to handle. Then again, I've heard of (and seen) demos where its possible, by using rather ingenious programming methods.

I guess the bottom line is, its still too early in this feature's development to know where it will end up, but hopefully what they ultimately come up with will be really impressive.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:46 pm

I'm sure it can be visually impressive. In my opinion though, the big challenge will be justifying that feature with gameplay. That's probably the biggest argument against planetary terrain, is that we don't really know what we want it for, other than that it would be cool.

mikeeusa · Post by **mikeeusa** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 9:08 pm

It vastly expands the universe by orders of mangnitude. It keeps the game unboring. The whole purpose of a game is to have fun and terrain adds to that immensly.

Can you contact scherezade? Ive been hoping for planetary flight for a whole year now, it looked like it was going along well.

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:44 pm

mikeeusa wrote:It vastly expands the universe by orders of mangnitude...

I don't think anyone can argue with that. But unless there is something interesting going on down on the surface, it can still be boring.

And you may contact scherezade, there are means for doing so via the memberlist on this forum.

-pincushionman

Shadowstar · Post by **Shadowstar** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:18 am

Well, making it functional is easy enough, the difficult part is doing it without killing the framerate.

There's all sorts of things you could possibly do on a planet:

1) Visit cities. Maybe different buildings in the city have thier own landing pads, and you can land there and visit that building. Perhaps you can take local missions to carry a package from one city to another on the same planet. This would also open the game up for air vehicles as opposed to space craft, and you could have an entire game where you never leave the planet.

2) Random bad-guys on the planet. Maybe there could be a random generator where an enemy base could be located in some remote part of the planet, and as you're flying across the planet you happen to fly over it and get attacked. You can take out the base for bounty reward (or maybe its part of a mission), and maybe even salvage some cargo from the wreckage. Would be cool to chase a ship through a canyon like in the movies...

3) Mining/Science. You can land on planets and use mining equipment to mine the planet. Maybe different planets can give you different minerals, making some planets more valuable than others. Or, you could perform scientific studies of the planet, taking atmosphere, hydrosphere, or lithosphere samples, bring them back to a university (and get paid). Or, capture lifeforms as samples and bring them back to a university for study. Maybe there could be a whole sub-game developed around hunting the creatures

4) Assist a colony. Perhaps the race you're working for wants to colonize an uninhabited planet. You escort the colony ship there, and then watch it land on the surface. You land too, and can trade with the new colony. Maybe at first there's nothing to do there, but over time the colony will grow. Could be fun to protect the colony and watch it grow over time. You could even speed its development along by bringing supplies to it from inhabited systems.

5) Archaeology. Perhaps you will find procedurally-generated ruins from a long-dead civilization on a planet and you can land at the ruins and enter them, and this could be like a sub-game where you explore the ruins, evade traps, fight hostile lifeforms, and find a valuable artifact (and possibly more treasures) at the bottom. In the process, maybe you could uncover some procedurally-generated storyline or something to make it interesting.

6) World wars. Maybe a planet is in the middle of a massive world war. There are numerous factions all fighting each other, everywhere on the planet. As you fly over the planet you will watch various battles occuring, and can even participate in them, winning favor for one side or another, and possibly earning money.

I'm sure there's plenty more possibilities, but you get the idea. Making planets interesting and relevant to gameplay isn't hard, but implementing these things is not easy and has to be done without sacrificing too much of the game's performance.

TestMan · Post by **TestMan** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:42 am

Excellent.. Planetary flight can attract a ton of not only linux and mac gamers but a TON of space flight sim fans. I mean people who played I-War2, Frontier Elite, XvT, Freespace, Wing-Commander will come and try out this game sooner or enough.

You just need to spread the word if it does happen.

TestMan · Post by **TestMan** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:19 am

1) Visit cities. Maybe different buildings in the city have thier own landing pads, and you can land there and visit that building. Perhaps you can take local missions to carry a package from one city to another on the same planet. This would also open the game up for air vehicles as opposed to space craft, and you could have an entire game where you never leave the planet.

Sounds interesting. But this requires a lot of artwork for cities. There can't be just a ton of different planets + the same building models. It would be boring then.

2) Random bad-guys on the planet. Maybe there could be a random generator where an enemy base could be located in some remote part of the planet, and as you're flying across the planet you happen to fly over it and get attacked. You can take out the base for bounty reward (or maybe its part of a mission), and maybe even salvage some cargo from the wreckage. Would be cool to chase a ship through a canyon like in the movies...

This sounds interesting. This reminds me of reading an article of the imperial fleet being discoverd on a remote planet while doing a turner mission. As for chasing a ship through a canyon, it depends what type of ship your flying. I wonder how difficult it would be to just switch from newtonian phsyics to arcade when entering the atmosphere.

3) Mining/Science. You can land on planets and use mining equipment to mine the planet. Maybe different planets can give you different minerals, making some planets more valuable than others. Or, you could perform scientific studies of the planet, taking atmosphere, hydrosphere, or lithosphere samples, bring them back to a university (and get paid). Or, capture lifeforms as samples and bring them back to a university for study. Maybe there could be a whole sub-game developed around hunting the creatures

Its not possible for a space fighter.. Mabie a specialized space craft should do the job for that.

4) Assist a colony. Perhaps the race you're working for wants to colonize an uninhabited planet. You escort the colony ship there, and then watch it land on the surface. You land too, and can trade with the new colony. Maybe at first there's nothing to do there, but over time the colony will grow. Could be fun to protect the colony and watch it grow over time. You could even speed its development along by bringing supplies to it from inhabited systems.

As long as your not commanding everybody whos building a colony, mabie a mission that asks you to help and escort the ships would be fun.

[/quote]6) World wars. Maybe a planet is in the middle of a massive world war. There are numerous factions all fighting each other, everywhere on the planet. As you fly over the planet you will watch various battles occuring, and can even participate in them, winning favor for one side or another, and possibly earning money.[/quote]

You can participate in them if you are doing some sort of a long mission campaign(optional one too. Like in freelancer but its up to you if you want to join first, but this is if you have good rating with a faction). You cannot just automatticly participate in the war like that after discovering a world war while flying on a planets atmosphere.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 6:05 pm

Wow, TestMan. I have to disagree with a lot of what you said. I still think that there is no clear idea of what gameplay should be like on the planet surface... but I still disagree.

Cities are an absolute must on a planet's surface. You need a place to land, to see populated areas, and to attack.

Taking mineral/atmospheric/bio samples would be fun. TestMan say: Need special ship for that! Which would mean the player would have to purchase a special ship (which would need to be modeled and textured), and then fly that around while taking his samples. That would be a bad game design decision, forcing the player to give up all the upgrades and investment in his ship just so he can fly a mission that may or may not be any fun.

Someone with some game design sense would need to attack this problem of "okay, we're flying over a planet's surface... now what?" if any progress is made towards including it in Vega Strike.

TestMan · Post by **TestMan** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:38 pm

[/quote]Cities are an absolute must on a planet's surface. You need a place to land, to see populated areas, and to attack. [/quote]

I have an idea.

Lets make some ships that are required to land on the landing pad(when cheap ships come to mind).

And some ships have the capability to land on rough surfaces.

Taking mineral/atmospheric/bio samples would be fun. TestMan say: Need special ship for that! Which would mean the player would have to purchase a special ship (which would need to be modeled and textured), and then fly that around while taking his samples. That would be a bad game design decision, forcing the player to give up all the upgrades and investment in his ship just so he can fly a mission that may or may not be any fun.

Either a special ship or a cargo ship can do the job.
As I was thinking, cargo ships in my view are the same size as star fighters and not a size of a large ship but hold a lot more cargo with lesser firepower.

If there was a ship hangar where a special or a cargo ship was avilible to purchase and the people can hold the ship for you while you purchase a special ship, then it might be a good idea..

TestMan · Post by **TestMan** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:07 pm

one more thing I forgot, is I can't wait for the atmospheric only fighter crafts to be implemented into vegastrike as well.

I'll be glad to make useless ships in the game. Instead of large variety of star fighters, mabie different types of small crafts like the lifter, shuttle, and many other weird crap.

mikeeusa2 · Post by **mikeeusa2** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:00 pm

City buildings can be generated by templates or fractuals, distinct modles arent an absolute nessecaty for each building, though perhapse you want to make some fancy ones... most real life buildings in big cities are just boxes with floors that are copies of eachother with some office furnature changes.

As for framerates, if it's a problem you can turn down the detail. When running VS on my 1.3 Ghz laptop I put the detail at low so it's faster (VS isn't so optimized

, when I do medium the background space texture/cloudthings slow the box down), If need be I myself would be happy to buy a new box just to run VS with seamless planetary flight... it's like running a whole universe + the worlds so ... that is just a dream to a gamer. What's nice about opensource is that we have no deadlines so we can keep plugging at it and making this game the game all gamers dream about.

I have made some textures and such on https://cat2.ath.cx/cat2/media.html and have archived opensource and public domain textures and sounds on https://cat2.ath.cx/ftoma

If any of you developers want some space and computational muscle I will give you accounts on my dual 2Ghz box with 463GB of hdd space. Planetary flight is something I verymuch want to see. Email me at mikeeusaSPAMISAFLAMER@cat2.athSPAMHATEYOUSOMUCHRIGHTNOW.cx
if you want the shell access.

dfryer · Post by **dfryer** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:58 pm

Has anyone done work on fractal generation of cities? Fractal generation of natural structures looks pretty "good", since nature seems to follow fractal models. Cities might not be so easy to generate, but I'd be interested in talking with anyone who has good city-generation ideas, or other ways to "populate" worlds. We may have to be satisfied with real models only near major/special spaceports, and flat urban-looking textures for the rest at least in the short term.

As for gameplay, I do think "immersivity" is cool (else we wouldn't be concerned with things like detail on space stations). Even if the VS universe focuses on large-scale inter- and intra-system trading, having planetary functionality in the engine would allow for more "small-scale" mods. It wouldn't have to be pervasive throughout the universe to be convincing (i.e. many planets could be boring/uninhabited/generic) and even populated planets might only have one or two major general-use spaceports. Personally I enjoyed Elite II's takeoffs, and think that planetary takeoff & landing could be made interesting, especially if you have to interact with flight control, navigate to the correct pad, etc. Currently, landing on a planet seems to be a quick (and cheap) way out of a fight. Being able to descend to a well-defended port, pirates on your tail... I don't know, but somehow the idea of planet-based structures appeals to me on a very deep level.

Of course, the question really is, what am I going to do to make that happen? Endless asking for status updates doesn't go far. If we're to have planetary flight, there has to be something on the planets.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:28 pm

Rather than go with a flat texture (bad idea because then there is nothing to blowup, knockdown, or enter into) Just plop down a bunch of boxes with variable size (easy). Fractuals can do cityscapes though so that shouldnt be a problem, I remeber on another thread that another demo program did it. It's all math so... math can describe anything.

Other Devs: tell the fractual and planet devs! Gotta get this ball rolling again. This is something that is really going to bring VS into the stratosphere

.

dfryer · Post by **dfryer** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:46 pm

I think it comes down to having something workable within (say) a year vs. something perfect delivered a day after never. I think randomised cityscapes probably can be developed (although they might all just look the same, which would suck) but that is potentially throwing a huge amount of polygons at the engine. These things have to be viewed from hugely ranging distances at hugely ranging angles, so level-of-detail/economy of geometry/imposters/incremental procedural generation/whatever really come into play (Does the VS engine support imposters? Would this be useful?)

Random boxes scattered over the terrain would look kinda.. special. I'd rather have higher-quality Blowing Up of Stuff near specific bases than random stuff scattered all over the surface.

mikeeusa2 · Post by **mikeeusa2** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:00 am

I wish someone would develop this stuff instead of us just talking for a year

.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:50 am

as each feature many people says "you must do that" "you musn't do this" but less people says "Yes, I will help you"

scheherazade · Post by **scheherazade** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 7:44 am

yah, no progress update...

sigh... i really should finish this.

its so close to an early working version that it's a shame i've not just sat down one weekend and made it happen.

anyways, yah, hate me or something... i've been lazy.

well, a lil work | a lil gf => computer goes to the wayside.

and i've had both...

anyways, i'll try to get on it. i dono. i'll see if i can get away from things this weekend and do some on it.

-scheherazade

mikeeusa2 · Post by **mikeeusa2** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 9:32 pm

Thankyou

I know the timesink a girl can be. Happily after the last on I've vowed off them for 20 years... next one will be in rural ukraine probably. I didn't get any programing done when involved with the last time hole... and it cost me a pretty penny too (finally dumped her). Females == evil. Nowadays I'd much rather shoot things in vidgames all day than be around a female (especially a modern one)... freedom!

If you need any comp resorces I'll give you an account on my server at a moment's notice.
Also does anyone use #vegastrike on freenode?

...

Planets!
Planets!
Planets!

Thanks++

Post by **mkruer** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:37 pm

Anonymous wrote:yah, no progress update...

sigh... i really should finish this.

its so close to an early working version that it's a shame i've not just sat down one weekend and made it happen.

anyways, yah, hate me or something... i've been lazy.

well, a lil work | a lil gf => computer goes to the wayside.

and i've had both...

anyways, i'll try to get on it. i dono. i'll see if i can get away from things this weekend and do some on it.

-scheherazade

Hey dont worry about it. I am in the middle of finals and i havent done $hit other then play Roller Coaster Tycoon 2

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More pretty stuff: atmospheres and planet surfaces

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