The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

[Loskene]

I'm being realistic rather than optimistic. Chances are, the planetary landings will be nothing more than you can do on a station. I doubt they will enable us to walk around on the planet itself outside of the confines of the starport. To allow movement outside the starport would take considerable memory space on their servers hard disks. Imagine thousands of planets, each with their own eco systems, flora and fauna etc. To procedurally generate such a thing would mean no consistency, that means trees and other objects, even land masses would be in different places and different shapes each time you visit. What about towns and villages? All those working at the spaceport wouldn't live in the spaceport. It really would be far too much data, even for a server. Also, how far can you travel away from the starport? If you suddenly hit an invisible barrier, that would really add to immersion Be realistic, it will be a station with open air above you instead of another part of the station but that area is about all you'll be able to interact with.

Even in Frontier, it was procedurally generated. If you landed on a planet to put down a static mining platform, the terrain was different when you went back to pick up what it had mined. Back then, it was a novelty and graphics weren't that great anyway so immersion wasn't an issue. These days, players demand a little more consistency for immersion, especially with the cinema quality graphics we have now.

Big difference between random generation and procedural generation. What you describe is the former. Procedurally (or algorithmically) generated objects made from the same seed will be identical every time.

 

[SteveLaw]

I always thought procedural generation would generate the exact same universe every time you use the same rules and seeds. Same with planet content.

It should but the way I imagine it would work is that once the content is generated it is saved as fixed. I can't imagine every systems or planet is generated on the fly each time it's visited.

 

[Ben Ryder]

I always thought procedural generation would generate the exact same universe every time you use the same rules and seeds. Same with planet content. If I am not mistaken, you seem to be mistaken, sir.

What would break immersion is the fact that you would need to use the same graphics for trees in different planets, unless you generate them procedurally too.

I guess a good way to check is to visit a planet nosw with distinctive features and a few beauty spots and return later, perhaps after the next release and see how and if it has changed.

 

[Snakebite]

I just can't wait to go big game hunting on Exioce. Or hire a fishing boat and go catch some merlin at Scirocco station..

Ohh the possibilities for this game are endless.

 

[SteveLaw]

Or will bodies be recycled, a la 2000AD??

You know that "Animal Meat"...

 

[Sim Maker]

I think they should make death expensive. The best sci fi explanation for this would be a quantum neural lace installed in the brain of the commander (we have Ian Banks for thank for this idea). This would then be able to transfer conscious instantaneously to a pre prepared clone at the exact point of death. This would provide continuity of consciousness, rather than a clone of consciousness. However, there should be a significant financial penalty for dying.

"Instantaneous" suggests faster than light and indeed time travel.......why not just go back in time and invest a few pennies in Microsoft and Apple when they were two dudes in their dorm rooms......

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

You can bet your life it isn't going to be a tenner. Planetary landings were standard in Frontier but I'm guessing now, they are going to milk it for whatever the mug will pay. I'm hoping everyone will hold out until FD bring it down to a reasonable price for an addon (£15 at most) which, by all rights, should have been included at launch.

It does cost money to make games you know ... :rolleyes

Your commenting on something you know nothing about yet.

 

[Rowander]

It should but the way I imagine it would work is that once the content is generated it is saved as fixed. I can't imagine every systems or planet is generated on the fly each time it's visited.

I'm not really sure if I'm honest, but I would think that is precisely the case: it is generated every time you visit the planet. Saving all the planets in the galaxy would need a lot of data to be stored and sent to the client every time you visit one, while generating it on the fly would be done in a similar way to the hyperspace jumps we currently have, with much less data required.

 

[Loskene]

You're actually a human consciousness downloaded into a drone core, from which you control robotic or android avatars to pilot ships, see the sights, and interact with the universe. If your ship is destroyed or your avatar is damaged (from, say, falling into a volcano), your consciousness is transmitted to the last place a backup core was prepared for you, which would be the last starport you docked at. Since we know the galaxy has FTL communication as well as propulsion it'd make sense that a signal could get back home from across the galaxy a hell of a lot faster than an object with mass. To tie it further into the lore, sapient AI is illegal because you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a human avatar.
Basically the idea is that humans by 3300 have cracked cylon resurrection from nuBSG, and it's how we get things done in a dangerous universe with a cheery attitude despite all the apparent death and destruction around us. We know nobody really dies and it's all cool, so death becomes a minor punishment handed out for misdemeanours and as a way to tell off lesser publicly minded folk.

 

[Derpster Frey]

"Instantaneous" suggests faster than light and indeed time trave

Or Quantum entanglement over large distances.
It's a thousand years into the future, it's a possibility scientists figured a way to transfer our conscience over quantum entanglement when we die.

Or use similar technology to just send a signal back to inhabited space and activate a clone, which is updated each time you leave a dock.

Or...

 

[CmdrDaymian]

An idea for planetary landings in the future

I remember a game I used to play on the SEGA Megadrive, way back in the day when I was maybe 7 or 8. I can't remember the name of the game, I think it might have had Commander in the title (though I'm really not sure about that). You flew a spaceship in 2D, up down left or right, and there were planets and space stations you could land on. If you landed on the space stations and you had the cash you could upgrade your ship, refuel it and so on. Landing on planets was where the fun was. You would approach slowly, get in to its orbit, then you had to lower your ship down by using the thrusters to slow your descent so you would land safely.

If you tried to land on lava/gas planets, or planets with immense gravity, you just exploded when you hit the ground

When you landed you sent out a small probe that would travel around the planet. I remember some had snow, some had rain, some were desert, and you took soil samples and encountered alien life. Some of them attacked your probe.

Being able to do something like this in Elite: Dangerous would pretty much complete my life. To reduce the amount of work the devs need to do we would only be able to land on un-colonized planets. This way you'd avoid having to add people, buildings, etc. and could just make some landscapes to drive your little probe around.

 

[Ydiss]

The easiest solution is simply to ignore the issue and not explain at all how you've respawned.

Much like how it isn't explained how your body is returned after your ship exploded 30k ly away from civilised space.

This. At some point, we have to admit we're playing a game.

There isn't sound in space, either. And the "hand-wavium" explanation for that is pretty loose.

Shields are magic fantasy. No explanation for that at all. It just exists.

It's a very interesting topic, don't get me wrong. But I can't think of anything short of fantasy "cloning" to explain it. And I doubt anyone would be happy with that. Yet we're getting along fine with all the other nonsensical things in the game. So we'll manage.

 

[Skizomeuh]

It should but the way I imagine it would work is that once the content is generated it is saved as fixed. I can't imagine every systems or planet is generated on the fly each time it's visited.

Actually that's what your client do when you enter a system : planets' textures are generated on the fly through datas provided by the server. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What's stored once the stellar forge has done its job is the different datas, values, parameters that will be gathered and used by your client to visually generate the bodies.

 

[TheSPunk3d]

I highly doubt that planetary landings are going to have nearly as much depth as you would like to believe.

I'm thinking along the lines of space engine esq procedural terrain for the most part with more handcrafted detail being given to already colonized planets.

In my mind, the prospect of encountering alien lifeforms seems like a pretty damn big stretch imo. But if they are ever implemented, they will all most likely be completely procedural as well (Just like the vast majority of the planets) with maybe a few instances hand placed in the game for things like big game hunting or whatever.

As for the guns and other assorted oddities, hopefully they are handled with the same amount of care that the ships have gotten.

 

[Daud]

-in regards to cloning: Isn't that illegal in some places, including the Federation?

 

[Loskene]

Also want to put in that I too would not set foot on an alien planet without a gun. Do you want to be the one guy in the landing party who brings a tricorder to a phaser fight?

 

[SteveLaw]

Also want to put in that I too would not set foot on an alien planet without a gun. Do you want to be the one guy in the landing party who brings a tricorder to a phaser fight?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4c/Redshirt_characters_from_Star_Trek.jpg

You don't need a gun you just don't need a red shirt.

 

[Sapient6]

I'd like to walk around with no guns, can't we appreciate the planet and lifeforms, why do we have to always kill everything?

I don't mind us getting out of our ships and walking around meeting people etc, but must we have guns all the time?

Live and let live

I think that's a fine idea, if you don't want to bring a gun you should be able to go unarmed. Saaaaaay, that's a nice ship you got there...

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

I can't imagine every systems or planet is generated on the fly each time it's visited.

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That's exactly how procedural generation works and is the key to the scale of the galaxy (and a lot of other things) that ED models. Of course once the algorithm is run to generate a planet you are approaching it can be held in memory for a period of time or dependant on your distance or whether you are in that star system (you wouldn't need a planet fully rendered if say 200,000ls or 20LY away for example).
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Procedural generation can be used for everything from stars down to blades of grass and even lifeforms provided you have the parameters and maths to describe them and provide the necessary variations. To give an example I worked on many years ago; you can describe and then generate a low pressure weather system (something very familiar to us in the UK) from 2 curved lines and half a dozen parameters describing strength, tracking velocity and direction. The clouds and precipitation in that system can then be generated and then rendered in a flight-sim from those lines (which are not visible) as low pressure weather systems follow a set of rules defining the cloud types, altitudes and thicknesses dependant on where you are in relation to the warm and cold fronts in the system. Its all a case of working out the base parameters and mathematics that define the rules of the make up of what you are trying to simulate.
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PG isn't unique to FDev's Cobra engine, although it probably the most impressive and extensive in a game environment (discounting SpaceEngine, which isn't quite a game yet) e.g. you can use PG for vegetation placement in CryEngine, as well as hand painting that onto the landscape.
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[Freddie Mc]

This thread hit me right in the lore