croxis · March 24, 2015 00:04
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
 In irc there was talk about FTL and the assorted gameplay issues with each method. Then I started thinking about other design and story issues trillek is having. Then I started thinking about my space game I haven't touched in a while.

 A few years ago I saw a video similar to this one http://vimeo.com/40234826 and I was really struck by saturn's moons. Saturn has over 70 moons. That is a lot of surface area to explore and with assorted orbits around each moon, and saturn itself, that is a lot of gamespace. I also saw this picture http://misc.oranse.net/misc/wallpaper/earth.jpg taken from low Earth orbit and how amazing our planet looked from low orbit. I started designing a game with the setting of just our solar system that takes place during humanity's expansion into our solar system.

 What if we used that setting, or a similar one, instead? What if trillek takes place in one solar system?

 Using our solar system as a model: There are 4 terrestial planets. 4 gas giants. At least 4 dwarf planets and a number of bodies that are really close to being round. Over 150 moons. Thousands of asteroids. That is a lot of surface area. That is even more if you factor in the volume of gamespace of the various orbits around these bodies.

 It solves a number of technical, story, and gameplay issues.

 On the technical side it solves the problem of handling the precision issues of very large spaces. There are existing solutions, such as multiple levels of coordinate systems or using zones. For one star systems using just doubles is more than plenty. With doubles we have good precision out to about 1 ly which is enough space to have binary or trinary star systems. It also saves a lot of time working on a procedural planet system trying to make thousands of planets interesting. The problem with procedural systems is that after a while repetition starts to happen.

 Story wise it helps narrow things down. FTl was just discovered, but it isn't fast enough to get to another star in less than a few months/years. So the game starts ether with the homeworld expanding out, or a small fleet of colony ships arriving in a new system to set up shop, or just arrived and is only a few years old. This gives the player a nice starting point too with a purpose. It also solves the problem of how to populate the orbit of a space-opera level homeworld in a realistic manner with npcs by just not being there.

 Gameplay probably sees the most boons. One of the big issues is trying to find ways of keeping players/npcs close enough together to have at least some occasional contact, but still offer enough room to be off on ones own if they want. One solar system seems big enough for that. Plenty of space to set up a hidden shop in an asteroid but it is still possible for someone chacing you to figure out where you might be heading if you arnt careful. Trying to balance out in system vs intersystem ftl is no longer an issue. Moving planet/moon orbit positions now become more interesting gameplay, and develops a stronger identity with the local play space.

 I had more advantages/arguments but they have slipped my mind. I'll post them if I remember them.



 ...


 Chemical brought up in the dcpu thread another agrument for scaling down to one star system.

 There are already epic super large universe games. Elite, pioneer, oolite, space engine. There are also games that take place across the galaxy even though the game universe, while still large, isn't to scale. Freelancer, egosoft's x games, privateer, independence war. We also have new games on the horizon such as Star Citizen and the new Elite which will offer this scale as well. By going with the standard large universe Trillek doesn't really offer anything new to the table. This isn't a bad thing per say, but if I want to play that sort of game I have no reason to play Trillek. (And don't say "but the virtual cpu!" I can play existing programming games right now too. The dcpu or whatever we use doesn't offer that much new either, but this can be discussed in the dcpu threads).

 Scaling down the game to one seamless and detailed solar system is a different direction than every other game I can think of other than KSP and maybe orbiter. It invokes the feeling of Firefly. It isn't the first thing people image playing in a spaceship game, even myself, but the more I think about it the more this idea really grows on me.


 ....


 "One star system would definitely suffice for small-mid range servers, but what about bigger ones? It would get cramped pretty fast."

 I don't think it would actually. I was going to do an example of distance and realized that distance isn't what is important, but time. How long does it take to head to the station next door to grab a cup of sugar? If your ship is in low earth orbit and your friend's base is 2 minutes away, we can scale the game so it takes 2 minutes to go from leo to geo, leo or mars, or leo to the next star system. If anything the faster we balance the ships to go, the smaller space will feel.

 Here is my contrived distance example to illustrate how big space, just around earth, is.

 A server has 1000 players and each has a space station around an earth sized planet/moon at the same altitude as the iss. Being civilized folk they space their stations evenly. Each station is 42 kilometers apart. Assuming they are iss size these stations would probably be just another glittery star. The game can be balanced so that 42 kilometers can take 10 minutes to travel with dinky rcs thrusters to star trek impulse engines to going next door to get a cup of sugar in seconds. That is a balance question.

 Obviously players wont want to build their stations on the same orbit on the same planet. The iss is about 370 km in altitude. We can build stations up to geosync orbit (42,000 km in altitude) but still on the same orbital plane. Now we are talking about area so 1000 stations are 2,660 kmish apart. Add in any orbital tilt from equatorial to polar 1000 stations would be evenly spread out at 80500 kmish apart.

 Someone can make a game take place just around earth, up to geosync, scale the engine power down, and it can still feel just as big as Elite.

 Add in several more interesting planets with a dozen or so interesting moons that becomes a stupidly big amount of volume. Add in hundred if not thousands of uninteresting bodies and there are plenty of places to hide. Crowding isn't the issue. If anything the opposite is the problem, trying to find ways to make player interactions happen by getting people to cross paths.

 "I think it would be cool if FTL could be used to warp between star systems. I agree with scaling down our concept of how big the game world should be, but absolutely confining the whole game to one star system would kind of both put a damper on the spirit of having endless space to explore, as well as the game world being cramped after a while."

 This is a resolution and time issue. If planets and moons were mono-biome star-wars type planet where it doesn't matter where you land the body is more or less the same, then players will run out of new places to visit quickly. If "exploring" was scanning the entire planet for ores in one go in orbit, land at a spot, take pictures, then moving on to the next world while eating your freshly baked cookies then a solar system gets spent quick. On the other hand if planets and moon had interesting diversity, ore surveying scanners can only handle a few square kilometers at a time, and the really good treasure was really well hidden, so that it takes hours if not days of enjoyable gameplay to explore one world inside and out, then one large solar system is plenty.

 One of the issues that might be bugging people is the lack of diversity a one star system can have. In our case venus, earth, and mars are quite unique but past that its either ice or rock worlds. Many are still interesting in a mono-biome sense (io, encladus, titan), but the habitable zone is only so big. A many mooned giant in that zone would be the only way around that. But by making a binary star system there are now two habitable zones. The second star, a significant distance away, would also give a progression path for the player, especally if only one star system is "civilization" and the rest are wilderness or frontieer.

 If I redid my math right a doubel precision engine can handle mm accuracy out to about 0.25 lightyears, or 380 times the distance from the sun to pluto. A bindary, trinary, or even a small cluster "solar system" is still doable at realistic scales. If even a 1/2 scale is applied to celestial bodies (for reference ksp is 1/10) we increased the gamespace room by 8 times. 1/10 scale would be 1000 times -- or 250 light years of stuff that can now fit in our "real" 0.25 ly of space.

 I'm not really sure what your point djetty is and it is apparent you missed mine. So I'm going to get detailed in my thought process here.

 Note: I refer to infinite space alot. I don't mean a literal infinite gamespace, but a gamespace so large that one player might, MIGHT be able to visit it all, it at all.

 There are two more or less opposing factions here - explorationers and gameplayers. Pure exploration is basically the ungame -- there are no mechanics to prevent the player from zooming around the game space looking at things (see celestia or space engine). It is a one time consumption. Why go back after it has been experienced? It is also a more solo experience. The only way to satisfy exploration is to have new, interesting content. To make the content last longer there has to be an overwhelming amount of it (space stage of spore, elite/frontier), andor introduce some mechanics as a means of slowing the player down (noctis) andor make mechanics that encourage a player to return for a second look (ksp science system). Mechanics can also be used to encourage players to explore together. In the end the game mechanics serve exploration.

 It is basically a dungeon crawler.

 I don't think the game is about exploration. There is too much game people want in trillek from multi player, mining, pirating, trading, crafting, combat, programmable computers, base building, realistic economy, founding colonies, health, hunger and thirst (not that all should be in trillek, but this is what I have seen mentioned). I would go so far to say 85-99% of the player's gameplay time should be taking place on their ship - that is where most of the drama and player stories will take place. Any exploration serves the larger gameplay and the primary objective we established in this thread.

 To make Trillek a game the players have to be put into situations where there is conflict -- a problem for them to solve. There needs to be consequences for success, failure, or something in between. There needs to be rising and falling action. It has to make sense in single and multiplayer contexts. There is room for co-op in exploration games, otherwise there is all the reasons to avoid every other players/npc and little reason to expose yourself to them -- especially with "infinite" gamespace. Pirates bothering you? No reason to defend your space. Just pack up, fly to where no one else is, and reset up your things.

 In regards to bases:
 I'm not exactly sure how everyone having a base evolved from. If anything wanting a stationary base is opposite of wanting exploration. The player is establishing a permanent presence because that location is valuable to them to where they invest significant resources. Basically building a second ship with no engines. If the player heads off somewhere for an extended amount of time they have to invest even more to hide it well/defenses otherwise they might not possess it when they return. If anything I think most players shouldn't/wont have bases. They are limited to the very rich/successful.

 One of the paradoxes of game design is that to make a game more interesting is that player choice has to be limited. One idea is that a ship has only so many "slots" (arbitrary term, don't get caught up over it) in what it can do. I can have a general multipurpose ship that can do everything but not very efficiently or complex. A player can specialize their ship, such as install a workshop that can build a new engine from scratch, but such a workshop takes up more "slots." Or a player could install an advanced sickbay that can cure anything. But their ship can't have both. They either have to expand their ship and add more crew, or I suppose they can invest in a base or a second ship for the specialization.

 Limiting the space autoresolves so many mechanic issues. It makes the gamespace worth while. The assorted locations become significant because they are not anywhere else. One of the paradoxes of game design is that to make gameplay more interesting player choices have to be limited.

 So all the augments I have given for one solar system is because this is the context I put it in.

 "Just think about the simple planet count. 10 planets is generous for a solar system. Sure, there's plenty distance between them, but a big server would simply need more surface area than that. I'm sure most people would want to use planets as outposts or private bases, as opposed to sharing a planet with the entire server. With such a limit for planets, the game would practically be mostly terrestrial with a few intermissions of flying through space just to get to another planet."

 Firefly didn't take place in any solar system. It took place in an interesting one that serves the purpose of its narrative. When a player clicks "new game -- random" they arnt put into any solar system, but an interesting one that serves the gameplay.

 I don't think you realize how much surface area is on just one to scale celestial body. I don't know what player ranges you are thinking of that constitutes a small/medium server vs a large one. But if the largest server was the size of eve, and each of the 300,000 players had a base 1 square km in size on this earthsized moon, thats about 509 million square km of untouched surface area.

 Who said anything about just planets? Our solar system has 4 terrestrial planets, 4 gas giants (bases floating in the atmosphere? eh its a stretch), 5-6 terrestrial dwarf planets. 190 moons (granted many are just captured asteroids). Hundereds of thousands of asteroids. Any made up one, be it hand crafted or a customizable map generator, can be made much larger, or much smaller. More diverse, or less diverse.

 "I agree that planets should be more detailed, but like I said above, it's a space game. With huge, complex ships and a high capacity for exploring space and combatting other ships, I don't think we should count on players wanting to roam around on a desolate space rock for the majority of the game. One of the biggest appeals of the game is the idea of discovering new lands that you can use just for yourself, and I honestly think having the game focus on sharing planets and diplomacy and city construction is kind of boring and largely wastes the idea of having insanely customizable ships intended for exploring."

 It is a space game. But were you expecting exploration to take place at? What do you image exploration plays like? Discovering new lands you can use for yourself is find and dandy, but think about this: why would someone join a large server? Because they want to play with people.

 My hunch is that you will find crazy ship customization just as boring as city construction. What will make the game interesting is the problem solving you do on your ship and with your ship. Sure that can be done with "infinite space" but it is a heck of a lot more achievable to go smaller for a community team making a compelling single and multiplayer game.
	In irc there was talk about FTL and the assorted gameplay issues with each method. Then I started thinking about other design and story issues trillek is having. Then I started thinking about my space game I haven't touched in a while.

	A few years ago I saw a video similar to this one http://vimeo.com/40234826 and I was really struck by saturn's moons. Saturn has over 70 moons. That is a lot of surface area to explore and with assorted orbits around each moon, and saturn itself, that is a lot of gamespace. I also saw this picture http://misc.oranse.net/misc/wallpaper/earth.jpg taken from low Earth orbit and how amazing our planet looked from low orbit. I started designing a game with the setting of just our solar system that takes place during humanity's expansion into our solar system.

	What if we used that setting, or a similar one, instead? What if trillek takes place in one solar system?

	Using our solar system as a model: There are 4 terrestial planets. 4 gas giants. At least 4 dwarf planets and a number of bodies that are really close to being round. Over 150 moons. Thousands of asteroids. That is a lot of surface area. That is even more if you factor in the volume of gamespace of the various orbits around these bodies.

	It solves a number of technical, story, and gameplay issues.

	On the technical side it solves the problem of handling the precision issues of very large spaces. There are existing solutions, such as multiple levels of coordinate systems or using zones. For one star systems using just doubles is more than plenty. With doubles we have good precision out to about 1 ly which is enough space to have binary or trinary star systems. It also saves a lot of time working on a procedural planet system trying to make thousands of planets interesting. The problem with procedural systems is that after a while repetition starts to happen.

	Story wise it helps narrow things down. FTl was just discovered, but it isn't fast enough to get to another star in less than a few months/years. So the game starts ether with the homeworld expanding out, or a small fleet of colony ships arriving in a new system to set up shop, or just arrived and is only a few years old. This gives the player a nice starting point too with a purpose. It also solves the problem of how to populate the orbit of a space-opera level homeworld in a realistic manner with npcs by just not being there.

	Gameplay probably sees the most boons. One of the big issues is trying to find ways of keeping players/npcs close enough together to have at least some occasional contact, but still offer enough room to be off on ones own if they want. One solar system seems big enough for that. Plenty of space to set up a hidden shop in an asteroid but it is still possible for someone chacing you to figure out where you might be heading if you arnt careful. Trying to balance out in system vs intersystem ftl is no longer an issue. Moving planet/moon orbit positions now become more interesting gameplay, and develops a stronger identity with the local play space.

	I had more advantages/arguments but they have slipped my mind. I'll post them if I remember them.



	...


	Chemical brought up in the dcpu thread another agrument for scaling down to one star system.

	There are already epic super large universe games. Elite, pioneer, oolite, space engine. There are also games that take place across the galaxy even though the game universe, while still large, isn't to scale. Freelancer, egosoft's x games, privateer, independence war. We also have new games on the horizon such as Star Citizen and the new Elite which will offer this scale as well. By going with the standard large universe Trillek doesn't really offer anything new to the table. This isn't a bad thing per say, but if I want to play that sort of game I have no reason to play Trillek. (And don't say "but the virtual cpu!" I can play existing programming games right now too. The dcpu or whatever we use doesn't offer that much new either, but this can be discussed in the dcpu threads).

	Scaling down the game to one seamless and detailed solar system is a different direction than every other game I can think of other than KSP and maybe orbiter. It invokes the feeling of Firefly. It isn't the first thing people image playing in a spaceship game, even myself, but the more I think about it the more this idea really grows on me.


	....


	"One star system would definitely suffice for small-mid range servers, but what about bigger ones? It would get cramped pretty fast."

	I don't think it would actually. I was going to do an example of distance and realized that distance isn't what is important, but time. How long does it take to head to the station next door to grab a cup of sugar? If your ship is in low earth orbit and your friend's base is 2 minutes away, we can scale the game so it takes 2 minutes to go from leo to geo, leo or mars, or leo to the next star system. If anything the faster we balance the ships to go, the smaller space will feel.

	Here is my contrived distance example to illustrate how big space, just around earth, is.

	A server has 1000 players and each has a space station around an earth sized planet/moon at the same altitude as the iss. Being civilized folk they space their stations evenly. Each station is 42 kilometers apart. Assuming they are iss size these stations would probably be just another glittery star. The game can be balanced so that 42 kilometers can take 10 minutes to travel with dinky rcs thrusters to star trek impulse engines to going next door to get a cup of sugar in seconds. That is a balance question.

	Obviously players wont want to build their stations on the same orbit on the same planet. The iss is about 370 km in altitude. We can build stations up to geosync orbit (42,000 km in altitude) but still on the same orbital plane. Now we are talking about area so 1000 stations are 2,660 kmish apart. Add in any orbital tilt from equatorial to polar 1000 stations would be evenly spread out at 80500 kmish apart.

	Someone can make a game take place just around earth, up to geosync, scale the engine power down, and it can still feel just as big as Elite.

	Add in several more interesting planets with a dozen or so interesting moons that becomes a stupidly big amount of volume. Add in hundred if not thousands of uninteresting bodies and there are plenty of places to hide. Crowding isn't the issue. If anything the opposite is the problem, trying to find ways to make player interactions happen by getting people to cross paths.

	"I think it would be cool if FTL could be used to warp between star systems. I agree with scaling down our concept of how big the game world should be, but absolutely confining the whole game to one star system would kind of both put a damper on the spirit of having endless space to explore, as well as the game world being cramped after a while."

	This is a resolution and time issue. If planets and moons were mono-biome star-wars type planet where it doesn't matter where you land the body is more or less the same, then players will run out of new places to visit quickly. If "exploring" was scanning the entire planet for ores in one go in orbit, land at a spot, take pictures, then moving on to the next world while eating your freshly baked cookies then a solar system gets spent quick. On the other hand if planets and moon had interesting diversity, ore surveying scanners can only handle a few square kilometers at a time, and the really good treasure was really well hidden, so that it takes hours if not days of enjoyable gameplay to explore one world inside and out, then one large solar system is plenty.

	One of the issues that might be bugging people is the lack of diversity a one star system can have. In our case venus, earth, and mars are quite unique but past that its either ice or rock worlds. Many are still interesting in a mono-biome sense (io, encladus, titan), but the habitable zone is only so big. A many mooned giant in that zone would be the only way around that. But by making a binary star system there are now two habitable zones. The second star, a significant distance away, would also give a progression path for the player, especally if only one star system is "civilization" and the rest are wilderness or frontieer.

	If I redid my math right a doubel precision engine can handle mm accuracy out to about 0.25 lightyears, or 380 times the distance from the sun to pluto. A bindary, trinary, or even a small cluster "solar system" is still doable at realistic scales. If even a 1/2 scale is applied to celestial bodies (for reference ksp is 1/10) we increased the gamespace room by 8 times. 1/10 scale would be 1000 times -- or 250 light years of stuff that can now fit in our "real" 0.25 ly of space.

	I'm not really sure what your point djetty is and it is apparent you missed mine. So I'm going to get detailed in my thought process here.

	Note: I refer to infinite space alot. I don't mean a literal infinite gamespace, but a gamespace so large that one player might, MIGHT be able to visit it all, it at all.

	There are two more or less opposing factions here - explorationers and gameplayers. Pure exploration is basically the ungame -- there are no mechanics to prevent the player from zooming around the game space looking at things (see celestia or space engine). It is a one time consumption. Why go back after it has been experienced? It is also a more solo experience. The only way to satisfy exploration is to have new, interesting content. To make the content last longer there has to be an overwhelming amount of it (space stage of spore, elite/frontier), andor introduce some mechanics as a means of slowing the player down (noctis) andor make mechanics that encourage a player to return for a second look (ksp science system). Mechanics can also be used to encourage players to explore together. In the end the game mechanics serve exploration.

	It is basically a dungeon crawler.

	I don't think the game is about exploration. There is too much game people want in trillek from multi player, mining, pirating, trading, crafting, combat, programmable computers, base building, realistic economy, founding colonies, health, hunger and thirst (not that all should be in trillek, but this is what I have seen mentioned). I would go so far to say 85-99% of the player's gameplay time should be taking place on their ship - that is where most of the drama and player stories will take place. Any exploration serves the larger gameplay and the primary objective we established in this thread.

	To make Trillek a game the players have to be put into situations where there is conflict -- a problem for them to solve. There needs to be consequences for success, failure, or something in between. There needs to be rising and falling action. It has to make sense in single and multiplayer contexts. There is room for co-op in exploration games, otherwise there is all the reasons to avoid every other players/npc and little reason to expose yourself to them -- especially with "infinite" gamespace. Pirates bothering you? No reason to defend your space. Just pack up, fly to where no one else is, and reset up your things.

	In regards to bases:
	I'm not exactly sure how everyone having a base evolved from. If anything wanting a stationary base is opposite of wanting exploration. The player is establishing a permanent presence because that location is valuable to them to where they invest significant resources. Basically building a second ship with no engines. If the player heads off somewhere for an extended amount of time they have to invest even more to hide it well/defenses otherwise they might not possess it when they return. If anything I think most players shouldn't/wont have bases. They are limited to the very rich/successful.

	One of the paradoxes of game design is that to make a game more interesting is that player choice has to be limited. One idea is that a ship has only so many "slots" (arbitrary term, don't get caught up over it) in what it can do. I can have a general multipurpose ship that can do everything but not very efficiently or complex. A player can specialize their ship, such as install a workshop that can build a new engine from scratch, but such a workshop takes up more "slots." Or a player could install an advanced sickbay that can cure anything. But their ship can't have both. They either have to expand their ship and add more crew, or I suppose they can invest in a base or a second ship for the specialization.

	Limiting the space autoresolves so many mechanic issues. It makes the gamespace worth while. The assorted locations become significant because they are not anywhere else. One of the paradoxes of game design is that to make gameplay more interesting player choices have to be limited.

	So all the augments I have given for one solar system is because this is the context I put it in.

	"Just think about the simple planet count. 10 planets is generous for a solar system. Sure, there's plenty distance between them, but a big server would simply need more surface area than that. I'm sure most people would want to use planets as outposts or private bases, as opposed to sharing a planet with the entire server. With such a limit for planets, the game would practically be mostly terrestrial with a few intermissions of flying through space just to get to another planet."

	Firefly didn't take place in any solar system. It took place in an interesting one that serves the purpose of its narrative. When a player clicks "new game -- random" they arnt put into any solar system, but an interesting one that serves the gameplay.

	I don't think you realize how much surface area is on just one to scale celestial body. I don't know what player ranges you are thinking of that constitutes a small/medium server vs a large one. But if the largest server was the size of eve, and each of the 300,000 players had a base 1 square km in size on this earthsized moon, thats about 509 million square km of untouched surface area.

	Who said anything about just planets? Our solar system has 4 terrestrial planets, 4 gas giants (bases floating in the atmosphere? eh its a stretch), 5-6 terrestrial dwarf planets. 190 moons (granted many are just captured asteroids). Hundereds of thousands of asteroids. Any made up one, be it hand crafted or a customizable map generator, can be made much larger, or much smaller. More diverse, or less diverse.

	"I agree that planets should be more detailed, but like I said above, it's a space game. With huge, complex ships and a high capacity for exploring space and combatting other ships, I don't think we should count on players wanting to roam around on a desolate space rock for the majority of the game. One of the biggest appeals of the game is the idea of discovering new lands that you can use just for yourself, and I honestly think having the game focus on sharing planets and diplomacy and city construction is kind of boring and largely wastes the idea of having insanely customizable ships intended for exploring."

	It is a space game. But were you expecting exploration to take place at? What do you image exploration plays like? Discovering new lands you can use for yourself is find and dandy, but think about this: why would someone join a large server? Because they want to play with people.

	My hunch is that you will find crazy ship customization just as boring as city construction. What will make the game interesting is the problem solving you do on your ship and with your ship. Sure that can be done with "infinite space" but it is a heck of a lot more achievable to go smaller for a community team making a compelling single and multiplayer game.