Air.

[RLGamer1981]

I hate refering to another game as a means of explaining my point, especially one where this inspiration derived from. Let's not beat around the bush, when we mentions "ploxel" games. Minecraft has the complexity of handling building, mining, chopping, growing and others that it plays into. When you go into water... you run out of air.

So... what if in Star-Made... you had to worry about air-supplies? Blocks that would create a virtual air system and even your spacesuit would have a limited supply of air. Certainly longer than what you would have with minecraft... but think... You're in space. You're air meter is reading 1 hour of air. This gives you an hour to build your ship, place your air-supply unit and refresh yourself while you're flying or on a planet. This also gives a need to actually land on a planet and resupply yourself with resources needed for air-creation. Want a base on an astroid? Transport your air-supplies from the adjacent planet in pods and deliver them to your astroid base to work without limitations, then a once in a while refill.

My suggestion is to take something that is already ingame and use it as your source to create air.

PLANTS!

Take the plants you mine from planets and use them in the creation of air. Creating pods or boxes to carry your air from A to B. If your ship is damaged, then so is your airsupply, harming you or your missions.

If you want to elaborate on this idea, by all means. I'd like to see what the community can offer to this.

 

[Ixalite]

I like this idea

 

[Visitor]

In general, it may be interesting but I am not sure it should be a feature to be implemented at current phase of development. Right now there are occasional issues and things to be added to the very basic things in the game, like ship building, factions etc and adding air right now can make ti all more troublesome while not really enhancing gameplay.

In the future though? Sure. Especially if/when equipment for characters themselves will get in (I know that at least handheld weapons are to show up one day in the future) and one will be actually able to get different suits, with different stats (speed traded for protection which can also be traded for air capacity).

 

[schadavi]

I think simple air supply would be easy to implement.
just three easy steps:
when air supply blocks are placed, the game checks if its in a closed room.
then it only calculates one unit of air per empty cube in the room (can be ship or station) and starts filling it up - not in a liquid simulation way (yet) but a simple percentage displayed on the air supply block.
then players in the room drain ten units per second, and plants or air blocks produce five or so...

 

[Visitor]

I would be very, very cautious about implementing air as actual value of blocks, tracking enclosed spaces. If it won\'t do it in real time, there will be silly moments where ships open to space will have air till next \'update\', if it will be tracking/refreshing often, then I suspect noticeable performance hit as the data will have to be circulated and updated all the time for who knows how many ships/objects.

 

[schadavi]

One update per second would be more than enough.
that shouldn\'t stress the server

 

[Shuriken]

Genrally good idea the \'Ait-*thing\' but before starting to invent new features i think the developer Schema wants to make the game run smooth with the existing features in my opinion.

Lots \'Basic-features\' in game have still so much bugs that needed to be tracked down i think we shouldn\'t bother him to invent new stuff.

Give him time to optimize the game at is it now.

Just to name a few

1. most important (just in my opinion maybe) bad/buggy spawn locations when exiting vehicles, in space and when manually landed on a planet it often happens that you stuck in planets rocks of you and your ship fall \'through\' the planet on exiting your ship or you 700-2000m away from your ship when exiting in space (out of a ship witha speed of 0)



2. MOB AI / Movement.. very often MOB Ships once captured by planets gravity are rolling around on the surface like a bowling ball. and keep spinning even wehen falling back into space



If im allowed to make a suggestion on an existing feature >solar sectors< are good but lot of lag and heading flips when switching within the solar-systems >sub-sectors

 

[schadavi]

That\'s why this thread is in the suggestions forum...
Since we can\'t say, \"schema I payed you three bucks, gib xenomorph now!\", we can\'t really press him into delaying quality control for the sake of new features... Its his decision what to do.

 

[MichaelSeph]

StarMade has lots of plants, that\'s actually a good idea, and something to motivate people using gardens and even forests on ships.

Not only plants, but also tree leaves blocks should generate air when connected to a wood block. (just so ppl don\'t just fill a room with tree leaves connected to... the metallic walls.

 

[Visitor]

It may, depending on how it\'s coded and how much is happening. When you have dozens (if not hundreds - all depends on the server, number of players, their constructions, NPCs) of mobile, changing objects of different structure, with block of interior interior that have to be, block-by-block checked and updated for some values at the same time, there still may be quite some problems.

 

[RLGamer1981]

I understand the basic mechanics of the game and the importance of working on bugs... but air would be easy to impliment and just as important as any other current mechanic in the game. Plus, this IS the stage to impliment new parts into the game. Implimenting it later, would only cause more bugs and issues down the road, trying to recode to bring about your ideas.

And like someone else said. This IS suggestions. Not bug fixes section. This section is specifically for new implimenting ideas and AIR would be a major one. It would take away the invincible feeling I have when I am playing (not related to the death of a destroyed ship...) There aren\'t many ways to die, other than pirate attacks and this would add more of a survival feel to it. I\'m not saying impliment food... which would require some sort of explaination as to how you\'d create food with no animals or similar. I\'m saying air, can be made through the means already provided by the game. It wouldn\'t take any extra blocks (other than the ones creating or storing air.)

It\'s a fantastic idea and NOW would be the time to try and brainstorm on implimenting. Some ideas are meant for finishing the product... but this would only help build up the reputation and gameplay features for Star-Made.

 

[Planr]

Minecraft has the complexity of handling building, mining, chopping, growing and others that it plays into. When you go into water... you run out of air.


None of the things listed here are hardly even complex properties or processes compared to some of the other things in either StarMade or Minecraft. They aren\'t anywhere near as task-demanding and computer-resource hungry as some other processes like chunk ghosting, lighting, collision (this is mostly in starmades case) and rendering. These are not super-complex tasks for a game to handle. Just letting you know...


So... what if in Star-Made... you had to worry about air-supplies? Blocks that would create a virtual air system and even your spacesuit would have a limited supply of air. Certainly longer than what you would have with minecraft... but think... You\'re in space. You\'re air meter is reading 1 hour of air. This gives you an hour to build your ship, place your air-supply unit and refresh yourself while you\'re flying or on a planet. This also gives a need to actually land on a planet and resupply yourself with resources needed for air-creation. Want a base on an astroid? Transport your air-supplies from the adjacent planet in pods and deliver them to your astroid base to work without limitations, then a once in a while refill.


This sounds very task demanding, play-wise. If one has taken a high-school chemistry course, they know that there are other ways to get oxygen besides going to a class-M planet and hauling up some of the atmosphere. The ISS utilizes air-recycling systems. Knowing Chemistry, you can take other elements and compounds, and convert them to other elements such as oxygen and water, with the right processes. I have to disagree on what you\'re saying here because it would simply make the game more inconvenient. Rather, I think oxygen should be a toggleable server option.

What\'s being suggested here is also task demanding in the computer resource-wise sense. How does the game check if there\'s a completely enclosed environment for which Oxygen can be present in? How is this not going to lag the server when you\'ve got big spaceships with complex interiors, and players flying around in these ships all over the server universe? Not to mention how it behaves when there\'s a hull breach or such. It sounds to me like a very tasking process for computers to handle, but perhaps it\'s as simple as block lighting is. Guess we\'ll find out if Schema implements it/

This is a game of exploration and adventure where you are free from many of the small-world, nitpicking restraints such as what\'s employed in Minecraft\'s survival system. Minecraft is like StarMade, except that its primary focus of survival aspects means everything is played on a smaller scale, block-wise and player life-wise. The \"world of life\" in Minecraft is alot smaller (traveling around is limited to tiny minecarts, rather than in giant spaceships like in StarMade), and i\'d hate to see StarMade dragged backwards and down such a level. StarMade is a game where you reach for the stars (among many other things), not exclusively simply mucking around in caves and dirt looking for your next meal or batch of iron/coal.

So to sum up what i\'m saying (and I do recognize i\'m getting a bit too poetic and long-winded in this speech of sorts here), I would like to see Air as a feature in StarMade as much as you do, but I think the way in which it is supplied to an environment and used should be far more diverse than what you\'re proposing.


Here\'s what I had in mind: Have oxygen work via generation blocks throughout the ship. Each oxygen generator block can supply air to the closed environment (room) it is placed in, and based on the area in which it has to fill with air, it uses ship power at a certain rate.

Two really cool aspects of air implementation are that:

• Hull breaches are now a problem the player has to deal with as a serious concern; This is the best survival aspect that StarMade can have. This can be the equivalent of the hunger aspect in minecraft, but in air instead. Without air being supplied to your ship sufficiently, every passenger dies. I\'d also like to see the way players work when flying from the ship cores to change so that they too are affected if the room in which the ship core is in gets decompressed.
• Ventilation systems and Airlocks now have a real usage

 

[Arclight]

1. Why not code it the same way shield are already implemented? Have life support blocks that refresh the air meter whenever you \"touch\" your ship.

2. Or pair them up with the gravity blocks and anyone gravitized to a ship with life support will constantly have their air supply filled. Also, you need more life support blocks for ships with higher mass.

With the second method, the same could be applied to planets, since if you are under the effect of their gravity, then you have oxygen. Then for planets without oxygen its as simple as disabling this feature in the code.

 

[Charlie_]

Minecraft? Look up XENOMINER.
Hell.. was this thing made by the same guy actually... I don\'t know but I have this feeling all a sudden.
[Edit: Checked and no, different devs, but I think StarMade would be closer to this than minecraft, Xenominer being the \'missing\' link betwen the two]

As the game currently is air would be the most frustrating thing ever.

In a survival mode, sure. That\'d actually brilliant.But when that happens, how do you build anything else than ships? You build for a minute, then run back to ship for a gasp of air? Rinse and repeat? Absolutely Aggravating.

And with the current state of the game, where tiny glitches warp you around into the emptiness of space, the last thing I ever want is a game telling me \"So by accident, nobody\'s fault really, you\'ve just been thrown 1km away from your ship and left there to drift in open empty space. Oh by the way, you have 1 minute and 13 seconds of oxygen left to get to your ship, so you might want to get moving right now. If you die don\'t worry, respawn inside the ship. What\'s that, there wasn\'t any undeathinator in there? That\'s a shame, I guess that shop 15 sectors away will have to do. By the way, you\'ll lose half your cash.\"



I mean. It would happen, so often. You\'d be stuck to either to the confines of your ship\'s fly and build mode for longs periods of time, or within an atmosphere -- and that\'s assuming they\'re ALL breathable, because of course if you\'re going to implement air necessary for survival, why make all planets an hospitable environment?

And as realistic and awesome as this mechanic would be, I think it\'d be extremly frustrating to lose a battle because that other guy removed that ONE block making your ship an enclosed space. PFfffffffffffffffff vaccuum void, motherlover. What\'s that, he\'s fine even though his ship\'S 60% destroyed? Oh but that\'s because his ship is completely FILLED and has NO INTERIOR, so he\'s fine even though more than half of it\'s been vaporised. Your few cubes on the other hand, tsk tsk, nope, that won\'t do, you\'re dead, man.

Really? You\'d really like that? Beats me.

The idea is cool, but as much fun situations it would create, it would take as much fun away in many situations. You could always check space flight simulators if you want to worry about a billion things while dodging missile fire, aiming and zooming through space as your shields are going down with an alarming warning sound.

 

[Arclight]

Yeah I\'ve heard about that glitch. I haven\'t experienced it yet though. Maybe its because I tend to put my core in large rooms. I imagine the air feature wouldn\'t be implemented until that bug is fixed. Correct me if I\'m wrong, but I think I remember reading that Schema doesn\'t want players to be able to survive indefinitely in space.

But yes, having code continuously check to see if a ship is completely closed off from the void would be very taxing on servers (anyone play Minecraft Feed the Beast with XYCraft tanks?) They were pretty much doing the same thing. And those are much, much, much smaller than the ships people are building. Basically, the more space inside a ship, the more resource intensive the check will be. Servers with 50 players would suffer from that.

If you want a scifi explanation for air on ships, you can look at starwars. Those big hangars with the huge open doors out into space? A Force Field keeps the atmosphere inside. It also makes plenty of sense for a gravity block to hold the air in, regardless of the number of holes in your hull.

 

[Charlie_]

Agreed on the gravity keeping air in part, to some point, but vaccuum decompression is a thing, because artificial gravity fields the size of a ship (no matter the ship, that\'s normally a relatively small gravity pull in space) can simply not compete against the pressure difference. Without exiting a gravity field, gasses expend as much as possible within areas, therefore, even if kept within gravity of ships, the air would \"try\" and spread as evenly as possible in all available space within the gravity... that\'d make for really cool artificial and limited \"atmospheres\" around ships, but you\'d need the area-of-effect gravity to be implemented first for any sort of \"keepin air in gravity\" mechanic.

On a balancing note, I\'m afraid the same kind of gargantuous thing as giant shields and such would happen with said force fields. Have so much force field that air is kept despite most of the hull being gone... would be abusing. So that means MORE calculations and exceptions and conditions and balancing for schema, which I think is unwanted atm.

Like many ideas, air is an amazing possibility and would give depth to the game in a completely new level of conception, but as someone else said I think even implemented, it should be left to server choice.

So far your force field is my favourite approach, and hell, I\'d like such \"force field walls\" if only as hangar bay doors, that blocks can go through but not antimatter or missiles. To completely block access to foreign objects (Like enemy small ships) you\'d then have to realy on actual heavy duty hangar doors (which could then be used in case the force field gives up). Yes I really like this approach..

But as many have raised, despite it not being too intensive on a logical base, calculating air in quantity within a space of dynamic size, while it\'s moving, while it\'s potentially changing shape (combat etc), for every block concerned, for every ship/structure/hole inside something constantly would be a server and client killer.

My lord, I\'m sorry I always get so carried away in my replies, they tend to stretch on and on..

 

[Arclight]

Yeah I would like to see force fields continue to cover plex doors even when they are open, but still allow ships and people to pass through.

I didn\'t go into enough depth when I meantioned the gravity block holding air in. I always imaging something like artificial gravity emmitting an electromagnetic bubble out to a certian radius. This \"bubble\" would act as an atmospheric compression field. I never understood this in a movie like the new Star Trek, when they have shields and everything, yet they still have violent atmospheric decompression when they get a little hole in their hull. Then it takes a minute, or long enough for half the crew to get sucked out, before life support systems \"automatically\" throw up an air shield.

Anyway, back on topic. I just think the whole point of the life support system would be to contain and stabilize an atmosphere. Again, for the sake of server load, there should be no algorithms to check if a ship is completely enclosed.

So why not have a gigantic hangar door always open to space? It\'s a sci fi game, we\'ll just make up some lore and call it a day :p

 

[Charlie_]

\"So why not have a gigantic hangar door always open to space? It\'s a sci fi game, we\'ll just make up some lore and call it a day :p\"

Yes.

 

[Avatarjonas]

Perhaps the gravity of a ship (or a mechanism with the same range as gravity) could be used to contain the oxygen? So long as you are within and are using the gravity of a ship, you will have access to oxygen and gain the benefits of life support (You could have a special life support block that is extremely expensive that uses tons of power, or farms to provide oxygen with a lower power equirement, but take up more space, soil, and lights). That way it will be as CPU taxing as gravity, and cheap one hit kills will not be possible. I do not think that oxygen supplies should be drained from the player when in any sort of computer, so that small fighter ships are still useful, but if you get out of a computer and there is no oxygen you have X minutes to either enter an oxygen field, or re-enter a computer (Computers halt oxygen loss; rather than giving or taking any) and go find some oxygen fields. I think this would be an appropriate method for adding life support to the game. Perhaps the oxygen could be used for animals, so that you can harvest them, and you could be using an onboard farm to support the player\'s oxygen and hunger, and the ability to raise livestock for food/goods. It would also be best if this were a server option, so that there is more control and customization.

 

[Ultraviolet Dugong]

Essentially, every time a block is added or removed, a door is opened/closed, etc, it runs the check. Then it won\'t be doing constant checks to see if it needs to handle airflow, and there wouldn\'t be any silly moments like you described.