I think that’s definitely something worth trying. Note that it becomes a general solution for all things having to do with situational awareness because it turns vacuum into a filled volume. Want to get a sense of where another ship is? Highlight the cube that it’s in with a slightly different color. Want to know the alignment of the system orbital plane? Align your grid to it. And so on.
Such a grid should be highly customizable for color, alpha and a number of different renditions. Only show cube corners. What range of distances the grid should appear. What range of angles. What colors to use for various distances. And so on. Lastly, and perhaps most obviously, adapt for speed. The spacing of the grid when moving at warp is going to be very different from that used for combat or for docking. Different colors for different grid sizes. Or other visual cues.
On the keyboard, I’d suggest a press-and-hold to show the grid and a double-tap to toggle it.
Yes, the effect would have to be subtle. The goal would be to enhance situational awareness without players noticing that it was happening. Perhaps as subtle as faded dots at the corners of the cubes.
i strongly suggest a non relative speed setting.
I want to set speed to e.g. 1000 km/s and it should stay there.
I dont like the speed changing near planets. I wanna set it myself! I hate it in Elite too.
there are different gears with min and max speed.
Lets say first gear from 0 km/s to 10 km/s
Second grear from 10 km/s to 100km/s
third from 100km/ to 1000 km/s…
i dont know the exact numbers.
the first one would be for start/landing and short distances
the second for planet wide travel.
the third for inner system.
the fourth for going to next system…
i think you get the idea.
there would be the possibility to not allow higher gears near planets and just lower gears near surfaces.
that way you could control speed in different areas.
thoughts?
edit:
some weapons could be dissabled in higher gears… or activated at higher gears… just another thought…
Ah, the endless problem of space games and trying to show movement when there’s no visual reference points!
If we have a realistically sized solar system in the final game, the planets will be very far apart - bright points of light from one to another. Travelling between them could be very dull if it doesn’t feel like we’re moving!
However, I’m wary of overlaying something on the HUD during warp. It could cheapen the large, empty-space effect that the I-Novae engine does so well. I would rather see a nice obvious warp speed indicator and some effects around the ship. Some kind of rippling visuals maybe, like the space equivalent of ocean waves for a boat? Think a heat-haze kind of wobble in your vision that perhaps becomes more extreme the faster you are going. Could be a bit trippy in deep interplanetary space and subtle nearer planets!
tl:dr
Wobbling visual effects rather than HUD lines or grid?
And what is your opinion about it’s helpfulness?
I’ve just watched a few videos and the lines don’t look very helpful. They appear to change units depending on how fast the player is going, but I don’t see any indication of what the units are, and by the sound of it most people use time-to-target as a gauge, rather than the lines.
I totally share your desire to avoid cluttering empty space with HUD elements.
Rippling visuals might conveying a sense of movement, sure, but does that help gauging how fast you’re going relative to that station you’re approaching and help people not overshoot?
I think, with some tweaking and prettifying, the Battlescape prototype already has what we need to help us not overshoot - automatic warp disruption near planets, distance labels, fairly drastic manual control over the approach speed, and that small but very important red marker in the speedometer bar.
That little red marker could be key to avoiding overshoots and collisions. I know the warp flight mechanics are going to change, but I really hope we keep that marker in some form @INovaeFlavien! Speed over this line = danger. Under = safe! The nice thing being, the marker isn’t fixed. So it gives really useful collison detection info for your target with very little effort!
Therefore, we can have ripple effects for speed and still not smack into things (too much)!
It’s not there to help with navigation, it’s there to convey the feeling of velocity and acceleration.
The minor lines start at a low velocity and as you speed up new major lines appear, by the time the next scale appears the initial lines are moving so fast they are not able to convey more increase of velocity, so they fade away. The scale is relative, but you clearly get a sense of ‘movement’ and acceleration.
I really can’t stress enough how much more helpful the ‘time to target’ is than anything else for not overshooting.
Yep ED’s system doesn’t really convey anything to me when I’m playing. The only thing I look at is how many multiples of the speed of light I’m travelling at
The biggest help for me would be some kind of target-related HUD indicator to help approach quickly. That is what I use most in ED and I hope it can be conveyed in a better system with IB. Instead of being shoved in the corner on a bar scale, I would love to see the approach info connected to the target indicator so I can better adjust my speed to “line up” the rate of acceleration.
Extending on @hrobertson suggested, perhaps a spherical grid centred on the star would be a better way to convey movement?
Then you could scale the granularity of the grid according to your speed rather than using arbitrary moving lines like ED. This would give you a sensation of moving through space the same way “space dust” is used in most games (and the same way planet orbits are portrayed in ED). Also to clarify, I don’t mean the entire grid being visible from the sun to your position either…just enough within a certain draw distance like his example.
The faster you go, the smaller grid segments would give way to larger segments until you reach max warp and only see a few major segments.
This would also have the benefit of making warp travel a more unique experience versus regular flight (with the ability to toggle on/off of course).
Perhaps this could also apply to planets so that when you approach a gravity well you see a planetary grid radiating from it indicating that it’s time to adjust speed. This also has the added benefit of giving a good spatial reference for targets. The UI could highlight a certain segment of the sphere to show where a target might be…or when you are scanning an area, you get a virtual “heat map” of signals that a player can search. Similar to what Limit Theory was aiming for.
What you are describing with that grid is precisely the ED system, except for it taking up more screen-space, their ‘lines’ scale according to velocity, it’s not random.
It can be as accurate as it wants but the vertical bars do not succeed in conveying velocity relative to POI objects in space. The ED system is missing a frame of reference linking the vertical bars to a larger star system scale.
I’m not saying a grid is the solution but, for it to work in my eyes, it needs an improvement on EDs system.
I agree that is what @selbie is describing, however, that is not what I proposed.
The difference is the lines in ED are an abstract indicator of deceleration and acceleration. They could be replaced by a pulsing orb of light. They give a sense of movement, deceleration and acceleration, but not speed relative to anything because they don’t convey any distance information.
You could watch two videos of those lines, one taken at 500km/s and one at 5C and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The proposal is markers that remain stationary relative to the star or nearest body that are a known distance apart, and thereby convey a sense of speed relative to the reference frame.
As for the actual warp mechanic…
Do you have any ideas yet? As far as I see it there are 4 factors apart from the visualisations that are being discussed:
Player controlled rate of acceleration and deceleration
How the player controls their speed (eg desired speed/desired % of max speed/desired acceleration)
Automatic acceleration/deceleration (eg caused by gravity well)
Pitch/Yaw limitation
Currently:
Acceleration is exponential and is slower than deceleration
The player controls their desired % of max speed
Because of 2, acceleration and deceleration happen automatically.
Problem with a fixed scale grid system is that it breaks if you want to meaningfully convey velocity differences of 5 or 10 magnitudes, the range is so large that the grid will be moving too slow or too fast most of the time.
Of course. There would have to be various scales, but the vital thing is that the player can see the difference between scales. If one fades giving way to another, with nothing tying them together, then it’s pointless.
Ie, the player needs to be able to see how many of those smaller boxes are in the larger boxes, otherwise they’re just lines zooming past.
Space dust does not convey distance information, only a sense of movement.
Give the player visual distance information and let their brain deduce speed - humans do this naturally.