Orbital units - 2 directions

Good summary.

amen

Hey I'm not badgering (or at least, trying to) you Neutrino. I honestly am curious when I ask those questions.

I wasn't suggesting any changes on how units move at all if you read closely and I never suggested ditching geosinc necessarily at any point either so if you have that I'm still not seeing time scale issues. Many people here suggested high top speeds and slow deceleration though.

We know it's fake, I for 1 don't care. I wasn't shooting for realism either if you didn't notice... I would hope you take any part you like from suggestions you see in this thread and try not to see each thing as a package deal, dismissing them outright because you think you've seen something similar.

I am not a game programmer like you, but I am a programmer (I've even used Open GL). I have a feeling this game will be object oriented and that objects like "tanks" derive from objects like "unit". I was only suggesting my idea from that point of view. Trying to treat "KEW"s (which, by the way, I obviously meant asteroids...) as units to help leverage that code more than once for a similar activity. If units in the orbital layer all moved the same way, that's just how that layer works for "unit" objects from which asteroids and satellites both derive. You can even consider the engine structure the "unit" for as far as in game movement is concerned. You are adding a new dimension to RTS and it has already forced you to think outside the box... I only offer these as paths to consider and ask for your best explaination on reasoning I don't understand. Maybe there is a barrier, try not to get frustrated though.

I wasn't suggesting any changes to the UI. Actually the opposite. Why not leverage whats already there for asteroids? It's a serious question.

I read it. Mostly don't disagree. The patrol thing would basically just be a way to quickly queue up a complete patrol orbit but I'm not even sure what it would look like.

BTW one of the major differences between "air" and "air 2.0" is that you can't build stuff IN THE AIR. That's a pretty frigging major difference people are glossing over.

We might have to just agree to disagree then.

I don't see much difference between blowing things up on land, or blowing things up in the air, or blowing things up in space. Blowing things up is blowing things up. To me, doing that across two layers is the same as doing twice as much of it on a single layer.

That's why I'm in no way opposed to having air or orbital units very niche/situational. Yes, there is the development cost argument - I can't disagree there.

Layers for the sake of layer doesn't appeal to me, especially when you could take that development budget and use it to improve an existing layer.

Thanks for the reply.

I am struggling to see how you can get satisfactory game play with only one shell. I think it would eventually end up with throwing units at each other while locked in a stalemate in space while your ground units win (or lose) the game.

No interest in separate game here, but you can't add a new layer of movement that follows completely different physics to every other part of your game, and then pretend that you don't have to account for that and just make it work like every other layer which follows the other physics of movement. It looks hacked together, and cheapens the whole experience. Especially when you consider that it's the first really PA unique piece that's been done, it makes you guys look great at making clones, but not at self design, which is really unfortunate, because the interplanetary concept is pure awesome by comparison, and is something I and a lot of people are hugely looking forward to.

This isn't about fake vs real, I don't care if it's real or not, it's about it *looking* and *feeling* fake to a casual observer, coupled with the fact that it's not really anything different than what's already an existing layer: air. If you guys can come up with a way to make it feel like the objects are orbiting, I'll (and I assume many others) will be perfectly happy with it, although I do see Neutrino's issues about differentiation from air/water.

Just out of curiosity, how hard would it be to have the units follow calculated 2 body movement paths, and let future orders continue from a point on the visual path adjusted for planetary rotation while shift was held down, with the assumption that the paths would try to maintain the most stationary orbit possible and assume speed was whatever was necessary to attain that? Like on the equator, the objects barely move at all, and as you move more north as a starting point, it becomes more eccentric as a figure 8 until you can't maintain any orbit other than circumpolar, and use initial vector to determine the starting direction of motion. Yes it's horrible from a physics perspective in some ways, but it looks much more convincing as far as being an orbit goes, and it can still work with existing systems at least I think. I don't really care about real, I care about presentation maintaining the illusion that the objects are in some sort of orbit.


I really personally think this game is going to be amazing, and is really groundbreaking in a lot of ways. I just want it to feel that way all over, and not have any parts that make me go "ewwww".

I thought it was implied you were throwing the units into the celestial mechanics system. This system is setup for moving around things the size of planetary bodies and it uses real orbits. The timescale could be like half the game to move a unit around using this sytem.

I have been doing that. Grabbing little ideas to try out. Frankly though a design that isn't fully thought out isn't all that useful. MadSci and Googlefrog both wrote fairly comprehensive posts on the ways it could work.

Basically I'm using this thread as an exercise to show people that this stuff does get thought about and that I do take feedback into account. It does frustrate me when I spend a lot of time on this stuff and people complain that "we never communicate" etc.

Because that UI doesn't fit in with the unit UI. Some orbital units also can touch ground etc. The system needs to make sense for UNITS. Taking something built for something else and glomming it into the unit UI is not going to work without a serious amount of thought put into stuff like context switching (e.g. when do we switch from the normal UI to the orbital UI, how to you queue stuff etc).

Honestly I think a lot of this is simply my limitations as a game designer. I simply don't know how to make a lot of the stuff people are asking for here to work within the context of the game. That's ok, I've never claimed to be a game design genius, I just have a game I want to make.

BTW Scathis *is* a game design genius and he thinks the fake design is the way to go as well.

Define satisfactory.

What I've described is fairly simple. Think of it as naval in a shell around the planet except that there are no fixed buildings.

Three days and 450+ posts later; you can't deny that there's been an absolutely sterling turnout for the forums on this topic, considering the timeframe.

Can of worms indeed.

This.

We should probably just relax on the massively complex systems people are coming up with and try to think of orbital units as a PART of the game instead of a whole new game in it of themselves.

These points are iterative, which jives with Ubers development style

These points use current UI and unit control "verbs" so there is a relatively small amount of extra work to get them implemented

These points fit with the rest of the game.

In all honesty, I wouldn't suggest another way of doing it at all until these ideas have been tried and proven wanting.

I personally like the idea of the only equator geosync thing. It would make orbital a little like naval (or land for that matter) in that certain locations are hard to get at based on terrain. Otherwise orbital can just sit on your face and pound you with ordinance.

Neutrino,

While I can respect your opinion and I certainly see where you are coming from. When I read about the stretchgoal "This stretch goal is to add gas giant planets (similar to saturn or jupiter) to the game and an expanded set of orbital units with unique gameplay." The way I interpreted it was:

• Orbital units orbit, that's why they are called that way
• Unique gameplay, which means that it has a distinct difference from anything else in the game.

In the current alpha, the units we were able to work with did not orbit, nor did they have a distinct difference from aircraft aside from floating in another layer. The opinions currently vary by a lot, but I think I am correct to say that most people want some kind of orbit whether it be realistic or fake or anywhere in between.

But I think for the sake of gameplay and development time, one just can not expect for physics to be realistic or anywhere close to it. What I think would be reasonable is to start with giving orbital units a couple of general properties that can be achieved in the current system:

• Slow turning speed
  
• Slow acceleration
  
• Slow starting speed, high top speed.

Things like units being unable to deccelerate or stop to "fake" an orbit would be perfectly fine. But the idea is that if a unit is left untouched, it will just circle around the planet. Any other properties that would require development are in my opinion less of a priority.

When talking about air 2.0, building in air is a significant difference, it still really doesn't change much about unit interaction. Which is what I think most people are interested about. I haven't seen anyone complain about orbital buildings yet.

This is just incredibly insulting.

Last time I checked you can't build stuff in the air.

I don't care about maintaing some illusion unless it serves gameplay.

So basically if it's not amazing in every single way it sucks. Sorry but NOBODY can handle that kind of a bar. It's insulting to even insinuate that such a thing is necessary, especially on a small budget. Your expectations are WAY out of whack.

Honestly I just want to cut orbital units now. After all if they can't be great why have them at all? I obviously don't know how to design them to peoples satisfaction.

/thread

Big waste of time IMHO.

I could respect a decision to have a skeleton for orbital layer to support modding, or delaying it until after launch.

Seriously, it could be beneficial.

sometimes you can only come to the conclusion that something's not possible once you're tried and tackled it.

sorry everyone is being so weird about the orbital stuff man. I've been pushing for essentially the very system you are describing since the beginning and have gotten nothing but flak for it. it seems to me though like it is a highly vocal highly opinionated minority (that happened to buy into the alpha)

just go with the orbital 'navy'. it is as you say the simplest way of getting the most out of the mechanic. once they see it in action they will like it im sure. till then i'd just leave the thread and go for it. show them instead of tell them and they will applaud you and call you a genius.


dont let it get you down

#spacenavy

Well, you did alter my perception of what's best for the Orbital layer. Reading through this thread given a bit more perspective on the whole affair, which was needed; many of us (myself included) were blinded to the forest for the trees.

If it's any consolation Jon, your time talking to us here was greatly appreciated by myself at the very least, and I'm sure by many others. So thank you very much for that.

I'll stop pestering you now.

Most of us are trying to give some constructive feedback here, and it is kind of disappointing to see you getting worked up over negative posts when all we are trying to do is help you out here.

Surely People must agree that having SOME orbital is better than none?

Its impossible to please everybody, so at some point you must just take a general consensus that doesn't overly bias the most vocal minority and see where you stand.

I think this thread has been wrung dry of all useful input at this point, and I have to wonder how many people just want something because thats just what they thought in their head would be cool, and then never bothered to think it all the way through in the concept of a game. I sincerely hope that Neutrino does not abandon the community because a few people cant understand why their ideas are good, but not good for THIS game.