Vega Strike Forums

Some games are developing the ability to fly directly from space to the surface of a planet and fly around the landscape. I think this would be a fantastic future feature [as well as the ability to walk around planets as in a previous post of mine. Perhaps ground vehicle capabilities?]

Park your ship and drive around [all around the planet]. That would be awesome!

Do a search on the this sub-forum it's been on the wish list for a very long time The technical details are enormous especially with the size of our universe as each planet class would need new defining data and some way of differing individual planets within each class remember that planetary and some system data is generated randomly with every new game so just maintaining an internal db is not a trivial task.

Enjoy the Choice

Actually its not exactly a wish anymore We have planetary flight in the experimental branch. It hasn't been worked on in awhile though. Someone never finished the gravity code or at least uploaded a more recent patch of it.. and log0 hasn't to my knowledge worked on the planetary flight code in awhile.

In any event its there. http://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... erimental/

So is that the planetary flight stuff? Like I would be able to fly straight toward the planet [even with the long wait] and it will start to look like I am actually on the planet?

until you crash into the planet. There is no planetary gravity so watch your approach speeds or go boom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOwj-gu8_Z4 shows a first test flight

Now actually WALKING on the planet is not possible, but you can fly around.

right, right. But hopefully a future feature?

Which files do I download and where do they go?

if you don't plan on compiling yourself, the win32 and data folders. I think (hope) I put install instructions in there... anyway, if I didn't its fairly straightforward. All the error messages will tell you where certain files should go if you dont already have them there.

What in the win32 is a drop-in replacement for an already installed VS. You can try to run it w/o the full VS data directory but I don't think it will work. Never tried though.

You need the original vs data in addition to ogre bits. The code just overrides planet drawing.

The development is pretty much stalled. The next step is to move all drawing to ogre. This means to hook into unit loader. The problem is where and how? Atm it feels like writing a game from scratch would be simpler. Thus the motivation is very low.

Sourceforge isn't making it east to download the files. How exactly do I save them to my pc? And you have a readme in the files that shows me where to put things?

They are not meant for manual download, are usually pulled using a svn client(tortoisesvn). You can still do it. Look for, click on "Download GNU tarball". It is a compressed archive of the corresponding folder. To extract it you can use 7zip and co.

Oh ok, I have 7zip. I do use svn, but what folder do I use the link for, and where?

Here you go http://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... erimental/ that link is for use with a web browser if using a svn client remove /viewvc/ IIRC.

Enjoy the Choice

@Pirate92
I am not sure if the current one will run with latest data. I'll build an updated version later today(tomorrow) which you can simply download and put into 0.5.1 installation folder without having to mess with the directory structure or svn.

Oh ok, I'll just wait for that. Thanks

Bad news. Building with the latest trunk produces heavy graphical artifacts. No planets, sorry. Will see if I find some time to identify the reason.

Haha! I try to imagine what the code looks like and my eyes widen. I can wait

youtube bbcode test

loki1950 wrote:Do a search on the this sub-forum it's been on the wish list for a very long time The technical details are enormous especially with the size of our universe as each planet class would need new defining data and some way of differing individual planets within each class remember that planetary and some system data is generated randomly with every new game so just maintaining an internal db is not a trivial task.

Enjoy the Choice

Actually, there was a feature in the to-do that is a step into that direction, namely, procedurally generated bases. Even clickable bases could be generated procedurally.

It needs a lot of investment into content production, but the mere support in the engine could make it interesting. We could work on a single planet as a guinea pig for this - e.g. earth. Have earth be a huge mess of interconnected random cities would be a neat gameplay addition, as every planet would be a world on its own, differentiating it a lot more from bases than currently are.

Still, the biggest blocker here is content production.

Atmospheric flight over planets is an awesome addition to a spaceflight game; the game play of one is the near opposite of the other. Atmosphere creates an environment of limited speeds and distances but relatively unlimited power and control. Space is an environment of limitless speeds and distances but power is relatively limited by poor access to heat dissipation and reaction mass or the intuitive 'control' of drag forces. Contrast like that is a where a game experience truly blooms.

BUT, beyond all of that, the ultimate goal of the long awaited "seamless planetary flight" feature has little to do with flight. It's about getting out of your ship and exploring the surface and dynamic workings of an entire world, from details fine and tangible to those vast and complex.

Open space is huge but a world is bigger in every sense except the literal. It's bigger because it can be so much richer. But space and dynamic generation open up a limitless number of these worlds. Thus, such a game that fully combines the two would be nothing short of a universe unto itself.

Deus Siddis wrote:Open space is huge but a world is bigger in every sense except the literal. It's bigger because it can be so much richer. But space and dynamic generation open up a limitless number of these worlds. Thus, such a game that fully combines the two would be nothing short of a universe unto itself.

I agree. I want to do procedural worlds (as in huge procedural bases where you can navigate from city to city) first.

I must say this game is incredibly complex for a free game, it's astonishing, though I'm not a avid gamer, I kind of came across this game by chance.

I like the choice of flying in a planet's atmosphere, but I recall another came called Flight Gear does that. I think for VS this may be too much for the average player.

The amount and complexity of VS is enough, at least for me, I still haven't explored all of it and I've been planing it casually a few times a week for over a year.

It's nice to have that option, we should keep it, but I think there is more "spacy" stuff that we could work on.

PS: Congrats to everyone who worked on VS.