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Post by irjayjay on Feb 12, 2020 9:55:18 GMT -5
So I was working on the flight characteristics last night to get the Hardwar simple flight feel into the game and I found some interesting things.
The moths never actually pitch or roll, they only yaw and move in an upwards/downward trajectory. If you pitched up 30 degrees in a plane and could then yaw 180 degrees so you're looking backwards, you'll be looking at the ground. Do this in hardwar and you're looking at the horizon, because you never actually pitched, only the camera and cockpit pitched.
This is difficult to explain with my words, but basically the control is a lot like turning on a fly cheat on a first person shooter, you'll never end up upside down, because your character never rotates, only his head rotates essentially and he moves to where you point.
So last night I added a fake camera and model roll animation when the game detects you panning and it suddenly felt super familiar, almost like an old game I found in a bargain bin all those years ago.
Anyway, I thought that was interesting, reading it must be boring though. Tonight I'll try to add the pitch characteristics, then it's just fine tuning and adding variables for different moths to have different handling.
I was working on hangar door animations the last two days as well. I suck at blender animations, but I'll get there. Just note, there are no working hangars in the game yet, I need to get the docking working before creating actual hangars I thought.
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Post by irjayjay on Feb 12, 2020 10:00:10 GMT -5
Along with moth flight characteristics I have been wondering. It would be nice to either have:
a. An advanced flight model/mode where moths can do loops, etc. Take note that moths don't have thrusters on top, so going upside down for long will make them fall out of the sky - look closely at the textures under the moths(yeah, me sticking to the lore/science we have) b. No advanced mode, but certain moths can fly in free mode and 6 degrees of freedom is possible with them, but the tradeoff is that they are lighter or smaller or use more power, I don't know, something.
Also, would it really suck to expect players to park their own moth? Is it near impossible for new players?
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Post by Denacity on Feb 12, 2020 10:43:00 GMT -5
I would have the same flight characteristics for all flying vehicles.
As far as the docking, could do what Elite dangerous does, there is a module that will dock for you but if you remove it you can manually dock faster.
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Post by extratitanian on Feb 12, 2020 11:52:43 GMT -5
I always figured that the moths had some sort of repulsor lift technology that worked against the ground to keep them in the air rather than any sort of traditional flight characteristics. Since the repulsor has to be facing the ground, that pretty much rules out going upside down and limits the amount of roll you can induce.
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Post by irjayjay on Feb 13, 2020 14:32:09 GMT -5
Titan has a 7th of earth's gravity and 1.6 times the atmospheric pressure, so repulsion would be a bit over engineered. I guess I'm only looking at what's possible with current science. It doesn't seem to be set too far in the future.
A repulsor would probably also use some form of giant electro-magnet, which would suck the cells dry. You wouldn't be able to hover and charge from your solar panels in a light well very easily. Maybe I'm being too much of a nerd now, sorry.
Also interesting to note that all the moths have wing-like control-surfaces, which makes sense in that atmosphere. You can get excellent maneuverability in that thick air with the control surfaces the moths have, and it's purely for turning, because they don't need to keep you in the air.
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Post by extratitanian on Feb 14, 2020 21:01:46 GMT -5
I just figured the way that everything just kinda floated around it had to be something similar. The Silver-Y doesn't really have anything other than those small nubs on the front and back and the Death's Head just kinda has a flat bottom rather than any specific wing like the Hawk or Neo-Tiger, it just looks like a flying brick that makes people sad. And the way they can fly backwards kinda like a helicopter. I don't know what the nitty gritty of the repulsors in Star Wars is, but maybe something similar?
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Post by shrekken on Feb 15, 2020 5:37:14 GMT -5
I think if you change the flight characteristics too much, you'll end up with a game that's like every other flight sim. Part of Hardwar's charm for me, was that it had very different flight limitations. The moths feel more like they have some kind of primitive anti-grav tech that could keep them in the air and that made sense to me understanding how they fly.
Don't forget that the power cells are probably something much better than our current lithium-ion batteries.
Don't worry too much about the tech we have now, just try to imagine how these things work and how they can be believable... I mean if you're worrying about how the moths fly, how about where the power is coming from to supply mis-op itself...
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Post by Denacity on Feb 15, 2020 17:28:45 GMT -5
I would just mimic hardwar as much as possible with the flight mechanics.
One thing that could be improved upon however is the weapons and effects, the Hardwar effects were too large and bland looking. I would shrink the laser effects down.
I also think it would be interesting if each moth had a set number of hardpoints and you could see each one from the exterior, like how you could fit Big Bob's and Nukes but for all weapons and you could see all the missiles and lasers from outside the moth.
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Post by irjayjay on Feb 16, 2020 2:46:09 GMT -5
Oh, the power for the city is easy, Every building in the city has solar panels somewhere on it, which powers the grid. Not to mention the methane rich atmosphere and water rich rocks, burn methane for power, convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. Easy.
Don't worry, I am trying to mimic Hardwar at first - but it's not that easy. Much easier to make moths fly like hover jets. Hardpoints are a great idea, though I also like the idea of not knowing what you're up against when you attack someone. Imagine attacking a noob and he pulls out a nuke on you, makes for interesting battles. Anyway, at first it'll be easier to not have weapons show physically.
Haven't made much progress this weekend as I had a social life, haha.
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Post by irjayjay on Feb 17, 2020 5:32:39 GMT -5
Good news, I got the flight model working like Hardwar, finally!! I'll introduce some variables, like turning angle, max speed, accelleration, in order to give moths unique handling.
There's just a small bug where the camera keeps rotating further and further, till you're looking to the side of the moth instead of straight ahead.
Hopefully I can sort this out during the week, then it's on to hangar docking. I might also squeeze in first person/cockpit view, everything's 3rd person right now.(I don't have a cockpit design though, haha)
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Post by techno on Feb 19, 2020 15:45:13 GMT -5
Oh, the power for the city is easy, Every building in the city has solar panels somewhere on it, which powers the grid. Not to mention the methane rich atmosphere and water rich rocks, burn methane for power, convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. Easy. I read somewhere that the light Wells are powered by geothermal vents deep under the surface of the city. So maybe that's what powers the buildings as well.
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Post by shrekken on Feb 19, 2020 16:48:02 GMT -5
Not sure... Though in reality titan doesn't seems to be geothermally active from the limited info I've found in a brief search. Solar power wouldn't be an option as the thick atmosphere and distance from our sun would limit the solar energy available. The atmosphere isn't very rich in methane either:
Nitrogen: 94.2% Methane: 5.65% Hydrogen: 0.099%
However, the lakes are made of liquid methane and they can be used for fuel. Also there is water on titan... but you'd have to drill through the ground and a layer of water ice to reach the liquid layer.
To quote Wikipedia: Titan receives just about 1% of the amount of sunlight Earth does. The average surface temperature is about 98.29 K (−179 °C, or −290 °F). At this temperature water ice has an extremely low vapour pressure, so the atmosphere is nearly free of water vapour.
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Post by extratitanian on Feb 20, 2020 9:38:03 GMT -5
I though it was in the original book that came with the game. It's all geothermal, but since everyone is using Light Wells to charge their moths, that's probably what they reference by "solar powered city" on Software Refinery's old website. Never really made much sense using solar power to run equipment to provide solar power to the moths. That'd be pretty cool to have some sort of actual building power system available. Geothermal makes sense for some of the single hangars off in the mountains, but when you've got something like Trade Central where it's a large complex with multiple facilities connected, it seems like a methane generator system sounds like it'd work better. That'd be pretty cool to be able to dictate what the hanger can do depending on what power means are available.
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Post by irjayjay on Feb 21, 2020 8:24:48 GMT -5
I totally get why light wells exist, its a great gameplay mechanic. If it weren't for them, there'd be less than half the dogfights happening in the original game. What better reason to become a sitting duck, than for charging your cells.
Fusion cells ruin the game in the end a little, things get too easy. There should be a drawback, like component damage over time because the power source isn't stable.
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Post by Lord Solarix on Feb 21, 2020 9:56:04 GMT -5
- The risk/reward for the following roles are pretty much equal, more risk = more reward:
Trader, Scavenger, Pirate, Enforcer, which makes all modes doable or worthwhile depending on your play style - In an MMO setting griefing would need to be prevented by allowing blood money(stealing money from the wanted person) on griefers, yet balancing it so that people still attack each other every now and then.
- There should be a way to cap a person's riches, but organically, otherwise richer/older players may get bored or cause an imbalance in the game world by always respawning.
- Moths need to be limited, perhaps in weapon/equipment slots, to prevent one build meta that everyone will end up using(this could be tweaked after launch though)
- Killing noobs marks you as a pirate, killing pirates marks you as an enforcer, that way you can't hide your sins and can be rewarded for killing pirates in a way
- Will AI pilots be needed? Depending on amount of players it may
- The game economy needs to somehow survive, yet be dynamic, or am I wrong, are basic economies okay? Would traders get bored if prices remained the same for certain goods?
Anyway, I'm hoping to get some pointers from people as to what mechanics actually made the game fun and also what would prevent an MMO/dedicated server game from sucking?
*WARNING: INCOMING NOVEL* (sorry) The art you've created is amazing, by the way - you're a much more talented digital artist than myself, those Moths look amazing. Re. your points: - Rich Cap: Replace "cap a person's riches" with added complexity for having wealth or property -- i.e. introduce property tax, ability for The Police to raid/seize your hangar, etc. Allow server admins to disable the Clone Farm - permanent death is a powerful deterrent to wanting to amass "too" much cash.
- Moth balance: I suggest actually, expose the variables to a server admin host, let the community figure it out themselves. Think of it like making a server admin into a "D&D Game Master" type role.
- Killing noobs / pirates: This could be addressed by re-enabling The Police in the online game. Re-implement their Hardwar standings/reputation system (binary: love you or hate you) first, come up with a sliding scale of love or hate later.
- Will AI pilots be needed: ABSOLUTELY 100% YES. It wouldn't be Hardwar without them. One of THE things that made this game so special was simply messing with the AI and watching them go at each other's throats "realistically."
- Dynamic Game Economy: 100% yes, this is needed. It wouldn't be Hardwar without it.
Some bits I can remember about Hardwar's mechanics: - Everything is interwoven -- Hardwar is a complex dance of many different systems interacting with each other.
- For instance, the game economy heavily depended on AI craft, especially those ferrying Ore from Mines to the various ore processors.
- Different NPC hangars had different ingame classifications and behaviors. For example, Trade Hubs automatically regenerated money so that they could keep buying stuff off of NPC pilots.
- Scavengers and Pirates in my remembrance would very often prioritize instant gratification - selling at Trade Hubs over taking goods to the "best" buyer.
- Pilots are pilots -- The player character is not special: AI pilots and players have the same statistics, attributes, etc. and both control their craft through joystick inputs and "keypresses", whether from a real joystick or a virtual AI one.
- The simplified control (no barrel rolls, no loop de loops, all weapons homing, could theoretically play the game with a gamepad if not for the fact the UI requires a mouse) made the game more accessible to more players.
I want to offer some words of caution. This level of detail is fun to think about but I've seen far too many fangames get swept up in game-mechanical theorycraft or modeling/texturing ... and eventually ... all updates slow to nonexistence ... the project never being formally cancelled, but never finishing. To avoid this from happening I'm going to suggest breaking this project up into phases. Each in of themselves are going to need to be further sub-divided into smaller chunks for specific parts of the game. By parts, I don't mean locations, I mean game mechanics themselves. Simply nailing "what a Silver-Y feels like to fly" is going to be a task unto itself. Phase A: Research, Reverse-Engineer, Replicate, Test, Repeat Product: Create a nearly perfect replica of the Hardwar Demo -- Alpha Crater only. Purpose: To understand the original game, possibly even more deeply than the original developers did, while working within a constraint (Alpha Crater only) that makes it possible to finish it. - Research and learn as much as you can down to last detail *all* of the original interlocking Hardwar mechanics.
- Draw up pseudocode/flowcharts/for game logic for how they might be separately implemented, and how they might interface/interact with one another.
- Focus on one thing at a time and figure out which things depend on what other things. For example, you can't have AI logic for flying ships until the ships are able to fly around.
- Attempt to implement them, one chunk at a time, as best you can. Future proof everything with the ability to be modified later -- e.g. make definitions for ships, economy, AI behavior priority, hangars, weapons, etc. "exposed" and externalized via XML files etc. so that future mods/addons/mutators/community Game Master controls/etc. can be done. It would be a good idea to make it possible to modify game behavior _while the game is running_ so that you can tweak on the fly.
- Test against the original game's behavior.
- Find errors or deviations from the original. Go back and revise.
- You will need help / QA testers. You will need us to meticulously document results.
- THIS WILL BE EXHAUSTING. This process will be a horrible, painful slog. It may take months. It may take years! It will feel like you are making no progress sometimes, or you may have to scrap an entire thing because it's not built right. All of this is okay. Mistakes are _necessary_. Build the game up, brick by brick. It's okay to take breaks to go model a perfect MOTH, but don't lose yourself in the temptation to stay in the modeling app forever.
Phase B ("Blow Out The Wall") Product: Build the rest of Titan. End up with a perfectly functioning clone of UIM06 that is a decent replacement for the original game. Purpose: This is the more fun part. - Now that the underlying "game" is built and you have a decent Hardwar clone
- Create Haven and Mines. Connect them to Alpha Crater. Test AI logic for traveling through tunnels.
- Test, test, test, test.
- Create more craters.
- Test, test, test, test. You get the idea.
Phase C ("Creative") Product: Whatever you want- Now that you're an expert on the original game and have produced a working clone, the floodgates are now open for tweaking and improvement.
- Go to town on the look and feel of the game.
- Start tweaking the game, too. New MOTHS? New craters? New factions? More degrees of love or hate than just black and white? Put the Police back into Multiplayer? Go nuts. The sky's the limit. Literally
- The community is going to have a whole bunch of different opinions on this. Allowing external graphical mods/changes might be a good idea.
Cheers, LS
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