Why is 'space legs' so technically difficult?

[krylite]

q

Everything in Elite Dangerous is instanced and pretty much RNG'd, everything! land on an instanced planet, get out of the SRV and the surrounds generate around your avatar, just like they do in the SRV. Planet bases and space stations are going to be one corridor (think Star Trek) with RNG potted plants, locked doors and lifts going to specific area's where you are allowed access.
The biggest job would be creating derelict and crashed ships and bases and creating environments you can actually interact with and (for the love of gods), some NPCs to bring life to these environments.

Exactly this. Not only is Elite heavily instanced, once you notice the limits of this you can't "unsee" it. This is particularly noticeable when you find the trigger points that separate the instances and see the loss of information from the prior instance. A good example is when you drop out of SC into a USS and all the other RNG-generated USS signals you saw earlier are gone once you jump back to SC. You have to wait for new USSs to spawn again because they only ever existed in the prior SC instance which is completely separate from the USS you just dropped into. The USS in turn is completely separate from the SC instance you jumped back into. It's the same when searching for mats on a planet, the SRV triggers certain rocks to spawn but they are only persistent as long as you remain in the area. Even simply recalling your ship can affect the pattern of those spawns. After a while when you notice it all the time it continually breaks immersion but there's really no way around the issue given that Elite is based on a P2P architecture instead of a proper client/server model.

It's still a lot of work even with rng assets which examples detail and scope vs. freedom. It would be rather poor if there was only one corridor or corridor type to be autogenerated. Yes, some decor could be rng generated, but stations and bases should have a lot more internal structure to navigate than a single corridor. For a good fps experience, there would have be more internal textures and designs. Even if the corridors and rooms in a station for fps wasn't the same instance as the docked ship in the hangar, it should have at least an observation room that can observe the regular instance of the npc and player ships flying around and the planet if one nearby moving into and out of view as the station rotates. The terrain of srv-landable planetoids would probably be the easiest for spacelegs, but then for gameplay of entering outposts, there should be doors that work, internal rooms and fps interactivity. And all this before atmospheric worlds and actual cities which should be detailed for the first person view and not just a plane's view brought close to ground level. (ever tried driving around in FSX?) Even if it's all roughly rng generated, imo, it's still an equivalent of another game on top of ED if going for at least the same fidelity as the SRV.

Yes, despite the ubiquitous instancing, I think Frontier would be working on bringing more persistent assets for the spacelegs. So when the player enters the instance, the hand-tailored fp assets or "fps level" would also load into the instance taking precedence over the rng assets already in existence similar to the current ground bases and engineer bases. The recent job listings listed at Frontier I think gives a hint on further development on ED's networking and engine , possibly to support future atmospherics and spacelegs. I've little doubt FDev already have test cases in isolated scope in-engine builds for spacelegs. i.e. the Krait trailer. A major challenge is bringing that functionality into every location where spacelegs could come into play. Like if I were in spacelegs mode in a station, I would still want to see outside the windows the same npc ship traffic (and other pc's flying their ships) as I would from the bridge in my ship, and later from the windows of a inside-walkable ship while the npc crew pilots.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I don't get it. It's not as if walking around with a first-person view ground-breaking in the video game industry. I would have thought by 2018 most developers would be able to do it quite easily.

Have fun clipping through objects and falling through the floor in those easily done crappy FPS games.

 

[varonica]

One of the big problems with legs is the movement of the ships. Once you enable legs technically the ship and the player become two separate objects which can and do move independently.

The problem is you have one object that is moving at multiples of the speed of light and another distinctly separate object that you have to match to the moving object, but not all the time! Sometimes you want its motion fixed relative to the ship and sometimes you want to break this relative link and have the legs object move completely independently, for instance if you dismiss the ship when walking around on a planet. I recall from my days of playing Desert Combat where the engineer could sit on top of the tank and repair it as the driver and gunner used it, it was like rubber band nightmare, and they weren't moving very fast at all.

I suspect it's not impossible, but whether it can be done to the satisfaction of players is another question, it might be that you can only leave your ships seat while docked or on a planet, how would people feel about that? For me that would be fine.

Most FPS only ever have their players moved in a fixed relationship to the game field and that, as stated, is not hard at all, we've been doing since the early days of Wolfenstien 3D. This is a different ball game altogether.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

"Here you go: We introduced space legs."

"But... but there is nothing to do with it."

"Yea, but it was easily done..."

 

[Devari]

"Here you go: We introduced space legs."

"But... but there is nothing to do with it."

"Yea, but it was easily done..."

I think what you mean is:

"Here you go: We introduced every expansion since 2.0 as a minimum viable product."

"But... but there is nothing to do with it."

"Yea, but it was easily done..."

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I think what you mean is:

"Here you go: We introduced every expansion since 2.0 as a minimum viable product."

"But... but there is nothing to do with it."

"Yea, but it was easily done..."

You have your terminology wrong. ED is not MVP. But I would completely agree with you that there are a number of features that are barebones.

MVP does not mean barebones. Look up what it actually means.

 

[varonica]

So i appreciate having had so many responses. But i don't feel anyone has really given a satisfactory answer. Yes the universe is big, but it's procedurally generated. Walking around on one planet is the same as another. I get the gameplay thing but there's minimal gameplay for everything. You could just do everything you do with an SRV on foot. Attack bases with a rifle and shoot down skimmers (or npc human guards). That's basic stuff that any developer should be able to do.

That said, i bought a Krait and that rear door looks way more detailed than i've seen on other ships so i'm starting to think it *may* be coming shortly. Of course, that remains to be seen though.

And yet you continue to ignore the important point that ED is not a FPS and that there are many more things to do than just land on a planet and shoot at things. Arguably if that's all you are after then we already have a perfectly viable mechanism in place to do that using the SRV, so why even bother developing legs and wasting all that dev time?

 

[NW3]

Walking around on one planet is the same as another. I get the gameplay thing but there's minimal gameplay for everything. You could just do everything you do with an SRV on foot.

Yes, but what's the point, if you can do everything in an SRV, but 20 times faster than on foot?

 

[Patrick_68000]

In the first time, a good compromise would be to have the legs of the space, only to move in the ship and in the space stations.

Without special gameplay but just to look at the environment

 

[Iskariot]

Because there's more to it than simply changing the point of view of the player

It's not the legs per se. It is the gameplay infrastructure that has to be there for it to make sense.

I want spacelegs, but I don't want it if NPC can't walk around also.
I always felt that we need npc SRV on planets too.
It makes no sense that I am the only one in the entire galaxy (I play solo) that can drive around, or walk around.

So for spacelegs to make sense, the npc behavior needs to become a lot more versatile too.
This is a lot of work, because they would need to display patterns of behaviour that are not too repetitive and seem to make sense.

And then when we have spacelegs, we as players also need to be able to do stuff.
All kinds of new gameplay mechanics, created for fps/fpa, need to be introduced.
It is like creating an entirely new game.

As I said I want spacelegs, but not at this stage of development.
I would rather see improved core mechanics first, and next the additional access to new planet types.
And let me see some npc moving in stations and driving around on planets too, before I can walk around.
And one of my pet peeves is the current limited diversity of station exteriors.
I desperately want more diversity in the human occupied galaxy before walking around is introduced.

 

[Devari]

You have your terminology wrong. ED is not MVP. But I would completely agree with you that there are a number of features that are barebones.

MVP does not mean barebones. Look up what it actually means.

I'm using the term "minimum viable product" in the same way that it is has been used to refer to Elite expansions for several years now, most notably with Horizons development, where we were given features that are technically functioning at a minimum level even when the various bugs, missing features and other issues cause the content to fall far short of what was advertised. In that context it has come to represent the minimum amount of effort that can be expended for FD to technically claim that they have fulfilled the minimum obligations to deliver certain content. In other games it may be used to mean something different, but that's how it's been used in Elite.

 

[Devari]

I'm not interested in who does or doesn't want it. I asked why the claim is always made about the technical difficulty. I suspect that's nonsense and you seem to agree.

I think the real reason why certain players are suggesting it's "too difficult" or "requires too much content" or similar claims is quite simply because they have finally realized that we're not getting space legs, in any form, and it's easier to pretend it's not feasible than to admit that FD simply isn't willing to develop Elite properly. Unfortunately the idea that it couldn't easily be done isn't a remotely logical claim as FD could develop a minimum viable product version of space legs for relatively little effort, especially since they already have cockpit interiors and holo me avatars, but it's been repeated so often about the "technical challenges" on the forums that some people have come to accept it as credible.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I'm using the term "minimum viable product" in the same way that it is has been used to refer to Elite expansions for several years now, most notably with Horizons development, where we were given features that are technically functioning at a minimum level even when the various bugs, missing features and other issues cause the content to fall far short of what was advertised. In that context it has come to represent the minimum amount of effort that can be expended for FD to technically claim that they have fulfilled the minimum obligations to deliver certain content. In other games it may be used to mean something different, but that's how it's been used in Elite.

Well it's the wrong terminology that people are using. And not all features are MVP or barebones either just because it isn't what people thought it would be like.

 

[Vasea Azure]

Its not difficult from the technical point if view, FD already put animated, rigged commander characters in to the game (our avatar in chair responds to our input already), so I assume its the gameplay that holds it back or some design decision to pretty much scrap the idea for no good reason.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

In the first time, a good compromise would be to have the legs of the space, only to move in the ship and in the space stations.

Without special gameplay but just to look at the environment

People don't realize how big everything is. Walking through an Anaconda would be soon a chore, now imagine space stations many kms across all directions. You'd need lifts and other transportation devices.
Makes much sense for those legs...

Its not difficult from the technical point if view, FD already pout animated, rigged commander characters in to the game (our avatar in chair responds to our input already), so I assume its the gameplay that holds it back or some design decision to pretty much scrap the idea for no good reason.

Gameplay, fully fleshed interiors and fully remastered textures and models in stations so they look OK close-up. It isn't much, really.

 

[Devari]

Well it's the wrong terminology that people are using. And not all features are MVP or barebones either just because it isn't what people thought it would be like.

The reason players expected far more than what we got for Horizons and Beyond is because of what FD told us they were working on. It wasn't that players imagined what they wanted and were disappointed, it was that Braben and FD made some very specific claims about content that failed to materialize and in some cases hasn't even been worked on by the devs since it was discussed. There are some very clear statements from the devs a few months before multicrew launched and we ended up getting a fraction of what they described. Not only that, but they haven't worked on improving it since it was launched. It's the same with most of the Horizons expansions except for possibly the first 2.0 expansion which introduced the SRV and planetary landings. Not to mention all of the "focused feedback" threads where FD made a show of "engaging with the community" on issues only to ignore the vast majority of what was discussed and go with whatever they had originally planned anyways. It was a classic problem of overhyping and underdelivering and none of it was due to any real technical limitations, it was simply due to the lack of development resources and support. The best example here is the inability to use the SRV with multicrew. There's no good technical reason why they can't do this, it simply would have required more effort to implement, and FD quite simply hasn't been willing to invest more than the absolute minimum amount of effort into Elite.

 

[Faybs]

Ask an EVE player just how well legs worked out for them...

Legs is a separate, second game. They would do better separating open from solo.

I think legs failed in EVE because it's a lot closer to an RTS that it is to an FPS. EVE players are used to moving groups of units around, so being confined to moving just one person (not even a single starship) would feel extremely limiting to them. Elite is different, because even though there's no practical difference between the ship and the pilot, you are always in control of your own unit and only that.

 

[varonica]

That's not my point. Clearly there is a large proportion of the player base want it and you seem to agree it would be easy to implement.

I didn't say that so stop misquoting me! Do it again and I will consider it deliberate trolling and report you! Selectively quoting to try and prove your point is making you no friends at all!

What I said was, for a limited implementation of an FPS game yes it's easy, we have been doing it for a long time, ED is not an FPS, it's a galaxy simulator in which we fly space ships and there are many more things to take into consideration than just shooting at things. if that's all that ED was going to do with space legs, shoots things on planets, I would say, forget space legs, stick with the SRV.

 

[Stealthie]

Respectfully, not ALL of us want to be in FPS battles, raids, or similar scenarios. There are plenty of FPS games out there; I own dozens, which are made by companies that understand FPSes. I got bored and haven't finished most of them. There are so many things I'd like to see FD invest in, but space-legs isn't one of them.

Fair comment.

I suppose what I really meant was that the ability to participate in stuff like that would indicate that space-legs had "arrived" as a mature technology.

The thing I find frustrating is that FDev really should be able to implement all this stuff (any stuff) incrementally and players should be happy to see it happen.
The problem is that FDev do have a habit of implementing "MVP" things and then failing to develop them meaningfully afterwards, so players have learned to be cynical about an initial implementation that isn't superb.

As I've said before, if all FDev did was create interiors and doors for the buildings of the generic surface outposts and then gave us missions which required us to search those buildings and retrieve a randomly placed datapad (or whatever) I'd be okay with that as long as I could be confident that was just an initial implementation of the feature.

I think there's a couple of different things to consider with space-legs and, ironically, the vast majority of it would be really easy but there's a tiny minority of things that would be overwhelmingly difficult.
What I mean is, most of the galaxy is "dead" or, at most, only includes tiny surface installations.
It's going to be fairly straightforward to allow a player to walk around in those places - although creating things for them to do is a different matter, of course.
But then there's space-stations and large surface installations.
Just mapping those is going to be tough and getting to a point where a player could be walking around inside one while another player, outside, could look through a window and see players inside is going to be a total nightmare.

And then there's the issue of populating these places, where a similar issue arises.
With most of the galaxy being dead, and most locations being deliberately abandoned, there's no need to worry about providing NPCs.
At stations and functional outposts (even the tiny generic ones) there probably should be NPCs around.
We don't even have NPC SRVs in the game yet so there's probably a loooong way to go before FDev might even think about putting animated NPCs into the game.

 

[Vasea Azure]

Gameplay, fully fleshed interiors and fully remastered textures and models in stations so they look OK close-up. It isn't much, really.

Still I wouldn't call it technically difficult especially for big developer like FD who is keep showing pretty amazing 3d assets and environments (JW game?), its rather time consuming and possibly not wroth of an investment for them at the current time.