My first discovery - Question for Vice

[iBeej]

Vice, for very VERY distant systems, do you still render them as stars in the background?

For example, being able to pinpoint the Saphire system (as a star) in the sky from Lambda? (These are example systems, not the ones I describe below.)

The reason I ask this, is simple. While doing contracts, at some point I ended up really far from the system's main star. It was just barely the size of the rest of the stars in the background, but I was close enough to it still that it would "strobe" when I panned the camera. This gave me an idea to discern differences in the sky with how stars flicker. They all seem to flicker, but I have also noticed (seemingly) variability in their luminosity and/or flickering.

Then I got to thinking... if Vice is truly rendering points in the night sky for distant systems, I should be able to find a lot of the ones on the Galactic Ecliptic by aligning my ship with 0 degrees, centering the targeting reticle + heading, and panning slowly to line up stars. While one might assume there would be hundreds that fell in to this range, I found this would be an incorrect assumption as there are only a few that PERFECTLY center within a few pixels of the small space in the center of the targeting reticle. Yes there are TONS very close to it, but if you kick on your IDS and keep your pitch perfectly level, you will see what I'm talking about. (Obviously running the game in a high res with a decently sized monitor is almost required) This will either seem really funny and crazy to you, or incredibly smart. The reason I ask is the following story:

To put my idea above to the test, I tried it. And the VERY FIRST time I tried it. While sitting in a known charted system I very slowly and carefully rotated my ship around the "ecliptic vector". Back and forth, trying different speeds to compare different stars and their surroundings. I looked for specific attributes, or differences between neighboring stars in their luminosity, flickering rate, and their uniqueness in position. I would also pull up the nav map and switch between nav/quadrant to get a bearing on heading relative to the heads up compass. I would ask myself am I looking at a known system or something else? So I found one, disabled IDS (critical for conserving fuel during the journey, as the IDS fights each warp and burns fuel insanely fast), manually plotted the SX, SZ vector, kicked on autopilot and just watched the nav map each jump. I ended up arrivng at a system which took 10 minutes to get to with a FC5. (It's between two neighboring charted quadrants) Naturally, it's easy to assume my hypothesis is correct. But then again, I could have run in to a major coincidence, and this kind of unknown drives me crazy. I couldn't believe it. When I arrived, I only had 17 fuel left and used my 2nd to last warp to dock with the station. But I can say this system had the star I seemingly pinpointed in the night sky and I had to burn through 800 fuel to get there.

*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT NO LOCATION INFO IS GIVEN!!!! ***
The system contains a single star, two planets, a station, an extremely lucrative asteroid field, and hidden containers close to the station. The 3 containers have an unlimited supply of Anti-Matter, Razor cannons, and excaliburs. I can sell the razor cannons at the stations for 285k a pop netting over 1mil in profit. It only takes about 60 seconds to do a complete run. The asteroid belt is high yield, lots of Diamonds, Platinum, etc. The location is between systems, and when I told MiaZ about it last night, he was even surprised I found it, and with the method that I found it.
*** END POSSIBLE SPOILER ***

It's a great system. It's my first discovery. It was a very calculated find and i'm really proud about it. But I really really want to know if this was just a fluke coincidence. But with how big the evochron universe is, that's some pretty crazy odds. I really hope you put this much detail in to the game, because it is extremely realistic and gives players actual methods for discovering hidden systems in a universe so massive. I refuse to look at spoilers, guides, or have those in MP "give away" all the coords, as part of the fun is finding them yourself. But without any methods or tools to approach this task would be extremely frustrating. Finding them by chance is great and all but there needs to be some flexibility and control in the hands of players who are willing to invest the time and effort to discover all the secrets Evochron has to offer. I am disappointed with how Probes function in this game as I was hoping they would operate a lot like they do in EVE; launching them a particular direction, pinging them, and triangulating hidden coordinates by then using probes with small scanning radius but more accuracy. As it stands now, probes aren't really "probes" at all, just limited timed stationary satellites which don't report enough information to be used or considered useful by most players. I hope this changes in the future for players who want a little more in the exploration aspect of Evochron.

Vice can you comment on this?

Thanks!!!

BEEJ

edit: typos/added clarity

[Edited on 4-21-2010 by iBeej]

[Vice]

Vice, for very VERY distant systems, do you still render them as stars in the background?

No, not at extreme distances, most of what you see is a pre-genned star backdrop. Although I had initially planned to have representative distant points, the required resources were devoted to other things instead. You can, however, spot distant stars you can travel to several sectors away (which certainly may have been the case here). From your description, it sounds like you achieved a rare discovery by careful observation and proper preparation.

[iBeej]

Originally posted by Vice

No, not at extreme distances, most of what you see is a pre-genned star backdrop. Although I had initially planned to have representative distant points, the required resources were devoted to other things instead.

Hey Vice! Thank you for the clarification on this. Is this something you foresee being a reality in future versions? With Evochron being so immersive, you are one step away from making the backdrop a true representation of what can actually be visited. As it stands now, there aren't any methods to intelligently triangulate hidden items, stations, ships, or systems. Like many players who play Evochron, I'm a huge astronomy buff and enjoy exploration.

Due to these absent features, players have resorted to "hacking" in to the Evochron data binaries to find coordinates. And I sure don't want to take the "brute force" route and plot a course through each sector a few at a time to find all the fancy toys and weapons Evochron has to offer. I'm sure you have heard all of this before, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately.

Really, check out how EVE does it, if you haven't already. I think it's a REALLY clever probe system for players who want to invest time and effort discovering hidden systems. Nothing is more rewarding than that!

Loving the game Vice, keep up the good work. I'm in B5 just about every night. Would love to see you visit sometime.

[Vice]

Thank you for the clarification on this. Is this something you foresee being a reality in future versions?

Probably not in the near term at least. If I were just creating a planetarium where virtually all memory and system resources could be devoted to scenery, it would likely be a much more practical option. Otherwise, I'd likely have to make significant compromises in other areas of the game that I'm not willing to compromise on... or at a minimum, force much longer loading delays (to create updated backgrounds for new player locations), particularly in-game where I prefer a more seamless approach. I'm not against it though, as the base system configuration continually increases, ideas like this become more practicle/feasible. So maybe at some point in the future.

As it stands now, there aren't any methods to intelligently triangulate hidden items, stations, ships, or systems.

There are methods, but they don't involve trying to spot things visually out of the cockpit window. Clues can be provided, depending on your tolerance for spoilers.

Loving the game Vice, keep up the good work. I'm in B5 just about every night. Would love to see you visit sometime.

Much of my time is spent buried in code and testing. Might be around once in a while though as my schedule permits.

[Marvin]

Originally posted by Vice

Thank you for the clarification on this. Is this [actual stars] something you foresee being a reality in future versions?

Probably not in the near term at least. If I were just creating a planetarium where virtually all memory and system resources could be devoted to scenery, it would likely be a much more practical option.

That depends on the number of actual stars you put in the database. If you tried to create another Celestia, then it could be a real problem. But, if you only included those stars that represented available systems, the additional computation time shouldn't be all that significant.

[Vice]

True, I kind of sense that it should go entirely one way or the other though. That is, if you see that star out there, you can fly to it. However, only rendering near or available stars (that might be visually distinct from the others in the background), would be much more practical.

The challenge isn't necessarily just in the rendering of those points though, it's also in the long range nav map system management required to accurately calculate the points of those stars relative to the player's current position. When you expand the search field in a memory array containing the universe's data, the delays start to compound... even with just a few hundred stars in the distance (which is what I originally tested with). There's a lot of presorting, preloading, precalculating, and real-time updating that's needed. One of the reasons I backed away from such a system was the hesitating and performance impacts managing it in real time caused when combined with all other game systems (cockpit, physics, graphics, AI, economic/market system, etc). It could work really well on its own in kind of a virtual planetarium scenery simulation, but there are so many other elements I want to devote resources to. It's kind of one of those 'on hold' type features that become more feasible as time goes on.

[Papa Mojo]

There are methods, but they don't involve trying to spot things visually out of the cockpit window. Clues can be provided, depending on your tolerance for spoilers.


New pilot question here on this: If we're not looking for spoilers (I know there's some on the strat guide for example that I've studiously avoided) are there methods for finding systems other then a systematic sector by sector looksie?

I haven't actually done too much exploring off the beaten path as of yet, simply because three to four hours of search fills up a gaming evening for me, and if there were certain clues to be looking for to help guide the way beyond spoilers or looking into the game files, that would be awesome.

[Vice]

New pilot question here on this: If we're not looking for spoilers (I know there's some on the strat guide for example that I've studiously avoided) are there methods for finding systems other then a systematic sector by sector looksie?

Yes, including fairly long range 'detection' and narrowing down.

[iBeej]

Originally posted by Vice

Are there methods for finding systems other then a systematic sector by sector looksie?

Yes, including fairly long range 'detection' and narrowing down.

No spoilers, please. . If you're saying there is a way to narrow down hidden systems, then that's good enough for me! I'm going to figure it out. I have some ideas to try out.

In other news, I found my second hidden spot and it was a gold mine. I'm now fully decked out with a Leviathan, full crew all at 100 skill and 100 loyalty, Banshee, Fusion, max experimental hyperdrive, stealth generator, Excaliburs, and what I believe are the max shield boosters, cannon relay system, and repair equipment.

I've got combat down and I'm lookin to hunt some Romulans...

[49rTbird]

WOW, Vice will have to make things tougher iBeej !!! :P:D:D:D:P:P:P

[Maarschalk]

LOL........Romulan hunting is a chalange of its own....when the hunting gets though the Womulan wuns like a wabbit.....:P:P:P:P

[iBeej]

Originally posted by thetiebers
WOW, Vice will have to make things tougher iBeej !!! :P:D:D:D:P:P:P

LOL!!! I'm game, as long as I have the tools to work at it. All he's gotta do is put most hidden systems off the galactic ecliptic. That will make it pretty damn hard. lol

[TGS]

If you did decide to remove the "backdrop" and actually set star's up to be approachable... wouldn't that mean you would essentially have to regenerate the universe file with a lot of random star's to "simulate" the night sky? Or would that be too resource intensive?

I'm not sure how the file generated universe would affect load up times or general performance. But generally it would be awesome if star's were "visible" at extreme distances (1000-2000 sectors?) in some form or another. That way if you went to the middle of nowhere so to speak and you were very observant you could pick up faint light from a distant star.