Ship Status

[Poilelo]

To begin, congratulations for this game development. Still in alpha but a lot of play potential.



What I have noticed. When a ship is brought to the battlefield and is taking damages, there is no damages location indicator:

• For a mother ship, are the shots coming from the top, bottom, left …? Hard to tell from the fly mode in “shoot view”.
• Ok the shield is down, now the hull and components begin to be deleted. The build view must be used to see the ship and to discover which blocks are missing.
• Ok the shield is down, the ship had taken a lot of damages, are the canon operational at 50%, 60%, how about engines…?

The idea is to display the ship status as a “dynamic see from above ship picture”. The first version of algorithms as I see in my mind would work as follow:


// ALGO may be launch in build mode, on even key:
// create two variables: initialNumberOfBlockOnY and currentNumberOfBlockOnY as two dimensional array of int (don’t remember how to in JAVA), ini at 0 each.
// Scan the ship on the xz plane:

for (int x = 0; x++;  x < maxShipSizeX)
{
  for (int z = 0; z++;  z < maxShipSizeZ)
  {
    for (int y = 0; y++;  y < maxShipSizeY)
    {
      if (ship[x][y][z].isABlock); // not a void block
        initialNumberOfBlockOnY[x][z]++;
    }
  }
}             
currentNumberOfBlockOnY = initialNumberOfBlockOnY;

To create the picture, if currentNumberOfBlockOnY is equal to initialNumberOfBlockOnY, draw a green pixel, otherwise, turn the green more and more into red, depending of the difference of these two variables (actualize on each shoot received).

Resize the picture to fit the screen resolution independently on ship size by grouping pixel (standard algorithm for resizing picture).



First I was decided to create it myself as a mod, but a read the topic explaining that the code is obfuscated for now. I understand the reasons. So I post as a suggestion/idea. However if you are interested by any help, it would be a pleasure to contribute by developing this feature. I have a Master in software development (expert C++, but JAVA is ok), 3 years of experiences in companies. I have a job, so I offer my help for free of course, on my free time when I can .

 

[Tomino_sama]

this is a great idea. I think a simplified image would be hard to generate for all ships though?



in any case the is great.



With the game beign the way it is, how can the game tell if you don\'t always save your blueprint? Its the only thing it could compare against for the \"undamaged\" state.

 

[DracoNB]

While the blueprint is ideal, it could also save a hidden blueprint everytime you add / remove a block manually (or maybe only in build mode?). It could then compare against that copy.

 

[Darth_Ato]

Great idea !

 

[Dwarfguy721]

What if you started with like 100 blocks that when you place as a outlne on the top of your ship it will generate a simple image from that, and you can remove and use them again, or buy more from a shop.

 

[PassivePicasso]

Rather than just providing this automatically, you could instead create a block which is responsible for reporting against blocks in a certain area.

It\'d be much like the Docking blocks except that it would only work when blocks are in the region.

Once placed you can activate the block which would register all the blocks in its region, and each time changes are made to that region it could report that.

 

[darkhog]

I think we could \"borrow\" damage indicator from games like CoD or other shooters. Those are good enough and if damage is comming from back/front of ship, indicator would be just tilted a bit.

 

[a21173]

A 3d Damage indicator would be ideal where an adjustable screen at the bottom left of your screen. This would have the option to display all six sides of your ship and show which blocks are damaged via colors:

RED- Critical iminent destruction of block

ORANGE- 50% left

Yellow- only 25% damaged

Green or natural block color- ok

or even better a 3d mode like a mini build mode that automaticaly moves to the face of your ship that is being damaged and indicates it.

Good luck

 

[NC_Jeager]

I think it would be awesome if you could make 3D character models out of tiny blocks. Also to make it better, we could make it so you can make your own weapons for charactors out of mini blocks too.

 

[I_is_Tinsy]

What does that have to do with this topic?

 

[Krauser1129]

I absolutely love Starmade. This has unlimited potential and is the spaceship game everyone has been waiting for.

As far as ship status go, I think some type of numerical display on small monitors you can put on your ship would be easy enough.

Like a monitor that is told what to keep track of, like the number of engines you had, vs the number you current have. So the counter/percentage would go down as you loose more blocks. Or a \"sensor\" module that tells you whatever you want to know about a given section of blocks. Lets say I have one set to \"scan\" a 50 cube wide section of my ship, and makes a sound effect if blocks start going missing in that area, with a vague report on what\'s being lost, and how much of it HAS been lost. I honestly feel if you had a sensor module, that can give you any type of info you ask for it, along with a monitor block that can get any info, from any sensor block and display it, would be fantastic for larger ships. Like if I had 1 sensor block, that tells me how many of what block I have in it\'s immediate radius, then have 1 monitor to display each set of information that I want, like one monitor forhow many engine blocks I have remaining, one monitor for how many hull/armor blocks I have in that area vs how many are gone/damaged (like an average damage) would be pretty sweet.

 

[Boggis2]

i realy like this idea. and a 3d model of a ship would have been amasing to have in combat

 

[Senji]

Perhaps with the Use of the Ship and Shields indicator similar to StarTrek Online And Part Indicator from World of Tanks



--For Ship and Shields Indicator--


a Simple Ship Img in size from

\"\" Tiny > Small > Med > Large > Huge \"\" depending on the X Y Z size like Docking Turrets ... if one block dif from Med to Large ... then the ship is classified as Large.

It dont matter what img of the Ship of each Size since Starmade is customizeable and requires additional coding to keep the same ship Designs

So for Each Img Sized Ship will have a Default Ship of its Tier .... ( If they wish to change it they can use TexturePacks for that reason )

So we would have 2 Imgs of that Ship .... One Horizontal and One Virtical with Each Facing Side showing which side is taking Dmg how % of Shield HP Under the Img of that Ship

--For Part Indicator--

Shows what components as Icons you have connected on the GUI and tells you the condition by \" % \" of its effectiveness and how much dmg taken as a Whole....not just in groups or sigments...

 

[Imperial_Gold]

I really like this. Another bookmark for Schema.

 

[Holsonn]

I think the multiview, and 3d models are great ideas the only problem I see with it is assesing damage of internal components and seeing where parts are damaged/destroyed, because with the way it is described to work, it seems this would display the status of the outer most blocks, or at least it would be confusing to find the damaged/missing internal components. But if this idea is implemented, I imagine that those models could be used for something like holograms or screens if those are added, and it would provide a nice asthetic to ones ship.

 

[MrFURB]

Gotta agree with most of what\'s said here. A simple overhead view of your ship with parts of it changing from green to orange to red as blocks damaged or destroyed would definitely give a massive boost to the ease of use and flight immersion of the game, and would be a boon to people trying to manage anything over a couple hundred mass in a fight.

 

[Krahazik]

I would just like to add my support for this idea. The differant ways to implent have already been hashed out and I can\'t think of anything new there, but otherwise, I would love to have some form of ship status indicator so that I could get an idea if I have lost a hull layer on a side or if I am now taking damge to ship systems.

Add the ability to customize the location, size and display contents of the status display and its golden.

Not sure I like the idea of it automatically updating is master ship map as that could result in a lot of activity on the server during ship building and updating. Perhaps with a Ship Diagnostics Block which would have to be installed on the ship, give it a interaction UI where the player can hit a bubtton to have the block record an image of the ship as its comparitive \"undamaged\" state. The UI could also be used to tie in any additional specialized area monitoring blocks, which have been suggested above, and setup the status dissplay arrangement.

In additional to something like the area monitoring block, how about a status display screen block. This block would show the ship status display (same as show on the flight mode hud) on its facing surface. There could also be an option that if multiple blocks are placed next to each other they can link to form a larger display screen which could show an advanced status display, which the player sets up in the Ship Diagnostics Block. The advanced status display, besides being larger, could feature multiple views of the ship with more details on ship systems and any information provided by localized monitoring blocks.

Exactly what is shown on the status displays and where could be controlled via an interface on the main Diagnostics Systems block. That way the player can setup his flight hud and display blocks to show only what he wants or needs. This would include the ability to change the color coding of systems, information and things like damage.