Abandoned Sneak Peek - Surface Navigation

Genar-Hofoen

Genar-Hofoen
Gimi said:
Thank you for the clarification Khelder. I'm sad to see this go. You did some impressive work.

Their view on "memory reading" is what I expected, and I can understand it.
But even with your clarification, I still find the statement you quoted odd.
FDEV seem very supportive of third party apps that use the journal and the old iOS API. That was the whole point of the journal.
So that part makes no sense.

Your effort is on a different level though, and I imagine that you are overlapping quite few items on their todo list.
My wish would be that they would push the last 10 sets "position, course and speed" to a file like the commanders journal (separate file) once every second or two, I imagine that would be all you need. I have no idea if it's feasible or what the load on the computer would be though, and also how time critical the data is.

I do hope we get a clarification from FDEV on the quote though.
Click to expand...

I can tell you right now that spamming a journal file with 'position, course, speed' whilst seeming like a good idea, is a very bad idea - mainly due to the fact that it'd be writing/spamming to the hard disk.

The way to do it would be to have some kind of game client<===>3rd party app API. The Player Journal is great but it's useful for only a subset of player-driven events and suffices as such. Especially, things like 'position/course/speed' would be better suited to some kind of network stream.

I suspect FDEV are reluctant to do this because real time reporting of position/course/speed opens up the possibility of programming game bots.

Regards.
 
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eventure

eventure
Genar-Hofoen said:
I can tell you right now that spamming a journal file with 'position, course, speed' whilst seeming like a good idea, is a very bad idea - mainly due to the fact that it'd be writing/spamming to the hard disk.

The way to do it would be to have some kind of game client<===>3rd party app API. The Player Journal is great but it's useful for only a subset of player-driven events and suffices as such. Especially, things like 'position/course/speed' would be better suited to some kind of network stream.

I suspect FDEV are reluctant to do this because real time reporting of position/course/speed opens up the possibility of programming game bots.

Regards.
Click to expand...

Some position data is already available at the netlog file, ofc only a relative X/Y/Z position value. Frontier writing it into the log every 3 km of position change, which is quite bad for an accurate position information. But adding latitude, longitude and heading, not in realtime, but in a 1-3 secs. period should be enough.

Actually, the netlog file got spammed with dozends of repeating lines each second like "LocationObjectCreator::AllLocationObjectsLoaded", so Frontier should be able to add those required position data without problem.
Maybe someone should report such spam data at the netlog, so Frontier can add more reasonable data, that are required to build an app around it.

Also, the current relative position data output stops immediately when you start driving around on a planet or entering supercruise, that has to be changed too!
 
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Khelder

Khelder
Genar-Hofoen said:
I can tell you right now that spamming a journal file with 'position, course, speed' whilst seeming like a good idea, is a very bad idea - mainly due to the fact that it'd be writing/spamming to the hard disk.

The way to do it would be to have some kind of game client<===>3rd party app API. The Player Journal is great but it's useful for only a subset of player-driven events and suffices as such. Especially, things like 'position/course/speed' would be better suited to some kind of network stream.
Click to expand...

I made that point/recommendation in my submission. From what I can understand of the response, I wouldn't hold your breath on ever getting anything like that.

FD did indeed threw developers a bone with the journal, but it is by no means an API.


Genar-Hofoen said:
I suspect FDEV are reluctant to do this because real time reporting of position/course/speed opens up the possibility of programming game bots.
Click to expand...

I suspect FD are reluctant to do this because third-party applications aren't that important to them.

Besides, not sure what game bots you would be planning on building without situational awareness. Aimbots aren't possible without knowing where the targets are. And why would you bother building one when we have built-in aimbots (turrets)? If you want to set something up for farming, it would be far simpler to just do the infini-shield thing and let the turrets do the job.

I briefly considered the idea of auto-pilot. Again, it still needs a level of awareness. I can't imagine this would have been a problem. The emphasis now seems to be on fastest way to get to trigger pulling rather than actual flying.
 
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Gimi

Gimi
Genar-Hofoen said:
I can tell you right now that spamming a journal file with 'position, course, speed' whilst seeming like a good idea, is a very bad idea - mainly due to the fact that it'd be writing/spamming to the hard disk.

The way to do it would be to have some kind of game client<===>3rd party app API. The Player Journal is great but it's useful for only a subset of player-driven events and suffices as such. Especially, things like 'position/course/speed' would be better suited to some kind of network stream.

I suspect FDEV are reluctant to do this because real time reporting of position/course/speed opens up the possibility of programming game bots.

Regards.
Click to expand...

You probably have more experience in this area than me, although I do work with systems that do exactly this, both for logging purposes and to share information.
The interval is dynamic in this case though and can be defined. But in essence, higher speed and turn rate increases the reporting rate. This is also done for multiple tracks at the same time.
These are dedicated systems though, and also not "real time" systems, but delays are negligible under light load.
But a comparison is probably not valid as I'm comparing purpose built applications to something that is a convenience feature running on the side and you have to consider the total load on the client.

Frontiers reluctance to do something like this I fully understand. I did say it was a wish, and don't expect it to happen. Ideally Frontier will implement something with waypoints and destinations that we can use to navigate on the surface. There is certainly a demand for it.
 
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Genar-Hofoen

Genar-Hofoen
Gimi said:
You probably have more experience in this area than me, although I do work with systems that do exactly this, both for logging purposes and to share information.
The interval is dynamic in this case though and can be defined. But in essence, higher speed and turn rate increases the reporting rate. This is also done for multiple tracks at the same time.
These are dedicated systems though, and also not "real time" systems, but delays are negligible under light load.
But a comparison is probably not valid as I'm comparing purpose built applications to something that is a convenience feature running on the side and you have to consider the total load on the client.

Frontiers reluctance to do something like this I fully understand. I did say it was a wish, and don't expect it to happen. Ideally Frontier will implement something with waypoints and destinations that we can use to navigate on the surface. There is certainly a demand for it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I used to be a SCADA Engineer in a previous life, so I'm aware of various techniques used to acquire, store, and present data.

As you mention, the game itself already puts quite the strain on the system it's running on - in fact I'm sure I recall some of the game's stuttering used to be caused by the amount of spamming to the netlogs it did, especially when it was configured for verbose netlog production.

And on the reluctance front, perhaps FDEV already has queued the addition of QoL features like surface navigation and other content which Khelder's excellent application has shown to be possible.

Lastly, it's a pity his product didn't see the light of day.
 

Tikas

Tikas
I just learned about this being crushed, and it saddens me. Khelder, you created something that would have been greatly appreciated by racers and explorers, hell, anyone I am going to asume. The fact that this is not in the game yet is also greatly disturbing.

Absolutly appalling to read through this FDEV. Thanks...
 

Exigeous

Exigeous
What's utterly pathetic is Horizons, and as such planetary landings, have been with us for over 2 years now - and with 3.0 launching we STILL don't have any feature like this. It's rather embarassing actually. Look at No Man's Sky as an example - horrible launch disappointing everyone but in the year since they've added a HUGE amount of content. HUGE AMOUNT. Like more than Frontier has added since Elite launched, uh, 4 years ago...

If NMS had VR support, well, you wouldn't be reading my moronic posts right now, a NMS player would be....
 

Cmdr Maxine Slayton

Cmdr Maxine Slayton
Hey Khelder,

as far as I understood, FDev objected against reading values from memory.

In the current BETA they upgraded to Journal to contain position, altitude and heading information in a file called status.json.
I believe it is upgraded every 1 or 2 seconds or so. Couldn't you use that to revive your application?
 

Khelder

Khelder
Exigeous said:
What's utterly pathetic is Horizons, and as such planetary landings, have been with us for over 2 years now - and with 3.0 launching we STILL don't have any feature like this. It's rather embarassing actually. Look at No Man's Sky as an example - horrible launch disappointing everyone but in the year since they've added a HUGE amount of content. HUGE AMOUNT. Like more than Frontier has added since Elite launched, uh, 4 years ago...

If NMS had VR support, well, you wouldn't be reading my moronic posts right now, a NMS player would be....
Click to expand...

Well, NMS has even worse navigation. Kind of. At least they have surface markers for things (and they aren't big blue dots) but there's no longitude/latitude to use to navigate with.

But the surface experience... I mean, I never particularly wanted to see lifeforms in ED. But other little aspects of surface exploration are really cool. You can get out and walk around. You can scan things. You can mine things. You can go underground (and get seriously lost - be careful). There have been occasions when I've desperately needed to find elements on the surface but could only leave the safety of my ship in short bursts because of extreme cold or extreme heat or other lovely things like acid rain. But you can upgrade your suit for more protection from the elements. You know... gameplay.

I'll have to get back into it again soon. Flight sucks (especially without HOTAS). Visuals are weird. But it can be quite fun.
 

Khelder

Khelder
Cmdr Maxine Slayton said:
Hey Khelder,

as far as I understood, FDev objected against reading values from memory.

In the current BETA they upgraded to Journal to contain position, altitude and heading information in a file called status.json.
I believe it is upgraded every 1 or 2 seconds or so. Couldn't you use that to revive your application?
Click to expand...

I have heard this. So, technically, I guess I could use that to provide a diminished version of what I was doing. The thought did cross my mind. The thought of coming back and building an orrery crossed my mind at one point too. But I'd have to get past a few things.

Let's start with the status.json file itself. No. Let's start with the journal. While it is certainly better than nothing and has allowed developers to do some cool things, it is a far cry from an API. The navigation data written to status.json takes the cake. Why anyone would choose to communicate transient information via a physical storage mechanism is completely beyond me. I guess I could hope that Windows would at least take over and keep the file in cache. But I'm not really sure on that point.

Then there's the direction the game has been going. So much time has been wasted on The Engineers. A gameplay implementation I just cannot get behind. All the complaining (from users, I guess) about the unfathomable "evil" of "combat logging". Pfft. Other things I could probably mention if I remembered.

Mostly, though, I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from my experience with FD.

I am not a huge gamer and I rarely get involved in anything past just playing games that I'm interested in. But I had history with Elite (BBC Micro as a kid) and Elite Dangerous drew me in. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be part of this "community".

Here's the thing. I can't draw to save myself. I'm not really good at organising player activities. I tried making videos but they suck too. My strengths happen to lie in coding... and (yes - I do this constantly with enterprise software for a living) finding ways to squeeze extra functionality out of software. I was already thinking of building an overlay to assist with trading, etc. But when I saw Horizons, a light bulb went off and I had my "thing". Something I could bring to the community.

That was the plan anyway.

Of course, it didn't work out that way.

After a very long time trying to get FD to communicate with me, they finally did. I finally got to have a conversation of sorts with a licensing representative who I presume was communicating with someone else internally... not sure who that was. That brief conversation gave me this lovely paragraph:

Again, thank you for taking the time to send this through and state your case. We DO encourage community created content, but this content takes the form of artwork, fan group logos, gameplay vids, etc. These are fan-driven pieces that allow players to express themselves or their appreciation of the world they are creating for themselves within the galaxy. I don’t believe we ever expressed apps as being a piece of ‘content’, but we have said that we are not allowing the development OF apps if they read any memory or scrape any data from the game.
Click to expand...
(bold mine)

So, yes, they are against memory reading. Still don't have a reason why. But that doesn't matter anymore. Apart from that, I found the rest of that paragraph particularly hurtful. FD do want to encourage the community - as long as you're doing one of those things that I'm not good at.

I received that email on 18 February 2017. I haven't worked on my application or even logged into the game since. Catalyst was always supposed to be more than just the navigation. I was even going to use the dodgy journal. But at that point I lost all motivation. What was once a passion and a challenge has turned into bitterness and resentment.

Now, it's entirely possible that other game developers are the same or even worse than FD. I have no doubt about that. Again, it doesn't matter now. Elite Dangerous is was the game I wanted to be involved with. From this experience, though, I'll never go near a game developer ever again.

As far as Catalyst is concerned, it is still dead. I don't know if I'll ever go back to it. And even if I did out of my own interest, with FD's complete lack of support, I would have no intention of releasing it publicly. Sorry.

I don't even know if I'll ever bring myself to log back into ED again.


Thank you for allowing me to indulge in a little rant. Feels good. And I managed to keep all the swearing in my head.



TL;DR - Probably could. Too butthurt. Not going to.
 

ilo

ilo
Khelder, I'm going to start a series of videos showcasing different 'player requested ideas' self-implemented and I'd love to get you involved.
 

Khelder

Khelder
ilo said:
Khelder, I'm going to start a series of videos showcasing different 'player requested ideas' self-implemented and I'd love to get you involved.
Click to expand...

I built an overlay snake game to keep people occupied while traveling to Hutton Orbital. Would that qualify? I don't remember it getting much of an enthusiastic response from other players, though. Guess people just don't appreciate good ideas when they see them.

There was this tool prototype developed a while back that allowed you to verbally set chained route destinations. That was pretty cool. You should include that.
 

ilo

ilo
Khelder said:
I built an overlay snake game to keep people occupied while traveling to Hutton Orbital. Would that qualify? I don't remember it getting much of an enthusiastic response from other players, though. Guess people just don't appreciate good ideas when they see them.

There was this tool prototype developed a while back that allowed you to verbally set chained route destinations. That was pretty cool. You should include that.
Click to expand...

Have a few ideas in mind and some more that I gathered from the forum posts, I'm talking about implementing them for the fun of it, I really don't look for nothing else than learning and having some fun but at the same time it could very well prove if the 'suggestion' actually 'adds that value' to the game.

I'll ping you soon, waiting for the beta to be released before I actually start.
 
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