Which is harder to program? Walking on a planet or on the ship?

[Lightspeed]

I've been taking a look at some of Arvey Jay's VR videos inside some of the ships, as he pokes his head around corners and inside doors. There's a lot of detail built into the existing ships, yet there is a whole lot more that would need to be addressed in each and every ship to provide an immersive experience.

Some of us (myself included) have said that "Legs: Walking on the Ship" would be a good first offering from FD, but I'm wondering if that is the hard option, and "Legs: Outside" is the easier feature to program and create immersion, even on planetary surfaces.

Take a look at his Anaconda tour ... and some of the others (The Krait II is good, and there's much work to be done even in that late arrival ship), to see what I mean .....

Of course, this is probably not news to those of you with VR

 

[Ignition]

The difficult in walking around is the gameplay, what things can be done. And NPCs.
Unless you try to do something like Star Citizen were 3rd person is the same as 1st person, which is great. But for a simple game as Elite is not necessary.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Suddenly remembered the trouble the Mass Effect: Andromeda and Fallout 76 teams had with programming walking. I think they had some issues with getting one foot to go in front of the other in a vaguely human way at times.

Yeah, if we do get space legs I feel like cutting Frontier some slack if things don't work first time.

 

[Mengy]

Remember, we likely won't be "walking" around our ships much, as there is no gravity out in space! Unless the ship is landed on a planet or at low altitudes. Or unless they just give us grav boots instead.

From an implementation point of view the actual walking is the "easy" part. The hard part is all of the asset creation and new game mechanics to make space legs worth implementing in the first place. THAT could take a huge amount of time for a game like this.

 

[Ignition]

THAT could take a huge amount of time for a game like this.

I don't think so. If you look at the actual mechanics which are really basic, I'm sure FD will do the same with walking.
This game is far from beeing Star Citizen. It has a much narrowed vision and its a console game.

 

[Drelthar]

Remember, we likely won't be "walking" around our ships much, as there is no gravity out in space! Unless the ship is landed on a planet or at low altitudes. Or unless they just give us grav boots instead.

Grav boots will be space legs version of "flight assist" - and the SRV's "drive assist"

"Grav assist, on"

 

[Seizewell Warrior]

How do we know ships in ED haven't got some form of pixie artificial gravity?!

Anyhow, that's what magnetic boots are for...

If memory serves me correctly, in X-Rebirth you had limited ability to walk round the ship, albeit the Albion Skunk wasn't really that big, probably only slightly larger than an Eagle or Adder.

 

[ThatSmileyGuy]

Given proper programming and utulization of generic programming approach there should be no difference between walking around the ship and on planets as in walking per se.
True difficulty comes from the complexity of gameplay mechanics involved, world generation(i bet planets would be procedural), texture work, modelling, lighting and so on.
So i guess the question is not which is harder to program but which is easier to make more fun. Or something along those lines.

 

[Voracity_T]

I'd say planets would be harder as you would have to equate for the varying degrees of gravitational pull.
That being said I cant imagine in cockpit being easy to program either, especially if more than one player was involved

 

[Kissamies]

Also depends a lot on how much the world inside ship interacts with the world without. That was a major thing in Star Citizen, whereas in Guns of Icarus Online each ship is its own little encapsulated world for its crew.

 

[Biff Stryker]

I always imagined moving around in the ships like you do in Lone Echo. Obviously this wouldn't be the case in a large station or planet though.

 

[Cervantes01]

guys, we've had a leak that states 'fps style gameplay,' in other words you will land your ship and instead of clicking 'deploy SRV' you'll click something like 'disembark ship,' and it will all fade to black and you'll appear outside your ship on the ground with a rifle raised in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It will be first person and underwhelming, that's the FD way.

 

[Bloodsign]

From a performance perspective, walking on a planet is harder. Rendering the terrain to a realistic distance is murder on graphics resources. From a technical perspective, they are both probably about the same difficulty, so long as the generation code for the planets and the ship models are already done.

If FDev is writing a terrain engine for atmospheric planets BEFORE they can do legs, well, that's likely a huge bottleneck.

 

[Kzak]

Grav boots will be space legs version of "flight assist" - and the SRV's "drive assist"

"Grav assist, on"

Magnetic boots, yes. Artificial gravity has not been invented in the Elite universe.

 

[Mengy]

guys, we've had a leak that states 'fps style gameplay,' in other words you will land your ship and instead of clicking 'deploy SRV' you'll click something like 'disembark ship,' and it will all fade to black and you'll appear outside your ship on the ground with a rifle raised in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It will be first person and underwhelming, that's the FD way.

If FD does not re-write the core of the game for the New Era then yes, this is how they will implement first person. And that would be terribly disappointing if it's the way they go.

 

[Bloodsign]

guys, we've had a leak that states 'fps style gameplay,' in other words you will land your ship and instead of clicking 'deploy SRV' you'll click something like 'disembark ship,' and it will all fade to black and you'll appear outside your ship on the ground with a rifle raised in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It will be first person and underwhelming, that's the FD way.

You'll have a "flight assist off" option if you want to do some fancy footwork, and a recharging boost that shoots you up in the air for a few seconds in case you need to... jump on something

Just don't break your canopy!

 

[Stealthie]

I don't know a lot about the specifics of programming but I'd assume walking around ships would be harder as a result of all the extra stuff that might be going on outside.

Let's face it, walking around a planet surface is, basically, the same as driving around it in an SRV, and that's already possible.

Walking around a ship - in flight - means still maintaining all the stuff related to a ship that's currently required (possible interdictions, ship getting attacked, collisions, damage, other game assets arriving/leaving and even changes of instance etc) and generating everything that's required for any walking too.

Course, I guess the potential issues could be minimised by, perhaps, setting it up a bit like the FSS/DSS, so you can only get out of your seat while a ship's stationary.

 

[Berpol]

You have to split "walking" into two parts, the movement itself and the environment.
On the ground you have different gravity, in a spaceship you have gravity while docked, magnetic boots or floating while in space.
For graphics you need to render far enough while on the ground, in a spaceship you need to know where the modules are placed and if you can enter them (passenger module yes, shield booster no).

I have read somewhere that they designed the spaceships with the modules in mind so a first version walking with magnetic boots through your own spaceship sounds easier.

 

[LordFerret]

All this speculation. How funny would it be if you all found your first "legs" experience to be that of crawling around on all fours.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

FPS is as old as Elite. Nowadays there are hundreds of fps. They just have to keep it simple. If you can walk around in bus simulator 18 and not in the new era I think FDev got some serious problem of basic gaming development.