The Importance of Planets

[Crimson-Artist]

Too many blocks to load. Plain and simple. The game was never designed from the ground up to incorporate such a feature (where-as skywanderers is).

Ill be honest starmade is not going anywhere fast at the moment (or in the foreseeable future), when skywanderers is released as an open Beta I can see the last remnants of starmades community migrating permanently.

Starmade is a flawed game, and whilst the dev team is dedicated, I’m not sure their abilities are up to scratch to compete with the likes of skywanderers (which is made by a single person).

The way I see it Starmade has only 3 major things going for it:

1. Build Mode
2. Logic
3. Rails

Skywanderers in its first year of development already(in effect) has 2 of those 3. SKWs goes into open alpha at the end of the year. Schine has that long to turn Starmade into a even remotely playable game (I.E enough content that someone can play it in solo survival and get the full experience). If they can't the game will very likely die.

 

[RB101]

1. Build Mode
2. Logic
3. Rails

Skywanderers in its first year of development already(in effect) has 2 of those 3.

SKW has all 3 of those already.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

SKW has all 3 of those already.

It has a build mode interface? Where? I havent seen it.

 

[Valiant70]

The way I see it Starmade has only 3 major things going for it:

1. Build Mode
2. Logic
3. Rails

Skywanderers in its first year of development already(in effect) has 2 of those 3. SKWs goes into open alpha at the end of the year. Schine has that long to turn Starmade into a even remotely playable game (I.E enough content that someone can play it in solo survival and get the full experience). If they can't the game will very likely die.

That is a very real possibility. As I understand though, Starmade has a different overall focus. Most voxel games will remain primarily about building, while Starmade aims for more imperial gameplay with other side elements to complement that.

I actually started this thread because I remember someone once saying that Schema was trying to build the "greatest voxel space game of all time," and if that's the case, there's a niche for all kinds of things that aren't necessarily a huge focus of the game. Farms or ranches would complement industry. Fishing or trapping alien creatures would complement exploration, as would foraging for rare plants.

Something to remember is that there are things that the current community has little interest in that would actually attract quite a few players. "Organic" content like farming, fishing, and hunting would be one such category. A survival game mode would be another. Obviously Schema can't just add EVERYTHING. A well-defined set of goals is the only way he'll ever finish the game. However, adding depth to these goals will make a better game.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

That is a very real possibility. As I understand though, Starmade has a different overall focus. Most voxel games will remain primarily about building, while Starmade aims for more imperial gameplay with other side elements to complement that.

I actually started this thread because I remember someone once saying that Schema was trying to build the "greatest voxel space game of all time," and if that's the case, there's a niche for all kinds of things that aren't necessarily a huge focus of the game. Farms or ranches would complement industry. Fishing or trapping alien creatures would complement exploration, as would foraging for rare plants.

Something to remember is that there are things that the current community has little interest in that would actually attract quite a few players. "Organic" content like farming, fishing, and hunting would be one such category. A survival game mode would be another. Obviously Schema can't just add EVERYTHING. A well-defined set of goals is the only way he'll ever finish the game. However, adding depth to these goals will make a better game.

honestly I would just be happy with some kind of passive resource generation. Be it planetary auto mining or some kind of farming.

 

[Valiant70]

honestly I would just be happy with some kind of passive resource generation. Be it planetary auto mining or some kind of farming.

Farms and mining rigs... Could work.

 

[EricBlank]

Pretty much what npc factions are doing with their resources for the minute isnt it? Taking tally of how much theyre supposed to have or something and putting those in a systems invisible inventory for use. I really dont see why players mining fleets/stations cant abstract it at least to a small degree.

 

[Valiant70]

Pretty much what npc factions are doing with their resources for the minute isnt it? Taking tally of how much theyre supposed to have or something and putting those in a systems invisible inventory for use. I really dont see why players mining fleets/stations cant abstract it at least to a small degree.

Too much abstraction runs against what Starmade is. This is the only game I'm aware of with large scale strategy that you can walk around in first person. Anything the NPCs can do should be possible for players to do manually.

 

[Nosajimiki]

The way I see it Starmade has only 3 major things going for it:

1. Build Mode
2. Logic
3. Rails

Skywanderers in its first year of development already(in effect) has 2 of those 3. SKWs goes into open alpha at the end of the year. Schine has that long to turn Starmade into a even remotely playable game (I.E enough content that someone can play it in solo survival and get the full experience). If they can't the game will very likely die.

If this is what you think Starmade has a leg up on, then you will likely be among those going the SKW, but these are just common space-lego features that has nothing to do with Starmade's actual strengths.

What makes starmade different is the immersiveness of the combat system. Starmade's engine is capable of handling WAY more stuff happening in a local area than SKW or Spengies because it is lightweight but without giving up complexity (yes, this is borked right now with integrity, but it's fixable). SKW is built on Unity. That makes it easy to rapidly develop, easy to make pretty, but puts a very hard cap on how efficiently it will ever run. Despite it's multi-core and GPU optimizations, Unity waists TONS of processor power and memory. It's great for simpler games like an FPS or what not, but for space voxel? not a great choice.

So if you like mini-made duels, sure, go have fun. But being engine independant means that SM has a LOT more that it can put into optimization making it still the most likely contender to be a proper PvP game or even fully functional MMO.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

If this is what you think Starmade has a leg up on, then you will likely be among those going the SKW, but these are just common space-lego features that has nothing to do with Starmade's actual strengths.

What makes starmade different is the immersiveness of the combat system. Starmade's engine is capable of handling WAY more stuff happening in a local area than SKW or Spengies because it is lightweight but without giving up complexity (yes, this is borked right now with integrity, but it's fixable). SKW is built on Unity. That makes it easy to rapidly develop, easy to make pretty, but puts a very hard cap on how efficiently it will ever run. Despite it's multi-core and GPU optimizations, Unity waists TONS of processor power and memory. It's great for simpler games like an FPS or what not, but for space voxel? not a great choice.

So if you like mini-made duels, sure, go have fun. But being engine independant means that SM has a LOT more that it can put into optimization making it still the most likely contender to be a proper PvP game or even fully functional MMO.

I didnt say that those were SM's advantages I meant that those features were the ones that stood out the most to me. And yes I do have my eye on SKW. I'm kinda kicking myself for not contributing to it to get its pre alpha access but I can wait. (You can build actual Robots for god's sake!)

What I'm trying to say is that unless schine really kick their development up a notch and put out some quality updates a good portion of the community will leave to play SKW. I've already invested enough time and energy into this game and I would hate for it to die like that.

 

[JinM]

I just want to leave here, that if planets where really such a big deal for the community, there would allready be many stations in the CC section, that are just simple cookie planets.

And such cookie planets are not that hard for any player to create. Just copy the terrain of a naturally generated planet-plate and then paste it onto a freshly founded station.

And. Are there any such stations around on the CC? Because I didn't found one.

I would really enjoy downloading and using such a cookie planet station with for example a diameter of 100. Could do some cool survival builds there.

 

[Nauvran]

I just want to leave here, that if planets where really such a big deal for the community, there would allready be many stations in the CC section, that are just simple cookie planets.

And such cookie planets are not that hard for any player to create. Just copy the terrain of a naturally generated planet-plate and then paste it onto a freshly founded station.

And. Are there any such stations around on the CC? Because I didn't found one.

I would really enjoy downloading and using such a cookie planet station with for example a diameter of 100. Could do some cool survival builds there.

Are you an blind?
Earth-like Cookie Planet! Working sector!
Pyro Industries Planet Plate 1
City Planet
Pyramid Planet
Salvaged Purple Vine Planet
Plain Discworld (sector export for version 0.1882)

oooh hey guess what did to find all of those
I FUCKING SEARCHED FOR "PLANET" WITH THE SIT'E'S SEARCH FUNCTIONS
Next time try actually looking before you say there isnt any.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Nice resources... you may want to clean your post up a bit though before the mods see it.
[doublepost=1521562121,1521559151][/doublepost]Also, random idea regarding planets: this may be way harder to implement than I think, but what if planet blocks were not rendered as perfect cubes, but more like radial slices? The only possible issue I see with this is people trying to build really tall towers that reach out into space, but an atmospheric ceiling for building could alleviate that.

 

[Valiant70]

Nice resources... you may want to clean your post up a bit though before the mods see it.
[doublepost=1521562121,1521559151][/doublepost]Also, random idea regarding planets: this may be way harder to implement than I think, but what if planet blocks were not rendered as perfect cubes, but more like radial slices? The only possible issue I see with this is people trying to build really tall towers that reach out into space, but an atmospheric ceiling for building could alleviate that.

View attachment 48236

Even if you did this, it won't map to a sphere. There would be six "corner" points on the surface where three blocks meet instead of four.

 

[Nosajimiki]

you would have a 6 - 3 block corners but it would still be a sphere (see below). While this would make for some minor visual hotspots, it would allow for a continuous ground surface in a voxel environment without any one area where squares become super squished like you'd see with Latitude longitude style tessellation

 

[Valiant70]

you would have a 6 - 3 block corners but it would still be a sphere (see below). While this would make for some minor visual hotspots, it would allow for a continuous ground surface in a voxel environment without any one area where squares become super squished like you'd see with Latitude longitude style tessellation

View attachment 48237

There will be six points on the surface that you have to be mindful of when building. The planet would not behave like an uninterrupted or user-friendly sphere.

 

[JinM]

you would have a 6 - 3 block corners but it would still be a sphere (see below). While this would make for some minor visual hotspots, it would allow for a continuous ground surface in a voxel environment without any one area where squares become super squished like you'd see with Latitude longitude style tessellation

View attachment 48237

Actually this 3 block corners are not really a problem as they can just be made unaccessible to edit in a 10m radius.

The real challenge is the transition of big ships that wants to dock to the planet plate. I mean does it bend gradually or just suddenly gets it's block-matrix fitted to the earths round block grid when it lands?

Basically this approach doesn't work in Starmade because of exactly this grid transition problem.

Additionally this grid thing lacks scalability. If you build something that is really big on the surface of the planet the upper parts get distorted and so on. I didn't see any voxel game that has this round grid thing actually used.

I think the planets with the multiple plates is a good approach. I mean the different plates even have the inherent advance, that they can be factionised. Just the core should be made invincible finally. Just add in planets that have like 30 plates with a 500m diamter each, optimize it - done. Doesn't look pretty but works.

Oh and reset plates that have nothing docked to them or give the option that they can be resetted. Or just deactivate planet mining if just one plate is claimed. It's just sad to see that someone builds on a planet and on another place there are huge mined out areas like doomsday. Or let factions claim whole planets. Even though this prevents a nice community-builds-on planets (Minecraft style) thing it would at least prevent planet griefing.

 

[EricBlank]

There is currently a suggestion thread that proposes placing the planets surface in another sector, one inaccessible except through the planet object in its own sector: whichbbehaves like a wormhole does and transports objects entering it to the sector the planet is physically in. The surface of the sphere-wormhole would be invisibly divided into hexagons/a dodecahedron and these tiles are mapped to the surface of the planet below. So youd "jump" to a planet by "entering close orbit/the atmosphere" and when youre ready to leave, fly up above a certain altitude, youre now in high orbit/the sector on the galaxy itself again.

It does mean planets end up instanced, but they can be as large as we want and accessible only through a transition to another sector like jumping, or flying between sectors does now (remember when flying throuh The planet terrain itself can be mapped to a bunch of hexagons (with normal cubic blocks) that represent the surface as it would appear in space, only loading those hexagons immediately adjacent to the player, and borders of hexagons at the edges warping the objects to the correct map tile on passing the border, treating it like a sphere in that sense. Not perfect still, but it would be more functional than the dodecahedrons we have at the moment in that it can scale to any size needed, and doesnt have weird transitional angles with terrain and gravity. Orbital bombardment could even be possible by letting projectiles travel through the wormhole, so a new projectile with identical properties appears out of the sky planet-side above the appropriate map tile at a random location.

 

[Valiant70]

Let's be honest. The whole universe is "instanced" by sectors already. There may indeed be a transition to planets, just a relatively seamless one.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Actually this 3 block corners are not really a problem as they can just be made unaccessible to edit in a 10m radius.

The real challenge is the transition of big ships that wants to dock to the planet plate. I mean does it bend gradually or just suddenly gets it's block-matrix fitted to the earths round block grid when it lands?

Basically this approach doesn't work in Starmade because of exactly this grid transition problem.

Additionally this grid thing lacks scalability. If you build something that is really big on the surface of the planet the upper parts get distorted and so on. I didn't see any voxel game that has this round grid thing actually used.

I think the planets with the multiple plates is a good approach. I mean the different plates even have the inherent advance, that they can be factionised. Just the core should be made invincible finally. Just add in planets that have like 30 plates with a 500m diamter each, optimize it - done. Doesn't look pretty but works.

Oh and reset plates that have nothing docked to them or give the option that they can be resetted. Or just deactivate planet mining if just one plate is claimed. It's just sad to see that someone builds on a planet and on another place there are huge mined out areas like doomsday. Or let factions claim whole planets. Even though this prevents a nice community-builds-on planets (Minecraft style) thing it would at least prevent planet griefing.

The issue with plates is that instead of 6 wonky corners, you have 75 edges that are all wonky. Not only do they interfere with building, they interfere with meaningful mobility on the planet surface. Translation between cubic and spherical space is only an issue depending on exactly how collision detection works. If the game uses geometric detection, it should not be a problem. If it uses matrix level comparisons or some other optimization method that relies on voxels being perfect cubes, then this could be very complicated which is why I began by saying, "this may be way harder to implement than I think".

There is currently a suggestion thread that proposes placing the planets surface in another sector, one inaccessible except through the planet object in its own sector: whichbbehaves like a wormhole does and transports objects entering it to the sector the planet is physically in. The surface of the sphere-wormhole would be invisibly divided into hexagons/a dodecahedron and these tiles are mapped to the surface of the planet below. So youd "jump" to a planet by "entering close orbit/the atmosphere" and when youre ready to leave, fly up above a certain altitude, youre now in high orbit/the sector on the galaxy itself again.

It does mean planets end up instanced, but they can be as large as we want and accessible only through a transition to another sector like jumping, or flying between sectors does now (remember when flying throuh The planet terrain itself can be mapped to a bunch of hexagons (with normal cubic blocks) that represent the surface as it would appear in space, only loading those hexagons immediately adjacent to the player, and borders of hexagons at the edges warping the objects to the correct map tile on passing the border, treating it like a sphere in that sense. Not perfect still, but it would be more functional than the dodecahedrons we have at the moment in that it can scale to any size needed, and doesnt have weird transitional angles with terrain and gravity. Orbital bombardment could even be possible by letting projectiles travel through the wormhole, so a new projectile with identical properties appears out of the sky planet-side above the appropriate map tile at a random location.

I'm aware of this suggestion, I was just thinking in terms of compromising between Schine desire to not instance planets and still achieve a continuous surface.