Mission Script - Competitive Racing

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Turbo
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Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by Turbo »

...and welcome back to the Regallis 4000, the most exciting race in the sector! We've got quite a field of competitors here from diverse factions, so we're expecting a lot of tension and maybe some weapons fire and flying debris. Today's race is sponsored by Quakerstate Injector Cleaner -- for maximum thrust response, use QIC! We have a few minutes before the starting signal, so let's take a look at today's pilots and their ships...
Mission: Competitive Racing

Navigation
- Start at whatever station gave you the mission
- Pass within 500 m of the following nav points, when starting signal is broadcast:
- Beacon A in asteroid field (try not to hit anything)
- Beacon B near star (best not to trust the autopilot for this)
- Beacon C near a shipyard (take time for repairs & refuel, or go for the finish line?)
- Beacon D in low orbit of planet (have fun with the gravity well; maybe refueling wasn't such a bad idea)
- Finish at starting location

AI spawned:
- 7 random-faction fighters (light/med/heavy) spawn at the start point; they have the same nav route as player; depending on relationships at the time, some of them may attack player or each other but none will move until start signal is given
- 1-3 spectator/news crews in medium or larger ships, stationary at each nav point
- 2-3 camera drones (missile chassis) flying around at each nav point

Mission Success: do not move ship until start signal and visit all nav points before any AI can do the same
Reward: 20000 credits

Doesn't that sound fun?
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
chuck_starchaser
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by chuck_starchaser »

There's two factors conspiring against the fun of it: Lack of scenery, and low dependence on player skill.
Racing cars or motorcycles has "vertigo", has the challenge of judging how fast you can take a curve you can only see from a shallow perspective, --with a risk of death if you're wrong. Gearing, clutching and motoring; and trees passing you by at ridiculous speeds.
Sail-boat races don't have the vertigo, but they have a ton of skill and judgment requirements. Speeding against the wind is not easy, and a difference of less than one degree in your heading can make all the difference when it comes to wining or losing.
But a race in space has no vertigo whatsoever, and whether you win or lose probably depends on your thrusters and spec drive, and little else. Unless you disable auto-pilot and SPEC, AND managed thrusting mode, so that you have to manually accelerate for half the trip to each destination, turn around and deccelerate for half the trip, so as to come around your goal exactly as your speed approaches zero, without too much undershoot or overshoot.
But then, AI's would be perfect at it, unless we code them to be imperfect...
pheonixstorm
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by pheonixstorm »

You could do something more like a slalom (sp) or perhaps an obstacle course. Anyone remember the training missions from X-Wing and TIE Fighter? We could do soemthing like that maybe. Or if you are a stargate fan there is an episode of a space race.. not sure what season though.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Possibly, but then the question begs itself: If vegastrike is such a bad game that we'd consider embedding a different game in it, we have a problem; and maybe we should be addressing the problem head-on. Otherwise, we might as well just add arcades at all bases, where for a few credits you can play Viper Racing, Duke Nukem, Space Invaders, Starcraft... How about we have hollow mining bases with robot miners that have rebelled, and turn it into Descent. Or add poker playing tables at bars, or slot machines? How about a stock-market, with stocks, futures, options, and currency trading? Or becoming mayor of a city in an agri planet and play SimCity. Well, at least racing is something you'd do in your ship, granted; but still, it's just a different game: If the non-campaign related goal of the game is to make money and upgrade your ship, racing is a distraction at best.
I sympathize with the fact that there isn't much to do in UTCS right now. Space is too big and too boring; and there's no story; and bases are all the same; and many of the models suck. But I think we should address these problems first. Not that adding the ability to have races as missions is a bad idea for the mission specification language you're working on. The more it can do, the better the design, probably.
Well, also, if we did add racing to the game, we'd have to add races as background. If you see a race advertised, and decide not to participate, but you fly to where it's happening, you should be able to watch it, as spectator. Then there could be side-plot where you have to win a race to earn your money, for example.
In other words, if there's a way to participate in races, you should occasionally come across space races; --i.e.: they should exist, in the first place. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. But to add races as background is probably a whole lot of work. Not that coming across sporting events in space wouldn't be super-cool; but seeing cargo shipping that makes sense would be just as cool. It'd take a fraction of the effort probably to make cargo ships park at stations properly, instead of flying through walls, just for an example of better use of developers' time. Having merchants fly in convoys, with escorts for protection, might just take a few lines to achieve, in some python file.
The best ideas are those that add the most value to the game at the least development cost. Having races is probably average, as ideas go, by this metric.
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by pheonixstorm »

In one of the Knights of the Old Republic games (probably the first) there is a racing game you can play as either a side mission or just a way to earn credits. In Mechwarrior 4 Mercs you can visit Solaris for some side adventures (I don't remember if its part of the story plot or not) so adding in a coporate sponsored race isn't far fetched. I wouldn't classify it as an actual mission but it could be labeled in the scripting as such or create a new classification for game events. Thats IF we have any game wide events that are scriptable (races, wars, etc). To add in a playable race event wouldn't mean the game is bad.. but depending on the culture there would or could be some huge event that takes place every so often that the player can bet on, watch, or be a part of.

Just like Nascar or any other sporting event involving vehicles you have large corporations sponsoring these types of event. It done correctly I don't see why it would make the game look bad.

Theres a lot of more important things to work on atm but if it doesn't involve a lot of code changes I don't see why it can't be done in some way eventually.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by chuck_starchaser »

I never intended to mean that races would make the game look bad; quite the opposite; but I was making a general cost/benefits analysis.
The cost is HUGE, I think. You basically need to,
a) code a racer AI
b) code a race event scheduler
c) code ways to interface with it, as participant, or as spectator, how to place bets...
d) code a random race generator, that makes races happen
e) code news related to races
f) code missions related to racing (participating or otherwise)
g) produce space posters, slaloms, whatever other art is needed
h) produce racing ship models
i) produce sounds, musics, voice-overs to go with racing events
j) worst of all, integrate all that
And you're still left with the problem of races being won mostly by technology, not skills...

....

And all for what? All that just for the sake of having a distraction from the main game?

If this was a finished game, beautiful models, excellent textures, unbelievable graphics and sound, a main story that puts
most science fiction to shame, and we were totally satisfied; then maybe adding races would be icing on the cake. But
right now this game SUCKS, and we need to be thinking of ways of making it suck less, rather than sugar coating the guano.
Like fixing stuff that is broken; strategic features that open up lots of possibilities... That kind of thing, rather than putting
months of coding effort on a side-show feature.

Races don't open up TONS of new possibilities; do they? Lots of work to get something that once it's there all it does is to
be there...
Compare that to having walkable 3D bases and ship interiors... And I'm not sure which is more work, or less.
Meet characters not just at bars... Have the occasional in-base mission...
Imagine the artistic possibilities opened up by having magazines or books you can read at bases. Want to know the history
of the Forsaken? Walk to a library; find the right book... Writers would come to Vegastrike to donate a book, I bet.
How about having Space Elevator Stations orbiting planets at geostationary orbit, with yatch-size elevator cars you can take
down to the planet; 10-hour trip where you might meet somebody?
That's probably much simpler to code than a completey new feature like races; and it makes TONS of sense; and it would
make planets TONS more interesting even if by making them less readily accessible. It would justify, give value to, having
a lot of unique planets, in terms of backgrounds; and it would justify having more rooms in them, and more things to do.
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Re: Mission Script - Competitive Racing

Post by klauss »

I happen to agree with chuck.

Races aren't an inherently bad idea, they're a good idea. But the value added by races doesn't compare to other missing features, and we have to prioritize those that make a better, easily extensible game.

VS is terribly extensible - but hard to extend. That has to be fixed so more contributors are able to extend VS, instead of relying on the 3 people working on it ATM ;) - those are the features that matter. Walkable bases are a huge amount of work but provide an equally huge value. Races... not so much. So walkable bases is higher priority than races.

Now... a mission scripting framework that allows for a contributor to produce a race mission script rather easily (even if the artwork needed is a lot of work), then that mission scripting framework has a very high priority. Because it adds a lot more than races, it adds moddability. It adds contributors.
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