|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 17, 2020 11:42:34 GMT -5
My reasoning for apartments is mainly for people to afford something smaller than an entire building, since buildings will be quite expensive.
Apartments will allow you to have a safe space to park a moth and to keep any character inventory.
Apartments won't allow you to sell or fit anything to your moth, for that you'd need to own a building.
At least this is the idea for now.
So there's progression not just in owning a moth, but also in owning property. You don't start off owning a huge building like in the old game, you rather gradually work your way up the food chain, meaning there's more to look forward to after getting your first crumby apartment.
It's also a way of having less hangar doors from the outside. Imagine 100 players building 100 buildings with hangar doors lighting up their owner's names as you fly by. It would be major spam.
Anyway, I think production will be something I focus on a lot later. I've never played the old game, being able to produce anything, so I'm not sure about the mechanics of it. It also adds a massively complex layer to a game I'm trying to keep simple, almost like it's a game on it's own. Anyway, I'm not saying it won't happen, but not saying it will.
Currently getting pods working and will then work on transferring inventory to/from a hangar as well as buying/selling. After that it's the hard work getting AI working before getting the economy working.
|
|
|
|
Post by Denacity on Mar 17, 2020 23:18:57 GMT -5
Being able to produce goods in your own hangar was the pinnicle of Hardwar really, the feeling of being a big player in the economy, and being able to make your own weapons. I don't think it's an important feature to dwell on now, but being able to produce goods in your hangar was an interesting prospect in the original game for sure.
Granted, it was a bit over powered, but I think with some limitations (like only being able to produce certain things in a single hangar) it could be balanced and fun.
I think the real interesting part is the concept of working together.
Player A refines basic materials
Player B makes mid tier components from Player A's refined resources
Player C uses materials from both A and B to make end tier components like weapons and moth upgrades
Players A,B and C could be in a faction together. They could be trying to out compete players X, Y and Z who are in an opposing faction. They use their ability to make their own resources to build up their own factions.
Of course, the main issue with not being able to produce your own goods, is that trading to public hangars to get them to produce goods meant that you lost money most of the time, it just wasn't feasible with the economy, but that's something that could be improved upon.
|
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 18, 2020 5:47:35 GMT -5
I've been thinking about this production bit since last night. Like I said, it's not a no, I just need to figure a bunch of stuff out before getting there. A production system/crafting is quite a massive bunch of logic to build. I need to be careful not to bloat the game with realism and options, that's Elite Dangerous' downfall.
Maybe I should join a multiplayer Hardwar game sometime and learn about the production mechanics.
|
|
|
|
Post by Denacity on Mar 18, 2020 7:14:54 GMT -5
Taken from Timski's FAQ:
"You will need your own hangar in which to install manufacturing equipment. You
then need to buy the appropriate machinery from Central Industrial. Five types
of machinery are available (so only certain aspects of the economy can
currently be taken in-house): Munitions (missiles and similar - not guns),
Components (MachParts, CompComp, drones and cells), Ore (Sheet Metal and
ExMetal), Distiller (alcohol) and Narcotron (Narcotics). You may need to
supply Central Industrial quite heavily before the desired machinery appears
for sale: They don't produce in volume, particularly early in the game. You
then take the machinery to your hangar and install it (note installation must
be done from your pod, not your stock). Now under Owner Controls - Stock -
Manufacture, you'll be able to set a production level. Next feed the
appropriate raw materials onto your hangar market - see the Non-Moth
Production Requirements and Locations Table appendix for details. Either
deliver them yourself, or set the purchasing options to attract other traders
to deliver them (but see Why don't AI pilots sell to my hangar? below - it can
only be made to work in beta 5). When the raw materials are available, items
will slowly be manufactured."
Basically, you have to buy Machinery to be able to produce goods. This is something we could make more expensive than it is now, at least the Munitions and Narcotics ones. The Ore and Components ones are really nice to have early on though because you use them to produce components from Raw resources that you use to feed hangars to have them to produce goods. You also needed to have 2 hangars, one for ExMetal and one for SheetMetal because ExMetal has to be made from Ore and SheetMetal can be made from ScrapMetal but if you have Ore in your hangar it would use it to make SheetMetal before it used ScrapMetal and using ScrapMetal to make SheetMetal was way more efficient than using Ore. This is just one example of something that is an interesting quirk that could be adjusted.
But this is something we could discuss later on
|
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 18, 2020 8:47:23 GMT -5
Been trying to get basic multiplayer going today, man is it tough!!
Finally found a document that explains the basics of networking in Unreal Engine. I was hoping to at least mount the moth from player 2, but no luck after working on it for the last 5 hours.
|
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 20, 2020 6:16:05 GMT -5
Good news, I got very basic multiplayer working for moth flight. That means the moth flies on all user's screens. Previously joining players could not enter a moth and even once they could enter it, the other players couldn't see them moving. I got stuck mostly with the pitch and roll movement, which was the same thing I got stuck with before when building the flight model. Seems the flying pawn just doesn't support all movement configurations out of the box. I have also experimented with random moth and player colours. In future the player colour logic will handle setting the player name. The moth colour will be picked when you purchase a moth. It's very rudimentary right now, but later I'll add a texture mask so that only the paint changes colour, not the entire moth(right now engines, solar panels windows, etc. also get tinted). Here's the video:
youtu.be/bESphGK0QOA |
|
|
|
Post by Denacity on Mar 20, 2020 7:29:08 GMT -5
Ideally it would be awesome if each person could use their own texture for the moths and other people could see it when playing online. This sounds like a lot of work though, but something to look at later on.
Some bits that are textured and other bits with a solid color that could be changed would be nice at least.
|
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 20, 2020 8:14:04 GMT -5
I have considered that, but I've seen some horrific skins for hardwar and can't trust players to make moths look sleek. I'm thinking of adding decals, much like in games like Need for Speed, but I don't know how easy that will be and how performance will be in multiplayer.
I'm all for it though and as you said, it depends on how possible it is. I imagine that clans can form with similar logos on their wings to tell them apart from other citizens, etc. we'll see.
|
|
|
|
Post by Denacity on Mar 20, 2020 17:13:56 GMT -5
Keep up the good work though!
Do you have a plan how the multiplayer infrastructure will be setup? We're you going to do something like we have now with a headless dedicated server that others connect to?
|
|
|
|
Post by Pilot on Mar 21, 2020 1:10:46 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. Did the Deaths Head have wings or foils? 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. The basic flying blueprint of the unreal engine is quite similar to Hardwar's controls, just needs tweaking, which it seems that irjayjay has managed to do if not build them from scratch. irjayjay Did you manage to do that through a blueprint or through C++? Either way I look forward to trying the Alpha. 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. Hardpoinjts will be cool, but they seem to be quite a pain, RSI still has problems with theirs. PLEASE NOTE, SHREKKEN AND I ARE NOT THE SAME PERSON. Apologies for the caps. I think on bulletin boards it's easy to lose track of who said what. SHREKKEN is the talented moth modeller. I am the guy making my own Hardwar remake. LS: I can see you thought through everything I said and I'm going to print out your reply and add it to my notebook, your response is extremely wise and valuable. Currently I'm working on flight mechanics and docking. Flight is now Hardwar-esque and I've eliminated most of the bugs I had, now it's just smoothing the flight and getting animations to be less abrupt. I started on docking an hour ago, currently just getting the airlock to sense the moth and open the outer doors. It's quite a long sequence to do, not to mention taking over control from the user and moving the moth into a bay... That's gonna be tough. Though I'm building Alpha and trying to stick to the Hardwar we love, I know very well that verbatim-copying is a huge time waste. So wherever I can get away with it, I am adding "improvements" (functionality that doesn't match Hardwar, but is easier to implement and actually improves upon the old game). One of these is the flight model... it'll take forever to get it exact, instead I'll settle for 85% there, and most won't notice the difference after playing my game for 2 minutes. As for the models: I have an untextured moth and an airlock modelled. I'm careful to not model what I can't script for yet, so what you see is what you get. I only model when I don't have internet(yeah, we get power cuts in my country), just saying. I am still not convinced we need a fully dynamic economy. Every company to ever try that has broken their own game and had to hard-code tolerances, the same goes for Hardwar, the trade centres having enough money to buy all the time is no mistake. Anyway, time I hit the sack, more coding tomorrow, maybe I can get all the door animations to work and get started on moving the moth toward a hangar bay... Just maybe. I want to point out that in the Unreal Engine contract it says that a copyright dispute would be pretty much instantly terminate the contract. So being less cannon and maybe another moon or planet would be best, though MisOp we love. A simplified econ would probably be best, max price if 0-1 in stock, avg price if demand is met, but not exceeded, min price if 100 in stock, though this may be to simplified. =-=-=--=-=--=-=-=-=-=---=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Now something I would like to see, is a few of the features that were originally going to be in Hardwar, like hangar damage. It would also be nice, more of a pain actually, but have hangar owners to have to supply their hangar with food, at least enough to motivate the repair workers, and once a factor module is installed enough to keep them from going on strike... That way a hangar is a boon and a shackle, not enough food for long enough maybe a crime syndicate will take over your building, or something. Thanx Teeth03. Yeah, I think controlling 3rd person cameras like the original might be difficult slightly more work for very little gain(if it is even gain), also, it would look pretty cool in first person. Perfect example of something that doesn't need to be like the original. I'm wrestling through the idea of getting out of your moth. It's already possible in my game, the question is why? It's probably the biggest feature I wanted in hardwar, having more to explore, not just in the crater, but inside buildings. I want it to be possible for you to live without a moth, maybe trading very low amounts by travelling by monorail until your hard work pays off and you take to the skies again. However, being killed on foot would suck, because you'd lose all your moths and buildings if you don't have a clone and killing on foot is much quicker. I also want the user to be able to stay in their moth and access the computer to buy/sell/etc. directly as with the current game. Sometimes you dock quickly to get rid of your goods, only to launch to go kill the pirate that nearly killed you. Something I had always wanted to do, get out of the moth to rescue gangboy. |
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 21, 2020 7:51:16 GMT -5
Keep up the good work though! Do you have a plan how the multiplayer infrastructure will be setup? We're you going to do something like we have now with a headless dedicated server that others connect to? I would prefer dedicated servers, but that is a ton of work still, especially in the department of persistence. Basically I need to manually build a server that'll receive all game data(where each ship is, its trajectory and speed, each character, all the items they own, all objects placed everywhere, all items fitted to moths all items fitted to hangars, all ownership details, etc. and save all of that in a database so that people can come and go as they please. Unreal supports a mock dedicated testing server, but I'm not sure if that gets exported with the game in the end. I hope it does. |
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 21, 2020 7:59:11 GMT -5
I want to point out that in the Unreal Engine contract it says that a copyright dispute would be pretty much instantly terminate the contract. So being less cannon and maybe another moon or planet would be best, though MisOp we love. So yes, using blueprints, I didn't feel like sinking my teeth into C++ and blueprints are quite a shallow learning curve. As for Copyright, I started realising that I can't call my game Hardwar. I modeled the Silver y, but my intention is to replace it later when I have more time to work on the assets. Probably most of the art you see in game will eventually be replaced. It's slightly inspired by Hardwar, but also inspired by GTA, survival games, crafting games, a little bit of Star Citizen. I know that's hard to hear for this community, but it's so difficult to buy the copyright for Hardwar right now and I can't justify putting all this work in for a free game. In fact, I think my concept is much closer to Star Citizen than Hardwar. Biggest difference between this and Star Citizen being, my game has much more chance of being completed. Hehe. |
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 21, 2020 8:08:35 GMT -5
Now something I would like to see, is a few of the features that were originally going to be in Hardwar, like hangar damage. It would also be nice, more of a pain actually, but have hangar owners to have to supply their hangar with food, at least enough to motivate the repair workers, and once a factor module is installed enough to keep them from going on strike... That way a hangar is a boon and a shackle, not enough food for long enough maybe a crime syndicate will take over your building, or something. Hangar damage in a multiplayer world, I've considered it, but, it should be really difficult and costly to cause other players damage. Almost the cost of having a hangar built. I don't want a toxic player base like they have on games like Rust and other survival games where people form griefing gangs. If any griefing is to be allowed, it should be highly premeditated and planned. You shouldn't be able to grief someone's hangar for scavenging cargo before you could get to it, for instance. About the food, this is going too far into micro management. I don't want people worrying about the small stuff, like when last their character has pooped or taken a shower. It's more about building a life on a new planet than a bill paying simulator. I see what you're saying about a hangar being a boon and shackle, almost prevents people from just buying out an entire crater if it adds a lot of admin to it. I guess that's why the original game forced us to collect the money from all our hangars manually. |
|
|
|
Post by irjayjay on Mar 21, 2020 8:13:17 GMT -5
I apologise if I seem to have an answer for everything. I have been thinking about this game solidly for the last 2 months and considering each possible feature very carefully. That's why I almost always have a comeback for a feature suggestion.
|
|
|
|
Post by Pilot on Mar 21, 2020 13:40:16 GMT -5
I apologise if I seem to have an answer for everything. I have been thinking about this game solidly for the last 2 months and considering each possible feature very carefully. That's why I almost always have a comeback for a feature suggestion. Nah this is a good thing it shows that at this point you are serious about this.  Now something I would like to see, is a few of the features that were originally going to be in Hardwar, like hangar damage. It would also be nice, more of a pain actually, but have hangar owners to have to supply their hangar with food, at least enough to motivate the repair workers, and once a factor module is installed enough to keep them from going on strike... That way a hangar is a boon and a shackle, not enough food for long enough maybe a crime syndicate will take over your building, or something. Hangar damage in a multiplayer world, I've considered it, but, it should be really difficult and costly to cause other players damage. Almost the cost of having a hangar built. I don't want a toxic player base like they have on games like Rust and other survival games where people form griefing gangs. If any griefing is to be allowed, it should be highly premeditated and planned. You shouldn't be able to grief someone's hangar for scavenging cargo before you could get to it, for instance. About the food, this is going too far into micro management. I don't want people worrying about the small stuff, like when last their character has pooped or taken a shower. It's more about building a life on a new planet than a bill paying simulator. I see what you're saying about a hangar being a boon and shackle, almost prevents people from just buying out an entire crater if it adds a lot of admin to it. I guess that's why the original game forced us to collect the money from all our hangars manually. I doubt that SR had the intention to destroy, only disable hangars. Excluding players the wealthiest traders on Titan are the humble constmat (construction materials) traders that no one bothers stealing from. As far as hangar damage goes, I doubt anything short of a TacNuke or BigBob would do any serious damage, unless you feel like wasting tons of cash on FB, UB, or Devs. EDIT: One of the things I always wanted to do in Hardwar was, I thought of after picking up the mystery package, was to land somewhere and "power down" while passively scanning for prey. ^^ |
|
