Suggestion: Walking on the bridge.

[Murfelton]

But we could have a middle ground for this, that when we have landed/docked, we would transition from being in a moving box, to a stationary box. and this would allow us to leave our seats, but this brings us the obvious thing with, what happens if you leave the seat on your friends ship, and then the ship takes off, would you get teleported to your chair? What happens if your friends try to dismiss ship when you are aboard? etc, etc.
But I do think from a player perspective, that the process of landing, get out of chair, move to the "door", and be able to select
Leave ship in SRV
Leave ship on foot

The objections to walking on a non-moving bridge/ship seem stronger.

• Not really what people are asking for. Other than on a planetary surface, just a view of the hangar. Adding more rooms to the ship might add something, but unlike walking the bridge, that requires adding assets.
• It emphasises a feature the engine does not have - walking while flying.
• Creates inconsistencies in multiplayer: everyone has to sit before talking off, as otherwise players end up teleporting somewhere (seat, out of the ship).
• Confuses people: why can I walk the bridge now, but not when flying? If you look at these threads, a large number of people believe that the engine already supports walking in a moving ship.

 

[MacIntoc]

So, not actually in your ship then, just pretending to be in your ship, now I don't see the point at all. The argument has gone from walking around our ships, which indeed had merit as an idea, to being transferred to a set piece that's not actually part of the ship at all but a floating room somewhere else. At least with station interiors you can see other players docking and they can look in through the window and see you, this is just bizarre!

You are in your ship. It's your ship which is not really flying in the galaxy

 

[MacIntoc]

I'm also a bit dismayed to see people completely crap on the idea that ship interiors could be fun, and enhance gameplay in Elite

Who is saying that ?
As far as as i understand, their is two major pov :
-Yes at all cost
-Yes, but if it has significant gameplay and without sacrificing parts that would increase the gameplay even more

 

[CMDR Yates]

That sounds more like an unwillingness to accept #4 than come up with a plausible explanation of FDev’s behaviour.

It's more an observation of how a certain vocal segment of YouTubers and commentators react to everything they perceive as "unfinished" or imperfect about the game.

Others are now asking them to release an actually unfinished feature (with nothing to interact with) as a sort of consolation stopgap.

To "normal people" (i.e. not Reddit/forum dwellers) who are unaware of the context of why such a feature would be added, that is going to look like a bizarre inclusion, and possibly a bug, if there is nothing to do there. Meanwhile the likes of Yamiks will be all over it, laughing like hyenas.

And 97% of the people polled by Obsidianant (so 97% of people who both follow a YouTuber and are members of his Discord... a tiny, high-engagement subgroup) said they would like "ship interiors". With no specifics or alternative or timescale or tradeoff given, therefore each one of them picturing their own ideal version of interiors. I'm surprised it wasn't 100%. It doesn't have any bearing on this question.

I don't know whether ship interiors is possible or not. It might not be. I'm not making any claim about that.

I'm saying unfinished features don't make a game look good to Joe Public, and that may be part of the reason they're reticent to do it.

Before anyone says "Elite is full of unfinished features", they've never gone as far as to let us wander round a space that has nothing to do or find before. Even supercruise has USSes.

 

[Murfelton]

Before anyone says "Elite is full of unfinished features", they've never gone as far as to let us wander round a space that has nothing to do or find before. Even supercruise has USSes.

They let VR players do this already. I’ve not paid attention, but the few comments I heard were all positive. We are in a thread asking for this feature. This exact request has appeared multiple times already just in the Odyssey alpha forum.

 

[Lithus]

I'd like to be able to get up and explore the bridge on the Anaconda or Federal Corvette, It'd be a pretty neat experience.

The problem is that most people want the whole ship explorable similar to Star Citizen. It'll most likely happen in the far future, but I'd be happy with just getting up from my chair and only having the bridge explorable. Allowing me to run to the elevator of my Anaconda to use my SRV or exit on foot will satisfy many people's hunger for exploring their ship while keeping times to enter and exit their ship pretty low.

I guess just use the current "fade in/fade out" mechanic for ships with little cockpits like the sidewinder.

 

[Bobbydylan]

Because your ship is moving, sometimes quite fast and often turning, while a station is essentially stationary from your character perspective (and yet we still get poeple accidentally kicked into space in the alpha). If you disconnect your body from it's stationary position in the ship you now have 2 independent bodies that need to be synced to keep you in your ship and exact location through all maneuvers, and as a certain other space game has demonstrated time and again, that syncing can sometimes...and quite often, go catastrophically wrong. I think a FC bridge could work fine because that's essentially a station, but I doubt we will ever get moving around in ship while flying at SC or even normal speeds.

So no, moving around in a station and moving around in your ship are not essentially the same, they are very different.

While you're moving, you're essentially at a standstill, and the instance you're in is moving. I don;t how this presents a problem to whats already possible with the camera in the game.

as for 2 moving frames, if I land my ship at Mitterrand Hollow (that crazy moon) and drive my SRV, the game has to keep track of mt ship which is moving as part of the moon. it also has to keep tack of my SRV which is driving on the moon. It also has to track how the planet is moving, all moving "instances".

 

[Bobbydylan]

I think the reason it wasn't done and will never BE done is simple; the way the game is coded, they simply cannot separate the player model in the cockpit from the chair, as they are likely coded as a unified entity (exemplified by how, when it animates you getting up when transitioning to the SRV or on foot, the camera raises but the player model doesn't move).

It is likely coded such that the ship is basically the player character entity when flying, rather than a controllable vehicle separate from the pilot; and it is HIGHLY likely it is coded much the same as the "trains" in the PS3/360 Fallout games.

Only reason they can do separate foot soldiers is because it means completely separating from the ship entity entirely. That's why it can work.

Except the game already does this when you go into an SRV and your ship remains on the planet as you drive around it.

 

[Murfelton]

While you're moving, you're essentially at a standstill, and the instance you're in is moving. I don;t how this presents a problem to whats already possible with the camera in the game.

Nobody else can see your camera, and so there’s no need to model its physics. If you are walking around inside a ship, your walking avatar needs to be modelled.

 

[Bobbydylan]

Nobody else can see your camera, and so there’s no need to model its physics. If you are walking around inside a ship, your walking avatar needs to be modelled.

It's already modelled. the walking gameplay already exists. Do you mean the interactions calculated?

 

[Ambroza]

I think the reason it wasn't done and will never BE done is simple; the way the game is coded, they simply cannot separate the player model in the cockpit from the chair, as they are likely coded as a unified entity (exemplified by how, when it animates you getting up when transitioning to the SRV or on foot, the camera raises but the player model doesn't move).

It is likely coded such that the ship is basically the player character entity when flying, rather than a controllable vehicle separate from the pilot; and it is HIGHLY likely it is coded much the same as the "trains" in the PS3/360 Fallout games.

Only reason they can do separate foot soldiers is because it means completely separating from the ship entity entirely. That's why it can work.

One of the great things about code is that it can be modified

 

[Fizzatron]

trying to model players moving inside moving ships is not supported by the current game engine.

This is probably the correct answer. Having thought about it a bit, it seems to me that having an independent object moving around in another independent object is a non trivial thing from a game engine physics perspective. Even if you are able to synchronize velocities from a forward motion, there's also the lateral and vertical motions to take into consideration and any lag in synchronization when traveling at multiples of C is going to be in the order of literally astronomical. I think this is why in Empyrion everyone has to be seated to fly in a capital ship and other vehicles have to be 'locked down', or else it all goes flying if you move slightly. Have they solved it in Star Citizen yet?

 

[Murfelton]

It's already modelled. the walking gameplay already exists. Do you mean the interactions calculated?

I’m a programmer, not a game developer, but I’ve looked over 3-D modelling quickly. This is my wording, which might not be the proper jargon.

There are two legs to 3-D games: (1) simulating the movement and interactions of all the bodies and (2) drawing what is seen from a particular perspective - a camera.

Normally, the camera is attached to your avatar - player or ship. That’s the “normal“ view. However, if you turn on the camera suite, you can change where the scene is rendered from. The camera itself is not a modelled object in the physics simulation, it is just a point relative to your avatar.

This means that the engine is not modelling things like collisions, getting knocked into space if a wall is destroyed, or whatever. You can “walk” the camera through a wall, while your on foot avatar goes “ooph.”

You could try cheating and pretending that the camera is the view from a walking person, but that’s only going to work in single player - another player will not see the camera.

Existing foot gameplay models the walking avatar, but the scenery is fixed with respect to the player, like a normal FPS game. The issue is whether the engine allows the player to walk inside a moving/rotating “building.”

 

[Bobbydylan]

I’m a programmer, not a game developer, but I’ve looked over 3-D modelling quickly. This is my wording, which might not be the proper jargon.

There are two legs to 3-D games: (1) simulating the movement and interactions of all the bodies and (2) drawing what is seen from a particular perspective - a camera.

Normally, the camera is attached to your avatar - player or ship. That’s the “normal“ view. However, if you turn on the camera suite, you can change where the scene is rendered from. The camera itself is not a modelled object in the physics simulation, it is just a point relative to your avatar.

This means that the engine is not modelling things like collisions, getting knocked into space if a wall is destroyed, or whatever. You can “walk” the camera through a wall, while your on foot avatar goes “ooph.”

You could try cheating and pretending that the camera is the view from a walking person, but that’s only going to work in single player - another player will not see the camera.

Existing foot gameplay models the walking avatar, but the scenery is fixed with respect to the player, like a normal FPS game. The issue is whether the engine allows the player to walk inside a moving/rotating “building.”

I'm neither, so you're probably closer to the correct nomenclature than I am. I assumed that modelling either meant the creation of a 3d assets (a 3d modeller is basically an artist) or the modelling of a specific mechanic (ie, the flight model of elite which I think is fantastic). So when I say the modelling is done, I mean the "flight model" of walking shooting gameplay.

The moving frame of reference is an interesting concern, but I guess it depends on how this deep this needs to go. Like you say, it depends on how the game treats the interaction between players in 2 different "gameplay levels" (One in a ship looking into the bar, one in the bar looking out at the ship) While also inside a moving station, which is also orbiting a planet moon.

I guess my question is, why would me walking around my bridge mean anything to another player who cant get there or see it? Say if I'm dancing on the ceiling of my T7 flying past you as SC, your client doesn't need to know about that. It would only be concerned with my T7 itself. It would be as if I was in the galaxy map, for all intents and purposes.

 

[Fizzatron]

There is one possibility and another thing being overlooked among all of this:

1) A solution to the physics aspect is a lore-reason as to why you have to be stationary to be able to get up and move around your ship. Call it a safety feature or something.

2) There is currently no anti-gravity tech in Elite so navigating ships in space would require zero-g maneuverability mechanics which I don't believe are in the game.

Speaking of the second point, my own personal feeling is that I think it is time Elite's universe got anti-gravity tech, which could be a module purchase or standard on all ships. There is certainly enough room among the Guardian Technology narrative for such a 'discovery' to be made, and also how anti-g tech could be only workable for small ships to outposts in space, but not powerful enough for the large rotating stations, and unsuitable for use on moons and planets.

 

[Toshio]

CCD is expensive in terms of processing power, and not to mention that it doesn't always work (I use Godot as a game engine, and after years I think it's not yet fully implemented).

There's a game that actually allows you to build your own ships/rovers/bases, and have walkable interiors, you can repair, or even build your ship wile moving. That sounds awesome and all, but it has limitations, by default max speed is 100-120ms. There are mods allowing higher speeds, but there is when you start having the tunneling problem, again, there CCD seems not to be implemented.
BtW, the game is SE (being s for space and the e for engineers).

I think it's not easy to implement, but it's not impossible, when we are in supercruise from other instances we are just a sprite, a dot, whatever. When we are parked somewhere it's not a problem either. The problem is only when flying in the same instance with others.

Not to mention, FDEV does not want artificial gravity, and tries (although with mixed results) to be realistic, inertia is the problem, if you walk around when the helm is dogfighting, you'll be dead in no time (except when flying a T9 or T10, were you won't notice if you're moving or not XD). An "easy" fix would be not allowing to move from any seat till the ship stops (in space or landed it doesn't matter).
Anyhow, another reason for the difficulty might be the amount of textures used, on foot/srv you have more detailed ground textures, but probably most of the planet is not instanced, when you're flying the planet is rendered dynamically... so in the end, you don't have enough ram to store all textures so the game won't run smoothly with all ship interiors textures plus exteriors. BTW, have you noticed that coriolis starports interiors are loaded only when you're very close?

 

[Grey Weasel]

Can we please move the Suggestions to the Suggestions section?

It clutters up being able to read bug reports and discussion of actual Odyssey Alpha gameplay when suggestions are dumped here.

 

[Bobbydylan]

I think it's not easy to implement, but it's not impossible, when we are in supercruise from other instances we are just a sprite, a dot, whatever. When we are parked somewhere it's not a problem either. The problem is only when flying in the same instance with others.

Why would this be any different? I'm reasonably sure my client isn't been shown your flight movements inside a station that's rotating while I'm super-cruising around. Surely ambulation would work no differently? It would just say Toshio is inside that spec along with Player 2 and the spacestaion.

As for "normal space" the game already does this wit player walking around stations that move while you fly around the drum. The tech would be the same.

1) A solution to the physics aspect is a lore-reason as to why you have to be stationary to be able to get up and move around your ship. Call it a safety feature or something.

The game already has "magnetic boots" as a handwave why we can walk normally in 10% gravity of the drum, and does so even less accuartely modeling movement on low G worlds. If that movement model is acceptable then it can be applied to ship interiors too. I'm not suggesting a new movement model (though I think EVA's should be a thing in a space game, call me crazy) when we can use the handwaves that already exist in the game.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Moved to suggestions.

Please keep the Alpha feedback to actual things that are in the Alpha. Thanks everyone.

 

[Lugh]

On the other, I really don't think Frontier would be wise to do it. CCP added a very basic station interior to walk around in EVE (and essentially do nothing in), with the intent to build more features into it later. While I found it pretty cool, as boring and basic as it was, it was pretty much reviled by the community, and as a result was never developed further and eventually removed from the game entirely.

thats not what happened at all.

CCP over reached with what they wanted to do in stations. The thought they could get away by charging Ludacris amounts for microtransactions. Those microtransactions and the hate for them were then inherently tied to WiS along with a large set of the community being upset that CCP was diverting recourses to what amounted to an entierly new game when eve was in a really bad state both technically and balance wise. No body cared about the captains courters. The only problem was that it was a vestigial leftover from an abandoned project full of bad pr and simply took up resources to keep around. You couldn't take your captains courters to some distant nebula and walk around inside your ship.

that sounds like it wouldn't be all that diferant from looking though the glass from the chair but it completely shifts the scale and hits the immersion much harder. You can see the same thing at work walking around the station and seeing ships dock vs just sitting in your cockpit on a landing pad doing the same thing.

I would pay $35 without thinking about it for an expansion that was nothing more than letting me walk around a ships cockpit.