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In general, I think user-created game content is a superb idea. There would have to be a screening process, naturally, but I think this is a great way to get the community involved and create a truly gigantic game universe with substantially less effort. It would require releasing mapmaking tools, as said before, but I'd love to see more of those out there, too. Not only would it be very cool for players to have people playing around in a place they created themselves, but it will also add great diversity as tens or hundreds of people bring their own creativity into the melting pot.
I like that "sector of the month" idea, Starfisher. I can't speak for the devs, obviously, but I think it's a great idea and would go a long way toward building the community once the actual MMORPG is up and running. Perhaps there could be a "sector editor" app like in starcraft or warcraft, and "sectors" could be submitted to someone who would choose one to be featured each month or week, and could be either added on the the universe or put in a special "sector of the month" location.
I think thats a good idea actualy. Having different people make up sector designs will make sure that there will be differnt styles of sectors. I mean Station, Roid Feild, Wormholes... Every system is practicly the same now. We need more specific objects, like one system having the huge wreck of some anchient civilizations huge mothership, riddled with passegeways and openings and crumbled bulkheads. Or black holes, and anomolies, and other stuff, to make each system different then the others.
"Every system is practicly the same now."
-Drive around suburban America. Every town looks exactly the same to someone who isn't used to it. Sameness is the harsh reality of, well reality. The sectors we have now are basically well traficked metropolitan areas, so they are going to look similar. Characteristic sectors like what you mention would have to be few and far between in order to be special.
-Drive around suburban America. Every town looks exactly the same to someone who isn't used to it. Sameness is the harsh reality of, well reality. The sectors we have now are basically well traficked metropolitan areas, so they are going to look similar. Characteristic sectors like what you mention would have to be few and far between in order to be special.
I was going to comment on the sameness thing, but then I remebered that this is still an 'engine test' rather than a game. So though things right now are rather uniform, that's to be expected.
Magus: People play games to get away from the duller aspects of reality. One thing that seems to be missing are nebula: I don't mean as in Freelancer, but more like in Homeworld - where space is brilliant red or blue or whatever.
I have a feeling this thread is going to evolve into a discussion of sector design, so why fight it.
***Disclaimer***
This is simply me rambling here. I know that sector design is the last thing on the devs mind at the moment. However, that doesn't stop me from dreaming ;) or wanting to know what other people think.
Magus: People play games to get away from the duller aspects of reality. One thing that seems to be missing are nebula: I don't mean as in Freelancer, but more like in Homeworld - where space is brilliant red or blue or whatever.
I have a feeling this thread is going to evolve into a discussion of sector design, so why fight it.
***Disclaimer***
This is simply me rambling here. I know that sector design is the last thing on the devs mind at the moment. However, that doesn't stop me from dreaming ;) or wanting to know what other people think.
Skyfox: I would imagine that the textures and 3D model of a particular object take up not an inconsiderable ammount of memory.
You seem to want 1000's of sectors each with thier own unique objects. I hate to tell you this, but I think that is impossible. First, you'd quickly need gigabytes of memory to store the game. Second, you'd need an amazing ammount of man-days to get all the objects up to the same standard of quality.
All games are modular. There are a finite number of stock objects which are combined in a large number of ways to give the impression of greater diversity than actually exists. A truly creative level creator takes existing objects and finds new ways of arranging them so that the level looks completely unlike anything else. Whatever solution is adopted is going to have to keep that in mind.
Starfisher: Nebula are actually really diffuse. They are only visible because they are really huge. I don't really want us to reach the point that we are in sectors and appear lost in a fog. I wouldn't at all mind a greater range of sky boxes than the one we have no, and some hubble inspired nebula's as the sky boxes of certain sectors would be a good thing. But I don't want to see lots of sectors with big curtains of clouds, because it looks really cheesy to me.
So what do I want to see:
1) A pitch black sector with a nearly featureless skybox.
2) Sectors with various nebulas in the skybox.
3) A sector with a black hole slowly rotating in the background.
4) A sector with a red giant star filling up half the sky box.
5) Sectors with two and three different colored suns. At the very least, think of the dramatic lighting effects.
6) Sectors with variable binaries - either one star regularly eclipsing the other, or else a red dwarf in close rotation of a blue-white giant and 'pulsing' do to gas inflow.
7) A nearly pitch black sector with a tiny bright spinning pulsar that casts really hard sharp shadows (not this fuzzy stuff like we have now, I mean the backside of 'roids should be BLACK).
8) A sector with a sun obscured by a shell nebula.
But all that 'content stuff' can wait until the engine is ready to accept it. It isn't a bad idea to turn the fans lose with a sector editor, but I don't think there is enough paint in the pallette yet to really worry about it. And I'm sure that a1k0n and such have spent alot more time thinking about what they want to put in sectors than any of us have.
You seem to want 1000's of sectors each with thier own unique objects. I hate to tell you this, but I think that is impossible. First, you'd quickly need gigabytes of memory to store the game. Second, you'd need an amazing ammount of man-days to get all the objects up to the same standard of quality.
All games are modular. There are a finite number of stock objects which are combined in a large number of ways to give the impression of greater diversity than actually exists. A truly creative level creator takes existing objects and finds new ways of arranging them so that the level looks completely unlike anything else. Whatever solution is adopted is going to have to keep that in mind.
Starfisher: Nebula are actually really diffuse. They are only visible because they are really huge. I don't really want us to reach the point that we are in sectors and appear lost in a fog. I wouldn't at all mind a greater range of sky boxes than the one we have no, and some hubble inspired nebula's as the sky boxes of certain sectors would be a good thing. But I don't want to see lots of sectors with big curtains of clouds, because it looks really cheesy to me.
So what do I want to see:
1) A pitch black sector with a nearly featureless skybox.
2) Sectors with various nebulas in the skybox.
3) A sector with a black hole slowly rotating in the background.
4) A sector with a red giant star filling up half the sky box.
5) Sectors with two and three different colored suns. At the very least, think of the dramatic lighting effects.
6) Sectors with variable binaries - either one star regularly eclipsing the other, or else a red dwarf in close rotation of a blue-white giant and 'pulsing' do to gas inflow.
7) A nearly pitch black sector with a tiny bright spinning pulsar that casts really hard sharp shadows (not this fuzzy stuff like we have now, I mean the backside of 'roids should be BLACK).
8) A sector with a sun obscured by a shell nebula.
But all that 'content stuff' can wait until the engine is ready to accept it. It isn't a bad idea to turn the fans lose with a sector editor, but I don't think there is enough paint in the pallette yet to really worry about it. And I'm sure that a1k0n and such have spent alot more time thinking about what they want to put in sectors than any of us have.
"Nebula are actually really diffuse. They are only visible because they are really huge. I don't really want us to reach the point that we are in sectors and appear lost in a fog. I wouldn't at all mind a greater range of sky boxes than the one we have no, and some hubble inspired nebula's as the sky boxes of certain sectors would be a good thing. But I don't want to see lots of sectors with big curtains of clouds, because it looks really cheesy to me."
... which is why I said I don't want nebula as done in Freelancer. I would rather have them implemented as in HW1 - still not realistic, but they gave the impression of incredible size and grandeur without fog. HW2 has strayed a bit from that in some respects.
A derelict sector would be cool. Textures could be stolen from existing ships, and the model itself might not have to be very complex. Look at 404 with the sensor boom track - that's a lot of objects, and my machine barely takes an FPS hit. A custom model might make the load time larger, though, but by how much depends on complexity and compression.
... which is why I said I don't want nebula as done in Freelancer. I would rather have them implemented as in HW1 - still not realistic, but they gave the impression of incredible size and grandeur without fog. HW2 has strayed a bit from that in some respects.
A derelict sector would be cool. Textures could be stolen from existing ships, and the model itself might not have to be very complex. Look at 404 with the sensor boom track - that's a lot of objects, and my machine barely takes an FPS hit. A custom model might make the load time larger, though, but by how much depends on complexity and compression.
/me adds to Celebrim's list:
9) A sector with jet-black obsidian glass asteroids
10) A sector with translucent ice asteroids
11) A sector with a large translucent ice roid with a frozen station in the center that is visible, but it's like a maze to get to it.
12) A sector with radioactive orange and purple roids that sap armor if you get too close to them.
13) A sector where two alien factions are waging war and are often found in large skirmishes
14) A sector with a distant supernova in the skybox
15) A sector with a comet that can sometimes be seen in the skybox
16) A sector inside an accreting planet (would be dark, foggy, and have lots of roids (planetesimals))
9) A sector with jet-black obsidian glass asteroids
10) A sector with translucent ice asteroids
11) A sector with a large translucent ice roid with a frozen station in the center that is visible, but it's like a maze to get to it.
12) A sector with radioactive orange and purple roids that sap armor if you get too close to them.
13) A sector where two alien factions are waging war and are often found in large skirmishes
14) A sector with a distant supernova in the skybox
15) A sector with a comet that can sometimes be seen in the skybox
16) A sector inside an accreting planet (would be dark, foggy, and have lots of roids (planetesimals))
Hi all. I just got into this a week or so ago, and have been happily failing my courses to squeeze in a few more minutes of Vendetta.
I noticed on the offical description site that the final game plans to have quite a few sectors when it comes out. I realize that the devs are FAR from the "create many new sectors" part of the dev cycle, but I figure I should throw this out there and see what happens.
Why not have user created sectors? Obviously not right now, but for sometime in the future when you need to create lots and lots of sectors for release? I appreciate 404 and 405 (damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate.
What I propose is an open contest where everyone can make a sector and submit it. Every two weeks or month or whatever, the submissions would be reviewed, the winner announced and the sector design saved for later when you need new content. The reviewers wouldn't even have to be devs (though the winning design would have to be checked against the limitations of the engine). It would be simple enough to have a temporary website thrown up that tabulated votes and accepted submissions.
Now, I doubt anyone at Guild is eager to release whatever tools or plugins they are using to the masses, so submissions would have to be Photoshoped or drawn in some other way. Probably the best layout would be to have a top view, side view and if your ambitious enough a perspective or "concept art" shot of your sector. The designs would be posted on a website for viewing and voting, and after a week of polls the winner would be chosen.
The whole point of this is to give us testers something to do when the s9 madness gets dull, not to add a heap of work to the devs. I would be willing to set up an email account for submissions, and coordinate with someone with the necessary web skills to make the voting site. The only time a dev needs to take time from their schedule would be when we have a winner, and then to just glance it over for a sanity check.
I'll wrap this up now (late for class again. Damn you Vendetta!) Suggestions? Feasible?
I noticed on the offical description site that the final game plans to have quite a few sectors when it comes out. I realize that the devs are FAR from the "create many new sectors" part of the dev cycle, but I figure I should throw this out there and see what happens.
Why not have user created sectors? Obviously not right now, but for sometime in the future when you need to create lots and lots of sectors for release? I appreciate 404 and 405 (damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate.
What I propose is an open contest where everyone can make a sector and submit it. Every two weeks or month or whatever, the submissions would be reviewed, the winner announced and the sector design saved for later when you need new content. The reviewers wouldn't even have to be devs (though the winning design would have to be checked against the limitations of the engine). It would be simple enough to have a temporary website thrown up that tabulated votes and accepted submissions.
Now, I doubt anyone at Guild is eager to release whatever tools or plugins they are using to the masses, so submissions would have to be Photoshoped or drawn in some other way. Probably the best layout would be to have a top view, side view and if your ambitious enough a perspective or "concept art" shot of your sector. The designs would be posted on a website for viewing and voting, and after a week of polls the winner would be chosen.
The whole point of this is to give us testers something to do when the s9 madness gets dull, not to add a heap of work to the devs. I would be willing to set up an email account for submissions, and coordinate with someone with the necessary web skills to make the voting site. The only time a dev needs to take time from their schedule would be when we have a winner, and then to just glance it over for a sanity check.
I'll wrap this up now (late for class again. Damn you Vendetta!) Suggestions? Feasible?
I guess it would be neat to have "1000s of sectors" but the problem is there really is no point. With only having a usual 20-30 people online at once means a lot of sectors would just stay idle if they were added. I guess I would rather see more ships and other stuff added way before more sectors.
I would also rather have new ships and such before new sectors. The point of this would be to gradually collect a pile of designs so that the devs wouldn't have to worry as much about designing them. I don't propse that the winning sector be added right away, but that it be added to the pile for if/when the devs decide to add them. Plus, it would be cool if you got to see something you designed in the game, even if it is only one sector in a million.
Eventually I could see its usefulness, but right now its not needed. When the userbase is big enough and the game developed more I think it would be awesome.
Umm, well, that'd be interesting, but not really beneficial to us right now. If someone mocks up a pretty sector in photoshop, that's nice and all, but then someone (that being us) has to go and actually make the thing, which is where the real time is consumed. Making sure spinning ice crystal number 29348923 isn't bumping into asteroid number 29384928, and all that.
There is definitely the potential to allow users to create their own sectors. 404 and 405 were made, on the fly, by Andy simply typing Lua commands into the server. If we placed some restrictions, we could make it possible for users to do this sort of thing too. That would be neat.. but might have all sorts of interesting scalability and gameplay repurcussions and would have to be implemented with some foresight. So, in general, this is not a priority at present.
We were actually discussing this prospect the other night. It'd be really neat to do, if implemented in a way that didn't screw up the rest of the game. The back-end of the game has become very powerful (as you're all beginning to see from Andy randomly making new sectors, or writing scripts to let FireMage create racecourses by flying around), and it'd be very cool and interesting to let people mess around with it and create things. But, we have a lot of more basic gameplay priorities at present.
Also, it's noteworthy that the game with thousands of sectors was not intended for a player load of 20-30 people. More along the lines of (hopefully) thousands of online players. This is a long-term intent. The current universe scale was designed more for the smaller userbase we have right now. The current gameplay also wouldn't work very well with a giant universe, we'd need a navigation system, autopilot, various other things.
There is definitely the potential to allow users to create their own sectors. 404 and 405 were made, on the fly, by Andy simply typing Lua commands into the server. If we placed some restrictions, we could make it possible for users to do this sort of thing too. That would be neat.. but might have all sorts of interesting scalability and gameplay repurcussions and would have to be implemented with some foresight. So, in general, this is not a priority at present.
We were actually discussing this prospect the other night. It'd be really neat to do, if implemented in a way that didn't screw up the rest of the game. The back-end of the game has become very powerful (as you're all beginning to see from Andy randomly making new sectors, or writing scripts to let FireMage create racecourses by flying around), and it'd be very cool and interesting to let people mess around with it and create things. But, we have a lot of more basic gameplay priorities at present.
Also, it's noteworthy that the game with thousands of sectors was not intended for a player load of 20-30 people. More along the lines of (hopefully) thousands of online players. This is a long-term intent. The current universe scale was designed more for the smaller userbase we have right now. The current gameplay also wouldn't work very well with a giant universe, we'd need a navigation system, autopilot, various other things.
Jumpgate doesn't have "1000s of sectors".
It has around 128 sectors at most.
It has around 128 sectors at most.
We have gameplay intentions that differ from Jumpgate.
I know.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here... I don't mean that we would start chucking vague designs at the devs and demand them in game NOW; rather the point is to have a repository of designs IF the devs ever decided to use them sometime in the distant future. However, everyone's point about it being too early is well taken.
Lua scripts for the maps? Homeworld2 uses Lua for its maps as well... I've been semi-active over on the Relic forums as a modder for that game. I wonder how similiar your map making process is to theirs.
Well, it was worth throwing out there. Perhaps sometime in the future when the game is more complete.
Lua scripts for the maps? Homeworld2 uses Lua for its maps as well... I've been semi-active over on the Relic forums as a modder for that game. I wonder how similiar your map making process is to theirs.
Well, it was worth throwing out there. Perhaps sometime in the future when the game is more complete.
They DO use lua with the new auto-generation engine...
Okay as for the user created sectors, that would be good but some ground rules would need to be applied and each sector would need more deviation rather than "1000s of sectors" being created that are fairly similar.
As for the "damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate."
That one had me rolling on the floor laughing.
As for the "damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate."
That one had me rolling on the floor laughing.
Okay as for the user created sectors, that would be good but some ground rules would need to be applied and each sector would need more deviation rather than "1000s of sectors" being created that are fairly similar.
As for the "damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate."
That one had me rolling on the floor laughing.
As for the "damn rotating thing ate my ship and made me barf :D ), but surely you devs have more important things to do than creating race tracks and pimping the frigate."
That one had me rolling on the floor laughing.