Naming Ships

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:10 am

I didn't find this feature when I searched, but I'd like to see some method of naming ships. Like, my cargo boat isn't just a Llama-class cargo shuttle, it's the Camel's Hump, capable of carrying 500,000 tons of water. My Lancelot heavy fighter is the Gunboat Diplomat, capable of negotiating a cease-fire against any faction with ease. And so on and so forth. The problem is, while it seems to me a simple matter of programming to add in, I'm uncertain as to how it would fit into the UI as anything more than a curiosity.

Post by **loki1950** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:32 am

i believe that is hard coded ATM so campaign missions work and you are credited with whatever and not any of the AI units there is some talk of putting naming in the next release.

Enjoy the Choice

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:04 am

loki1950 wrote:i believe that is hard coded ATM so campaign missions work and you are credited with whatever and not any of the AI units there is some talk of putting naming in the next release.

Enjoy the Choice

Eh? I was just thinking of it as a curiosity, something to add a bit of variety to the game. It shouldn't make trouble for campaigns, nor for the AI units.

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:00 am

Further thoughts on this subject: It should be fairly easy to fit into the interface; the right VDU on the HUD could describe a ship as "Herculean Squadron: Raven's Claw \n Civilian Dodo, Dgn faction". I'm certain that it could simplify the display significantly if this were the case. And all it would take, AFAIK, would be an addition to the .csv file of one field describing the name of the vessel, in the player's case at least; for the AIs, it would likely take a large field of names, and probably one for each faction. The biggest worry I can see would be the possibility of a craft "rising from the grave", as in a ship you've killed coming back with the same name.

Will a developer please tell me where I'm wrong?

Post by **klauss** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:39 pm

Well, if it's up to me, naming of players and ships will be added.
But there are lots of other things that take priority right now - like bugs, serious bugs, or features, really gameplay-enhancing features.
But yes... I have the idea that naming ships and yourself is something you should be able to do. The main stopper for it (ie - why it's low priority) is that it requires quite a bit of user interface programming (a menu to select and christen ships, etc, etc...). Not worth the very limited time we have right now... the upgrade system needs heavy fixing (were you ever unable to repair something? those bugs need fixing more than the game needs ship christening).

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:33 am

klauss wrote:Well, if it's up to me, naming of players and ships will be added.
But there are lots of other things that take priority right now - like bugs, serious bugs, or features, really gameplay-enhancing features.
But yes... I have the idea that naming ships and yourself is something you should be able to do. The main stopper for it (ie - why it's low priority) is that it requires quite a bit of user interface programming (a menu to select and christen ships, etc, etc...). Not worth the very limited time we have right now... the upgrade system needs heavy fixing (were you ever unable to repair something? those bugs need fixing more than the game needs ship christening).

Tosh! I demand that you place those bugs and upgrades on the back burner, so that I may have my Diplomat in the next release!

I get the picture; bigger bugs beat better boats, so far as priority goes.

JoeB4226 · Post by **JoeB4226** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 12:23 am

i like the idea of naming ships. alot.

maybe it can be added that you can buy used ships, for a cheaper price of course and maybe a few flaws, that already have names. then you can only name a ship if you buy it new, or if you want to name a ship you have to "order" it from a factory and have to wait a certain amount of time to get it.

Nano_Lite · Post by **Nano_Lite** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:10 am

YAY! If this is implemented, then I'll be able to name my ship...WHATEVER I WANT TO!!1 =D

Great idea.

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:02 am

Kindly read the rest of the thread. Sad as it is to say, unless one of you or I is willing to code it in, ship-naming takes second fiddle to fixing the big bugs in this game. C'est la vie and all that good stuff.

maybe it can be added that you can buy used ships, for a cheaper price of course and maybe a few flaws, that already have names. then you can only name a ship if you buy it new, or if you want to name a ship you have to "order" it from a factory and have to wait a certain amount of time to get it.

Unrealistic. In real life, you can change a ship's name in the registry, so names won't be that permanent. If you buy a used ship, it should be in need of maintenance and possibly set up oddly; ie, much like your stock(refurbished) ship, but in poorer condition and cheaper, but with all the same goodies. And if you want a custom named ship, why not just buy it stock/milspec and have its name changed on the registries?

KorJax · Post by **KorJax** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:29 pm

klauss wrote:Well, if it's up to me, naming of players and ships will be added.
But there are lots of other things that take priority right now - like bugs, serious bugs, or features, really gameplay-enhancing features.
But yes... I have the idea that naming ships and yourself is something you should be able to do. The main stopper for it (ie - why it's low priority) is that it requires quite a bit of user interface programming (a menu to select and christen ships, etc, etc...). Not worth the very limited time we have right now... the upgrade system needs heavy fixing (were you ever unable to repair something? those bugs need fixing more than the game needs ship christening).

I really hate to be a downer, but i've heard that for the past two years (or is it? its been a long time

)....

I mean, the whole thing about how there are lots of different stuff that needs to be done first, and for the past year(s), all of the same stuff has been named... I mean, the current VS version is several years old (I know about the dev version, but why cant you guys make a comprimise and atleast semi-regularly release updates?), and the front page gets an update about every year.

I know how hard and combersome it is to develop a game, espcially with a "small" team.

But either all progress that gets accomplished is being lost annually from the open-source nature, or just the organization of whats going to get done is bad, or somthing else, because quite litterally ive heard the same thing every year on how there is higher priorty stuff that needs to be done. Which is all well and good, but that list of priorities hasnt changed much throughout the years, the website still gets no updates, and all of the progress ive witnessed after all this time was in the dev version, which sporattically seems to never come to any meaningfull progress to actually release an update to the normal VS version.

Yeah, I know, im just not being optimistic, and you guys arent paid and you dont work on this every day of your life. But I do see stuff happening with the dev version, but no actual "progress" seemingly after several years is made in achiving the overall goals of the project...

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 9:46 am

after several years is made in achiving the overall goals of the project...

sadly true.

I wish I was there at the beginning of this project.. i dunno. anyway, it's still alive.

Post by **klauss** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 9:29 am

Sadly true - but let me comment on that:

Well, the plan is to make a release when rebalancing is done, regardless of where the engine is at that point - ie, whatever experimental features aren't working right get disabled, and whatever bug is there will get fixed in subsequent patches and minor releases. So... the only thing really important in getting a release is getting SVN at least as playbalanced as 0.4.3 (which it is not).
Since I'm in no way related to that part of development, I can't say much. I know dandandaman is working on that (on and off - he has lots of RL stuff in the way), and I've seen JackS commit some relevant stuff on that subject as well. Still, I can safely say that gameplay balancing, though the most important part of the project (into getting a release), is one of the least active development areas.
Since many rebalancing tasks only need limited modding knowledge, I bet contributors could help a lot in that department. Engine development needs widespread engine-internals knowledge, but gameplay balancing doesn't. I mean... someone could easily hop in, read up on factions, figure out a faction relations model (ie - who likes who and to which degree), check that up with JackS, and flesh out balanced relations without knowing much about modding. In fact, figuring out balanced relation numbers is the most time consuming thing there - you have to playtest a lot. So... it's mostly the ability to playtest a lot what matters there. That's true on many other rebalancing tasks too.
I bet, even if dandan could work a lot on the rebalance, he'd still be constrained on how much time he can invest into playtesting, which is crucial in a rebalance.

What I say: it's not just team size... it's that what needs to be done requires a lot of time, which none of use really has. That's been true for a long time, and it doesn't seem to be changing on the core team - ie, none of us will magically get lots of free time. Sad, but true. That means that, unless helped (and such help needs proper direction - I wish I could provide such direction, but as I said, I'm not involved in rebalancing and couldn't be, I'm really not up-to-date on what's the status or goal there)... unless helped, I don't think the next release is close. Surely not a couple of months away. Unless helped.

Post by **jackS** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:47 pm

On my end, the time constraints have been coming from grad-school related issues:

My advisor got hired away by Microsoft, I've been in a paper lull (haven't submitted anything for publication since summer 2006) due to my switching to a new software-tool infrastructure for my experiments (which has proved less than agreeable in our efforts to tame it - we had to punt on our February conference and are aiming for an April one), and, in large part due to the above two items, my thesis proposal date has been pushed back multiple times now.

Now, these things will resolve themselves (if for no other reason than departmental limitations on how far the thesis proposal can be postponed), and some, such as the advising, have already mostly done so (enter the new co-advisor), but, until they do, my prioritization of time allocations will have to continue to be skewed toward what they pay me my stipend for. Or, to put a different grad-school spin on things: until, at the least, I get past the thesis proposal, time spent on VS has to count against my procrastination quota rather than my personal fulfillment quota (those who've been through or around graduate programs will know what I mean

).

As Klauss said, many of the rebalancing tasks are more tedious and time consuming than requiring of anything profound. Playtesting of given value sets, in particular, is something that has every reason to be a task well suited to delegation. At present, however, neither dandandaman nor I have a defined set of people to delegate to for this (delegation does tend to work better when communication is frequent enough that both sides actually know what is being understood rather than just said), and thus the to-do tasks for rebalancing have not been partitioned for delegation. This does not have to remain the case.

Post by **loki1950** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:45 pm

so jackS are you calling for volunteers if so i have lots of time doing vampire shifts as i do

Enjoy the Choice

prolog · Post by **prolog** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 3:21 pm

I'd be happy to help out on the writing side of things. I submitted some of the ship descriptions that are in-game, which were accepted by jackS with minor revisions. I think I also submitted a second batch, but haven't heard from him since. Anyway, I'd be happy to continue doing small things like writing ship descriptions. I also had a campaign and some small utilities (varying the mission texts, etc), but my hard drive's been having some issues, and I can't seem to find them ATM.

I could probably help out on the code side of things also (I write C++ for a living, now), but I only have Windows on my machine, and don't have Visual Studio.

Post by **jackS** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:08 pm

prolog wrote:I'd be happy to help out on the writing side of things. I submitted some of the ship descriptions that are in-game, which were accepted by jackS with minor revisions. I think I also submitted a second batch, but haven't heard from him since. Anyway, I'd be happy to continue doing small things like writing ship descriptions. I also had a campaign and some small utilities (varying the mission texts, etc), but my hard drive's been having some issues, and I can't seem to find them ATM.

I could probably help out on the code side of things also (I write C++ for a living, now), but I only have Windows on my machine, and don't have Visual Studio.

Doh. Sorry about that. Got lost in the shuffle. Ping me again if I don't manage to find and reply by this weekend.