realistic Vs. arcade physics.

[hurleybird]

Which do you prefer more, and why?

[pincushionman]

Arcade. I think it's more fun, because I don't have to think as much.

But the behavior of ships will not affect my choice to play this game. However, the issue I see is how easily could the game be made to use one or the other? I predict that realistic behavior will ultimately be chosen for the main VS game, but if someone were working on a mod and wanted to use an arcade flight model, would he be able to do it?

-pincushionman

[peteyg]

Arcade feel, definiteily. I don't care what crazy explanations have to be used, or how realistic it is... trying to space-opera-style dogfight with realistic physics behavior is just lame. Not that there isn't room for fun realistic physics battles in a game or anything.

Really, I think the issue of 'realism' is probably the closest thing to a flame war there's been on the VS boards.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... sc&start=0
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... ight=#8903
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... sc&start=0

[hellcatv]

I'm not sure what you guys are referring to when you contrast VS with arcade physics?
do you think the turn acceleration is too slow? the normal acceleration?
both of these are configurable parameters in game

the former you may edit by changing the thrust maneuver values in units/factions/upgrades/mult_turn_balancer

the latter may be changed by editing game_accel in vegastrike.config

if you find better values be sure to post them here

but the difference between arcade and normal physics is merely a matter of changing the game stats

I mean the ship's computer does its best to compensate for realistic physics--and that's the way it should remain

[mkruer]

Well most people I talk to try to take an arcade style game and add realistic elements to it. This seem to fail 99% of the time. For Rylix I am trying to take realistic flight sim and add arcade elements. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy, It’s like walking a razor, and that is why I am spending soooooo much time laying out the ground rules for Rylix.

I like the idea or information overload, and the fact that in a realistic flight sim. You stand a 1 for 1 chance of getting shot down. Add a few hundred ships, and you start to feel very insignificant. This is also something I am trying to convey. That is the reason all the ships are friggen huge. On top of that, for every “ruleâ€

[hellcatv]

xmesh->obj...actually some progress...I have a loader that takes the info from n xmesh files in... and calls a macro for each element...I should be able to tweak the macro to spit out obj pretty soon actually... this is mostly due to jack's work...but I did a lot of work getting a single file with many textures loaded and in game, thereby invoking a macro per element...


the trick will be weaving the points together--but given the macro I think I should be able to maintain a count

the other trick will be referencing the proper material-- I wish I had an example obj which used more than 1 texture in the same .obj file

mail me if you got one

[peteyg]

You're right, MKruer. I'm sure it's possible to make a realistic space fighting game that is really super fun, all it would take is some (a lot of) work.

But I think it's impossible to have the two different flavors of realism have the same feel.

[chuck_starchaser]

Realism, all the way!

Well most people I talk to try to take an arcade style game and add realistic elements to it.

Couldn't agree more. I was working on my own 3D engine, a while ago (like everybody else), and what my plan was, was to have physics at the lowest possible level, from material definitions on up. Non-realism would become un-realizable...

I think that the concept of "arcade == fun" is fundamentally flawed. The more realistic a flight model in a flight simulator the more fun. The more realistic a car's physics in a racing game, the more fun. What's fun about seeing the car you're racing tailing by more than 30 degrees on every curve without losing control?, or to have to keep in mind that, unlike when driving a real car, you can slam the breaks in a curve and get away with it? It kills one's immersion; it suspends the suspension of disbelief; it sucks!

I can't deny that a game can be a lot of fun without being realistic. Nothing realistic about dogfighting in space in the first place; but it's not that such games as privateer were good *because* of their lack of realism, but rather in spite of it. Now, if one were to ask "how can we have fighting in space, with full realism?", that's a tall question, because the travel velocities typical in space would have ships cross each other at such high speeds they'd never have a chance to make an impression in the retina. But I think it's the wrong question to begin with:

The question should be: What's a plausible scenario in the year 2500 that would lead to trouble in space? How would you wage war? How would one make a living? How would organized crime evolve in a space-faring environment?
Coming up with realistic and plausible answers to such questions would lead to some serious possible scenarios that would not only provide challenge, but do so in original ways, and without necessitating violations of physical realism. In other words, reality is a game. A different, fictional future, if realistically conceived, would provide realistic game challenges, as it would do in real life, if it were to materialize as such.
Then again, any game that is so challenging as to require frequent re-loading of saved games, is by definition un-realistic. Life is never *that* challenging.

The strategic solution in the old flight sim TFX was to disallow re-spawning. In that game, you could save and reload; but if you died, your death was recorded to disk automatically (without Save), and your character listed as MIA. You had to create a new character and go through flight academy again, and through every mission again.
On the other hand, while there was a lot of challenge in that game, usually the risk was quite manageable. After all, the planes you got to fly were better planes than the enemies' planes; and you had all the right tools for the job. I found that game immensely more fun than any flight sim ever since. Believe me, the dread of doing something wrong and losing the game was more than compensation for the assurance of manageable risk. I'd spend the entire flight to the theater of operation mentally rehearsing the actions as per the briefing, and trying to predict the conditions I would encounter there. Once, after an F22 mission in Yugoslavia, coming back to the aircraft carrier, the carrier was damaged and could not be landed on. I had 1/4 tank of fuel so I climbed to 60,000 ft, accelerated to Mach 1.5 going west, turned off the engine, and just glided to Italy; then watched the sky for any commercial planes, followed one until I saw a landing strip and just turned the engine back on for the emergency landing. Just made it, the fuel ran out as I was touching down. That was the most challenging a mission got, IMO. And that was FUN!

But I really get no fun whatsoever from excessive challenge, and the ensuing need to reload a game all the time. Re-loading from a saved file is anathema to immersion, IMO.

So, yeah, I think realistic physics would make a realistically challenging game better and more fun than arcade physics; but facing 16 pirate ships attacking you all at once, twice a day is NOT a realistc challenge, nor is it a realistic scenario to begin with (what would the insurance premiums be like, in such a world?).

But there's no doubt that, with an engrossing story line, VS could be a lot of fun to play in spite of the lack of realism, just like privateer was a lot of fun. But then again, with a realistic setting, challenges AND physics, it could be MUCH more fun.

[jackS]

The question should be: What's a plausible scenario in the year 2500 that would lead to trouble in space? How would you wage war? How would one make a living? How would organized crime evolve in a space-faring environment?

Indeed. Motivating something as expensive as an interstellar military action is an important part of universe backstory. While, in doing a last-starfighter-style kill'em all arcade game, one might be able to hide the absence of motivation for the alien horde to want to kill you underneath the constant explosions, the absence of plausible story is not excusable in more richly defined games.

The answers to some of your questions are made clearer from reading the VS history documentation and the previous Q&A responses. The answers to other such questions are not yet recorded, and would perhaps be good fodder for future Q&A posts. Either way, these are relevant questions.

Since we're in the off topic forum, I'll be pedantic and note that, for number worshiping reasons, VS begins in the eighth month of the year 3276 C.E. - not 2500

But basically, I agree with much of starchaser's sentiment, albeit my thoughts on the matter are somewhat differently structured.

I look at the realism question as a goal setting issue, rather than a necessarly good thing. The goal of extreme realism is admirable and a good guide, but certain aspects of realism must be sacrificed for gameplay. Useful forms of FTL, for instance, are effectively Magic, but necessary if one doesn't want to spend at least days if not weeks getting from one inner planet to another, and absolutely necessary if one wants to have a universe with interstellar politics. Likewise, I am firmly convinced of the belief that there will be no dogfighting between manned vessels in any interstellar war. However - that's the premise of this game, and so one designs a universe that takes certain liberties so as to explain how such a situation exists.

So, I favor a shoot for realism, sacrifice as expedient for gameplay, and hope that you didn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater approach

[chuck_starchaser]

I was only off by 777 years, lucky guess! :-]

Useful forms of FTL, for instance, are effectively Magic, but necessary

Very true. And if someone came up with a game version of Asimov's Empire series I'd be the first to buy it.

To try and put my previous overstatements in a bit of perspective, I'd say that the good of any type of realism one can achieve helps NOT to call attention to the sobering fact that "this is just a game", and therefore aids to 'immersiveness'. On the other hand, somebody who spends money on a game (or a SciFi book, for that matter), is a willing victim to the lure of un-reality.

So to refine my earlier points, I'd say that the important thing is to plan carefully what needs to be un-real, and what can possibly be realistic. Whether piracy could really generate enough cash flow to buy and maintain ships is an aspect of un-reality that could be considered tolerable if the typical player *wants* to believe precisely that. And to the extent that I might be a typical player, I do want to believe that, sometimes. However, I do NOT want to believe that there are so many of them as to come in hordes of 15 to 20 ships at a time, twice a day, and that after killing them like flies, they somehow keep re-spawning. It totally kills my willingness to be fooled; it ruins the game for me, and turns it into a cheap arcade. But maybe it's just me. I didn't like this aspect when I was playing Privateer either, I might add; even though it remains my all-time favorite game.
So, I'd say that a good game plan would be one that carefully allows measured and justified doses of un-reality, and watches that they don't include 'cascading', where un-reality here necessitates un-reality there, and so on.

And where un-reality is needed in physical quantities, scales and physical laws, I'd probably explore possible mathematical compromises. If I were designing the solar system, and, say, there was a concensus that distances were too great or disparate to represent in actual scale and still get some visibility and reasonable flight times, I'd probably explore, for instance, using distances proportional to the square root of actual linear scale, or perhaps proportional to the logarithms; so as to at least provide a hint of the relative ratios. I throw that out of the top of my head; I'd probably do a lot of thinking and experimentation; but the general idea would be to to have at least *some*, even if non-linear, relationship to the reality represented. It would probably help later on in resolving issues when facing subtle consequences of the sacrifices of realism made, to know that at least they follow a documented formula.

Just my $0.015

[hellcatv]

though with the universe so bloody large you'd have to kill hoards of them

[jackS]

However, I do NOT want to believe that there are so many of them as to come in hordes of 15 to 20 ships at a time, twice a day, and that after killing them like flies, they somehow keep re-spawning. It totally kills my willingness to be fooled; it ruins the game for me, and turns it into a cheap arcade. But maybe it's just me. I didn't like this aspect when I was playing Privateer either, I might add; even though it remains my all-time favorite game.

which is why, in VS, unlike many other games, there are a finite number of vessels in existence at any given time, those vessels have a coarsely defined (system) location, and new ships enter a system either by leaving the one they were previously in, or by being produced, where production is dependent on the facilities available to a given faction.

Admittedly, there are known issues with the initial seeding of the universe with ships, and the production model is overly simplistic, but if you go around killing all of some faction's ships, you're going to notice that it becomes progressively harder to find any more ships of that faction.

[Average Earthman]

Arcade, definitely.

Come on, we're making things up anyway (otherwise you're going to take a week to fly between planets in the same system), why not make something up to make it fun.

[Dual]

I would perfer realistic phsyics because its easier for me to duel a bad guy then just ram into it head on.

[Average Earthman]

Actually, now I think of it - what exactly do others mean by realistic physics?

I actually have a degree in Astrophysics (which is even less useful than it sounds), so my idea of realistic physics might be rather stricter than others.

[zero_kelvin]

I like the idea of realistic physics, and by realistic I mean:

- Killing your engines means that your momentum of travel becomes fairly constant, affected only by outside forces such as gravity, atmosphere (if flying through a gaseous region of space), and anything else that externally acts on the vessel.

- Flying in atmosphere requires a craft that has either wings, stabilising and height controlling thrusters, or something akin to "anti-gravity".

- Sitting dead still in space without your thrusters or engines will eventually mean that you're travelling towards the nearest gravity well.

- Turning is not just based on "push left cursor, ship must turn left". I like the idea that a ship must have pitch and yaw thrusters, and they be used to point the nose, while the rear thrusters push the nose forward, creating a curved turning circle.

The reason I like all this sort of realism is not because I'm an anally-retentive freak who needs 100% reality in his games. If I was I wouldn't play them. Anti-grav? FTL drives? HA!

No, the reason I like my games to be realistic is that in space games, that solar system is reachable without the fuel required to use thrusters all the way there. Fire up your rockets, burn for say 30 minutes and kill the engines. You'll get there soon enough if you just make the odd adjustment for external forces.

Space combat is another one where realistic physics helps.

Say you're being chased by someone who's shooting at you, and he's behind your ship which doesn't happen to have rear firing weaponry. What do you do?

You kill the rear thruster, flip around and shoot back, all while still moving in the direction you were heading in the first place, and if he flies around you then you can track him and continue to fire.

It doesn't all have to be 100% realistic, but if you've got the core physics - and I'm speculating here - written down in an adjustable text file, then I suppose you could have realism for those who wanted it, or arcade for others.

Adjust the <object>gravitational constant</object> to suit.

Have <object>thrusters off <action>cease momentum <variable>1</variable> </action> </object> modifiable so those who want their ship to stop when they kill the engines can have that, while 0 would mean that others could "glide" or cruise with dead engines.

I don't know, I'm rambling I guess.

[hellcatv]

*cough* vega strike does all this stuff
use tilde to kill your engines
most ships have stabilizing thrusters
the gravity has been disabled cus no one sits around forever holding down tilde (and ships have > 1G accel)

the ship has pitch yaw and roll thrusters that are used to push teh nose

and you can fly without FTL drives (just don't hit 'a' and instead turn on non-combat mode...in CVS this is a lot more realistic)

yes you can hit tilde, turn around and blast him--or have your ship comptuer do the work at matching his speed and just hit home and turn your desired relative speed to zero


so ya VS does everything you mentioned...and atmosphere stuff is being worked on by ye grande Scheherazade

[ssfsx17]

This is what I imagine when one discusses realistic vs. arcade physics:

Realistic: Like Asteroids, except in 3-D. You thrust for a time, and then turn and thrust in a different direction.

Arcade: You just turn, and you somehow manage to retain the same amount of speed no matter how much you turn. Additionally, you can stop simply by dropping your cruise control speed to zero.

I'm inclined to make the game itself work like the former, but let the ship's computer and thrusters make the user feel as if the game was the latter. Obviously, firing the afterburner will let you feel more "realistic" effects as you do the "afterburner slide."

[hellcatv]

exactly that's what Vega Strike does
if you think we slide too much increase the side and retro thrusters on your ship model

[Average Earthman]

I have to admit, I've virtually banned the AI from using slide because they were using it to whirl their ships around while firing beam weapons. Wildly. I got blown up several times by people who weren't even firing at me. By fiddling with the settings in the .config file, they now actually have to fly their ships...

[StoneCold]

wow, a off-topic post literally goes ONTOPIC! now you don't see that everyday

I myself like realistic/simulation/whatever you want to call it physics. I love sliding around, blasting suckers using Beam Weapons.

Say, is there a way to turn auto braking off, so you could go and not have to hold down the ~ key to slide, and instead make the ~ key the "Brake key?" Just an idea...

[Ampersand]

Say, is there a way to turn auto braking off, so you could go and not have to hold down the ~ key to slide, and instead make the ~ key the "Brake key?" Just an idea...

Try getting a mule, then getting close to a group of dodos with tractor beams. You end up going off at about 3 times the ship's maximum rated speed, requiring several minutes of turning and reverse thrust to get down to a normal speed and bring the shields back up.
Richard

[hellcatv]

which config variable did you change
what did you change it to?
maybe we can prototype this change for the next release and see how it improves ai

[scheherazade]

the way i see it is

we have BOTH realistic AND arcade... _as it is now_.


if you wanna slide around a lot, give your maneuvering thrust stats shit worth of power.

if you want tightly bound turns without slide, give your maneuvering thrust stats lotsa power.


although, since in this 'game universe' the main engines are so powerful, i don't see why you can't assume that the thrusters are also super powerful (even if not even 1/10 of the main engines).


so its perfectly reasonable to say that, within this given game universe, arcade really _IS_ realistic...


-scheherazade

[Shark]

I think players should be able to choose between the two using a hotkey. This way, they get to play whichever way they prefer (and even switch between the two!).
Visually, it should reflect real physics - e.g., maneuvering jets/thrust vectoring (does thrust vectoring work in space?), etc..