0.5.0 Roadmap

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 2:12 am

charlieg wrote:Even now it's still very ambiguous. A more specific goal would be better.

Seems to me like you're being a little critical- after all, those are your words, I just added them to the list.
How's "Flesh out storyline / Devise more story-based missions" sound?

Post by **hurleybird** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 2:45 am

Humm, another thing that you might want to add to that list is to redo the heads up display, work on implementing something similar to the web based one in the artwork section.

Is it just me, or does it always seem so alive and vibrant after these new releases?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 6:41 am

I hope...

New Capship/Carrier UI likely Starshatter.

1.　New Cargo UI
In-Flight, when push Cargo UI key.
Open Cargo UI. can check cargo Item States and Eject them.

2. New Hanger UI
Carrierble Ships are not in cargo. new in hanger.
In-Flight, when push Hanger UI key.
Open Hanger UI. can launch/landing Carrierble Ships and Repair, Upgrade, check states.
In-Base, can move "Shipyard/My Fleet" ships to Hanger, can move Hanger ships move to "Shipyard/My Fleet".

3. New Turret Control UI
In-Flight, Change Turret Fire mode AI are offense, defense, normal, hold fire.
offense, defense, normal, Turrets Control are Fullauto.
hold fire, now vegastrikes turret setting.

Synchrone · Post by **Synchrone** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:22 am

Just commenting:

-I heard EV:Nova being mentioned.. anybody look at the map system? It has a 2D universe, but still, the maps are easy to navigate with.

-Keyboard configuration: may I suggest a new key (or additional key) for firing missiles? I'm using the keyboard and I find I would prefer a key on the left side of the keyboard (left of the space bar). I know I can personally set it, but perhaps it is useful enough to add in the standard configuration?

-edit- Another possible useful thing would be to 'make it so' (hey, Im not a coder or anything

) that the arrow keys could be used to navigate the cargo, mission, upgrade and ship menus. This mostly because I'd find it handy looking through cargo missions with the arrow keys rather than with the mouse.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:07 pm

Halleck wrote:Seems to me like you're being a little critical-

Not at all. It's a roadmap. The more specific it is (and some of the points are specific already), the better.

Halleck wrote:after all, those are your words, I just added them to the list.

I'm not a developer. My words are not adequate, just a nudge to get somebody to suggest something more substantial.

Halleck wrote:How's "Flesh out storyline / Devise more story-based missions" sound?

Personally I'd make storyline / missions it's own subsection of the roadmap and get people to volunteer specific missions / parts of the story that they are prepared to implement for the next release.

I'm not trying to be overly critical. Just a good roadmap is one where the tasks are well defined so as to help organise the development and provide entry points for new contributors. See the Inkscape roadmap for a good example. I mean, if it's just left as 'improve storyline' (said in however many words), and people don't volunteer for specific tasks, then people might not feel the obligation to work on it. Sorry to be a pain about it, I just think it'd be good for the development of Vega Strike! Feel free to ignore my suggestions. Like I said, I'm not a developer.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:12 am

Well met.

On a general note, I think it would be a good idea to move the roadmap to the new Wiki. All in favor?

Post by **jackS** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:54 am

Halleck wrote:Well met.

On a general note, I think it would be a good idea to move the roadmap to the new Wiki. All in favor?

Agreed. Go ahead and do so.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:21 am

Okay, the current list now resides at Development:Roadmap.

Post by **jackS** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 8:25 am

you might want to actually make that link more easily accessible from the front wiki page

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:35 am

I'll certainly link to it from the Development main page, but no such article exists at this time.

Where on the main page do you think a direct link would be appropriate? In the "Development" box, perhaps?

Post by **jackS** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:48 am

Halleck wrote:I'll certainly link to it from the Development main page, but no such article exists at this time.

Where on the main page do you think a direct link would be appropriate? In the "Development" box, perhaps?

Yep. A good roadmap is a good thing to display prominently. A poor roadmap... could get you lost in some place where they play dueling banjos all the time, but might still be better than nothing

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:28 am

Bullocks. It's been replaced by ShipInfo.
Do you know if the article itself has been wiped out, or just rendered inaccessible for the moment? The History page also displays a blank ShipInfo table.

Post by **jackS** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:37 am

The data should be fine, it's just a php hack gone bad for displaying things.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:40 am

That's a relief. Do you know how long it will be until the wiki is back in working order?

EDIT: Hey, it's back! Yay.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:14 am

Never mind. Now it all reads "Parse error: parse error, unexpected ';' in /home/groups/v/ve/vegastrike/htdocs/mediawiki/includes/Skin.php on line 372"

CubOfJudahsLion · Post by **CubOfJudahsLion** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:49 am

Planet textures. I wish I could volunteer for that, but I'm busy enough as it is...

Post by **klauss** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:42 pm

Planet textures, I think I'll be doing them. I always wanted a real-looking space sim. Now I've got the chance, I just have to draw some sattelite-picture-like textures. I'll enjoy my time doing it.

I've already posted some questions I had in the development forum, in the "I can't find a piece of code" thread.

Another thing to add: gravity. I know it's complicated, but it would make VS really impressive if the flight model didn't allow you to stand still in front of a planet at a mere 10Km (geostationary orbit is around 30Km on earth, much more on a gas giant, and a helluva lot more around a star).

And I don't know if it would go here, but flying into a star should kill you

About the campaign, I strongly suggest writing the story before coding. Forget about VS limitations, there are none (any limitation that exists today can be overcame by tomorrow, that's what OpenSource encourages). Just write a good (preferrably great) story. Then we'll dry our brains out trying to code it into VS.

And yet another complicated but critical element: speech. It's really complicated since we need actors for that (any volunteers?), but any game without speech sounds incomplete nowadays.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 1:33 am

Awesome. Our gas giants need a lot of work IMO (a lot of the old textures don't wrap seamlessly).

I think that your suggestion for the story/campaign thing is already being followed. Certainly, jackS has spent a lot of time developing the universe, races, and backstory of vega strike (not sure about deucalion's story, though).

I disagree with your assertion that "any game without speech sounds incomplete nowadays". Where do you think that this game would benifit from speech?

Post by **klauss** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:46 pm

Where do you think that this game would benifit from speech?

1) Messages from other craft (like the announcement that they'll scan your cargo hold) sometimes go unnoticed. They wouldn't if there was someone speaking to you.
2) Mission instructions also go unnoticed. I've played quite a while by now, and only recently I noticed that when you undock, a bunch of messages tell you what to do.
3) Don't you think there should be a computer voice? I miss computer voices talking to you. Kind of like that WC movie, which wasn't that good but had that computer AI, what was it called?, "Merlin", I think (the computer, not the movie - I won't try to remember the movie's name as it would be futile). It's a very nice futuristic quality.
4) Believe it or not, speech can also help to time the messages right, so that they don't come in too fast or too slow. If you have someone speaking, you can't make a mistake there.
5) Ah, speech also makes you feel surrounded by people, and not alone in the universe.

One question, though: are specular maps implemented? And if so, at which level? (do they need PPL?) I did already some work and I can't see the specular maps. I use a TNT2 without PPL, but I konw specular maps can be accomplished without PPL (If you want, I can try to code the technique myself, it's not hard, but first I would like a confirmation about whether it's done or not). It's quite important since the planet I just did has a lot of water on it (one side of it is only water), and without specular maps it doesn't look that good. (I still have to add the clouds, however).

Also: Gas giants? Do I have the same version? In the version I have, the better ones (although they do need work) are the gas giants. If there's one that needs work is toxic_disaster. Man, that one looks wrong.

smbarbour · Post by **smbarbour** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:02 pm

I've thought about creating or finding a few sound effects to add when your ship is being scanned, no contraband found, contraband found to attach to the communications just so I know when it happens without watching for messages.

<captain_obvious>
BTW, it gets really quiet in the messages when you are cloaked.

</captain_obvious>

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 1:23 am

klauss wrote:Also: Gas giants? Do I have the same version? In the version I have, the better ones (although they do need work) are the gas giants. If there's one that needs work is toxic_disaster. Man, that one looks wrong.

I remember seeing a noticeable incongruity in the gas giant textures, although it may have been a gas dwarf/midget. I was more focused on getting the redeemer to texture properly at the time, so I wasn't paying too much attention to the planet type. Anyway, here's shot I took where I later noticed a "seam" on the planet.

Post by **klauss** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 2:29 pm

I see what you mean. You know, I never noticed that. I've seen the file, but I think I never saw the planet. Anyway, since I'll be trying to redo all textures, that includes gas giants.

It'll take me a while, though. Yesterday I was working on toxic_disaster (which I'm converting into a horribly polluted world), and noticed that it's much harder to paint the original ones: I can't use the real pictures much, I have to hand draw almost everything. I'm no drawing expert, but I can appreciate a good picture so I'm playing by ear (eye?), and it takes time. I spent the whole day and only got one of the many landmasses almost ready. So I think each picture as detailed as this one and as original as this one will take me about a week.

Anyway... I still can't make the whole set work in the game. How do you make lightmaps work? And what about cloudmaps? Will they work in my PC? Again, I'm using a TNT2 (no shader support, no register combiners).

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 3:14 pm

One thing about gas giants is that their textures have an order of magnitude more color and contrast than they should have. People've been looking at too many false color images. The colors of the bands should range between say beige, light brown and yellowish gray, whatever.
Clouds on planets do NOT need a special layer, like they have now. A mere offset would be enough to ensure they show "on top" of the ground. But no shadows from clouds, nor any indication of their altitude is actually noticeable in photography from LEO.
And the best way to render clouds is as white on black with grayscales, --no alpha channel, just monochrome, and then use additive blending with saturation, rather than alpha blending.

Post by **klauss** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 3:39 pm

I was thinking about that, and thought it was too much to ask now that there are only basic shaders. But although it's right that shadows on the surface are not visible, shadows on the clouds themselves are.
So perhaps the grayscale with no alpha is no good there: how would you draw a shadow in a cloud if you can't draw black?
But grayscale with alpha is not entirely good either. What if I want a planet with green clouds? Or brown? (I'm doing toxic_disaster with ill-colored clouds to show the contamination).
I think flexibility is the solution. I don't know what the status of things is, since I can't get them to work (really, I would like someone to help me out there), but cloudmaps, lightmaps, normalmaps, and every kind of map should accept the widest possible range of formats. For cloudmaps, for instance, if it gets no alpha it should use additive blend, and if it gets an alpha channel use the usual alpha blend. If it gets color, it should draw color. If not, you should be able to specify a tint color (so that you can draw orange clouds in grayscale and then apply an orange tint - increses memory efficiency threefold).
Right now, correct me if I'm wrong, multiple layers are present to allow the clouds to drift independent of the terrain.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:29 am

Yes, you're right; you do need alpha in addition to grayscale. But putting a tint on that gray should be easy. Much easier than having to save cloud files of many colors. This is not to say the file format can't be RGBA. In fact, it probably has to be, come to think; --never seen grayscale plus alpha format...

Right. There's a second sphere on top of the planet ground. I don't say this from a deep knowledge of the engine; merely from flying close to planets and looking at the horizon.