• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

phoenixyz

Member
Daedardus said:
So we're doing list wars on why one unreleased game is better than the other unreleased game? Can't we just accept that they both do things differently, and be grateful for that? I rather have two great, unique space sims rather than one good one and a me-too one.
Click to expand...

But ships in SC rotate so fast.
 
metalshade

metalshade

Member
Lumicide said:
Listies.
Click to expand...

Well, I hadn't thought of it that way tbh.
Don't forget that SC is still way way way pre-alpha at this stage, so they are trying to figure out the basics, I am certain there will be changes and explanations and lore for all these things that make sense, both for gameplay and realistic physics.
Plus, I think that what ED is doing is great too, although the things you mentioned are true, the actual feeling of the flight controls is much more game-ified (as Braben intends it to feel, for that atmospheric dogfighting feel.)

Anyway's, I am not interested in starting any arguments, I am sincerely enjoying both games very much, and appreciate that they both have something different to offer.
 
Z

Zaptruder

Banned
Space sim. Hah. They're all different flavours of space magic.

Real space combat would be vastly vastly different... more like high speed jousts than anything else really.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/essay-on-realistic-space-combat-i-wrote.131056/

This is the penultimate realistic space battle article. So much detail.

The best terrestrial analogy for space warfare would probably be a battle on a perfectly plain at night, fought between sports cars painted with phosphorescent paint, with machine guns mounted on their hoods. All sides will be aware of the movements of the other. The battles will likely consist of long periods of boredom while the ships chase each other, accelerate towards each other, or vie for an intercept that favors them, punctuated by a few minutes of terror as they scream past each other at many kilometers per second and fire away. The primary weapon will probably be missiles, which will be fired in huge volleys. Depending on the vessels’ relative speeds, a warship will probably need to shoot dozens or hundreds of missiles to be sure of one getting through. In such an exchange, the winner is likely to be the ship with the heaviest missile throw weight, best PD, or both.
Click to expand...
 
L

Lumicide

Banned
Shrike Alvaron said:
Yes, let us forget that the engine provides 6DOF and the controls are the only limiting factor, controls which are still in development and they have said will change. Let's also forget that the entire reason systems are small is because of the in-fiction limit of 0.2C travel, meaning realistically sized systems would take ages to cross and be no fun.
Click to expand...

My bit on the controls was a low blow :p. That .2c thing never sat well with me, it's such an arbitrary limitation that causes so many other issues along with it.

Shrike Alvaron said:
Actually I don't even get what you mean by space gravity. You mean the artificial gravity in ships? ED doesn't even HAVE ship interiors, so how do you know if its ships have magical gravity or not? I'm pretty sure no one's ever complained about Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc having artificial gravity either so why are we starting now? It may not be realistic, but at the same time it's typical of this sort of sci-fi.
Click to expand...

Not just the ships, but the large structures in space as well. Everything's flat, as if gravity magically works in space. In ED the spaceports have to rotate to provide that effect, and Braben has said that gravity is a luxury in a ship, so it'll be achieved in the same way w/o the handwavium.

I don't really have a problem with any of the handwaving of either game, just poking fun at the "simmyness" of the games in comparison.
 
E

Effect

Member
Surprised how well the xbox 360 controller is working out for me. I had picked up a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick but have since returned it after I decided to mess around with the 360 controller more. I also didn't like the twisting on the joystick and kept jerking the ship around with it. The 360 controller is just giving me a lot more control or the feeling of more control. Having everything in my hand is nice.

Decided to finally start messing around with decoupling and disabling the different sub systems attached to that. Something about almost blacking out or making the screen turn instantly red during turns makes things far more interesting during a fight. It also makes combat go a lot quicker. This is of course against drones. Still not sure I like it but guess I have to learn to use it. No clue how I'll do against other players that are more comfortable with joysticks. If I get into the multiplayer I am looking forward to seeing how well I do or at least last. However given the difference in weapons on ships I might not last long in a Aurora.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Lumicide said:
Not just the ships, but the large structures in space as well. Everything's flat, as if gravity magically works in space. In ED the spaceports have to rotate to provide that effect, and Braben has said that gravity is a luxury in a ship, so it'll be achieved in the same way w/o the handwavium.

I don't really have a problem with any of the handwaving of either game, just poking fun at the "simmyness" of the games in comparison.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we'll see how ED will solve gravity when they'll provide ships that You can walk on.
Its easy to make gravity based on rotation in a game that has only walking in space stations. Its not easy though when You are designing Your game around ships that will host multiple players and rich interiors with items affected by physics.

Having fictional system that generates gravity is not extraordinary idea, but not only it solves gameplay related problems of lack of gravity, it allows You to disable it in on ship FPS combat to give You advantage in defense.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
Lumicide said:
Not just the ships, but the large structures in space as well. Everything's flat, as if gravity magically works in space. In ED the spaceports have to rotate to provide that effect, and Braben has said that gravity is a luxury in a ship, so it'll be achieved in the same way w/o the handwavium.
Click to expand...

If we're going that way:

Rotating doesn't produce any force that is similar to gravity. An object that is purely rotating needs a centripetal force to change the angle of the speed of every point of that object, but not the magnitude of the speed. This centripetal force is directed inwards towards the centre of gravity. Note that the centripetal force is needed to rotate the object and not the other way around, forces don't manifestate magically, they are the ones acting on a body.

If an object were to stand still in its own reference frame on the inside of the rotating ring, then it has to exert a force in the opposite direction of the force it receives. This force can be tought of something as gravity. This force however is a manifestation of electromagnetic repulsion of electrons (most forces are actually) and requires contact. If that contact is 'nearly' lost and it still wants to rotate along with the ring, it would need to receive a centripetal force too. With the object not being tied down, this force would mean the object moves towards the inner centre of the ring. There wouldn't even be a way to exert this force on a free floating body. Merely jumping on the inside of the ring would leave you floating around until you make contact with the ring again. This force is often times called the centripetal force but it doesn't quite exist, it's merely a reaction of a system that receives outside influence.

So for a properly working space sim, we need to have some sort of artificial gravity. If we can overcome all the hurdles of fusion power, ionic drives, power shields,... surely we can find out how gravity works and generate it at our will.
 
M

MrBig

Member
Looks like the 890 jump is going to be a lot of ship

ivgt2WRnwnMbz.png
 
L

Lumicide

Banned
Daedardus said:
If we're going that way:

Rotating doesn't produce any force that is similar to gravity. An object that is purely rotating needs a centripetal force to change the angle of the speed of every point of that object, but not the magnitude of the speed. This centripetal force is directed inwards towards the centre of gravity. Note that the centripetal force is needed to rotate the object and not the other way around, forces don't manifestate magically, they are the ones acting on a body.

If an object were to stand still in its own reference frame on the inside of the rotating ring, then it has to exert a force in the opposite direction of the force it receives. This force can be tought of something as gravity. This force however is a manifestation of electromagnetic repulsion of electrons (most forces are actually) and requires contact. If that contact is 'nearly' lost and it still wants to rotate along with the ring, it would need to receive a centripetal force too. With the object not being tied down, this force would mean the object moves towards the inner centre of the ring. There wouldn't even be a way to exert this force on a free floating body. Merely jumping on the inside of the ring would leave you floating around until you make contact with the ring again. This force is often times called the centripetal force but it doesn't quite exist, it's merely a reaction of a system that receives outside influence.

So for a properly working space sim, we need to have some sort of artificial gravity. If we can overcome all the hurdles of fusion power, ionic drives, power shields,... surely we can find out how gravity works and generate it at our will.
Click to expand...
What the hell are you talking about?

A) hamsters spin in their hamster wheels until they fall out of the wheel, or it slows down
B) hamsters fall towards the center of the wheel the second they stop running

'A' is the correct answer

So long as your momentum intersects with the ring you're not going to escape it, or fall towards the center. Unless you ran the opposite direction and nullified your momentum that you got from the ring, you'd hit the ring (assuming there was no atmosphere).

Another method is to endlessly accelerate at 9.8m/s.

I'd not compare controlling gravity at will to ion drives, or fusion power. We've never even observed something that could generate gravity in the way that you'd need for a space ship. Fusion is something we can do, just we can't capture the energy it produces effectively, or do it efficiently enough, to produce extra power and enough to power the reactor. Ion engines are something we've made a ton of, completely doable. Shields are also something odd...
 
D

Daedardus

Member
Lumicide said:
What the hell are you talking about?

A) hamsters spin in their hamster wheels until they fall out of the wheel, or it slows down
B) hamsters fall towards the center of the wheel the second they stop running

'A' is the correct answer
Click to expand...

You do know there's gravity on Earth, and this supposed ring floates in gravity-less space? I also didn't say anything about falling towards the center by yourself, only to support that specific that is impossible.

Jumping also changes your own momentum, and while it is very likely you will hit the ring over time, this is in no way comparable to Earh like gravity. I imagine walking on it won't be as pleasant as walking on Earth. Biomechanics are a complicated thing.

And I believe efficient fusion (I don't think ITER/DEMO like reactors can ever be put in spaceships) could be achieved by going beyond the Standard Model and acting on what happens in the inner core of particles. This would mean that we know how gravity works too. Ion drives are something we have, but not in the state like in Star Citizen. I don't see how efficient fusion and efficient ion drives would be so different from artificial gravity, they could all be controlled by some sort of special field manipulation.
 
W

Winterblink

Member
SO ANYWAY

Latest Around the Verse (Ep 6): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2J_LyX44uY

Really cool discussion about interior and exterior ship modeling and how that will work within the game physics wise. They're doing different physics within the ship interiors and putting that together with the ship exteriors such that damage states of the latter will affect the former.

Fucking cool.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
It wasn't exactly supposed to be shown (could still be an intentional 'leak'). The image got censored on Reddit (which I only visit because it's a good place for summaries of all info) which caused quite a bit confusion.

That said, it looks pretty awesome, and I'm curious towards the interior. Have to say I expected it be more rounded, somewhat like this yacht but in space.

Oculus-01-big.jpg
Click to expand...
 
M

MrBig

Member
Mustang and Asteroid Hangar are looking great from the latest Jump Point, seems like they only need polish and implementation at this point.
 
S

Soi-Fong

Member
Zabojnik said:
But Elite is procedural and therefore inferior by default.
Click to expand...

Damn I love how you immediately equate procedural = crap. I think you should try out the game before putting out judgments like that. David Braben is practically the father of procedural generation. The system they're using in E:D isn't some off-the-shelf procedural generation. Please take a read of this article.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-video-game-that-maps-the-galaxy

Some quotes:

“I wanted to make the galaxy as accurate as possible so that the results of that exploration would make sense to people,” Braben said. “In the game, every single star in the real night sky is present, some hundred and fifty thousand of them, and you can visit each one. Even the clouds of stars that make up the Milky Way are included: some four hundred billion stars, their planetary systems, and moons are present, all waiting to be explored.”
Click to expand...

Elite’s model has expanded Braben’s understanding of planet formation and distribution. Braben boasts that his games [sic] predicted extra-solar planets (“These were pretty close to those that have been since discovered, demonstrating that there is some validity in our algorithms”), and that the game’s use of current planet-formation theories has shown the sheer number of different systems that can exist according to the rules, everything from nebulous gas giants to theoretically habitable worlds.
Click to expand...

Along with that, not everything will be procedurally generated in Elite. A fair few will be hand crafted.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Soi-Fong, please go back to making your Rift prototype. Your kind isn't welcome here.

I'm trolling, ffs. :) I know all about Elite and can't wait to play it. And yeah, if anyone can make procedural feel amazing, it's definitely Braben. Although I've played enough space-sims, all the past Elites included, to know that I'm more of a story/missions/crafted universe kinda guy. I hope both games do great. No Man's Land too. The genre needs it.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
I have to say though, after the release of Arena Commander, it seems like the team got it more and more together and I keep being impressed by the progress they are making.

I have the feeling they first needed to figure it all out, how to build ships, how everything would work,... but now that they have a solid base to work on it seems like things go much smoother now. The weekly progress in ATV and monthly progress reports are packed with details regarding the development process, and they are being quite honest with all the bugs they are experiencing.

As the funding has now grown considerably over the first sought amount, many news outlets start hating more and more on Star Citizen, claiming that they will never fulfill their promises and that it's all one big scam. From what I've seen in the past two months, the contrary is true.

I also have to give props to Behaviour. While they may seem to take quite a while conjuring up stuff compared to AAA studios, their work on Star Citizen seems a pretty big step up over the Spongebob/Doritos tie-in games. I think the guidance of CIG gave them a chance to redeem themselves, a chance they are taking well. The new hangar system looks absolutely brilliant.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
I'm pretty sure that's how it is with every big project. People just never had the opportunity to see what actually goes on behind the curtains. Figuring stuff out is what takes the longest and it ain't pretty to look at. Also, what some people don't seem to realize is how fucking long it takes to build a big studio from zero and get it working at 100%. Something that should be taken into consideration when comparisons between Star Citizen's and Elite's development get thrown around. They are two completely different beasts.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
It's the 51 million stretch goal. Will only give you permission to buy one though, which will cost $25.

Have to say though, this is the perfect reply vid for when a new Funding thread pops up.
 
O

okiemok

Member
So now that the Arena Commander has been out for a bit, what is the general perspective for the future of SC? Are people happy with the progress?
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
I have been on media blackout for the most part since donating in the initial funding period. I launched it up and proceeded to devour everything I could about the game because the combat is that good.
 
M

MrBig

Member
okiemok said:
So now that the Arena Commander has been out for a bit, what is the general perspective for the future of SC? Are people happy with the progress?
Click to expand...

There has been lots of discussion on this here if you want to go back and read that, but really, myself and quite a few others I've talked to aren't really touching Arena Commander - though it's not representative of the game as a whole I do not want to burn myself out on it. AC is very rough, but that is not the tell, anyone is able to see the progress that CIG is making on the countless content and story posts (both official and in the forum) that are being made. They've stopped floundering, figured out most of what they're doing, and are now working to actually, slowly and carefully, build everything out.
 
M

Mindlog

Member
Not touching my space combat/sims/whatever FU until I get CV1.
Partly because I want to be overwhelmed by CV1 content and partly because I really need an upgrade and picked CV1 as my best time period for that upgrade.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Star Citizen crowdfunding passes $700 million
News 2 3 4
151
7K
Buggy Loop replied
Star Citizen Alpha 3.23 update: Adventure Beckons (Fauna, Creature Hunting plus more)
2 3 4 5
203
10K
Buggy Loop replied
$50,000 spare? Star Citizen wants your cash
News
20
2K
Ribi replied
Star Citizen’s live game director is leaving his position after nine years at CIG (which has not released one single game)
2 3
113
10K
Madonis replied
Over $600 Million Later, Scam Citizen Is Now at the Alpha 3.20 Stage
News Business Game Dev 2 3
120
8K
Buggy Loop replied
Top Bottom