rickisen wrote:Yeah I guess, maybe...
But what if the object in question is in a far away system that isn't fully calculated at the moment.
And even if that was possible, wouldn't that kill the imerssion a bit?
Or what if it's a blueprint of a weapon that hasn't been constructed yet.
...
Ultimately I'm pretty sure that's what I'll end up with. There's no doubt that the holographic renderstyle from the command interface will be brought into the node interface. That's a must for your ship menu, even hardpoints I'd like to see, etc. Like you said, if there's a model, draw it. For OOS or objects of which you are not aware, no model, so just a node. Makes sense
Grumblesaur wrote:I noticed two interesting things:
Many of the placenames in this new video had syllabic Rs (that is, Rs unaccompanied by vowels).
Some ships have domes on them now.
The naming algorithm sucks and I would do well to study your posts
The domes, which I forgot to mention, are just placeholder models for the transfer units. I just wanted something big so that I could tell when an NPC had equipped a transfer unit. Of course those will be replaced with something that looks like a mining beam in due time
alpan wrote:As much as I loved this update, I have to admit that out of all the updates so far, it was also the most opaque. It felt almost like awesome fan service, for those of us who have been following the dev logs daily, but I can imagine some distant backer watching the video and scratching his/her head about WTF is going on with the supposedly "great" interface (and all the data field names, et cetera) and how the AI apparently works. Not to mention complete outsiders.
Now I'm not sure if this is an actual concern -- it is after all a development update, the topics discussed are complicated and deep, and layman comprehension should not be a focus anyway. But I felt like airing the tiny voice just the same. There's a great game being made here, but for a moment there it felt more like it was a technical feat that was being showcased, not a game. And I feel that someone might get that same feeling and suddenly, intuitively decide that this upcoming game is too complex for them and maybe they should steer clear.
Noted, and I think I agree with you. There was a certain lack of coherence to this update. It's honestly probably because I stayed up so late working on last-minute things that my the time I filmed, I really failed to film in a way conducive to a "coherent" overview of where the game is right now. By the time I got to overdubbing I was running on fumes. I need to figure out a better strategy for these dev update production hauls. My goal is for the Dec update to be strongly coherent and showcase, if not gameplay, then significant AI usage of gameplay
Matthew Cason wrote:Love the unity in the UI! It would have never occurred to me to carry over the node-based system into everything else but it is so simple and elegant and functional, that the decision seems a natural one. And even just that sample universe map you threw in was jaw-dropping in scope. Amazing!
Thanks Matthew, so happy to hear that
Gazz wrote:Right now there is no balance.
No real ship construction.
It's all a bunch of systems with rule-of-thumb data just to see if they add up the numbers in the correct manner.
It's even worse that that. I literally just freeballed a number for mass that was way, way, way off. I should really be less careless
Kvallning wrote:rickelsen wrote:And that is that the textures dont scale very good. Or rather that the textures seams to scale together/linearly with the ships size.
Speaking of scale, that's sort of something I keep noticing in the videos as well: Whenever I see a big ship do hairpin turns, and quite quickly, something in me goes "...oh... " and "ho hum..." Yeah, I know, it's space, there's technically no weight, so I shouldn't be complaining about it, but screw realism damn it! When I see what seems to be a decent sized frigate doing quick manoeuvres like that, something in me screams for some semblance of heftiness, or drag, but I know we've had about seventeen thousand threads about that previously.
See above. I'm an embarrassment
Flatfingers wrote:1. I miss the more angular, feathery structure from the initial interface look. I definitely do like the radial look, though, and I appreciate that there may be a valuable mechanical/control aspect to the new circular look. Still... any chance that other visual structures will be supported?
2. It might be an artifact of the video or YouTube, but the lines showing connections "behind" the current level of nodes seemed to fade out a little too quickly to see the deep structure of a set of nodes. If the final version could have a slider that lets us adjust the fade-out level, that would be spectacular.
3. The value of this UI for showing/navigating a pure hierarchical structure is apparent. But some data aren't purely hierarchical; they can have multiple belongs-to relationships. The "dusty" clusters of objects (presumably mostly asteroids) in a system node view suggest that the node interface can cope with things-attached-to-multiple-things. Is that correct? If not, should/could it be?
4. I wasn't sure, but at times I think I saw little flashes of light among the nodes. I'm hoping that this is a very early example of the node UI in "dynamic" mode, where changes to data are represented by visual effects among the nodes and connections. The idea of seeing the LT universe in a schematic view alive with fireworks of AI activity is extremely appealing. I would really, really like to see that -- a sort of game version of
Indra's Net.
5. I would like that even more if it were possible to select which kinds of dynamic activity to highlight continuously in the node UI. To be able to choose to see bursts of economic activity, or mining, or ships blinking out of existence where jewel-like massed fleets collide....
Very happy that I pleased the Flat
1. Absolutely, I mentioned that I will continue to develop more layout algorithms for specific types of data, and I'm sure some of them will include more angular varieties. Ultimately the goal is to optimize interaction ease, and in some places angular structures will probably work best. Suffice it to say we will see much more than just the concentric ring structure showcased here
2. Definitely something that we can tweak. Another thing I love about this interface - there are so many things that you can customize to suit your tastes. Even things like how many subnode levels are unrolled (which controls the on-screen complexity). And certainly the transparency falloff, etc. are all easy things to make customizable!
3. Everything shown so far is a clear tree structure (the entities in a system, for example, all belong to one system). To display general graphs, we will need some more cleverness. Well, that's not strictly true - currently it will simply visualize a graph as a recursive tree (e.g. if you drill into a child, you can further drill into parent, but this is two levels below the original parent, which is the exact same). Yes, this needs to be dealt with more elegantly and I am actively thinking on it
4. Yes! Courtesy of graphics Josh
Each node can find itself randomly subject to an "eletrical impulse" that will travel along connected nodes, ultimately decaying. But it provides a lovely yet subtle feeling of life and electricity. These impulses could definitely be queued to events like damage, firing, etc. That's an awesome idea and I hadn't considered it! Graphics Josh is pleased to be of functional service
5. Me too. There's lots of stuff to be done in terms of node coloring, sizing, etc. based on what patterns you want to discern. Fun times ahead