Building the game around NOT walking!

babelfisch

babelfisch
Sterling MH said:
So legs should be on the bottom. Good design for a biped :)

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#107:

The reason why it keeps coming up is because with a FPS, the walking about bit is part of the game. Pretty much the only part you see. Wheras with this space flight sim, it's been written with your legs stuck in the seat. Therefore there is no game to play if they just make you walk about. The "Debug cam" would not be space legs nor interesting to those wanting space legs, even though it could be made to walk through a "real ship" as if it were your eyeballs walking around in the ship.

And at the moment, the only place you can walk with space legs is the cockpit. NOWHERE ELSE. It's not even modeled.The doors don't open. There's no interior. No walkways, no cargo racks "correctly placed", no interior areas filled with the kit you picked out in the Outfitting screen.

So there isn't anywhere other than the cockpit to walk around in. And no ineteractive surfaces.

Because these, important and therefore alrady implemented in an FPS, necessary environment tricks are not required for a space flight sim where you are stuck in a virtual seat.

So BEFORE you can get space legs, you need at least the environment to use them.

Which is why it is important to point out that this is not an FPS, therefore completely lacking in all this environment an FPS comes built with, including legs.
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I agree that space legs will be another complex feature, it's also very likely that it'll be lacking lots of mechanics in the first release. But I've seen some fully modeled and textured interiors that aren't accessibly in game yet, so it's not unlikely they already did some work on other areas as well.
 

Kurok

K
john willi said:
Are we running before we can walk?

NOT being able to walk, and building the game up without this feature is making less and less sense and creating weirder work-arounds, such as tele-presence.

It seems to be really inefficient, how much of the game will have to be re-made once we can walk?

I'm starting to suspect we may never get to walk outside our ships.

For example where is the door in your SRV? Edit: seems it opens like a bubble car, ace thanks peops.
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Walking around is useless when you are walking around the same environment like all the current planets are, rocks and dirt. And the ports and stations have the same look with very minor changes.
How about FD puts more efforts in a diverse look of the planets and stations?
 

Strangepork

Strangepork
Arcadius said:
QED :D ^ Here we see the perennial whiner, complaining about immersive gameplay, and scapegoating it for the problems. Awesome proof, thanks...

PS: 70 percent of the community voted for a delay based on GAMEPLAY reasons, some based on immersion. That is not a vocal minority, this was even outside of the forum, every player got a chance to vote with their account.
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May I gently remind the good people of this thread that it's purpose is to discuss, whether delaying the inclusion of "space-legs", may be causing issues down the line, where substantial parts of the game, placeholders and seemingly odd work-rounds such as tele-presence may have to be substantially reworked.
 

CmdrChorusLindarr

CmdrChorusLindarr
Arcadius said:
QED :D ^ Here we see the perennial whiner, complaining about immersive gameplay, and scapegoating it for the problems. Awesome proof, thanks...

PS: 70 percent of the community voted for a delay based on GAMEPLAY reasons, some based on immersion. That is not a vocal minority, this was even outside of the forum, every player got a chance to vote with their account.
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Nice misdirection. Where was I complaining about immersive gameplay? I think immersion is important for context in the game sure. It can make the game more fun to play. However, immersion for the sake of immersion when there's no gameplay value I'm at odds with and I'm sorry if that offends your precious sensibilities but I'm not going to apologize for that.

And I wasn't even referring to the ship transfers, with my comment about a vocal minority. I was referring to the vocal minority that has been calling for delays to the instant telepresence required to make multi-crew work, against... you know... common sense.

But I guess you one of those people aren't you?
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
john willi said:
May I gently remind the good people of this thread that it's purpose is to discuss, whether delaying the inclusion of "space-legs", may be causing issues down the line, where substantial parts of the game, placeholders and seemingly odd work-rounds such as tele-presence may have to be substantially reworked.
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Maybe it's the other way around and introducing space legs now would require serious reworks of other mechanics? Or it's both? Or neither? I honestly don't know ;)
 

Conde

Conde
Khavi said:
There are games coming out like SC and others that will push the genre past the limit of just being a simple x-y-z spaceship sim. They'll be full blown RPG's where we actually play a character and not just fly a ship.
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I've pledged to SC as I always loved CR's Wing Commander and Privateer series. But as of the current Alpha build (admittedly years, yes YEARS from release) walking around the same old places gets boring pretty fast! One of the few "Fun" parts for me was watching another human player run out to a landing pad, steal my ship and just before he took off I managed to hitch a ride and watch him fly my ship from behind the cockpit. He got blown up and we ended up floating in space jetting around in EVA hundreds of km from the nearest station! We'll see the ED version soon of Multicrew but I doubt you'll be "walking" to your mate's ship. So the moral of the story is be careful what you wish for-it might actually come true.
 
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Sterling MH

Banned
S
babelfisch said:
I agree that space legs will be another complex feature, it's also very likely that it'll be lacking lots of mechanics in the first release. But I've seen some fully modeled and textured interiors that aren't accessibly in game yet, so it's not unlikely they already did some work on other areas as well.
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Yeah, but those are just graphical. No testing of the FPS dynamics that allow you to move a human-ish character around a twisty maze of corridors, that all look the same... to be eaten by a thargoid. Especially a zero-g one. The drone someone else came up with is easier, because you can simplify the shape and animation. But space legs need the legs. And a bottom to hang them from.

There's a huge amount of thing that is in an FPS for it to BE an FPS. And this wasn't designed for it, but a different envelopeof "character" (the ship) interaction.

So when FPS is brought up, that's why. And if someone says it should be easy, that's why not.

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Kurok said:
Walking around is useless when you are walking around the same environment like all the current planets are, rocks and dirt. And the ports and stations have the same look with very minor changes.
How about FD puts more efforts in a diverse look of the planets and stations?
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What I think wouldn't be useless, because it would be fun and avoidable when not, is space legs in the space port so you can walk around your ship in outfitting and see what happens to the interior when you change one thing out for another. And again when you're buying the ship, if you can walk around it and inside it before buying?

Totally grin-worthy, right?

And since it's a fairly normal in-gravity situation with a definite up and down, it should be easier to get right. And if worst comes to worst, you can exit the walking about mode and set yourself back in the external cam view. And a bug report sent to FD.
 

CmdrChorusLindarr

CmdrChorusLindarr
john willi said:
May I gently remind the good people of this thread that it's purpose is to discuss, whether delaying the inclusion of "space-legs", may be causing issues down the line, where substantial parts of the game, placeholders and seemingly odd work-rounds such as tele-presence may have to be substantially reworked.
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I don't think the inclusion of space legs is being "delayed" per say, as it's just so big of an update that it is taking a long time to design and implement.

The reality is that we don't know what FDev is working on, and whilst they actually might actively be working to develop Space Legs, hampering or seriously compromising more immediate feature releases for the sake of "space legs" isn't really a good idea anyway.

Ultimately, the game needs to be fun now. So it's understandable why things like Multi-Crew is being delivered in the way we see it now. So yeah these features might need a redesign later when multi-crew comes, but software development realities require the stuff you're putting out today be able to work on its own merits, in in spite of the potential need for a redesign later on down the line.

There's also an element of player expectation to consider too, as if they announced that update 2.X has been designed in a particular way that compromises its functionality in order to make a yet unannounced update feature work, players would expect that unannounced feature to be coming soon, when in fact it could be months or even years down the pipeline.
 

CmdrChorusLindarr

CmdrChorusLindarr
Sterling MH said:
Yeah, but those are just graphical. No testing of the FPS dynamics that allow you to move a human-ish character around a twisty maze of corridors, that all look the same... to be eaten by a thargoid. Especially a zero-g one. The drone someone else came up with is easier, because you can simplify the shape and animation. But space legs need the legs. And a bottom to hang them from.

There's a huge amount of thing that is in an FPS for it to BE an FPS. And this wasn't designed for it, but a different envelopeof "character" (the ship) interaction.

So when FPS is brought up, that's why. And if someone says it should be easy, that's why not.
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"Space Legs" doesn't necessarily mean "FPS" (which means First Person Shooter by the way). Space Legs in ED can simply mean EVA and the ability to walk around and get in and out of your ship.

The basic premise of your post is still correct, however, as space legs requires:

- Environment spaces to explore other than your ship interior, planet surfaces and station landing pads
- Mechanics and physics that govern player character animation and interaction with the game verse
- Actual stuff to do other than walk around on foot

While this might not seem like much on the surface, it's a massive amount of work for a studio as small as ED. Space legs alone is basically enough content for an entire new game; in terms of the resources required to develop it all.

People like to bring up Star Citizen when we talk about this subject, but many don't realise that ED doesn't have the 300+ developer, multi-site studio that CIG has, nor the $140m crowd-sourced funds to finance it all.

I'd much rather FDev focus on the ship-based ED gameplay that exists now and can be fleshed out into some thing relatively wonderful, than spend obscene amounts of dev resources on "space legs" only to find that in order to actually have enough content for it to be fun and not feel samey, it would require another even more obscene amount of dev resources to complete.
 

Jukelo

Jukelo
CmdrChorusLindarr said:
Nice misdirection. Where was I complaining about immersive gameplay? I think immersion is important for context in the game sure. It can make the game more fun to play. However, immersion for the sake of immersion when there's no gameplay value I'm at odds with and I'm sorry if that offends your precious sensibilities but I'm not going to apologize for that.

And I wasn't even referring to the ship transfers, with my comment about a vocal minority. I was referring to the vocal minority that has been calling for delays to the instant telepresence required to make multi-crew work, against... you know... common sense.

But I guess you one of those people aren't you?
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There's a lot of value beyond immersion to having a time component assigned to gameplay elements. Why do you think things tend to take time in all good video games? Or should units instantly spawn in Starcraft when you start their production?
Delays add a much needed skill component to becoming good at a video game: foresight. Being able to predict when and where you're going to need something, and preparing in advance for that is a skill. Remove the need to develop that skill and you make a boring and shallow game. Frontier's decision to "remove barriers to accessibility" is PR talk for "we're trying to attract the casual masses who cba to deal with logistics".
 
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Sterling MH

Banned
S
CmdrChorusLindarr said:
"Space Legs" doesn't necessarily mean "FPS" (which means First Person Shooter by the way).
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I know.

Read 107 again:

The reason why it keeps coming up is because with a FPS, the walking about bit is part of the game. Pretty much the only part you see. Wheras with this space flight sim, it's been written with your legs stuck in the seat. Therefore there is no game to play if they just make you walk about. The "Debug cam" would not be space legs nor interesting to those wanting space legs, even though it could be made to walk through a "real ship" as if it were your eyeballs walking around in the ship.

And at the moment, the only place you can walk with space legs is the cockpit. NOWHERE ELSE. It's not even modeled.The doors don't open. There's no interior. No walkways, no cargo racks "correctly placed", no interior areas filled with the kit you picked out in the Outfitting screen.

So there isn't anywhere other than the cockpit to walk around in. And no ineteractive surfaces.

Because these, important and therefore alrady implemented in an FPS, necessary environment tricks are not required for a space flight sim where you are stuck in a virtual seat.

So BEFORE you can get space legs, you need at least the environment to use them.

Which is why it is important to point out that this is not an FPS, therefore completely lacking in all this environment an FPS comes built with, including legs.

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The environment also includes the surface reacting like a surface.Doors open. And don't close on you.

Physics and so on.

That's in another post on this thread? Do you want me to cutnpaste that, because sure as heck isn't working posting it just once...

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#124:
Not to mention clipping and edge capture. Remember what happenswhen you use the cam view inside a station and swing it round a large ship? You see inside the "walls" and bits of the ship are clipping through the ceiling bars.

And if you have a physics model to make you sit on the "floor", you will get jumping as the maths tries to find where your body model ends and the surface begins and keep them touching but not buried in each other, and finding that when it rounds the numbers one way, you're under the surface, and rounding the other leaves you floating, where the physics engine will drop you down and you're now clipping again, so forced up... and so the cycle continues. From your POV, you are stuck and jittery.

For a freefall system, you will have to either have you fly with no "space arms" and no point to the handholds, or you will need to animate and either automatically use or control via input, the arms and the grab reflex (and letting go) AND the collision necessary to make the illusion of grip and pull yourself along.

When doors open, they can't leave gaps or have poor fitting textures. There can't be any rips.

And some textures will need upping because they've been able to use poor cheats or repeats because you've never been close to the back wall...

And that's just to get you out the door. And in a stationary ship. What happens when it's moving or being shot (or hit by missiles?)

You then have to add something else to do.

Which is why a station walk in the shipyard or outfitters would be much easier. Stationary ship, gravity.
 

CmdrChorusLindarr

CmdrChorusLindarr
Jukelo said:
There's a lot of value beyond immersion to having a time component assigned to gameplay elements. Why do you think things tend to take time in all good video games? Or should units instantly spawn in Starcraft when you start their production?
Delays add a much needed skill component to becoming good at a video game: foresight. Being able to predict when and where you're going to need something, and preparing in advance for that is a skill. Remove the need to develop that skill and you make a boring and shallow game. Frontier's decision to "remove barriers to accessibility" is PR talk for "we're trying to attract the casual masses who cba to deal with logistics".
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Whilst I don't disagree with much of what you're saying here about the value of "progression" (not necessarily "delay") in game design, I would like you to explain to me quite how adding in a timer for ship transfers or limiting multi-crew with the extremely arduous task of having to all meet up at one place, in anyway makes a player more skillful? I don't really follow you there at all.

You can argue that adding these delays and whatnot adds to the immersion - which few on here have been doing, but not that it makes a player more 'skillful', I don't really get that.
 

Cheapchips

Cheapchips
Sort of an aside, but not really, is that I don't understand where the spacesim talk comes from. ED is an RPG where you play the part of a spaceship commander. That's what it's development plan has been pitched as from the start. Saying it's a spaceship only game is trying to push it into a pigeon hole it was never intending stay in.

As a genuine aside, I always loved the original PS2 era Elite 4 pitch. You'd start in a city and have to earn your way up to a spaceship. The dev time/cost required to achieve this on current hardware sadly precluded the all in approach with ED, leading to the multi year path we're on.
 
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[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
Cheapchips said:
Sort of an aside, but not really, is that I don't understand where the spacesim talk comes from. ED is an RPG where you play the part of a spaceship commander. That's what it's development plan has been pitched as from the start. Saying it's a spaceship only game is trying to push it into a pigeon hole it was never intending stay in.

As a genuine aside, I always loved the original PS2 era Elite 4 pitch. You'd start in a city and have to earn your way up to a spaceship. The dev time/cost required to achieve this on current hardware sadly precluded the all in approach with ED, leading to the multi year path we're on.
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I loved the elite 4 pitch it would have been v cool!.

As for ED being an rpg..., I WANT it to be an rpg and perhaps technically it ticks the boxes but much like the mmo folk i would say there are certain things people expect in an rpg and one of them are npcs to interact with and get stuff for and form bonds with.... Basically stuff like npc wings and multcrew that is in the DDF. ED was pitched as very rpg ish but the more it goes on the more it is becoming multiplayer shooter.

As a multiplayer co op shooter there is still lots of fun to be had but it is a far cry from the rich vibrant background sim and what not that we were pitched in KSer :(

One day i would like legs in ED but i would much rather they developed core game 1st. No money there tho i guess
 
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