Original post by NIm ... There will be several other "worlds" outside of yours, each one holding an enemy ship or fleet, each 10,000 km in diameter. Each will be drawn onto the outside of the map-sphere as a single dot, and drawn onto the starfield as a dot. Planets will be the exception, and will be rendered not as a point, but as an actual sphere, even if outside your world-sphere.
Glad it helped :) I'd really like to see a game using this system, so I'll keep an eye on the progress of your game.
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I really like the idea of a line going out from your ship, and simply entering a course change. That is what I will do. That line will extend far beyond your ship, through the entire solar system, curving of curse, for gravity. I also, however, need something for orbital mechanics. instead of a course change, I need to be able to request a higher orbit, or one with more inclination, and a type of transfer orbit to get there. Actually, ths could be done the same way. Just have 6 parameters for the desired orbit, and if neccessary, the optimization of the transfer orbit, along with a parameter for how much optimization to require for the transfer orbit. Perfect! Thank you for the idea!
Sorry, but I don't think I understand what you mean about the orbits and stuff!
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I noticed htat when I posted this, I didn't get very many meaningful replies at first. What could I do to get meaningful replies sooner?
That depends, most of the time the problem is that your topic has already been discussed many times lately so people don't bother typing the same stuff again. But if you search the forum you'll find lots of interesting discussions. Sometimes it's just that no one has any creative ideas for your problem :P It's a matter of luck I guess.
Original post by NIm ... There will be several other "worlds" outside of yours, each one holding an enemy ship or fleet, each 10,000 km in diameter. Each will be drawn onto the outside of the map-sphere as a single dot, and drawn onto the starfield as a dot. Planets will be the exception, and will be rendered not as a point, but as an actual sphere, even if outside your world-sphere.
Glad it helped :) I'd really like to see a game using this system, so I'll keep an eye on the progress of your game.
Don't hold your breath. This is a learning project for me, so it'll be a whill the specific item being lerned being opengl, so I don't have too much done yet :) Once that gets done, though, it should be come playable shortly thereafter. No idea when that'll happen though. Kind of tripped over myself getting into college this year, so I've got my hands full.
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I really like the idea of a line going out from your ship, and simply entering a course change. That is what I will do. That line will extend far beyond your ship, through the entire solar system, curving of curse, for gravity. I also, however, need something for orbital mechanics. instead of a course change, I need to be able to request a higher orbit, or one with more inclination, and a type of transfer orbit to get there. Actually, ths could be done the same way. Just have 6 parameters for the desired orbit, and if neccessary, the optimization of the transfer orbit, along with a parameter for how much optimization to require for the transfer orbit. Perfect! Thank you for the idea!
Sorry, but I don't think I understand what you mean about the orbits and stuff!
Basically, a gravity source curves the path of an object, which is why you get orbits. I wish I knew of a good orbital simulator to help you get the idea...
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I noticed htat when I posted this, I didn't get very many meaningful replies at first. What could I do to get meaningful replies sooner?
That depends, most of the time the problem is that your topic has already been discussed many times lately so people don't bother typing the same stuff again. But if you search the forum you'll find lots of interesting discussions. Sometimes it's just that no one has any creative ideas for your problem :P It's a matter of luck I guess.
Many thanks. I shall endevour to promulgate fewer and simpler ideas at one time, and also to search the past few pages of the forum:)
Homeworld really was 2d+1 when you consider the ships never pitched or rolled. They always existed perpendicular to the usual plane and they only moved vertically with it.
Control with all axis of rotation... I've thought about that alot as I've always wanted to make something like this. And I've NO clue where to begin.
You could control the units foreward speed and then issue orders via rotations specifically. Like order Cruiser A to maintain 20m/s and pitch up 30 degrees. This brings up the issue of trying to navigate the stupid things from A->B though. If you guess wrong by a degree or two you will be off a long distance by the time you get there.
Perhaps allow setting a 'nav point' with respect to some other object and then the game will compute the required heading and ...go. Then allow the system above as an 'override' for when you get into close combat. The next difficult problem arrises from how to describe that 'nav point'. I guess homeworlds system works for that though?
It seems to me that it would be to my advantage to do everything in multiple ways.
"Down" might be with respect to a particular ship, planet(determined by axial north/south), system, etc. It would be confusing to have it change all the time, especially if it changed as you changed your current focus. It may also be possible to orient a ship to whatever you set this global "down" to be.
Velocity changes have been kind of a problem, from the design perspective, becuase the distances involved are so huge. Presumably you could zoom to any degree you like. in combat, only your velocity relative to another ship counts, unless you are about to smack into a planet. In this case, it is probably best to make direct changes to your vector, by way of some kind of drag and drop thing. Possibly similar to homeworld, but with a few improvements. Alternatively, if you know exactly what you are doing, you can input a heading and velocity directly into you navigation system, relative to either you current position heading, or your current point of reference. You could even do constant heading changes this way. set a random rotation and don't cancel the rotation, keep ing yourself in a tumble, which makes you hard to hit or indistinguishable from a random rock. You could also set a heading to pass through a point (of course your frame of reference has alot to do with this) or stop on a point(it takes fuel to stay on a point, because of gravity), or pass through several points.
For drawing a point in the void, I turn to a rather ancient invention: the compass rose. On old maps, there is are lines that radiate from a number of points on a map. This was later given up for the cartesian grid system, because the cartesian sytem is more precise. I think it would be good, however, to use it to give an inuitive idea of position. Everything this positioning system is used for woould have lines radiating from it in 3d space. Each line would point toward a navigational reference. You'd set a number of these(planets, distant stars, possibly mobile ones like ships you are aware of) and have a line pointing to each. The idea is o give the player an idea of where they are in space. The cartesian grid doesn't do that, nor do the numbers associated with the grid. This is something I really want feedback on. It's a strange idea, and I don't know how well it would work.
Does anyone remember a game called Gravity in the early 90's?
That was basically played on an isometric grid that was distorted by massive objects forming hills and so on. A similar grid could be calculated from arbitrary down.
Though for displaying gravity fields, I'd suggest particle systems to show space dust falling toward your massive objects.
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You should check out Orbiter. The orbital calculators and transfer MFDs taught me a lot about orbital mechanics. I never knew that stuff was so complex! I mean, it's rocket science, not brain surgery. ;) Get the Red Shift mission planner add-on and try to copy the autopilot stuff for your orbital AI.
Original post by NIm The idea is o give the player an idea of where they are in space. The cartesian grid doesn't do that, nor do the numbers associated with the grid. This is something I really want feedback on. It's a strange idea, and I don't know how well it would work.
I think you're risking overloading your player with information and cluttering the interface severely. Even if you have only a few reference points in space, that's still a lot of lines pointing out every which way. It might be a 'realistic' way to show how navigation works, but I'm not sure if it'd be very fun or even particularly manageable.
As far as giving the player a good sense of direction and orientation, I think just using nav points like you'd find in any space sim would work fine. Have the location of planets highlighted in some way, so if you're looking at an external view of your ship and rotating around it you can see where they are relative to your position.
For actual long-range navigation I don't think it's really necessary to even go that far, though. Like I said before, I don't think there will ever be any reason for the player to want to go to a completely empty point in space. You'll almost always be travelling relative to something else, so it should be good enough to provide a list of landmarks (planets, starbases, other ships, whatever) to select from when you're plotting a course over a long distance. You could use either an actual list or a map that lets you scroll through them in a visual fashion.
If there is a time where you'd want the player to just pick a random spot and fly to it, you'd probably want to generate a nav point there anyway so the player doesn't get lost. If you do that, the nav point just becomes another 'reference point' for the player to travel to.
Original post by Paradoxish As far as giving the player a good sense of direction and orientation, I think just using nav points like you'd find in any space sim would work fine. Have the location of planets highlighted in some way, so if you're looking at an external view of your ship and rotating around it you can see where they are relative to your position.
That's a bit how I had suggested. Obviously you can't see objects that are far away, but an overlaid map mode with some way to also give you a sense of distance (for example, bigger or smaller dots) and maybe also some filters would be very intuitive. I think it would be enough to rule out the usual notion of over-head map.
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For actual long-range navigation I don't think it's really necessary to even go that far, though. Like I said before, I don't think there will ever be any reason for the player to want to go to a completely empty point in space. You'll almost always be travelling relative to something else, so it should be good enough to provide a list of landmarks (planets, starbases, other ships, whatever) to select from when you're plotting a course over a long distance. You could use either an actual list or a map that lets you scroll through them in a visual fashion.
If there is a time where you'd want the player to just pick a random spot and fly to it, you'd probably want to generate a nav point there anyway so the player doesn't get lost. If you do that, the nav point just becomes another 'reference point' for the player to travel to.
I agree. But I can see the need to position ships near a planet, but behind the enemy space-station. And it could be even more interesting if you usually order your ships to orbit around a massive target, instead of stopping near it; how would you tell it to follow behind the station? The first problem could be solved if, after specifying the target, you could also refine the order by selecting a nearby location.
I agree. But I can see the need to position ships near a planet, but behind the enemy space-station. And it could be even more interesting if you usually order your ships to orbit around a massive target, instead of stopping near it; how would you tell it to follow behind the station? The first problem could be solved if, after specifying the target, you could also refine the order by selecting a nearby location.
You're right, and placing yourself in a specific position relative to another object is probably the most difficult aspect of this problem from a UI perspective.
At the moment, I like the idea of placing a sort of 'navigation sphere' around reference points. The player's actual, final position is a point on the surface of the sphere. The radius of the sphere would be the distance from the reference point, so the player could shrink or enlarge the sphere to arrive closer or farther away. Sliding the 'destination point' around the circumference of the sphere would allow the player to fine-tune his actual position relative to the object.
In concept, it seems like a pretty good system to me, but I'm not sure how it would work in practice. There are definitely some UI obstacles that'd need to be overcome, including coming up with an intuitive way for the player to slide the destination point around the surface while also scaling the whole thing. On the bright side, the exact same system could be used for moving reference points - the player's final position is relative to the object, so it doesn't matter if it's stationary or not.
