Interior walking

gbjbaanb · Post by **gbjbaanb** » Sat, 2. Sep 17, 18:36

I'll agree with that - if you want walking in station, make it a DLC. Not only does that mean the base game can have more effort expended on it, making a better quality game. It means the station walking aspects can be improved too - and there is nothing less enjoyable that repetitively boring stations that all look the same and have the same few areas and NPCs to interact with.

Something like stations requires you to "go big, or go home". Building it into the base X4 is not a good idea.

Look at Stare Citizen, they have these things, but they also have millions upon millions of dollars and 3 dev teams to do it. they've still not delivered after many years either.

Nikola515 · Post by **Nikola515** » Sat, 2. Sep 17, 18:44

I think it would be more interesting if player could build their own interiors. For example have some sort of map maker or do something what NMS did with their capital ship interior building. Another thing would be interesting to share those station/ship interior builds on Steam workshop.

lostProfitssssArrgh · Post by **lostProfitssssArrgh** » Sat, 2. Sep 17, 18:59

We've also been discussing station walking more in depth here.

The discussion linked above tries to narrow down how walking could best be implemented and how feasible that implementation can be. It might be worth a read if you're looking to get more info on the subject.

-lpa

caleb · Post by **caleb** » Sun, 3. Sep 17, 01:35

I personally do not like it. X is a space simulator, economy simulator, but not a space station walking simulator. It takes resources to set that up, so I would prefer those resources are spent to make a better space simulator.

None of the X games before XR had the feature, and I never missed it. I don't think the game needs it at all. Does not make it better in my opinion.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Sun, 3. Sep 17, 08:16

gbjbaanb wrote:...Look at Stare Citizen, they have these things, but they also have millions upon millions of dollars and 3 dev teams to do it. they've still not delivered after many years either.

More importantly that they "have it" is the question of whether or not they "need it."

There's gotta be something to "do" with it that is meaningful, worthy and can be a part of gameplay that the player will enjoy. That's not impossible to do, but it's a heck of a lot more than just "station interiors."

**********

Important Note:

I've though on it a bit more. There's something that needs to be considered: Criticism.

If X4 stations don't have any interiors, then how will the community, general gamer base, and critics respond?

The opinions of those who have never played the game, have only played it for a few minutes, or just got home from daycare and loaded up a game for which they had expectations that were not represented on the "the box", yet expected anyway, only to find these things weren't in the game and felt that justified their horribly misspelled rants... Well, these opinions are important to devs/publishers, these days. (More important because they're just so darn loud, really. They're usually not very substantive, otherwise.)

For that reason, and that reason alone, I think some attempt should be made to provide "station interiors." Publicity and initial public reaction matter a great deal when releasing a new title.

Station interiors should be present. Should be nice, but smaller versions of what will eventually appear in a future content expansion pack/DLC.

Each area should have a large, very visible, doorway with signs that read "Authorized Personnel and Visitors, Only" or "Under Construction" so that players will be pleasantly reminded that a future content pack and patch will be coming.

There should be a basic services NPC or two located in the accessible parts of these mini-interiors. Those seeking "immersion" can get that, here, too. There will be windows that look out, nicely done lighting and textures and such, inside. NPCs will be pleasant to talk to, etc. (Players are not required to access these interiors in order to contact these NPCs, but they can if they wish to.)

BUT, everything will point towards a future, and obviously entirely optional, Expansion/DLC.

Paired with this will be highly publicized, within Egosoft's normal abilities, statements concerning station interiors and their plans.

How this proposal works...

A) What has been developed up to the X4 release:

1) Egosoft has put in station interiors for their fans to enjoy and to increase immersion for those who want that sort of experience.

2) Egosoft interviews/press'es - Admits it's a smaller dev house than some who attempt to produce a game the size and complexity of an X game. But, reminds all that it has a stable of highly regarded X games. Then, it details its upcoming plans.

3) Egosot will be working, after release, on expanding station interiors. (After any critical bits and content issues are successfully resolved with X4.)

4) Once completed, the new DLC will be released. It will expand, greatly, the physical station interiors already present in the game. It will also add new mission types, new story-missions, expanded NPC offerings and "special" NPCs, and the ability for the player to actually use station interiors meaningfully to visit "taverns", shops, offices and even seedy little places no self-respecting entrepreneur would hazard to go, but goes anyway...

5) In keeping with Egosoft's tradition of giving all it can to its players, players who already own the game will get a limited version of the DLC for free. They will get all the expanded station interiors, but they will not get the extra missions, special NPCs, new ships/sectors connected with them, etc... (Not difficult to do.)

B) The end result and benefits:

1) Egosoft doesn't have to spend time and money they don't have, right now, in developing station interiors properly. They can, instead, short-stroke a workable station interior with some basic NPCs, in order to avoid release-critics and their often unjust criticisms.

2) Egosot gets good press by announcing they will, however, be working on a content-expansion pack, not just simple "DLC." The development will be done either while or after the first few bugpatches come out, if necessary, and, since they're a small house, they'll be using some of the proceeds from X4 to fuel this.

3) When the expansion is released, it will be obvious that Egosoft loves its fanbase and good press coverage will demonstrate that. Owners of the game will get all the station interiors for free. They won't get all that the expansion offers, though, but they will get to benefit from Egosoft's support of its fanbase. They'll also get whatever new technical/scripting/game mechanics that Egosoft has added since release and that Egosoft is planning on using in the future for X4. (To keep "version problems" from cropping up and to, once again, demonstrate Egosoft's commitment to its fanbase.)

4) Egosoft creates a lure for owners to buy the expansion, since they'll have seen good things with the rather limited, but functional, station interiors so far. They'll be excited to see how much more can be done with them. Players who have since stopped playing will likely begin playing again, and buying, once the expected content release is live.

Conclusion - Egosoft gets as much good press and hype for its upcoming expansion as possible during an initial X4 release while avoiding some of the pitfalls, but not all of them, for releasing X4 without a huge amount of development for station interiors that may, after all, not even be necessary, needed or desired. Players will not feel "cheated", since they'll get these interior spaces for free, without having to buy the expansion. They just won't get allthe really creative bits that take a lot of time, money, effort to script/put together and to plan for. (And to write so they make sense!)

PowerPC603 · Post by **PowerPC603** » Sun, 3. Sep 17, 13:17

Station walking would be fun if there was some form of first-person shooter feature.
There could be missions that require you to land on a specific station to hunt down a criminal, who's hiding inside a station.

Then you need to find him and kill him, and take his body with you as proof (just click on him to store the body on your ship, no need to drag his corpse behind you).

Or a mission to steal some data from the onboard computers (industrial spying missions).
Or missions to plant a bomb at the indicated spot, where you have 1 minute or so before it detonates. By then, you must be onboard your ship and leave or you're dead. The bomb should also destroy the module where the bomb was placed.

There might be other missions as well, or you could just play pirate and rob npc's onboard the station or kill them to make the police come after you and start a war this way.

The interior itself doesn't need to be destroyable or something, just a static interior would do nicely.
It also wouldn't need too many guns, just a few to start with, it can always be expanded.
It also doesn't need options to get head-shots or whatever, just shoot the npc a few times to kill him. The npc's would need the ability to flee of course, or fight back.

But don't make it the same as Rebirth, where you have to be physically there to hire an npc or get discounts by the smalltalk minigame or even to get permanent trade offers.
Those features were forced upon the player and tedious to do AT EVERY DAMN STATION.

Interiors should be there even when not in a mission to enable piracy (robbing npc's onboard stations or even kill them).

But they could add some orbervation room so you can look around to see what's happening outside the station (the landing deck also currently has that feature).

wwdragon · Post by **wwdragon** » Fri, 8. Sep 17, 13:34

Anything but the hanger interior is a waste of dev time!

Post by **euclid** » Fri, 8. Sep 17, 14:02

PowerPC603 wrote:Station walking would be fun if there was some form of first-person shooter feature.
There could be missions that require you to land on a specific station to hunt down a criminal, who's hiding inside a station.

Then you need to find him and kill him, and take his body with you as proof (just click on him to store the body on your ship, no need to drag his corpse behind you).

Or a mission to steal some data from the onboard computers (industrial spying missions).
Or missions to plant a bomb at the indicated spot, where you have 1 minute or so before it detonates. By then, you must be onboard your ship and leave or you're dead. The bomb should also destroy the module where the bomb was placed.

There might be other missions as well, or you could just play pirate and rob npc's onboard the station or kill them to make the police come after you and start a war this way.

The interior itself doesn't need to be destroyable or something, just a static interior would do nicely.
It also wouldn't need too many guns, just a few to start with, it can always be expanded.
It also doesn't need options to get head-shots or whatever, just shoot the npc a few times to kill him. The npc's would need the ability to flee of course, or fight back.

But don't make it the same as Rebirth, where you have to be physically there to hire an npc or get discounts by the smalltalk minigame or even to get permanent trade offers.
Those features were forced upon the player and tedious to do AT EVERY DAMN STATION.

Interiors should be there even when not in a mission to enable piracy (robbing npc's onboard stations or even kill them).

But they could add some orbervation room so you can look around to see what's happening outside the station (the landing deck also currently has that feature).

.... or leading your marines in a station takeover

Cheers Euclid

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Fri, 8. Sep 17, 17:33

My opinion is "no" primarily because it is night impossible to make the interiors varied enough to be truly immersive - these Quonset interiors that are identical across an entire zone, an entire sector, an entire system, and even sometimes between systems is absurd. Walk into different hotels or shops or homes even within a single city, and you will see variety of design and decoration - and yet all these station interiors are carbon copies. What REALLY drives it home for me is how ever bar looks the same, has the same girl's portrait (is it just me or does it look a bit like a young Milla Jovovich?), and PLAYS THE SAME TUNE! This is ridiculous even if visiting only stations of the same faction within the same race, but when you walk into a human bar in a station orbiting a *different planet*, never mind a Teladi or Split bar (as if they would necessarily have the same sorts of establishments which implies identical cultural influence paths - how anthropocentric!) and the same piece of human techno is playing, that's just preposterous.

Now, the problem here is that to diversify things sufficiently for them to be plausible and thus immersive, would require a prohibitive investment of effort and resources. And trying to circumvent this problem through procedural design would result in merely a thinly veiled version of the same situation, with perhaps a little bit more variety.

surferx · Post by **surferx** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 01:27

They said there will be limited visits inside stations by invitation only. I'm fine with this. Unlimited means more resources going into stations that could be used for space. It's a Space game! Please don't lose sight of this.

caleb · Post by **caleb** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 01:35

PowerPC603 wrote:Station walking would be fun if there was some form of first-person shooter feature.
There could be missions that require you to land on a specific station to hunt down a criminal, who's hiding inside a station.

Then you need to find him and kill him, and take his body with you as proof (just click on him to store the body on your ship, no need to drag his corpse behind you).

Or a mission to steal some data from the onboard computers (industrial spying missions).
Or missions to plant a bomb at the indicated spot, where you have 1 minute or so before it detonates. By then, you must be onboard your ship and leave or you're dead. The bomb should also destroy the module where the bomb was placed.

There might be other missions as well, or you could just play pirate and rob npc's onboard the station or kill them to make the police come after you and start a war this way.

The interior itself doesn't need to be destroyable or something, just a static interior would do nicely.
It also wouldn't need too many guns, just a few to start with, it can always be expanded.
It also doesn't need options to get head-shots or whatever, just shoot the npc a few times to kill him. The npc's would need the ability to flee of course, or fight back.

But don't make it the same as Rebirth, where you have to be physically there to hire an npc or get discounts by the smalltalk minigame or even to get permanent trade offers.
Those features were forced upon the player and tedious to do AT EVERY DAMN STATION.

Interiors should be there even when not in a mission to enable piracy (robbing npc's onboard stations or even kill them).

But they could add some orbervation room so you can look around to see what's happening outside the station (the landing deck also currently has that feature).

I'm sorry, but I have to really disagree with this. I didn't get into the X games because they are first person shooters. Actually, I dislike first person shooter. So I do not want a 1st person shooter. They make me dizzy.

I want a space simulator, and economic/production simulator. If they turn the game into a space simulator/FPS, I'm totally out.

I would not mind if they make it optional, but if they make it compulsory, then I'm really out.

There is a place for everything, and a little station walking is fine. But a full on FPS on my space simulation? No thanks.

surferx · Post by **surferx** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 01:55

caleb wrote:
I'm sorry, but I have to really disagree with this. I didn't get into the X games because they are first person shooters. Actually, I dislike first person shooter. So I do not want a 1st person shooter. They make me dizzy.

I want a space simulator, and economic/production simulator. If they turn the game into a space simulator/FPS, I'm totally out.

I would not mind if they make it optional, but if they make it compulsory, then I'm really out.

There is a place for everything, and a little station walking is fine. But a full on FPS on my space simulation? No thanks.

Agree 100%.

Post by **eMYNOCK** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 03:36

An other Poll an other opinion...

I do NOT CARE if the game has the same Interion walking or not.

if i am the owner of a certain Station i would enjoy and if i could personalize the interior... if i am not the Owner Station.. i am not the owner.

really... i am totally okay with standarized interiors / Bars, Living Quarters, Admnistrations that are shared along all Stations.. but if i have the choice and the possibilities to to make my Bar really MY BAR that i would and will do that...

Someone mentioned No Man's Sky already... and i agree on this particular part... nothing to add.

Regards and happy voting Friends.

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 05:05

surferx wrote:
caleb wrote:
I'm sorry, but I have to really disagree with this. I didn't get into the X games because they are first person shooters. Actually, I dislike first person shooter. So I do not want a 1st person shooter. They make me dizzy.

I want a space simulator, and economic/production simulator. If they turn the game into a space simulator/FPS, I'm totally out.

I would not mind if they make it optional, but if they make it compulsory, then I'm really out.

There is a place for everything, and a little station walking is fine. But a full on FPS on my space simulation? No thanks.
Agree 100%.

Another 100% agreement here

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 19:10

a half-polished (model, animation, wakling-AI quality) would likely do X4 more harm than good for initial release imo. The comparisons will quickly be made to ED and SC, where X stands 0 chance. The NPC's in XR looked like from 2004 or something like that.

I would be totally ok if they focus on interior with a dlc to flesh it out gameplay wise and also optically.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 19:19

Killjaeden wrote:a half-polished (model, animation, wakling-AI quality) would likely do X4 more harm than good for initial release imo.

I completely agree.

Killjaeden wrote:I would be totally ok if they focus on interior with a dlc to flesh it out gameplay wise and also optically.

Ditto here. Also, I believe that seeing how the game is played while the additional content is being developed would help to focus its direction better, as greater understanding of what players want to use it for and expect from it can only lead to a product that better meets needs and expectations.

lostProfitssssArrgh · Post by **lostProfitssssArrgh** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 19:41

Killjaeden wrote:The NPC's in XR looked like from 2004 or something like that.

Doesn't everything in xR look like 2004? Doom 3 UIs, Doom 3 frame-rates and all

But the X crowd knows better than to fall for shiny graphics, right..?

lostProfitssssArrgh · Post by **lostProfitssssArrgh** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 21:07

Just in case my previous comment wasn't taken with a HUGE grain of salt, please allow me to straighten things out :

I played through Doom 3 once, it bored me to tears. It boiled down to:

1. Enter room.
2. Lights go off.
3. Wall panels burst open.
4. Clobber monsters to death with your crappy flashlight because ammo was ridiculously scarce.
5. Lights come back on.
6. Door unlocks, walk through door.
7. Goto 1.

It's not a commonly know fact, but id was at least as much into licensing their engines than making bleeding-edge-graphics-twitch games. Hence the focus on innovation. Their games were basically tech demos, with maybe thew exception of q3a (for which SMP support was announced in 1999 btw, hint-hint

).

Now, Egosoft may not have shiny gfx engines, they may not have Carmack's arguably-insane genius but they certainly know how to make a good game. I started playing X since X3-R back in 2005 and I still play X3 to this day. Nobody else in the game industry has that kind of mileage, especially for comparatively non-existent price tags, and nobody beyond a f'ing doubt has the same devotion towards their costumers and community. NO ONE ELSE, period.

And if anyone tries to convince my otherwise, they can take their crappy, shallow, dumbed-down games and shove them. I know I'm a much happier gamer, having -and still enjoying- the same game-base for ~12 years, and still rocking a 2011 rig.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 21:38

lostProfitssssArrgh wrote:
Killjaeden wrote:The NPC's in XR looked like from 2004 or something like that.
Doesn't everything in xR look like 2004? Doom 3 UIs, Doom 3 frame-rates and all
But the X crowd knows better than to fall for shiny graphics, right..?

ES goal always also was to bring people from outside the x crowd on board. And with 2004 graphics and animations on NPC's this is more than likely result in putting a good part off. I can do with 'non up to date graphics'. But when the graphical aspect is the only thing the 'walking on station' has going for it, it better be good - because 'immersion' that comes from the graphics falls apart quickly when human faces look arkward, the humans and aliens alike move like weird marionettes or stuff like that.

Flying in a space ship this issue is less pronounced. But as person on foot you walk up close to ships and players and generally get much closer to things than you ever would with ships. Plus making humanoid characters move and behave believable is hard - especially since they can't rely on tried and true systems like common game engines offer.

So, imo, they should not focus on something that offers little value other than 'graphics', when the 'graphics' isnt as good as one would expect from a recent game. This will likely only hurt it for non-x-crowd and critics.

I'm not opposed to walking on stuff. It's simply a matter of priorities to me. To me it's not "yes" and "no", but of "now, for first release" or "later".

Regarding Doom 3 Gameplay - yes it's dumb i quit Quake 4 after 3 levels bored to death. Same game essentially... Now imagine you couldn't even shoot and there would be no doors to open and close. Just a platform. That's what walking on station as we currently know would be.
Why would you want to do that more than 5 times, when the actual game is not on foot but in a ship?

DaMuncha · Post by **DaMuncha** » Wed, 13. Sep 17, 04:31

I like station walking. But I want it implemented better.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Interior walking

Should X4 have stations' interior walking feature or not?