PA LiveStream: July 30th, 2013

Wonder if velocity will have an effect on how much damage ensues.
Just imagine if you managed to slingshot an asteroid head on into a planet going the opposite direction. Total Annihilation.
For game purposes I think limiting the range of up and down to about 15 degrees so that the game is still generally within an equatorial plane with the sun. This range could probably be a server option too. I hope setting trajectories has a bit of kerbal touch to it.
Would be nice to be able to develop some "galactic pool table skills" and be able to skim or direct slam a planet, rather than a direct click to target. That little pull tab they where using in the stream is pretty much already there, im just wondering if that would be the full implementation or if this gets simplified for game reasons.

keeping all planets locked to a completely 2d plane would make the solar systems feel a bit fake to me. Allowing a small amount of variation in orbital angles would make for much more appealing planetary motion, more organic.

As for difficulty aiming asteroids ... didn't the livestream just demonstrate how orbital trajectories are automatically calculated by the game engine? if all it takes is dropping an celestial body down to a near-sun orbit before looping it back out, and that's all done automatically, I don't see the problem

but yes having every planet on it's own random axis would get confusing to players. Happy to know that the system allows for 3d movement tho

You could use sped up Relativity-based orbits and just completely toss sanity out the window.

Thanks for answering my question about choosing spawns.

However, you did not answer my question about whether we will be able to 'supercharge' the size of our gas giants as they do not have playable space.

Can any dev confirm whether this will be possible or not?

I have heard it mentioned quite a few times about laddering/tournament play. A community I have been part of for years is a large tournament/ladder community which was actually created initially in 1996 to resolve a "I am better than you at cnc" back in the mid 90's.

Business set ups can be discussed at www.igl.net and if you guys were thinking of a more interclan league setup, www.myleague.com (powered by igl.net) is a good way to go forwards. A great opportunity to get involved there.

Are the planetary orbitals all gonna be on the same plane? If it is, its gonna make collisions more easier. Hope planet hopping wont be like real physics cause that would be slow and boring as hell, either speed up the physics give the big F U to gravity.

well on the other hand, real star systems often have all planets nearly in one plane, of course some planets have a small inclination, but that would not affect the game very much. star systems where planets have extremely high inclination probably would be very instable, as nature cannot calulate it as a 2 body problem

There was no mention of tidal locked bodies in the livestream. Did you think to add a feature in the editor to easily set the rotation rate proportional to the planet and moon revolution?

Tidal lock shouldn't be forgotten because it would have quite significant impact on the gameplay with asteroid smashing.

Keeping the editor in 2d while keeping the ability to define a 3d system directly in json seems like a really good trade off. Especially if you can reload the system live.

I have to say I'm quite happy to see that you go with a simulated orbital system (simplified to 2body sim for gameplay reason is totally fine) instead of the more often used "space is air/water so lets ignore gravity" of other games. (Like Sins of a Solar Empire, great game but quite no simulation to be seen there. :mrgreen: )

I hope you'll bring something similar to the orbital layer itself. Can't wait until you can talk details about that. :mrgreen:

(Also area commands where confirmed, yay.)

The LiveStream was great and loved the universal edit stuff It lookt pretty awesome. There wasn't that much shown as in the last LiveStream ofcource that was a bit of a down for me...

But hey atleast we can see wat you guys are working on with these livestreams..

Anyway will the Sellection bug be fixed the next update because it seemt like it was resolved the other patch but in patch 51118 it just came back :/

Well ok Thumbs up for the stream thank u.

I hope we can mod in the Sun's electrical field, and the relationships between the planatary bodies in a charged environment. It has the capability of fixing the gravitational chaos that is caused by running on gravity as THE main force of celestial interaction. Just throwing it out there as well, our solar system is FAR from the normal solar systems we are seeing in space today. Mainly, our gas giants should be where our terrestrial planets are, and earth, mars, and venus are not from this system.

Good livestream, its cool seeing these things come together.

This is a sound idea but you do know that most astronomers tend to avoid EM celestial bodies because of their difficulties in their modeling and rarity? Also the range of E & B fields are relativity weak on the galactic scale cause their effect are 1/r^2. On a side note they might as well throw in a supernova as a time bomb to end the match.

Great Livestream guy's.I'm so please I backed this even if I don't manage to contribute as much as some other guy's but ehh at least I try as much as I can It's in alpha and its even better than expected. keep up the good work Uber!!!

I still feel weird doing livestreams but apparently people like them

Dude! Whenever I see "new livestream" on facebook, g+ or twitter (not that I follow you guys or anything........creepy....) I'm all like "CHEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! MOAR NU INFOZOMG!!!!", or at least i get really excited for a preview of what's to come :mrgreen: Any peeks into the tech side, like the n-body stuff is something like christmas for my inner geek :ugeek:

You shoulda heard me going on about the livestream on flow fields. My co-workers at the time just didn't understand :cry:

Really? But you all look so comfortable being on camera! =D
I really enjoy the more technical stuff you guys go into, although I appreciate it's probably a bit rambling for those of us who just want to see stuff blowing stuff up!

Taking a sip from your coke every half a second isn't comfortable. :lol:

I love how they blocked the label part way thru :lol: