Planet Landings?

[CBJ]

Let's summarise the options:

1. Basic planet "landings" which are effectively just cutscenes or jumps to a static environment.

Advantages: Relatively little work.
Disadvantages: Adds nothing to the gameplay that could not be achieved in space.

2. Planets with a simplified or generated environment.

Advantages: Potentially more new gameplay opportunities.
Disadvantages: Lots of work, planets likely to be boring and repetetive, and the result is something that doesn't really "fit" with the rest of the game.

3. Proper planets with high quality, realistic environments.

Advantages: Really cool and lots of gameplay opportunities.
Disadvantages: Utterly insane amount of work, to the point of being impossible within any sensible budget.

4. No planet landings.

Advantages: All available time and resources can be spent developing gameplay opportunities in space (this being a space game after all).
Disadvantages: We'd all like to be able to land on planets.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why option 4 is likely to remain the chosen one for the foreseeable future.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Let's summarise the options:

1. Basic planet "landings" which are effectively just cutscenes or jumps to a static environment.

Advantages: Relatively little work.
Disadvantages: Adds nothing to the gameplay that could not be achieved in space.

2. Planets with a simplified or generated environment.

Advantages: Potentially more new gameplay opportunities.
Disadvantages: Lots of work, planets likely to be boring and repetetive, and the result is something that doesn't really "fit" with the rest of the game.

3. Proper planets with high quality, realistic environments.

Advantages: Really cool and lots of gameplay opportunities.
Disadvantages: Utterly insane amount of work, to the point of being impossible within any sensible budget.

4. No planet landings.

Advantages: All available time and resources can be spent developing gameplay opportunities in space (this being a space game after all).
Disadvantages: We'd all like to be able to land on planets.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why option 4 is likely to remain the chosen one for the foreseeable future.

Hear here!!! Well said!!

If you want Option 1 guys there is always Microsoft Freelancer

There is a kind of Option 2 already in X3 (c/f couple of the missions in the Egosoft plot).

WRT Option 3, I don't think there is any space simulator with this.

Well we have Option 4, and the game works well, so lets give thanks for that

[Azanor]

Let's summarise the options:

1. Basic planet "landings" which are effectively just cutscenes or jumps to a static environment.

Advantages: Relatively little work.
Disadvantages: Adds nothing to the gameplay that could not be achieved in space.

Of course this is the job of marketing guys and producer but besides how much it adds to game-play its also matters of how much more copies you sell with it. If work is little ROI is big instead of achieving somethings in space it can be moved to planets too. People are already getting used to doing everything in space it doesn't surprise them anymore. X3 as today great game but perhaps for getting more 39.99 usd in the future Egosoft or publisher may need new highlights while marketing the upcoming versions. Otherwise we may see more expansion packs than new versions of the game in the future.

If option one will give out the message "we heard you, its in our new version, its a reason to upgrade" I am sure your marketing department would consider it.

The information available to them is not available to me, so I cant claim its a good decision at the moment.

[CBJ]

Let's just follow that scenario through shall we? We "listen to our customers" and add "landing on planets" in a very limited away through a cutscene or whatever. The publicity machine gets to work and players get all excited about the game finally having the feature they always wanted. The game gets released and they find out that all it consists of is a new place to trade or get missions, with some slightly different graphics to make it look more planet-like. The forum explodes with people complaining, not unreasonably IMO, that they've been lead up the garden path.

No thanks.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Fair comment about publicity Azanor, but CBJ is right as well.

Landing on Planets (Freelancer style) does not really add much and depending on how the publicity machine works can end up disappointing alot of customers.

However, there is one benefit of having planets to trade with that could perhaps be got another way. The main problem with X3 IMO is the way that the GOD engine works (for instance - the GOD engine may destroy all stations that produce FAAs and not rebuild them for a very long time if at all). Introducing planetary landings would perhaps work around this problem as the planets can produce most things and would not necessarily be cullable by the GOD engine. However, taming the GOD engine so that it keeps a list of endangered species and as a result prevents the wholesale destruction of stations which produce a given item. Hence ensuring that there is atleast one NPC station available which builds a given item (unless the player does the culling himself)

[Carlo the Curious]

Just out of curiosity I went digging for a poll about planetary landings. This (rather old) thread was the most recent I could find.

Fairly heavily pro-planet, but then I guess we knew that anyway .

[Azanor]

So your observation, CBJ, peoples expectations are too much higher. I am sure you have been listening to people longer than I am , I cant argue if you say so.

But lots of people have their own idea of planet landing. Can people who is following this thread give us some examples of what you really expect from landing planets? Do you really expect game turn into flight simulator? I was kidding when I said it before, but perhaps thats really (an unrealistic) expectation.

Besides that (I am sure this will also help ninjitsumonk's original reason to start this thread) , what would be satisfying for you without turning landing planets into developing an entirely new game thing? If everybody can give short examples perhaps this can be helpful for modders , or anybody who wants to develop an idea and present in DevNet in the future.

[Observe]

Let's just follow that scenario through shall we? We "listen to our customers" and add "landing on planets" in a very limited away through a cutscene or whatever. The publicity machine gets to work and players get all excited about the game finally having the feature they always wanted. The game gets released and they find out that all it consists of is a new place to trade or get missions, with some slightly different graphics to make it look more planet-like. The forum explodes with people complaining, not unreasonably IMO, that they've been lead up the garden path.

No thanks.

That about sums up the reality of the situation imo. I'd rather see Egosoft apply effort in areas which will improve the space game genre even beyond what they have already done. Perhaps interaction with planet population/races could be included to good effect.

[Nanook]

....

Infinity is also an MMO, where all the massive amounts of data calculations for planets and everything else are kept on the huge server(s) it uses. Unlike our poor little PC's that must do everything themselves.

False, the server just calculates the players in game and economics etc. ALL THE GRAPHIC ENGINE is loaded inside the player's PC. It works becouse it procedurally generates models and texture's combination (base textures are the same but very light), the trick it is makes the same rendering in all pc about the same planet. ....

Not false! Most of the computer's work is NOT in the graphics, it's in maintaining positional calculations with respect to the other objects in the game, as well as calculating all the economic and other interactions between players, NPC's and inanimate objects in the game. The rendered graphics you see on your screen are pretty much all that's calculated on the player's computer. Everything else in an MMO is ON THE SERVER. That means the maps of the planets, including all the cities, etc. that you might eventually encounter, and have rendered graphically on your computer. Graphics are trivial, it's all the rest that bogs down the computer.

Just look at X3 right now. When you enter a very busy sector and get massive lag, it's not generally because of what your computer is rendering on your computer screen from moment to moment. It's all the rocks, stations, ships, etc., that are in the whole sector. In X3, all those calculations are done on your computer. In an MMO, that's all done on the server, so that every player in that sector sees the same thing. Your computer running an MMO client does relatively little work.

[ReggieReddog]

I think actually navigating down to planets and playing around down there would be quite the can of worms to open...for one thing, most of the ships wouldn't be able to get down there since they have to be built in space. An M2 or TL trying to land on a planet of any decent size would have to put out the thrust of an atom bomb or something to keep from just plowing into the surface in a ball of flame. And if the ships were capable of doing that, then we would all just be flying around in space pointing our thrusters at our enemies and toasting them that way. Not to mention the damage you would do to a planet every time you land/take off. I'm not sure even the current TS ships would be able to make a planet landing and back into space again. They barely have the thrust for 100m/s in space. I'm guessing that a TP of some sort would be needed to get people back and forth. Or heavily shielded M5s. Might need a new class of ships; planetary shuttles and such. But if all the basic minerals needed can be found in asteroids, I think it would be much more efficient to just mine them in space than pull them from planets.

[Elucca]

I think some gigahumongous trading storages in orbit around some planets would be adequate. And because planets produce and consume a lot of stuff, you could potentially do interplanetary trading with TLs. Or TL convoys... Imagine having the occasional huge trading convoy moving around... Hehe.

Then have some special NPC transport shuttles ferry the stuff onto the planet.

There could also be Freelancer-style planet landings, just for flavour, nothing too big.

[BROOKAKA]

I'd be happy enough if there were a few NPC ships ferrying cargo from the equipment docks and trading stations down to the planets, just to add a bit more realism to the game...as it is the planets seem a bit disjointed from what happens in space around them, and it'd be nice to see shuttles and dropships providing this link...purely cosmetic of course, unless you feel like attacking a drop-ship carrying a cargofull of BPPCs as it heads planetside!

I know dropships do exist in the game, I've seen a fair few Argon ones, but I don't think they actually head planetside...it'd just be a nice thing to watch as I'm travelling across sector as the shuttle disappears into the planet's atmosphere...would something like this be hard to do does anyone think? Worth a request in the Scripts/Mods forum? And sorry if XTM already has this; haven't checked it out yet...!

[BROOKAKA]

Then have some special NPC transport shuttles ferry the stuff onto the planet.

Wow, great minds...!

[Elucca]

Heh.
Now that i think about it, trader TLs would be a lot of fun. Any chance that's scriptable, since essentially the trading storages would just be bigger trading stations?

[BROOKAKA]

Even forgetting landing it would be good if planets were somehow part of the economy even if they just acted as sinks via specific planetary trade stations for manufactured goods that are shuttled down by npc craft.

Some kind of visible active commercial bridge between the planets and space would be great. I like to think of planets as the ultimate space station in X. However at present they do absolutely nothing.

You would think the space side economics should be tied to planetside consumerism on some level. Unless all those stations are just really support for the creation and operation of protective Fleets which I guess might make sense when you look at the tech tree. Nonetheless, it seems surprising that planets and space feel so unlinked in general gameplay.

Hmm, OK, maybe I should have read this post more carefully! Someone else has beaten me to it as well!

Still, good to see other people would like to see this feature...over to you Egosoft!!!

[Realspace]

Not false! Most of the computer's work is NOT in the graphics, it's in maintaining positional calculations with respect to the other objects in the game, as well as calculating all the economic and other interactions between players, NPC's and inanimate objects in the game. The rendered graphics you see on your screen are pretty much all that's calculated on the player's computer. Everything else in an MMO is ON THE SERVER. etc etc .

What you say is right, but the topic here was how heavy the new big terrains/scenes of cities, etc. would be for the X engine, i.e. the engine in its graphical activity. That's the point to decide whenever it is a good idea, even if we can make it, to build big land/city sectors

Of course Infinity CPU calculations are most on server... it is a galaxy of BILLIONS of systems at real scale!!! nothing comparable with the even busy sectors of X3 (that indeed can stay in a single PC)

[pjknibbs]

In X3, all those calculations are done on your computer. In an MMO, that's all done on the server, so that every player in that sector sees the same thing. Your computer running an MMO client does relatively little work.

I think this is untrue, actually. If an MMO was relying on the server to do the calculations to that extent, then two things would happen:

a) The server would collapse as soon as you put more than 3 people on it.

b) You would need massive bandwidth for all the communications between the server and the client.

What I think most MMOs do is transmit the minimum needed information to the client. For example, if you had an X style MMO, the server would transmit the speed, position and heading of all the ships in the sector when you jumped in. It then only needs to transmit more information if one of those factors changes, e.g. another ship changes speed or direction--other than that it can leave the client to calculate where the ship is moving. This is far more efficient than simply transmitting the coordinates of every single object in the sector for every frame of animation.

[Nanook]

In X3, all those calculations are done on your computer. In an MMO, that's all done on the server, so that every player in that sector sees the same thing. Your computer running an MMO client does relatively little work.

I think this is untrue, actually. If an MMO was relying on the server to do the calculations to that extent, then two things would happen:

a) The server would collapse as soon as you put more than 3 people on it.

b) You would need massive bandwidth for all the communications between the server and the client.

What I think most MMOs do is transmit the minimum needed information to the client. For example, if you had an X style MMO, the server would transmit the speed, position and heading of all the ships in the sector when you jumped in. It then only needs to transmit more information if one of those factors changes, e.g. another ship changes speed or direction--other than that it can leave the client to calculate where the ship is moving. ...

Transmitting precalculated numbers doesn't take much bandwidth at all. Especially since most people have much higher download speeds than upload speeds. No, what happens, and I'm pretty sure of this from discussions on the EVE Online boards, is that the servers do all the calculations and only have to download the data to the clients. I'm pretty sure the only data that gets uploaded from your computer are your keypresses, mouse and/or joystick movements. The game engine is on the server(s). Otherwise, you'd run into major synchronization issues with all the thousands of different personal computers, with varying performances and internet connection bandwidths. All those calculations are why MMO's such as EVE Online spend millions and millions of (name your currency) on massive supercomputer-level server clusters.

This is far more efficient than simply transmitting the coordinates of every single object in the sector for every frame of animation.

But it has to. Every object in the game is subject to movement/destruction at any given instant. Either it has to poll every object constantly from your (and everyone else's) computer to see if you (or anyone else) did anything to it, or it simply reads your input and determines the result itself. The second alternative is by far the most efficient, especially when you're dealing with tens of thousands of clients.

[Carlo the Curious]

If I remember rightly from Everquest (and it's been a while) the calculations for your position were mostly done locally and forwarded to the server every tic or so. That's not to say Eve does it the same way...

EDIT: Or not, thinking about it some more. I've a feeling the calculations were actually duplicated on both but re-synced server to client every so often. i.e. almost entirely the opposite of what I said...

[Nanook]

Well, I know it's done that way in EVE, since if you commit a 'logoffski', your ship stays in space and is subject to attack for a certain amount of time. In some situations, your ship, without any input from you, will try to flee to a safe spot. So by this, we know that all the positional and combat calculations have to be done on the server. The only thing the server needs that it isn't getting from your computer, is your input. Which it deals with by taking control of your ship.