Game Guides Archive
Thread: Space Expansion
I just wanna say one thing, i dont wanna see players bringing their ships from their datapads... i allways think that Dragon Ball's capsule method was disgusting, if your ship is on mos espa, you SHOULD go there if u want to pilot it
Shadowiord (dont ask) - Novice BH now - Radiant server
For landing from orbit down onto a planet, a while back i had posted a message on atmospheric flights, here's my take on it:
Atmospheric flight is not possible from a programming view. It is too complicated, would lag down servers too much and would probably be overpowered (Imagine a tie fighter pummeling a jedi from above, no way to deflect those blaster bolts!) So instead, here's my take on it:
To land somewhere on a planet, you must first enter a low orbit around it. You then select on that planet's map where you want to land (either by entering X,Y coordinates, selecting a waypoint or a city or directly picking by hand where to land.
The game checks to see if you can land there:
If it is a municipal or no-build zone, you can't land there.
If it is a city, and it is not equipped with a starport/landing pad, you can't land there.
If it is a city and it IS equipped with a starport/landing pad, you CAN land there, and your ship will be stored in the landing pad's facilities. You will load, and you will see your ship Land on the pad (without controlling it) much like when you see a shuttle land to a shuttleport, except you will have that shuttle's Point of view. Others around the pad might see your ship land and be docked into a garage of some sort. You will see your ship open and your character walk out to a designated spot, at wich time you regain CONTROL of him.
If it is not a city, not a no-build zone, not water, etc... The gamee will flatten the land around where you want to land (Much like it does for a camp) and you will go through the animation. Your ship will then Stay there until you store it in your datapad. Others will see you land. You have NO COINTROL AT ALL during these landing animation sequences. They are automatic and you cannot control your ship. You cannot shoot, you cannot be shot at until you have regained control of your avatar fully.
If you decide to store your ship, you will have to improvise a small "takeoff" camp similar to a camp to recall it and take-off. You will take off by doing another animation and end up back in orbit after a loading screen.
This offers many advantages:
You cannot crash. You can safely land pretty much anywhere in the wild. You can land in cities. Ships are not overpowered versus land fights. Land fighting stays on land and space fighting stays in space. The coding of it is relatively easy compared to atmospheric flight. You can use your to move quickly from one spot to another by going back to orbit and dropping somewhere else. You can deploy reinforcements fast where needed (to take a small base for example). You can Taxi people... etc etc...
I think this would be the best system for landing by far... What do you think?
/agree
pagebt, no need to recopy my entire post to /agree 
As for the interior of spaceships, It's all relative to how they implement it.
If they create a whole new entire "space" in the system for space itself (yea i know, twisted pun), then it's entirely possible for them to scale it the way they want! There's no reason why i shouldn't be able to move around in my ship, except for one thing, and this is really what it boils down to:
Can I move around my ship while it's moving, ha ha! that's the real programming challenge. How do you make sure that your character moves like if he was on the ground around on something that is moving very fast by the game engine's definition. Vehicles currently run around in 15 kilometers per hour roughly if i remember right. a Ship flies around usually in games liek this around 100 -300 kmph...
How do you, at that speed, make sure the avatar doesn't suddenly get "pushed back" or "around" due to the speed (and your own point of view, sicne the camera is bound to your character anyways...)?
Well the way i see it:
A Ship has to be at full STOP for you to get out of the cockpit and run around and toy with stuff, OR:
A ship ahs to be in hyperspace for you to be able to move around... When in hyperspace, your ship is nowhere tangible for the game system. you're in a box with an animated texture (the stars flying right at you) and you're not moving... So then it would also be possible to do it.
Now about cap ships and moving around in them. Sure, if they are not moving! 
That is why moving a big ship will be slow. To move it, everyone on board needs to go to "battle stations" or just fly off. During flight though, via a UI menu, you should be able to fly off.
During Hyperspace you can also walk around the cap ship.
Otherwise you are in a fixed post, your avatar is not moving (the camera is now bound to the moving cap ship, pointing at your avatar, or turret, or the ISD itself if you're piloting it )
So you could use your ship as a house, a storage space, etc. You could also walk around an ISD, check out the cargo bays, modify/repair your ship, go to the bar, med center, etc, when the ship is not in "battle mode"!!!
But here's another challenge to think about, how do you make sure the pilot, or whoever is in charge of the ISD, doesn't grief the 10-500 PCs that are currently ON the ISD? You've all seen it with mayor griefing their entire cities, etc, the size doesn't matter, if these guys can grief others, they will, the bigger the scale, the more thrilling for them.
So you needa countdown period to allow others to leave the ship or go man their post, etc... You should also be able to only do one hyperspace jump at a time, then require another countdown (so you can't indefinitely make people stuck in hyperdrive, unable to fly off the ship...) Etc etc...
So you see, making ship interiors is definitely do-able, but it has restrictions. You'll definitely not be able to load up a passenger (passengers?) and just let them roam around your nicely decorated flying home while you drive around at 100-300 kmph shooting NPCs and fighting the GCW, it just won't happen 
As for making a new "space" for the SE, it's quite simple, if you use my landing technique (select planet, plot in X,Y coordinates, load, generic animation, end up on the ground) then the ground and space "spaces" are totally different from one another, and they don't interact with each other, wich is good, believe me
Anyways, if you've read entirely through here, feel free to give your own opinions:
Do you think you'd still like to have walking around ship's interiors even with the restrictions listed above:
Can only walk around when ship is at full stop or in hyperspace.
Cap ships have a Countdown to departure period before starting to move or jump to hyperspace.
Cap ships can only do one "jump" at a time, then have to suffer another countdown period...
Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it
(And i wish a dev would read this, or at least acknowledge they are reading it )
And they would need to have some profession oriented ships like a bounty hunter ship which was heavily armed and armored. And for classes like crafters they would have like merchant vessels. For non-profession oriented ships they should make different classes like fighters, for what else fighting, and cruiser ships that could be like a giant space yhat, the boat, that you could decorate and do what ever to. You would have to be able to color and name the ship. The ships should also have some sort of battle damage if they get in a fight.
Thats every thing i could think of right now probably think up of more later on.
I seriously agree with this. I personally hate the way that we can pull stuff out of our datapad like some sort of **edit** game.
Bajazet wrote:
I just wanna say one thing, i dont wanna see players bringing their ships from their datapads... i allways think that Dragon Ball's capsule method was disgusting, if your ship is on mos espa, you SHOULD go there if u want to pilot it
Shadowiord (dont ask) - Novice BH now - Radiant server
Message Edited by Maverick315 on 02-10-2004 10:28 PM
. The good thing there was that the game supportedboth joysticks and mouse - and worked well enough with either (although joystick was better for pvp).Message Edited by Shaladim on 02-11-2004 11:39 AM
One thing i don't understand:
They opened a SWG forum 3 years before release. they gave out tons of screenshots. They talked and debated for 3 long years with players about different systems.
What we have now on the Se:
a 5 minute piece in an unofficial video taken 2 years ago and 2 official screenshots.
I mean, i understand that we'll "start hearing a lot more about it after publish 10" but publish 10 is like june or july! I don't want to wait so long to start talking about this!
If they had the engine somewhat roughly started 2 years ago to give a public show with someone filming it, then it must be gorgeous by now! How about some screnshots, how about some info? Why all the hushing up and tring to distract our attention on other stuff! I know i am staying not jsut because i like this game and what i do in it (because i do like it...) but also because of the upcoming SE! Star wars means space, big ships, tie fighters, X wings... We NEED eye candy...
And I'm going crazy since a couple of days because of lack of details about the SE
I feel like i felt in november 2002, reading about SWG ont eh website, debating stuff actively on the old boards, hoping and praying that SWg would coem out in december...
Oh well, at least we still have SWg to play while we wait