Beam Weapon Visuals - Travel time

[Edymnion]

And for the most part, we are seeing genre based specifics.

This does not mean every last single thing put into the game should be a copy of something from a movie, TV show or book.

To me, the beam weapon is more hard sci-fi than the beam weapons seen in movies and TV shows. If it's made of LIGHT, you shouldn't be able to watch it travel, if you're anywhere close enough to see the beam emerge, its travel time is going to be pretty much instantaneous, because LIGHT.

The suggestions people are offering are pretty much asking for a longer cannon weapon, not a beam weapon.

Actually, what we have in game now CANNOT be a light based weapon.

Space is a vacuum, there is no dense dust cloud to refract the light back to our eyes. All light based laser weapons would be invisible. The fact that we can see the beams at all, and that we can color the beams, means that they can't be pure laser based weapons.

 

[Thalanor]

I could see very cinematic applications for beams that work like the asgard plasma beams in SGA (that shoot plasmatized gas or something at non-instant travel). The thing I am sceptical about is how the weapon FX can't be synched to the hit check and damage application, and this desync won't feel good.

That's why I would suggest to instead polish the very poor weapon FX of cannons, which already are non-hitscan weapons. Then beams could be "lasers" and cannons would draw a bright trail like true epic plasma cannons (for almost the same effect) instead of shooting tic-tacs into space.

 

[Edymnion]

And lets be honest, we can see the cannon fire. If we wanted to be realistic here, the cannon shot is travelling about as fast as a thrown baseball. Its not like its realistic either.

I still support keeping beams instant draw the way they are, but we can't really bring "realism" into the arguments for or against it, because nothing here is realistic in any way. Its about looking good and feeling good to play.

 

[Gasboy]

there is no dense dust cloud to refract the light back to our eyes.

Uhm... I hope you have a paper ready for scientists to peer review, because you'd be able to prove them wrong.

Cosmic dust - Wikipedia

Go ahead.

Cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location: intergalactic dust, interstellar dust, interplanetary dust (such as in the zodiacal cloud) and circumplanetary dust (such as in a planetary ring). In the Solar System, interplanetary dust causes the zodiacal light. Sources of Solar System dust include comet dust, asteroidal dust, dust from the Kuiper belt, and interstellar dust passing through the Solar System. The terminology has no specific application for describing materials found on the planet Earth except for dust that has demonstrably fallen to Earth. By one estimate, as much as 40,000 tons of cosmic dust reaches the Earth's surface every year.[1] In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic matter (amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic–aliphatic structure) that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars.[3][4][5]

On August 14, 2014, scientists announced the collection of possible interstellar dust particles from the Stardust spacecraft since returning to Earth in 2006.[6][7][8][9]

Also, Zodiacal light - Wikipedia

Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night sky that appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or zodiac.[1] It is caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud. It is best seen just after sunset in spring, and just before sunrise in autumn, when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon, but is so faint that either moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible.

Yes, there are some places where there is no dust to be found. I would bet it would be interstellar space, between solar systems, between galaxies and so on. But there is an awful lot of dust in a solar system. Asteroids banging around, heck, the sun and all the planets are formed from dust. So inside a solar system, which is pretty much everywhere most people hang out in StarMade, you'd see at least SOME of the laser beams.

Also, you ignore the fact that there's a lot of things in space we would be unaware of. We would likely devise instruments to warn us of these things. For instance, colouring a laser beam for our eyes to see.
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And lets be honest, we can see the cannon fire. If we wanted to be realistic here, the cannon shot is travelling about as fast as a thrown baseball. Its not like its realistic either.

I still support keeping beams instant draw the way they are, but we can't really bring "realism" into the arguments for or against it, because nothing here is realistic in any way. Its about looking good and feeling good to play.

Some things are realistic, other are not. But you are right, it's about having a fun game.

 

[Edymnion]

Dude, I know what cosmic dust is. But that doesn't apply here. You're talking about a super thin dust that can create vague glows when looked at across an entire system.

We're talking about lasers being visible from inches away.

To see a beam like that, you would need near fog machine levels of material, at which point we 1) wouldn't be able to see the sun or stars in the first place, and 2) would eat so much of the energy of the beam by reflecting it away that such a weapon would be rendered useless by the time it traveled any actual distance.

 

[kingreol]

New starmade dock drinking game: Open a suggestion thread, and every time someone asks for the game to be more like X TV show game or Movie, take a shot. Guaranteed alcohol poisoning within ten minutes.

Lol. It's not as bad as music production. "I'm thinking of a sound, kinda like this sound this producer uses a lot.. but instead shove This beat into it." My other beam thought was independence day. Pulses running through the beam... :p Now Drink!


Anyways I don't care about it slowing down or not. Only that beams become less ugly.. I'm assuming we will get some nice graphics intensive options for weapon systems, slowly. Wouldn't even be worth a suggestion. It's like suggesting we get a proper sound engine

 

[Lecic]

Starmade is already very much like TV shows and movies. The jump drive we have now is visually identical to Star Wars hyperspace. The cannon fire looks just like the cannon fire from Battlestar Galactica or Stargate SG1.

If you're going to make a genre based game, then you should EXPECT people to want to see genre based specifics.

"the jd and cannons kinda look like these things from other scifi so you shouldnt complain about the suggestion forum being constantly swamped with pointless suggestions asking for aesthetic changes to match another scifi thing (which is star trek 90% of the time) xDDDDDDDDD"

Actually, what we have in game now CANNOT be a light based weapon.

Space is a vacuum, there is no dense dust cloud to refract the light back to our eyes. All light based laser weapons would be invisible. The fact that we can see the beams at all, and that we can color the beams, means that they can't be pure laser based weapons.

It's a video game. It doesn't have to have realistic laser weapon visuals.

And lets be honest, we can see the cannon fire. If we wanted to be realistic here, the cannon shot is travelling about as fast as a thrown baseball. Its not like its realistic either.

Cannon shots are travelling just under 1000 m/s by default settings. That is hardly "about as fast as a thrown baseball."

 

[Gasboy]

Dude, I know what cosmic dust is. But that doesn't apply here. You're talking about a super thin dust that can create vague glows when looked at across an entire system.

We're talking about lasers being visible from inches away.

To see a beam like that, you would need near fog machine levels of material, at which point we 1) wouldn't be able to see the sun or stars in the first place, and 2) would eat so much of the energy of the beam by reflecting it away that such a weapon would be rendered useless by the time it traveled any actual distance.

You conveniently leave out the part where I said that in some parts of the solar system we could see lasers, not all. And that we may, in future, design systems that colourize lasers so that we can view them. Amongst other things.

 

[Nickizzy]

This is a gameplay-changing solution to an aesthetics problem anyway, but most importantly it really seems like it could be solved by beefing up cannon particle effects. Right now they do act like little "baseballs in space" and there's no difference between a 10,000,000,000 damage pulse-shot and a PD cannon. Besides, how would a continuous beam work on travel time? Would it act as a super-fast firing lancelike weapon?

 

[Edymnion]

You conveniently leave out the part where I said that in some parts of the solar system we could see lasers, not all.

Dude, just no, you wouldn't.

From the wikipedia article you linked:

The dust density falling to Earth is approximately 10−6/m3 with each grain having a mass between 10−16kg (0.1 pg) and 10−4 kg (100 mg).

10^-6 is 0.000000001 grams per cubic meter. The average density of Earth's atmosphere at sea level is 0.0012 g/cm3. That would be 0.12 grams per cubic meter. Thats over a billion times thicker than the cosmic dust the Earth passes through, and its still not dense enough for us to see a laser in without SUBSTANTIAL pollutants.

 

[Gasboy]

Dude, just no, you wouldn't.

From the wikipedia article you linked:10^-6 is 0.000000001 grams per cubic meter. The average density of Earth's atmosphere at sea level is 0.0012 g/cm3. That would be 0.12 grams per cubic meter. Thats over a billion times thicker than the cosmic dust the Earth passes through, and its still not dense enough for us to see a laser in without SUBSTANTIAL pollutants.

I guess barring a denser cloud...

And that we may, in future, design systems that colourize lasers so that we can view them. Amongst other things.

 

[TheGT]

Uhm... I hope you have a paper ready for scientists to peer review, because you'd be able to prove them wrong.

Cosmic dust - Wikipedia

Go ahead.



Also, Zodiacal light - Wikipedia



Yes, there are some places where there is no dust to be found. I would bet it would be interstellar space, between solar systems, between galaxies and so on. But there is an awful lot of dust in a solar system. Asteroids banging around, heck, the sun and all the planets are formed from dust. So inside a solar system, which is pretty much everywhere most people hang out in StarMade, you'd see at least SOME of the laser beams.

Also, you ignore the fact that there's a lot of things in space we would be unaware of. We would likely devise instruments to warn us of these things. For instance, colouring a laser beam for our eyes to see.
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Some things are realistic, other are not. But you are right, it's about having a fun game.

Dude, I know what cosmic dust is. But that doesn't apply here. You're talking about a super thin dust that can create vague glows when looked at across an entire system.

We're talking about lasers being visible from inches away.

To see a beam like that, you would need near fog machine levels of material, at which point we 1) wouldn't be able to see the sun or stars in the first place, and 2) would eat so much of the energy of the beam by reflecting it away that such a weapon would be rendered useless by the time it traveled any actual distance.

You conveniently leave out the part where I said that in some parts of the solar system we could see lasers, not all. And that we may, in future, design systems that colourize lasers so that we can view them. Amongst other things.

Dude, just no, you wouldn't.

From the wikipedia article you linked:10^-6 is 0.000000001 grams per cubic meter. The average density of Earth's atmosphere at sea level is 0.0012 g/cm3. That would be 0.12 grams per cubic meter. Thats over a billion times thicker than the cosmic dust the Earth passes through, and its still not dense enough for us to see a laser in without SUBSTANTIAL pollutants.

I guess barring a denser cloud...

It DOESN'T FREAKING MATTER!

Were playing a game that is supposed to PLAY WELL, and LOOK COOL.
Schine is not trying to make a massively realistic game. They're trying to make something that satisfies those two categories. Most of the suggestions on this form go into the PLAY WELL category (logic activated scanners, lua implementation, etc.). However there are occasionally suggestions that cater to the wish for a game that LOOKs COOL. (realism does come into play for LOOK COOL decisions, but getting into arguments over lasers reflecting off of comic dust is silly) Most of the time we try to keep the two types of suggestions separate, (my holo-display isn't going to affect the way that factions work) and that is what we should try to do here.

My personal opinion ( I misstated this before and failed to correct myself) is that these changes should be made:

Of course the numbers are up to debate, but this is how I think this should exist:

Magic Radiometric Gravioli-DiLithium Laser Pointers, super unrealistic, but lookin' cool.

 

[Hexed]

I could see very cinematic applications for beams that work like the asgard plasma beams in SGA (that shoot plasmatized gas or something at non-instant travel). The thing I am sceptical about is how the weapon FX can't be synched to the hit check and damage application, and this desync won't feel good.

That's why I would suggest to instead polish the very poor weapon FX of cannons, which already are non-hitscan weapons. Then beams could be "lasers" and cannons would draw a bright trail like true epic plasma cannons (for almost the same effect) instead of shooting tic-tacs into space.

Honestly I'd be fine with a FX update on Cannons in place of this. Or as well.

I'm not arguing from a Scientific perspective of how the weapon would be perceived. And I'm not suggesting a mechanical change to the gameplay. It would be a purely visual adjustment. I realise that the instantaneous nature of the beam weapon would complicate that a little, but the "travel" of the beam could easily be a barely noticeable time frame and it would still be an improvement.

The whole point is the visceral feeling of firing the weapon, which I freely admit is a subjective position. The current weapon has a very insubstantial watery quality to it IMO. The sound assets, animation and hit confirmation aren't particularly impressive. If you feel otherwise I'd like to hear why. But if you want to instead focus on the scientific aspects of being able to perceive the travel of light then you are missing the point I feel.

Starmade is a space shooter. It says so right on the front page. And an important aspect of a shooter is the shooting mechanics. This is a suggestion based entirely on my subjective view that the shooting mechanics would be improved by a visual adjustment.

 

[jayman38]

Honestly I'd be fine with a FX update on Cannons in place of this. Or as well.
...
The whole point is the visceral feeling of firing the weapon, which I freely admit is a subjective position. The current weapon has a very insubstantial watery quality to it IMO. The sound assets, animation and hit confirmation aren't particularly impressive. If you feel otherwise I'd like to hear why. But if you want to instead focus on the scientific aspects of being able to perceive the travel of light then you are missing the point I feel.
...

I agree, and think the weapons would look and feel infinitely better when the game introduces proper particle effects. (Proper particles! Not the test puffs that have been tested years ago....)

Particles (and sounds if they want it) will really add punch to weapons. I think it's just a matter of time, because everytime someone talks about the "feel" of the weapons, it always comes down to not having very many support effects. Particles will forever change the look and feel of Starmade. And for that reason, Schine knows they have to get it right the first time. That's why it will probably be a while before we get proper particle effects active in the game; the particles have to be right, and they can't bog down combat too much. And a million other little things.

Examples of ways that particle effects would change the game, that we see in other games right now:

You can have a shower of sparks at the launching point that scales with the power of the weapon, to give extra emphasis to the power of the weapon being fired.

Others have already touched on adding trailing particles to the cannon shot, to both increase visibility and improve the aesthetic immensely. This can also be scaled in any number of ways (increasing the length of the trail depending on beam slaves, increasing the spread depending on pulse slaves, adding colors depending on tertiary slaves, etc.)

The big one: adding massive sparks at the point of impact would probably be the #1 thing to make weapons "feel" as powerful as they work. Naturally, scalable with the power of the impact, and maybe altered with the type of system hit (different colors, different density, maybe have long-firing, wide-spread fire-work-style sparks when weapon systems or reactors are hit, etc.)

Edit: but that's a whole different type of suggestion and is off-topic....

 

[Deserea]

Im going to say no.
I prefer beam weapon visuals as they are, if it was made to take time it would just nerf beam weapons...and i dont think they need that, do they?, this is one of the few games where beams *dont* travel over time and i like it that way, in part because in those other games, beams are way way better than they are here. They may do less damage when they hit, but over time they do more. Beams here do no such thing, *maybe* if we could make the beam wider visually(and thus spreading its damage out a little over the area of the visual..), but ill say no to this suggestion for now.

 

[lupoCani]

Before this is farther de-railed by arguments about the merits of realism, can I ask we consider something?

We want this fast-not-instant visual, applied to a continuous beam. Do we have to change beams specifically? Cannons are already fast-ish, can't we work with those, instead? Changing cannon-fire to be continuous would be less of a change than making beams slower.

Of course, even I don't think we should remove the current kind of cannon. But, spreading the damage out over a line really isn't that big of a change, so we could simply make it optional. Say, a "muzzle" block or something, that lets the cannon-shot out slowly in pieces, forming a continuous burst. There may be some tweaking required, say, more power use to compensate for the fact that this essentially the same as having multiple cannon outputs in a line. But, as a whole, I think this is a workable implementation.

 

[Hexed]

Before this is farther de-railed by arguments about the merits of realism, can I ask we consider something?

We want this fast-not-instant visual, applied to a continuous beam. Do we have to change beams specifically? Cannons are already fast-ish, can't we work with those, instead? Changing cannon-fire to be continuous would be less of a change than making beams slower.

Of course, even I don't think we should remove the current kind of cannon. But, spreading the damage out over a line really isn't that big of a change, so we could simply make it optional. Say, a "muzzle" block or something, that lets the cannon-shot out slowly in pieces, forming a continuous burst. There may be some tweaking required, say, more power use to compensate for the fact that this essentially the same as having multiple cannon outputs in a line. But, as a whole, I think this is a workable implementation.

Except that the entire point of the post was a suggestion to improve the visual quality of beam weaponry. Cannons need work too but this suggestion was solely about improving beam weaponry.

 

[NeonSturm]

Laser, Maser, Phaser, Taser, *aser weapons:

There is an emitter point and a target point.
These points travel.

1. If the beam pulse is at 0.25 to 0.5 distance and the points travel 10 meters (push/microwarp effect), then the beam repositions (what the looks?)
   
2. The beam travels a curve (magic beams?)
3. The beam misses but do damage at the target point (undesired)
   
4. The beam misses completely (no instant hit weapon)

I think I prefer the magic beam barrage effect

EDIT: No magic. just gravity-drives! (Black holes bend light too)​

 

[Lecic]

Bending beams sounds like it would be more difficult to calculate. You'd need some sort of rope physics or something to beams, instead of them just being a sprite.

 

[NeonSturm]

Laser, Maser, Phaser, Taser, *aser weapons:

There is an emitter point and a target point.
These points travel.

1. If the beam pulse is at 0.25 to 0.5 distance and the points travel 10 meters (push/microwarp effect), then the beam repositions (what the looks?)
   
2. The beam travels a curve (magic beams?)
3. The beam misses but do damage at the target point (undesired)
   
4. The beam misses completely (no instant hit weapon)

I think I prefer the magic beam barrage effect

EDIT: No magic. just gravity-drives! (Black holes bend light too)​

Bending beams sounds like it would be more difficult to calculate. You'd need some sort of rope physics or something to beams, instead of them just being a sprite.

True, but when the point of impact is already determined by "bending beams" and tracking projectiles in 90% of the cases, you can just alter the visual effect without breaking immersion too much.

Bad computers have effect 1 (repositioning), good computers have effect 2 (curving beams).
1 is more accurate, but 2 may be desired by some players with good hardware.​