WHAT IS THE NEXT BIG THING? ...and WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ,or not like IN IT

[G Morgan]

Am I weird for wanting an X3 type game based on the Earth's oceans?

The physics of propulsion in the X games is certainly a lot closer to underwater travel than space travel but if it was set in a single world then your poor computer would need to render the entire game platform in one go. At least with the space gates system only a small portion of the universe is rendered at any one time.

Why would it? I assume at the very least Ego are using a scene graph in the game. You'd no more have to render the entire world than the Oblivion engine does. This is a solved problem. Literally all you do is break the world up into a grid. Render a cube x sections wide centred on your grid location. Simulate the other grid sections as if OOS.

There would be other issues like transitioning a ship from OOS to IS space but it is a doable problem.

[Argon tactican Justin]

Maybe TNBT will be a space game (ok I'd be tempted to put money on it) but I don't think it'll be an X game. Actually egosoft said x3:tc would be the last X game so...

Why did you have to ruin the fun of coming up with ideas with TNBT being an X-series game? I doubt that this is the truth (if for no other reason than the fact that I haven't seen this said anywhere yet) considering that in at least one series there's about a decade between the releases of two consectutive games. I doubt that Egosoft has run out of ideas, either. I've mentioned the basics for two or three possible plots in my first post in this thread based only on my limited knoweldge of the X-series. Like cjstilner, I can't stand Steam and was annoyed that the X superbox wasn't released in the United States except on Steam (Dial Up and Steam don't mix). I'm even mad that there wasn't a 2.5 to 3.0 or 3.1 patch for X3TC so I could get the gold edition and udate it from there, as well as the fact that they don't keep the older patches available so I could update the game gradually to the current version. Unlike cjstiltner, however, I've only played X3TC and the only way I could play the older games was by getting the superbox, which isn't available in the U.S. except through Steam As a result, I could explain what I think cjstiltner means by saying TNBT is no big deal if it's only available on Steam: if you can't buy it when it gets released except through something like Steam that your internet connection won't let you use, then there's no point in getting interested in it because you probably will never get to play it, so it ends up being no big deal

[ganjanoof]

TNBT ?

1) Built-in Complex Constructor letting no ugly or buggy complexes to be built. Preset complex shapes (eg line, box, sphere) with automatic and aesthetic station positioning. The ability to chose complex models as those spawned by the game engine.

2) More stock ship commands in basic software (eg navigation, exploration, combat, trade, station management, special commands). The price of those software is ridiculous from day 2 in the game. So why bother the players with micro-management for the rest of their play ? A tech tree might be an alternative to "X software mk#". You just buy "X software" and then when buying/researching a technology, you get more options, commands and automation in the software's features.

3) Common-sense. The UT is almighty with 500k while there is a lack of trading options that justify more trade scripts. There are alot of other examples of a lack of common sense in X3. Just analyse the mods/scripts and you will see what players do miss. TC already is alot better than Reunion on this very aspect.

[myshkin]

These are more wishes for the engine rather than the game content; you guys make great space sims and i've no doubt TNBT is going to be engrossing.

My biggest hope is support for parallel processing, in the game logic and graphics rendering. Since the original X3 engine was released, cpu and gpu tech has shifted from getting faster to being wider, but X3 only really improves with single-threaded performance. In an ideal world i'd love to see TNBT be highly multithreaded, such that when the game begins to bog down on my quad core cpu, i can simply upgrade to a hex or octa core cpu and have the game use that extra power. If you guys are sticking with sectors or some other kind of non-contiguous universe (tho i'd guess even a contiguous universe would have to be broken down into chunks of some sort), then something as simple as batching the OOS logic for sectors into an individual thread for each batch would be great, as opposed to one monolithic thread that walks the sector list.

The same with the renderer, although in this regard the X3 engine did pretty well with shader complexity scaling, it'd be nice to see vertex complexity scale also (a LOD system of some sort, DX11 tessellation would be ideal but even good old fashioned model swaps work). X3 always irked me that a several hundred thousand poly station was rendered in such detail regardless of distance, further aggravating the single-threaded bottleneck on my cpu (hello using SETA whilst pointed at empty space).

In short i'd really like to see an engine with legs, that not only takes advantage of current-gen hardware, but remains able to take advantage of processing power gains later, unlike X3 which simply couldn't.

My other hope for change is with the interface. X3 essentially has it's own window system, complete with dialogs, popups, and viewports. If you're keeping that system then i'd love to see it expanded to provide one massive usability benefit of most windowed UIs, namely drag-able windows that can be repositioned and resized.

Another enormous usability improvement would be some kind of shortcut system, just for example give the player an actionbar and allow them to drag commonly used commands onto it. I don't mind hitting C 4 2 2 enter enter to send a ship to dock at my TL, but it'd be so much easier to just target it and click a screen/keyboard shortcut that does 'tell my target to dock at...' or even 'repeat the command i gave my previous target'. Likewise clicking a screen/keyboard shortcut to launch boarding parties sure would beat targeting my transport and hitting a 5 or 6 key sequence i've had to memorise in mid-combat. I hate to say it but take a look at World of Warcraft's macro interface, combined with it's actionbar system, and you'll see an excellent way to reduce the number of keypresses/clicks for commonly used actions.

One last request would be multiple unit selection without having to use wings. If two, five, or fifteen ships can all take a common command, it'd be nice to issue that command once to them all simultaneously. Dragging a box over them might be a bit of an ask, but a ctrl/shift selection modifier would be more than enough.

Bit of a long post i know, but regardless of the above issues, i'm very much looking forward to TNBT.

[stevecs]

Besides engine updates for parallel processing, the big item I would love and is really the main issue I have currently with all the previous versions of the game is a CLOSED UNIVERSE.

I.e. no 'ware sinks' or other 'god' type cheats. Everything needs to have a use. If I want to build ships then raw materials need to be supplied/sold to stations owned by that government or shipyard. And tie all of that back into the system. I.e. in weak economies no-one can build/get good ships, sorry no resources. In economies that are well developed, then you can have large patrol fleets, more pirates et al.

This goes for all factories as well, nothing is for 'free', everything takes something to produce it. If done well it can also have influence on race alignments. For example 'secondary' resources would still be required for /all/ plants but depending on what you provide (say boron produced secondaries) would thus attract more boron employees for that plant and then have more of a boron influence. If done well this could also be used to start economic wars due to influence incursions or even change sector 'ownership/major influence'.

[Kalthzar]

Ok, I go into this discussion/rant lacking knowledge of how much the S&M forum has achieved, so it might be all redundant!

So there is one thing I would like to do; Use Fleets.

Now this is actually, in my mind, fairly complicated. First. the current X-Universe doesn't really justify such fleets, there is no great enemy to fight, nothing that you can leverage out of it. Indeed killing off races limits the profits you make, and is uhmmm unrealistic at best. Second, the micromanagement is just painful.

Lets deal with the second problem first because I see it as easier to deal with. Ok, so you want to build a fleet; now currently you can't do that without dying a little inside:

Software is just a pain; as such you should be able to purchase 'licenses' of various sizes (and costs!). Now these licenses would either cover all your current ships (unsure how to cover boundary when you get more ships than the license covers, but an easy problem to solve), or give you say 100 pieces of software that you can upload to the ships you want.

Equipping weapons can be annoying, and stems partly from an inability to mass produce weapons (especially with my rig). Possible solutions allow either the ability to fully equip ships on purchase or, if you have the complexes, the ability to order a batch of ships to go to X and equip themselves as Y.

This leads onto the complexes. Tubes are annoying, constructing a complex with 100 stations is just irritating. Thus, allow a complex Hub, depending on the size of the hub, this can house say 10, 20, 50, 100 factories on it, so you take your TL set up the Hub and then all further factories are simply loaded up onto the Hub. Limits the size, the mess and the slow down of the system. If more factories want to be complexed together; install a transport system: either using frigates or using massive transporter devices in the complex Hub. Simply you would place all Complexes that you want to work together into a field much like the current 'Wings'.

Lastly, I want to be able to industrially produce ships, not a piddly 1 or two fighters every day or so (especially with my RL time constraints), the ability to build an order of say 30 fighters would be desired. If this shipyard/PHQ could be added to a Complex 'wing' then the supply issue can be almost forgotten!


Ok; so you might have noticed that my industrial side of things is a little bit bigger...ok its much bigger. Of course this can be accomplished fairly easily, Corporations. This also dovetails into my first point all the way at the beginning of this post. Who to use fleets against? Well, other corporations. I'm inspired by the Age of Mercantilism (i.e. Dutch East India Company etc) for this next bit.

To justify fighting other corporations we need to be fighting for resources, we also need loose government control. So....the Galactic map could be divided into two parts; 'Known Space' Where various states have their systems, much like is currently found in X3:TC, and 'Unknown Space' (how creative of me!) where you get to; Explore and find say Xenon/Khaak-Equivalent home sectors, long lost colonies, minor aliens, a load of unexploited sectors and fun explorey things to do! On the border between these two areas various governments are developing colonies.

Corporations are mostly found in unknown space fighting over resources and luxuries found there to supply to the governments e.g. a corporation has the ability to get a LARGE contract to supply a colony with resources to develop it, or to import luxury items into home sectors etc. As the player you get the ability to become a corporation (about the time you get your PHQ or similar!) and build a fleet and got after these big contracts and beat the snot out of other corporations in good old fleet battles.

Since I've also changed the scale of the game; I see it being broadly split into a few phases; the beginning; where you have a few fighters, corvette's etc and your doing stations missions as found in TC, and trading etc own a few stations or similar. The midgame, where you are really getting into the unknown sectors, own a pocket carrier, a bunch of stations and a mid size complex or two, working for various Corporations on mapping out sectors for them to develop, working for governments and defending colonies with your mini-fleet against Xenon/Khaak equivalent incursions. And the 'End' Game, where you compete with the other corporations on an equal basis and get to fight them, with serious rewards from governments. Further the ability to take over sectors to develop (with your name and everything!).

Through out this process, some Dynamic missions would be fun. Also plots that have serious repercussions on the game world (i.e. you support race X and eliminate/cripple race Y's sponsored corporations, you get a nice big stash of money, but also perhaps race Y declares war on race X, and a series of battles that you do or do not take part of changes the balance of power and some sectors officially change hands etc. Or maybe introduce some dynamic tech advances and new stations etc.


Thoughts?

[Apoch]

Besides engine updates for parallel processing, the big item I would love and is really the main issue I have currently with all the previous versions of the game is a CLOSED UNIVERSE.

I.e. no 'ware sinks' or other 'god' type cheats. Everything needs to have a use. If I want to build ships then raw materials need to be supplied/sold to stations owned by that government or shipyard. And tie all of that back into the system. I.e. in weak economies no-one can build/get good ships, sorry no resources. In economies that are well developed, then you can have large patrol fleets, more pirates et al.

This goes for all factories as well, nothing is for 'free', everything takes something to produce it. If done well it can also have influence on race alignments. For example 'secondary' resources would still be required for /all/ plants but depending on what you provide (say boron produced secondaries) would thus attract more boron employees for that plant and then have more of a boron influence. If done well this could also be used to start economic wars due to influence incursions or even change sector 'ownership/major influence'.

This is a lot harder than you think.

Consider the real-world economy: with internationalization in full swing, we can no longer treat any subset of human economy as a closed system. The only closed system we can consider is the whole of human economics, i.e. the entire planet (and some outlying bits of space, to be fair).

That's over 6.5 billion people, all doing their thing, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.


You can't even begin to represent that kind of scale in a commodity home PC these days, let alone derive an interesting game experience from it; it just isn't feasible.


Now you want a fully closed system across (in X3's case) dozens of sectors and potentially trillions of people?

Good stinkin' luck


To build a truly closed system on a physically feasible scale means dramatic simplifications. It's been a few years since I've run the numbers, but IIRC, it works out to something like 3-5 types of goods in the entire universe and a painfully flat production tree.

So, take your pick: open economy with some magic, and lots of diversity and interesting stuff to do; or a truly deterministic, closed economy with no gameplay.

[stevecs]

This is a lot harder than you think.

Consider the real-world economy: with internationalization in full swing, we can no longer treat any subset of human economy as a closed system. The only closed system we can consider is the whole of human economics, i.e. the entire planet (and some outlying bits of space, to be fair).

That's over 6.5 billion people, all doing their thing, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.


You can't even begin to represent that kind of scale in a commodity home PC these days, let alone derive an interesting game experience from it; it just isn't feasible.


Now you want a fully closed system across (in X3's case) dozens of sectors and potentially trillions of people?

Good stinkin' luck


To build a truly closed system on a physically feasible scale means dramatic simplifications. It's been a few years since I've run the numbers, but IIRC, it works out to something like 3-5 types of goods in the entire universe and a painfully flat production tree.

So, take your pick: open economy with some magic, and lots of diversity and interesting stuff to do; or a truly deterministic, closed economy with no gameplay.

I didn't say it was simple; however I don't think it's as hard as you seem to indicate as a lot of the work is already there (dynamic pricing; searching for/delivering goods based on price (need); et al). The main items would be re-vamping what wares are required for what stations. You're correct that in a full economy this would be hard, but X3 is not a full economy, it's a representative one. You have a minor subset of a full economy which is being used to represent a full one. In that small subset you have generalities (energy; raw materials; food;) those generalities are also already tagged (at least the food) to indicate source culture to do the second part (cultural influence).

As for effect on game play, I would reject the posit that it would kill it but rather make it much more dynamic/interesting.

Even if ego did not want to take this on themselves (a shame) to make the engine itself 'not cheat/generic' with no hard codes and have all the 'cheats' as scripts that could be deleted/removed by the user so as to allow for a 3rd party closed system as a mod.

[greypanther]

Lots of good points there Kalthzar; add in more dynamic 3 dimensional races and I agree with all your points I think.

[cj-spartacus]

I guess all this speculation will be moot in a little over 4 weeks time.

Can't wait! Where's that irl SETA button when you need it?

[thyco]

If the next big game is X4, aside from the normal things that come along like graphics, engine and sound improvements, theres a few things id like to see added:

1 most importantly, a fairly detailed tutorial game start that can help new players and returning players learn the basics of how to start making money through trade and ending up with a small money making complex

2 this probably wont be done but id love it did happen, the ability to walk around stations and ships and even help board enemies ships in a fairly basic FPS way. Obviously there would be a lot of copy/paste "maps" and not asking that every single capital ship is fully mapped out because that would be basically impoosible to do what with most destroyers and carriers being near 1km and 200-500mt wide and tall. No i mean just a couple of rooms and corridors like say the bridge, hanger, armoury etc

3 a small thing id like to see would be add a small bit of rpgness to selecting a pilot, like being able to gain levels and specialize in certain aspects if you wished to do so like specialising in just being a merchant or being a commander of capital ships.

4 this kinda links into number 3, the ability to have the option to work exclusivily for a race/faction/fleet/trade empire. I really liked the final fury missions but id really like to become an actual solider for say the terran fleet, i could fly around and go on missions for the terrans but id actually be working with other terran pilots. I mean in TC, im not really a soldier, just a freelance merc and the only time i have any back up form the race im working with is doing plot missions. If do some policing missions or patrol missions that arnt plot related, id like to have some back from the faction that im helping.

5. this is a very minor thing but of all my ideas i believe it one that could be implemented rather easily. Multiple Launch Missile System. In every ship ive used, missiles are always launched from the same area, right underneth the cockpit/bridge. Id love to beable to have missiles fired from under the wings and the ability to fire multiple missiles at once if i choose.

[Anchorshag]

Xenon & Kha'ak starts.

I absolutely do not want an MMO style multiplayer, but I certainly wouldn't mind joining my friend's game, taking control of one of his ships for him and flying around his universe.

[Argon tactican Justin]

If the next big game is X4

I read the "Squiddy Goes to the Movies!" news post on the home page (congratulations to NUKLEAR-SLUG) and noticed this specific line in the post

This couldn't come at a better time for us. As we move closer to unveiling our next major project, the publicity that this will attract will do a great deal to increase the profile of that project and all of the X series in general

Anyone else catch what it seems to be hinting about TNBT?

[Vitez]

LIKE
- a deep story and good storytelling
- new graphics
- a new (or new part) of the universe
- not as many ships as in TC (it was just too much too sudden)
- mining. There are some of us who like it.
- more complex missions (example: Tachyon - The Fringe, where a hospitals ships engine dies and is about to hit an asteroid, you have to blow up the rocks)
- make it an MMO


NOT LIKE
- planet landings (it's all fun and games until someone actually makes it and you realize its cr.p and limited)

[StarSword]

This couldn't come at a better time for us. As we move closer to unveiling our next major project, the publicity that this will attract will do a great deal to increase the profile of that project and all of the X series in general

Anyone else catch what it seems to be hinting about TNBT?

Egosoft is practically required to make an X4 for the same reason Blizzard was required to make StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty instead of StarCraft: Ghost: The fans wouldn't have it any other way.

Just like Blizzard's best games are its real-time strategy titles (@WoW fans: I'm not interested), Egosoft made its name with first-person space simulators, and that's what they're good at.

[Nanook]

...
- more complex missions (example: Tachyon - The Fringe, where a hospitals ships engine dies and is about to hit an asteroid, you have to blow up the rocks)

You mean, like the ones we had way back in X-Tension.

NOT LIKE
- make it an MMO
- planet landings (it's all fun and games until someone actually makes it and you realize its cr.p and limited)

There, fixed it for you.

[Vitez]

...

- make it an MMO
- planet landings (it's all fun and games until someone actually makes it and you realize its cr.p and limited)

There, fixed it for you.

Now I gotta make it again all over I hope you're satisfied
Want: MMO I'll pay everyones subscription (okay, I wont).

[StarSword]

- more complex missions (example: Tachyon - The Fringe, where a hospitals ships engine dies and is about to hit an asteroid, you have to blow up the rocks)

Yeah, then there was the one that gets you booted out of Sol, where you have to escort a humanitarian aid freighter delivering medicine to a quarantined station, disable ships attempting to escape the quarantine, and destroy fighters trying to blow up the freighter. And then it turns out the freighter was actually carrying a bomb, and you get framed for blowing up the station. Talk about a bait-and-switch.

- make it an MMO

Gold Wing, accelerate to attack speed. Your target is the SS Vitez. Fire Control, arm Hammerhead missiles and IBLs.

That's my opinion of the subject. You want an MMO, go back to EVE or WoW. Cooperative play, sure, as long as you can do it over a LAN as well as the Internet. (Blizzard got a lot of flak for leaving that feature out of StarCraft II: now, you have to log in to Battle.net to play against somebody sitting right next to you.)

Not everybody has unlimited downloads or multi-megabyte per second Internet connections, ya know. Some of us are still stuck with satellite Internet that can't go faster than 120K, throttles you back to 6K for hours if you download more than 150MB in a single day*, and goes out whenever there's a goddamn storm in the area. (And I think my neighbor down the road is still on dial-up.)

F---ing cable companies. Sometimes I hate capitalism.


* That reminds me: once again, a DVD release will be much appreciated. Can't do Steam.

[Vitez]

That's my opinion of the subject. You want an MMO, go back to EVE or WoW. Cooperative play, sure, as long as you can do it over a LAN as well as the Internet.

To turn the tide; you want single player, go back playing X3TC. MMO is what I want, but what we will get is up to EgoSoft.
Not to mention that
- EVE is totally different from an X MMO
- so is WoW
- cooperative gameplay an LAN: Naumachia
- and...OH FU... THE MISSILE!!! BAAMM!!!!

[christina one dash one]

hhhmmmmm
come on guys... this is , i hoped , to be constructive. not a verbal fight out and arguement moan at other persons ideas..
THe people at ego cant take you seriously, Or even take you ideas seriously


ALL Ideas are welcome,,, even the gerbils with guns idea,,,,,,,.......

o.k even i dont want gerbils, (or hamsters)

i want to read at this and make a list.....
so all ideas welcome

christina