The way it looked, he only accelerated when he turned around because his warp throttle was still up. He also mentioned there was a station keeping button that would let you keep your matched speed with someone. Once you match relative speeds you’re along the for the ride and I think you would just maneuver normally, aka ICP like.
I’m totally speculating but that’s how I understood it. @JB47394?
I just wrote a long reply to you three, but it boils down to this:
The prototype is newtonian. Think of a stock 2D space game with WASD controls. That’s exactly what the prototype does. There’s a speed cap, and there’s all that strangeness of automatic velocity changes as you move closer or farther from a massy object, but fundamentally, the thing is just a 2D WASD space shooter. Just like Asteroids.
Until you can watch the first five minutes of the Basics video and see that that is true, there is nothing that I can say that will explain it any better.
Because “turning around makes you accelerate into that direction” isn’t wewtonian, we know that that’s not what the video is showing. In the video, the ship is moving along in one direction. I turn the ship around and then hit W to power in the opposite direction. The ship will slow down (per newtonian motion), then stop (per newtonian motion), then accelerate in the direction that the ship is pointing (per newtonian motion).
Newp. The station keeping feature is a simple autopilot thing. It’s like an autohover. The moment I moved the ship manually, station keeping was disabled.
As soon as I got within 10km of the Cruiser, I was in an ICP arena with it. That’s why I was able to make a slashing attack on the second cruiser that I intercepted. I didn’t have to hit the station keeping button. I just intercepted, made my slashing attack, and then hung around at a bit beyond 10km.
JB I think the confusion stems from you calling the grey bar a power setting. If you call it a relative-velocity-ometer it’s a lot more intuitively Newtonian.
)JB I love what you’ve done. That perturbation of the ribbon is a thing of beauty 
So sad that it’s going to be so many years before we get to experience it ‘for real’!
I agree that the word “power” is the root of the misunderstanding. The long reply that I discarded attempted to clarify that, but “power” is the only word that I could come up with that expresses what’s going on. I don’t buy “relative velocity”, but I think you’re on the right track - that it should be some qualifier on “velocity”. Perhaps “ideal velocity” or “context-independent velocity”. CIV.
Instructor: “Ya gotta check your civvies as you make your approach, son.”
Student: “I gotta what?!”
Of course, it would be a speed value (a scalar), not a velocity (a vector). So “Ideal speed” or “context-independent speed” or some such thing.
Ultimately, it is the fraction of the maximum possible speed (FOMPS*) at which your ship is moving. Because the maximum possible speed changes depending on your context, your ship’s actual speed can change even when the FOMPS value doesn’t.
*Not affiliated with Friends of Menston Primary School.
Thanks. I had a lot of fun with that during testing, flinging it around the stellar neighborhood to see what it would do. I’d occasionally land a course that was just right where it would spiral in on a star, or go out and be perturbed so much that it would loop right back around to the departure star.
I don’t know if it came out in the video, but when I was bending the course, I was only changing my ship’s warp-level course and speed. Everything else fell out from that. I wasn’t pushing buttons to bend the jump course directly.
It occurs to me that the jumps should probably be much slower, and the ribbons rather wider, allowing players to literally fly the ribbons. Right now, ship’s are just kinda flushed through the ribbon to the other end. I’d keep the self-centering trait of the ribbons so players could kick back and relax on straight runs. On the curvy ones, though, I’d want players to have time to fly. Because it would be a skill test, players could challenge themselves, but also use their skills to defeat pursuers who are following in the same jump tunnel/ribbon.
Well, we’ll have to hope for a slam-dunk Kickstarter for I-Novae Studios.
That’s what I didn’t notice. It’s hard to see from just the reactions of the ship. Also when I said “turn arround and accelerate”, that was the part I thought wasn’t newtonian. But if you had to press a button, then that’s believable.
In an attempt to make it easier to see what’s going on, I’ve put together a 90 second video that shows how the ‘thrusters’ fire on the ship. I hope it gives a better sense of the way that ships move in a newtonian fashion.
Thanks for clarifying that again visually JB.
Rotational isn’t Newtonian though. But that’s ok as most games alter it in such a way it would act the same way it did in the prototype.
The name choice of “power level” was an unfortunate one indeed. Thanks for making that last video, makes a lot more sense now. ^-^
Now if the forum would let me edit this post the way I like, that’d be great…
Yeah, it’s newtonian too. There are automatics in place that restrict the rotation rate that the player can command, and the ship also automaticaly counter-fires thrusters to cancel rotation once the player is no longer commanding it.
I restricted myself to depicting the player WASD+QE commands because that was the source of confusion about translation. It would take more work to depict the counter-firing and the restrictions on rotation.
So if the display was totally accurate, the thrusters would not be firing once the maximum rotation rate was achieved, and once the player stopped commanding rotation, the opposite thrusters would light up to indicate the counter-firing by the ship.
You can see some of the newtonian rotation stuff at about the 2:15 mark in the Intercepts video when I “dock” with the cruiser by slamming into it. My ship goes spinning away from the impact at a much higher rotation rate than I could command. You don’t see the counter-firing, but the ship is damping the rotation as quickly as it can because I wasn’t commanding rotation.
= (equals)
Ok.
Yes I understand that. 'Relative-velocity-ometer was a bad suggestion.
The thing is it’s an indicator rather than a setting - You don’t set your ‘ideal’ speed and then wait for your ship to accelerate to that speed. The bar shows your current FOMPS at any given time. Or have I misunderstood?
Yes that was perfectly clear, at least it was to me.
Could you explain a little bit about your implementation of manoeuvrability inside a ribbon/tunnel?
At 8:45 you say you attempted a hard left but the little line that indicates the facing of the ship did not change. However, at 16:00 you appear to rotate the ship reasonably easily, and then accelerate towards the edge of the ribbon very slightly, at which point you are pulled back towards the middle?
Why were you unable to navigate the corner at 8:45?
In the game there should certainly be a line or something indicating the current “setting”. So that the pilot can know what he entered into it without having to wait for the ship to reach that point.
I would love to see this idea taken further and made into a “2D Infinity”. 
That movement system looks perfect for a 2D space game.
Correct.
The FOMPS value translates to an actual velocity depending on the current context. A ship that has a FOMPS of 0.5 and that is sitting next to the space station is moving at 1.5km/s. Teleport that ship instantaneously into interplanetary space and it will be moving at 0.05AU/s. There is no acceleration from one speed to the other; the change is instantaneous.
[quote=“hrobertson, post:43, topic:709”]
At 8:45 you say you attempted a hard left but the little line that indicates the facing of the ship did not change. However, at 16:00 you appear to rotate the ship reasonably easily, and then accelerate towards the edge of the ribbon very slightly, at which point you are pulled back towards the middle?[/quote]
At 8:45 I tried to strafe to stay in the ribbon because it would be faster than turning and then moving forward.
At 16:00, I turned the ship and thrust forwards, then stopped thrusting. The ribbon pushed me back towards the center.
Because of the aggressive way that the ribbon pushes ships along the centerline of the ribbon. Tuning is required if players are going to take a greater role in flying ribbons.
There is no wait. Press a key to instantly change the FOMPS to instantly change the ship’s speed. Each key press changes the FOMPS only a little bit so you are limited in how quickly you can change the FOMPS over time.
If I put in a key that just set the FOMPS to 1.0, the dial would instantly jump to 100%, instantly getting the ship moving at its maximum possible speed. That’s just the way the system works. Such a key would never be implemented because gameplay would suffer.
I started down that path in 2009 as evidenced by the layered mountain surfaces on all the planets. I was starting work on a mining system. I decided that even a 2D game would end up involving inordinate amounts of time fooling around with fiddling little issues in graphics and artwork and I have no interest in that stuff. If I hit the lottery, I’ll hire folks to build my vision, and I’d quite likely stick to the 2D version. I can get more gameplay per dollar out of 2D than I ever could in 3D.
Thanks for the clarification. Yes I’d deffinitely like to see player skill having an impact on jumps at the limits of a drives capability.
But as you show in the Basics video at 13:25, the rate of change of FOMPS varies between ships.
I think what @Lomsor is suggesting is the ability to set a target FOMPS and your ship would increase it’s FOMPS to that value at the appropriate rate, as if the W key was being held.
Just a convenience ‘autopilotish’ feature. Please correct me if I’m wrong @Lomsor .
Seamless planetary landing in 2D That would look great. It would probably require a side view of the ships when landing on the surface.
If you ever decide to do a light version of this vision of yours I could maybe contribute some graphical elements like ships, trees, buildings etc
[quote=“hrobertson, post:47, topic:709”]
I think what Lucas is suggesting is the ability to set a target FOMPS and your ship would increase it’s FOMPS to that value at the appropriate rate, as if the W key was being held.[/quote]
I didn’t get that impression from @Lomsor’s comments , but such a thing could be added. I think that’s a first step towards an autopilot: get me on this heading and FOMPS. If you’re just after a player convenience, I’d add a double-tap-to-lock feature for the WS+QE keys.
That’s the sort of thing I just didn’t want to get started on. The ship shape is symmetrical right now, so it works whether you’re zipping along in space or ‘landing’ on a planet. I’d have gone with spheres if players didn’t need directions for a WASD layout. A touch screen implementation could certainly go with spheres that accelerate in a touched direction.
Thanks for the qualified offer, but the textures are just the tip of the iceberg.
What. I’m wrong again? Man.
Oh yes it was Lomsor not Lucas. Oops.
Was my auto-increase-to-desired-FOMPS interpretation incorrect?
The student is only wrong when there’s a test. I’m curious to know where I presented things such that you didn’t get the right impression. The first time it was because I chose the word “power” as my metaphor. I’d like to know where you saw a delay or a waiting process. If this presentation isn’t making sense to you, then it likely doesn’t make sense to some chunk of the rest of the viewers.