Feedback X4 Presentation

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Nikola515
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Post by Nikola515 » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 05:45

Anyway back on topic.... Presentation it self was pretty good so was the gameplay and stability of the game. I only wished they spent more time on Q&A and answered some of question from online... Personally im happy what I have seen knowing this is not final product (I'm glad NPC animations will be fixed). What worries me the most is AI and I hope they can show some improvements on it. Also I'm hoping they are only reusing those ugly XR NPCs for demo :cry:
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Post by vukica » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 06:28

Nikola515 wrote:What worries me the most is AI and I hope they can show some improvements on it. Also I'm hoping they are only reusing those ugly XR NPCs for demo :cry:
XR currently has a fairly decent flight AI. It *sometimes* does stupid shit, but generally it's way better than what we had before or in X3. If half of the "stupid AI shit" was fixed it should work great.
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Nikola515
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Post by Nikola515 » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 08:18

All thought AI did get better compared to older titles it still needs a lots of work.... For example carrier clas like Sull or any other drone carrier are useless because they behave like battleships and get destroyed in seconds (it should stay back and use drones in battle). Balor and that Terran capital (can't remember name) just got fix in 4.0.... I'm hoping that AI dont gets neglected like XR.
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Post by Sparky Sparkycorp » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 10:56

Nikola515 wrote: For example carrier clas like Sull or any other drone carrier are useless because they behave like battleships and get destroyed in seconds (it should stay back and use drones in battle).
Agreed. Although I think the difficulty with Suls in XR is that they do not have have and differences in their drone capability compared to other capital ships, which all have drone bays. Such that there probably wasn't any point in investing time (Dev or Modder) in changing their behaviour without a change to their drone use.

I'm excited to see ships landing on ships in X4. It should support ships that act as carriers having different behaviours like you've described.

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Post by Nikola515 » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 17:14

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:
Nikola515 wrote: For example carrier clas like Sull or any other drone carrier are useless because they behave like battleships and get destroyed in seconds (it should stay back and use drones in battle).
Agreed. Although I think the difficulty with Suls in XR is that they do not have have and differences in their drone capability compared to other capital ships, which all have drone bays. Such that there probably wasn't any point in investing time (Dev or Modder) in changing their behaviour without a change to their drone use.

I'm excited to see ships landing on ships in X4. It should support ships that act as carriers having different behaviours like you've described.
You are right about that... Perhaps they added drone bays to each ship because they known all along that carrier roles are useless. Also with 150 we could make Rahana in to carrier as well.... I hope they do something about it in future.... That AI could give some pretty good tactical advantages ...

X4 ships remind me on those Russian dolls :D S can land on M and it can land on L :D
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Thank you Bernd for taking lessons from X:R and using it to vastly improve X4

Post by Vandragorax » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 16:43

I'm so stoked for this. In the presentation Bernd acknowledged the shortfalls of X:R and what fans were disappointed with, and he seems to have taken all of this on board to massively improve and focus on some key areas for X4.

1) New map: The new map looks INSANELY GOOD and was always the one thing I felt was missing in managing my empire in previous X games. I mean, X is an empire management game and for the first time we'll have a proper "Google Earth" type modern GPS interface, with context menus for giving orders and managing everything that's going on in the game world. Wonderful stuff!

2) Ship upgrades being shown visually: This is again fantastic, space game fans love this sort of thing and it really gives you a sense of progression and power when your ships bristle with guns etc. and you can actually inspect how powerful you think an opponent might be by looking at their ship exterior.

3) Teleporting: A must-have feature in combination with the new map mode, allowing me to manage my empire and respond to conflicts or events going on around the map manually. Really top marks!

4) UI/UX looks like it has been developed with keyboard + mouse in mind from the start. This is great to see because the controller UI was one of the things that let X:R down (I feel like it reduced the scope for a lot of the options, menus, etc. that could be dealt with because they had to be designed with a controller in mind, which is no longer going to be a constraint).

There were a couple of other points I had in mind when watching but I forgot them now, anyway I just wanted to say thank you for listening to the feedback and focusing on some extremely interesting and useful features (especially the new map) that should hopefully help X4 become the next leader in space 4X games. Looking forward to this a lot :)[/code]

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Awesome

Post by yimmasabi » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 17:16

All is awesome, Congratulations.

Here are my additive recomendations

+ more post effects are needed on whole camera view (cockpit is not included), you can put a very big invisible square based pyramid, and you can do affects inside that, blue-green-red gasses, fogs, warping, effects you do when landing etc. So far objects will not be same as close ones.
interiors looks nice but cockpit view looks feels me like 3d objects

+ add option to textures (you need High Res textures) , especially inside the ship and on planets

+ some sexy colors like pinks, lime etc. should be like metal, may be you should add some grays

+ add skill gains to crew NPCs, and let them die , hurt when ship is underattack, may be loss of some skills or slower learning curve

+ trade with online players would be awesome , i don't mean fully online game but items can be sold in their primary stations online

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Ships with docking points

Post by Santi » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 17:32

X4 will allow ships to dock in other ships, this made me so happy. I know we all love an HQ where you can develop stuff and all that. But myself, I prefer a flying HQ where an exclusive selection of ships are docked and at my command. Also a number of necessary war supplies.

It does not need to be a Carrier, my favourites were the military transports from TC like the Zephyrus.

Anyway, fantastic that this feature is back as it adds so much to the game.
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Just a thread of support!

Post by TonyEvans » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 17:56

Devs! We've heard it and seen it a hundred thousand times. Rebirth tanked. Terribly. Miserably. It essentially committed suicide on launch. Actually, it was one of the biggest disappointments in terms of game releases ever. It had a rough start and many thought that would be the end of X as a whole, or at least Egosoft.

For some people, that was the last X game they will ever buy. However, not myself. Despite the release, you guys showed a commitment to your game and did everything you could to make it up to us INCLUDING free DLC, several several patches and fixes, and by the time you were done the now-released game is nothing like it used to be. For that, y'all have my support still. Had you just left it as it was, this wouldn't be the case.

Rebirth as it is now is a great little stand-alone game. Small compared to the Original X series, but not without its own great perks and gameplay content. So I ask you this and this only: Please work with us, the community, and your greatest supporters. I plan on buying X4 not just because of what you did for Rebirth, but for what you've managed to do with all the X games. There's great potential, and I can't wait to see the finished product. If y'all keep us in the loop of content, roadmaps and future content plans (paid DLC or free), then you can count on my preorder.

P.S. It wouldn't hurt to get a small discount for buying on-release Rebirth, but it would help. Like I said, I'm buying X4 regardless!

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Re: Ships with docking points

Post by Vandragorax » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 18:25

Santi wrote:X4 will allow ships to dock in other ships, this made me so happy. I know we all love an HQ where you can develop stuff and all that. But myself, I prefer a flying HQ where an exclusive selection of ships are docked and at my command. Also a number of necessary war supplies.

It does not need to be a Carrier, my favourites were the military transports from TC like the Zephyrus.

Anyway, fantastic that this feature is back as it adds so much to the game.
I wholeheartedly agree! I loved having my Centaur flying around with a little scout M5 docked in X3 it felt so cool (and wasn't too difficult to get to that point, unlike stocking up a whole carrier and trying to manage a large fighter fleet which frankly was a pain).

Really looking forward to this, commanding a large capital ship with a smaller garrison of ships docked at my disposal. Seeing them all coming out of the landing pad, as well as every one having different gun configurations actually shown on the hull model.

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Post by HaradaTaro » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 18:27

First the multi ship is back great.

+I don't care if highways are in or out.
+No need to lose time on multiplayer X serie is a SOLO game.
+graphics looks greats
+Being able to make your own statin the way you want seems great. I wonder if there will be a limit in size.

Fears:

- From what I saw once again like in X-rebirth we are flying a cockpit and nothing else. The rest of the ship doesn't exist... no hitbox and yo will beable to go nearly every where withoin tiny space as long as the cockpit fits in no matter if the rest of the ship is way too big.
-No word said on industry line and ship building... I guess it will be the old ship magically popping out from no where as much as wares...

Questions :

No words have been said about sector management.... I really hope this time we the palyer will be able to claim, capture sector and manage them.
But once more I think the worse and it wont be in.

And last FOR GOD SAKE

NO ONE CARES ABOUT WALKING AROUND and in stations Stop losing time with that.

Thanks and have a good day all.

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Post by Sandalpocalypse » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 18:29

What? The ship was always modeled in XR, and there's every indication it will be in X4 as well. Your guns were even physically modeled and the shots came from different spots. Drones popped out of the drone hatch. Etc.

And one of the specific points made in the presentation is that they want ships all built using the economy rather than spawned, presumably to the extent that is practical. Missions also will ideally use existing assets rather than spawned assets whenever possible.
Irrational factors are clearly at work.

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Post by HaradaTaro » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 18:37

It was modeled that all but it has no hit box so you could go with the skunk through tiny passge where the cockpit xould go through but not the ship.
Same in the presentation the guy who made some piloting went many times so close to station/building that it was blatant only the cockpit existed in term of hit box because the ship had a long nose and the cockpit was behind still he went to cockpit nearlit hitting the station walls meaning that if it was real half of the ship would already have crashed into the station.

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Post by aquatica » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 18:38

I understood that the ship building will be from ground up and real. You need resources and components to build a ship and it will take time to get it done.

I also understood that you can own a shipyard (I think you can in XR too? Never got that far...) and build those ships on your own, if you wish.
Now what I *really* am looking forward:

To take over trade. All of it. Everywhere.
I mean that *I* and my Empire will own everything that produces anything from the most basic materials to ships. I'd love to saturate the market and kill competition. And claim the places where that happens.
Find an empty sector or area, claim it for myself and build an empire to Rule The Space.

Oh, how about Jump beacons? I would love to be able to make those...

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Post by linolafett » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 19:20

HaradaTaro wrote: Fears:

- From what I saw once again like in X-rebirth we are flying a cockpit and nothing else. The rest of the ship doesn't exist... no hitbox and yo will beable to go nearly every where withoin tiny space as long as the cockpit fits in no matter if the rest of the ship is way too big.
Just answering this one, as its already a not that simple topic.

ARTIST ANSWER; MAY CONTAIN TECHNICIALLY INCORRECT UNDERSTANDING OF THE SUBJECT.
I try to answer with the best of my limited understanding, dont take it as 100% correct! Please.

In rebirth the skunk was rotated around the cockpit, because at the time it was deemed unacceptable to have a rotation origin far away (behind) the player. That felt off with the very quick rotationspeed of the ship.
The skunk had a collisionsphere around the cockpit for the same reason.

In X4 we use the ship origin (usually center of mass) to rotate around.
As the ships are less agile and m ships even much bigger, you have more time to adapt to the offset of the player position and the origin of rotation.

Which collisionmesh is used for playership collisions depends on the context.
In most of the cases the rule "smaller object will use boundingbox for collision, bigger object will use main geometry for collision".
Why? Performance reasons.

An example would be:
You sit in an ship and collide with a station.
In that case your ship collision is simplified with a bounding box.
Result: You may not fit into areas which visually would work, this is very rare with small ships though.
You also collide with sttaionparts with the back of your ship, or parts of your ship which are left/right of your cockpit. some ships have very extreme cockpit positions and you have to get used to each ships size.

Hope that helps to get rid of your concerns regarding origin of rotation and collision.
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Post by Skeeter » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 19:32

Collision bounding box's for small ships is a bad idea its what was used in homeworld 1 I believe as I used to mod ships for it. In home world 2 they used skin tight collision detection by duplicating the ship and using that albeit a low poly version for performance reasons. Much better so things didn't bounce off each other if near something else AFAIK. Plus hit effects could be much more near the ships hull so firing on ships looked better and other reasons I'm provably forgetting, oh maybe pathing was it too I think.

Just my few words on that bit of the post, based on modding space games In the past.
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Post by Tamina » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 19:40

Skeeter wrote:Collision bounding box's for small ships is a bad idea its what was used in homeworld 1 I believe as I used to mod ships for it. In home world 2 they used skin tight collision detection by duplicating the ship and using that albeit a low poly version for performance reasons. Much better so things didn't bounce off each other if near something else AFAIK. Plus hit effects could be much more near the ships hull so firing on ships looked better and other reasons I'm provably forgetting, oh maybe pathing was it too I think.

Just my few words on that bit of the post, based on modding space games In the past.
He is talking about the player controlled ship, only, I believe.

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Post by linolafett » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 19:42

Skeeter wrote: Plus hit effects could be much more near the ships hull so firing on ships looked better
Bullet impacts follow the same rule (i think).
Small thin bounding box, bigger thing hull. Therefore bullet impacts are at the right place.
at least this is what is see, maybe there is something else used for bullet impact detection, i can just see, that they impact at the ship surface and do not get stuck somewhere in space.
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Post by aquatica » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 19:50

I hope we'd really get skin-detected collisions. That is common practice elsewhere, but if Ego can't get the performance numbers to work with it then fine, let it be something else.

Just would like to point out that AFAIK there are those games (albeit higher budget with more devs doing the work) that have highly accurate collision detection, mostly done from the skin or model - at least nearby.

Anyone remember "Blockhead"-High-FPS models for Counter-Strike 1.6 back in the day? The actual hit box was not that of the actual original model, but closer to this raw "blocky" version of the models. It was simply put several squares filling roughly the intended areas - this might work in X4 as well?

If performance truly is an issue, it could be simple - IF the game engine supports it in the first place!
A ship might have few collision points to roughly go by the actual model: both wings, maybe weapons and then core components or other objects that are "away from the main parts". As an example, X3's Nova would have 3 hitboxes: one for the fuselage, one for each wing. Shouldn't be too complex...

And this is of course not knowing at all how collision detection works. If it's too rough, its no good. If it's highly accurate (imagine HAVOC with full modelling of the human body as hitpoints... Now *that* is accurate at it's worst!) it WILL be intensive for hardware... Finding the balance could be the issue.

PS.
Wasn't that one of the key reasons why X2's last mission was so overwhelmingly CPU-intensive? A lot of Terran guns blazing and as each and every one of the bullets were followed separately, and there were hundreds if not thousands around at the same time, many then-good PC's were very, very much struggling...

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Post by lostProfitssssArrgh » Tue, 29. Aug 17, 20:20

linolafett wrote: In most of the cases the rule "smaller object will use boundingbox for collision, bigger object will use main geometry for collision".
Why? Performance reasons.
Hmm. I'll be that guy and flag a "limited technical understanding" on that one. I don't see how testing for intersections on a full mesh (wild guess : 100k polygons) can be faster than testing a box with 6 polygons... Well, the main mesh could be split into different sub sections (more draw calls), or use a lower res proxy mesh reduced to blocky outlines of the ship (don't fly too close to those rounded areas). Neither can be faster than testing a box. The only faster things than a box for testing intersections would be a tetrahedron (4 sides) or a direct distance check (ship center to ship center). Unless ES has some sweet, sweet collision algo I'd love to hear about and send me packing.

Take my observation with a grain of salt, YMMV etc... IANAP

-lpa

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