I was just wondering if I had a large ship would I be able to walk around it and check out the systems and stuff?
Can You walk around ships?
- Thread starter AmeriToast
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Without basically a very extensive "game inside the game", actually being able to in 3D "walk around" may seem like a quite "void of content and purpose experience".
What i mean with this is: Unless there are a lot of things to do on a ship at different locations, there isn't really a point to "walking around". And even if there are only a handful of things to do, it cannot really fill a subgame of "walking around".... instead, the impression of "inside the ship" could be done by just being able to switch from "screen to screen" as you go from "room to room": Meaning, "walking around" would just be presented as going from one "station" to "another".
Like, want to talk with your passenger? Just switch to a screen with a passenger cabin background, perhaps even a display of the passenger in the cabin, and then a talk menu -> no need to walk around in 3d, just to talk with the passenger.
With this, i do not mean to discourage "things to do inside the ship".... actually, i welcome this a lot! I'd love this stuff. But i am quite sure that for a game like elite, it would be enough to just do it "visual novel"-style instead of 3d movement style... i mean, if there aren't that many points of interest on the ship, the "walking around in 3d" just becomes pointless "filler" material.... and that isn't so immersive, you know? Instead, it would make ships feel even more "empty of content", than it would feel if you can just switch from point of interest, to point of interest.
With things like space stations or planetary bases, it may be different. If those are done well, there are plenty of "points of interest", so walking around in 3d may actually be a feasible option.
What i mean with this is: Unless there are a lot of things to do on a ship at different locations, there isn't really a point to "walking around". And even if there are only a handful of things to do, it cannot really fill a subgame of "walking around".... instead, the impression of "inside the ship" could be done by just being able to switch from "screen to screen" as you go from "room to room": Meaning, "walking around" would just be presented as going from one "station" to "another".
Like, want to talk with your passenger? Just switch to a screen with a passenger cabin background, perhaps even a display of the passenger in the cabin, and then a talk menu -> no need to walk around in 3d, just to talk with the passenger.
With this, i do not mean to discourage "things to do inside the ship".... actually, i welcome this a lot! I'd love this stuff. But i am quite sure that for a game like elite, it would be enough to just do it "visual novel"-style instead of 3d movement style... i mean, if there aren't that many points of interest on the ship, the "walking around in 3d" just becomes pointless "filler" material.... and that isn't so immersive, you know? Instead, it would make ships feel even more "empty of content", than it would feel if you can just switch from point of interest, to point of interest.
With things like space stations or planetary bases, it may be different. If those are done well, there are plenty of "points of interest", so walking around in 3d may actually be a feasible option.
Ok thank you, that was a concern for me. I would like to walk around the ships and explore.
No...would be the obvious answer as this more and more looks like a dogfights in space game, all in order to cater for the needs of the majority. Having the ability to move around in your ship would be madness, as it would be suicidal to leave your post at the rudder. Instant jumps to any point and probably large-range radars make you an easy prey any minute should you leave your cockpit.
Personally I like the idea though to have some freedom to move around, my dream is to do an EVA, floating around your ship....but alas, it would just go a few secs and then "pew, pew, pew" and I'm dead.
Personally I like the idea though to have some freedom to move around, my dream is to do an EVA, floating around your ship....but alas, it would just go a few secs and then "pew, pew, pew" and I'm dead.
No it just could replace a simplistic main menu, to get a more emersive feel of be on a space ship. The whole galacy is overkill to the limited point of intressed. Does exploring has a deeper meaning. Its could just be as limited to feed only emersion.
First you could walk from terminal to terminal to take matter in your own hands by temporally replace a crew member on the bridge. These terminals are relative close to each other so it relative fast. More tactical desision could be made in special rooms wich are close by the bridge. Like crusial micro mamagement. Missile comand. Flight controle. Turret controle. Special or things that give more depth could be spread out to the ship. Tuning and upgrades. Crew bounding wich is optional. There is lot of cruial stuf to do on a ship.
Just like those full galacy, its just a extra to get more the feel of be on a ship. You can stay on the bridge the whole game. Just like lot of gamers won't go out exploring. There are enough important rooms where important task could be done. Talking with passanger is just a very deep implementation. Just like do we realy need those 100000000000 stars. Its easier to fill such limited internal space then fastness of space out there.
Galacies are empty of content. The stars and planets are what the terrain is in a opensandbox FPS. Extreem large and empty. A ship is like a limited size map with a few point of interrest that fill it decently. More crusial point of interrest.
Its part iff true simulation. You can't be the ship. Unless your consioness is uploaded in space traveling decepticon robot with a space ship mode. Or use the explination of neural connection where cockpit could be avoided at all. Where the pilot is merge and intergrated as it where ship system.
and your ship has not. Keep in mind the more crew the more task are there. The captian could take over some specific highmlevel task from a crew member. You also have to lead your crew.
It runs like this at the helm you have a pilot. So interact with him you got a high
Evel pilotinginteraction. But taking over his place ou got the full piloting interface.
Dito for the gun controle crew. Interact with them and you got a highlevel abstract combat interface. More so if you adress the tactical officer. But you could take over specific task of a crew member to get the full specific weapon group or system interface.
The smaller the ship less task also few crew. The bigger the more options and larger multi system. The crew could be a lot, with a hiarcy. Also controlers who direct the many auto small turrets with tactical input.
In the captains room you could manage crew and other stuff.
like setting up protocol and procedures the crew thus AI will follow.
What this means if you have difficulty with piloting your first crew member on your first more then one crew ship would be a pilot. NPC behave like protocol. If attack the act accordingly.
nats
Banned
Then you obviously have no idea what Elite games are all about. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I like the idea of 'walking around' in a similar way to Silent Hunter 3 but I feel that it would mean every ship would need a lot of designing, unless the interior style of the same types of rooms in different ships were all the same.
But in Silent Hunter you have lots of different positions each with a lot to do - Navigation, Periscope, Sonar etc. In this game it will mostly be done from the bridge. But I do like the idea of having a captains cabin with a diary, magazines to read etc.
I would like to walk around starports and stations in order to visit bulletin boards, sit in bars, sit in the lounge looking out of big windows/reading magazines, walk around your ship to view damage, visit the equipment store/refueller, repairing station, watch ships come and go etc.
But I would have to say it wouldn't be a major feature for me - I would be happy with a cockpit only view if it meant the gameplay elsewhere got more attention. I wouldnt want this to become a role playing game at all - wouldnt want the game to suffer from 'feature creep' for things that arent central to the main game which is exploring, fighting, trading etc in a ship.
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Actually I do know what they are about. I bought FE2 for the Amiga back in the days and played it quite a lot. Can't say I was particulary good at it but I think I got to at least Above Average, far from the Elite ranking that probably most here achieved. Also tried the FFE but as it was seriously bugged I did forget about it eventually. However I never played the original Elite, so I give you that.
Didn't mean to stir up any bad feelings with my earlier post. I do however suspect there would be no FP interaction in the game. Based partly by reading the following from the Kickstarter page:
"In "Elite: Dangerous" you fly a spaceship using a first person from-the-cockpit view, building on the elements from the previous games, with sumptious graphics enabled by the performance of modern PCs - all made possible using procedural techniques (see video on 'Procedural Generation' below)."
It would mean a lot of designing for anyone else. Braben and Frontier could probably pull this off using proc gen and still make it interesting to explore. Doing this would add a greater sense of immersion, change the focus from ship to person, and could create some new gameplay opportunities - but on the other hand the point about feature creep is valid and it may be better to develop a simpler more satisfactory game than to try to do everything.
Though this could partially explain why only 15 ships have been touted at release.
I like the idea of having to keep things on the go in the ship. Whilst in normal flight moving around the ship would be limited, the idea of having to fix issues or damage is quite appealing to me. But, well, it depends on the travel mode to some extent. With stardreamer I used to notch it low so that I could spend some travel time reading the newspapers, if travel is instant this becomes less likely and more likely that I would do it in a port.
However, if a ship needs fixing, in some way, and I have to visit a spaceport to buy the parts, it would be an interesting dynamic to have to fit those parts yourself. Not in an overly complex "read 300 page manual" way, something quite simple but satisfying, with the option to have the shipyard do it for you at greater cost.
This could extend to the idea of carrying spare parts for the parts of your given ship that may be more exposed and prone to damage in battle, and even the potential for donning your spacesuit to go and replace a faulty retro thruster, or the like.
Thus, for me, yes, walk around in ships is nice, but only something you use when it's needed or docked, when in flight one sticks to their bridge.
![[VR] Shadowman](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/16/16608.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
I think it could be a great addition, but only if it adds to the game in a meaningful way and is in keeping with the Elite universe. I would love to be able to get out of my ship and admire it from inside the station. Maybe admire the paint job/skin and get a sense of scale against my character (as well as use terminals etc)
Having said that, I would hate to see something that took a lot of dev time away from the core game and doesn't really work; just for the sake of ticking another box. An expansion pack perhaps?
Having said that, I would hate to see something that took a lot of dev time away from the core game and doesn't really work; just for the sake of ticking another box. An expansion pack perhaps?
It could be used as a kind of tutorial to gain a familiarity with ship layouts and the loadout settings. Perhaps like a tetris style positioning of cargo or equipment. But yeah I totally get where Shadowman is coming from - extraneous gameplay is always a risk if it interrupts with the 'flow' of the game. Micromanagement is fun up until a point - it'd be a drag (excuse the pun) if you had to manually position your cargo every single run.
At the danger of repeating myself:
I really think people are underestimating what can be done via "multiple choice menus" and "visual novel style". That is: Oneself simply changing oneself's location in a "room-based" manner. Like, going from the cockpit to the cargo-room, via just one click (as opposed to walking in 3d).
Don't understand me wrong: If someone were to say, that for most games, whenever location-change was just one click away, it usualy didn't FEEL much like walking around at all - it totally agree with this! Heck, typically, whenever any game used this scheme, it wasn't much more than changing from one interface screen- to another interface screen (thus, really not much more than changing from one instrument-panel, to another one) - and yes, this does not feel like "walking around" at all.
I'm not sure how to explain to people just how powerful multiple-choice/screen-based location switches can be. Perhaps, one example this audience should be aware off, is the way how one acts when docked, in elite 2/3. You know, where you browse blackboards, contact agents, go to the docks. Even though, it still feels quite "just switch from one instrument panel, to another", you can already noice a hint of the player actually going from one place to another.
Personally, if you would like to learn more about the unused power of multichoice menus/visual novel style/choose your own adventure style.... i would propose to play the game "King Of Dragon Pass", especially the hero quests. Screens/multichoice menus, were the ONLY means of that game, to give the player the impression of moving from one scene to another. Yet, it succeeded brilliantly in this regard. However, if you wish to try out "King Of Dragon Pass", know that it is not Sci-Fi. It isn't even "high fantasy RPG".... the setting is actually a very tribal and barbarian one... so, a completely different world than what elite is about. If you are interested in game design at all, i honestly think that KoDP is one of the most underrated and unknown milestones, especially if you are interested in just how much you can do with text, states, and screens.
I really think people are underestimating what can be done via "multiple choice menus" and "visual novel style". That is: Oneself simply changing oneself's location in a "room-based" manner. Like, going from the cockpit to the cargo-room, via just one click (as opposed to walking in 3d).
Don't understand me wrong: If someone were to say, that for most games, whenever location-change was just one click away, it usualy didn't FEEL much like walking around at all - it totally agree with this! Heck, typically, whenever any game used this scheme, it wasn't much more than changing from one interface screen- to another interface screen (thus, really not much more than changing from one instrument-panel, to another one) - and yes, this does not feel like "walking around" at all.
I'm not sure how to explain to people just how powerful multiple-choice/screen-based location switches can be. Perhaps, one example this audience should be aware off, is the way how one acts when docked, in elite 2/3. You know, where you browse blackboards, contact agents, go to the docks. Even though, it still feels quite "just switch from one instrument panel, to another", you can already noice a hint of the player actually going from one place to another.
Personally, if you would like to learn more about the unused power of multichoice menus/visual novel style/choose your own adventure style.... i would propose to play the game "King Of Dragon Pass", especially the hero quests. Screens/multichoice menus, were the ONLY means of that game, to give the player the impression of moving from one scene to another. Yet, it succeeded brilliantly in this regard. However, if you wish to try out "King Of Dragon Pass", know that it is not Sci-Fi. It isn't even "high fantasy RPG".... the setting is actually a very tribal and barbarian one... so, a completely different world than what elite is about. If you are interested in game design at all, i honestly think that KoDP is one of the most underrated and unknown milestones, especially if you are interested in just how much you can do with text, states, and screens.
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There's no reason why both methods can't be used - save the walking around for boarding other ships or conversely dealing with boarders. Still exploring your ship at will (but not constantly out of necessity) would be a pretty cool thing.