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Fleyyre wrote:

Talk about bringing back the StarWarsiness back to SWG...this could be very similar to the climax for RotJ. You could have a ground crew trying to accomplish one mission that directly affects the space based mission.

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I like the idea of switching back and forth between ground and space, however having two groups doing two seperate parts of the same mission at the SAME TIME is such a great idea!!

They should make it so, that at the end of the theme park, you have to steal a special ship at the of the mission to escape, and let that be the prize

I think this could be technically feasible, and not that bad to develop BUT the following things need to be addressed (to make this work right in 3D space)

The current planetary maps. Do those cover the entire surface of the planet or just a portion? If its just a portion, then we have a severe problem of filling in the rest of the planet with content ;-) If the current maps ARE in fact the entire planetary surface then it they would have to take that map create a mercator projection of the globe to make it 3D. It would also mean the current maps would have to wrap around (so if you flew in a straight line non stop from Bestine you would eventually wind up flying back into Bestine from the opposite direction, or you could drive from Mos Eisely by heading due East rather than West. The edges of the maps would have to be eliminated and wrap around to the opposite side.

The space zones would have to become bigger to accomodate the bulk of the planet associated with the sector. You have to be able to orbit the planet on all sides.

The quick and dirty way is to say screw making it work right as real 3D and just let folks fly across the current map as it is. The trick here is if the global character file for the planets have enough space to accomodate the different ship styles and appearance modifications. They get around this now because space has nothing but space based global character models and doesnt have a 1/3rd of the character models that the planets surface has to deal with. When you 'launch' into space, you not only cross to a different 'server' you are in a different database as well, sepearate from the planetary one. This likely is the biggest blocker of all because adding more models to the global file increases the minimum system requirements of the game (and means more memory is required on your graphics cards). Also you have to deal with multiple ships showing up in the same airspace. Imagine the possible video lag from having 3 yachts, 4-5 YT1300s and 20 other starfighters all flying in Coronet airspace at the same time (and possibly fighting each other).

The next thing to deal with technically is the physical size of the ships and figuring out collision detection between them and the objects on the ground (and making sure you cant grief the cities by trying to recreate the crash landing of the Lucky Despot). Ships are BIG. The smallest ships are bigger than the houses, the yacht is nearly the size of a guild hall. Lots of BIG objects AND their contents moving all over the place (think of how to handle a flying house and everything in it). You would also have to add the ability to get in and out of the ships while they are on the ground (which mean extra graphics and animations and things to check)

The Z axis would have to be fully implemented on the ground. This perhaps is the riskiest code change because it requires messing with the graphics engine. But there could be benfits too, such as adding the ability to jump or take falling damage (no more leaping off cliffs). This would also be quite a dev challenge because the pathing logic mobs use now would have to include Z axis pathing so they dont just wander out into open air.

Combat would have to be changed as well. Do you want a PC to be able to finish ground missions using a spaceship? Perhaps using missles to blow up nests of Banthas or strafing Tusken Raiders? That ability would make you virtually invunerable and that would be a game breaker right there. NPCs would have to have some way of shooting back at you and bringing you down, but really, do you expect Tusken Raiders to have Ion Cannons for repulsing air attacks? pretty thorny and would also require more additions to the global character file as well as AI improvements for the NPCs. For creatures, well there is not a thing they can do except scurry and try to hide.

Its all technically possible (anything is really) BUT do you really think its worth it in light of other big changes needed (like the GCW and combat revamp and figuring out what to with Jedi's?) This is an example of what goes on in a design meeting when devs get together and try to figure out how and why to do things or if they should be done and when.