Toops posted:

Thanks dude! Nvidia's PhysX engine is fantastic, and comes native to Unity and UE. The guys that designed it are way smarter than I'll ever be, so I try to let PhysX do all the real work. I think of the ship as a simple sphere with mass, then just push on it with forces and twist it with torque. Contrast this with CryEngine which doesn't use PhysX, and CIG's ultima-fidelity-online approach, and tbh I'm impressed CIG's FM is as good as it is. It's immeasurably more complex to do individual thruster forces, and it's a wonder those ships fly at all. Literally every ship CIG makes needs its own custom physics-based flight model code, whereas I can use the same exact script, just tune the parameters, and get a completely different feeling ship based on those params alone. The time saved could be, oh, I don't know, spent working on the actual GAME?

The way I designed the flight model was just forces, torques, and per-axis dampening. When I pull in a new ship model, I just slap the FlightController on there and specify the forces for each direction of flight. Each direction also has a "damping" value, so (theoretically) you can "reduce" the net force in a given direction. Say if your main thrusters get damaged or something, you'd take forceDampeningZ from 1 to 2. Now you have half the force. I haven't found cause to use it yet, because although I register where ramming damage came from, the damage model doesn't care atm. All damage is created equal. If at some point if feels like that would add to the experience, I'll hook it up. But it's good enough for now just to have the hooks flapping around free. I try not to pre-solve problems, or add features "just because" unless the game feels like it needs it.

Then I jacked E:D's "flight assist" idea, so if you're moving but not thrusting in a given direction, the flight model applies a force opposite that direction of travel until you stop. So if you're strafing left, and you stop strafing, your ship will "strafe right" to counteract your velocity until it reaches 0. The only direction this isn't true for is forward/reverse. It feels really good to kind of "power coast" through space.

As for pitch/yaw/roll, same deal. There's a torque value per axis, and a "dampening" value. I set the torque values for each axis to limit rotation in certain directions (another Elite feature). You can pitch (rotate around x axis) much faster than you can yaw (rotate around z-axis). This naturally encourages you to roll your ship and pitch, because looking left and right feels too slow. But it also gives the ship a feeling of weight, and puts you in pilot-problem-solving mode, which I find more fun that twitch-turret-in-space mode. The net result feels way better to me than freelook noclip wallhax mode in SC.

The final bit was "boost," which is just as simple as adding an impulse force in the forward direction. In PhysX, you have several different force types. The one used for thrusters is just generic constant Force:

code:

rigidbody.AddForce(someValue, ForceMode.Force)

but you can add a "blast" of force (which handles jerk values) by:

code:

rigidbody.AddForce(someValue, ForceMode.Impulse)

PhysX handles the rest. No reason to re-invent the wheel.

You can also disable the "flight assist", and you'll get the "decoupled" or "KSP" mode, which is as simple as flipping a boolean to false, and the "anti-velocity" logic won't act on the body. The Neutron Paaarp Horn will temporarily disable people's flight assist if they're in the blast radius. So once again, I spent the time coding it this way to satisfy a gameplay requirement.

The only place things get hairy is working with rotation, really. Rotation is expressed as a Quaternion (4-dimensional projection of 3-dimensional rotation), which has literally no application to reality whatsoever, and so solutions aren't always intuitive.

Jesus loving effortpost man. I hope that wasn't boring.

orcinus posted:

Change log:
- added some pixels
- removed some pixels
- removed a chair
- added a door
- removed a door
- tripled the fidelity

Ash1138 posted:

Supposedly the online stuff utterly murders the framerate, so SQ42 should be smoother.

In any case if they did say that the PS4 could run it, then CIG has some of the dumbest motherfuckers running PR. They could have easily said that SQ42 runs on a [CPU and GPU roughly equal to a PS4] and it would've sounded a lot better.

Dusty Lens posted:

It pains me that Transverse didn't make it as it would be amazing to watch as it overtook Star Citizen.

But the short term hilarity was also good.

This is a dilemma.

Daztek posted:

So, what you're saying is if Star Citizen was made by a good development studio you'd get Elite: Dangerous.

Toops posted:

Correct.

Daztek posted:

It is a Derek joke, friend

Norefund14days posted:

SO Derek is actually Eight Ace....Eight Ace is Derek? Plot thickens...lol

Daztek posted:

I wanted to add some spinning pink elephants, but I forgot

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Transverse was such a horribly transparent money grab that it deserved to die. That said it had some interesting ideas. I particularly liked the concept of players sentience basically being a pile of data that could be dumped into whatever body they wanted and the bad guys being errant programs that were either faulty transfers or people dying or whatever the hell it was. PGI had no chance of pulling it off though, not with sentiment against them being so harsh.

I like to point to PGI during the Transverse days as a hint of what will happen to Roberts if he fucks of SC.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

To get an idea of what SQ42 will be like, go play Vanduul Swarm by yourself. It's far smoother and actually not a terrible experience.


Transverse was such a horribly transparent money grab that it deserved to die. That said it had some interesting ideas. I particularly liked the concept of players sentience basically being a pile of data that could be dumped into whatever body they wanted and the bad guys being errant programs that were either faulty transfers or people dying or whatever the hell it was. PGI had no chance of pulling it off though, not with sentiment against them being so harsh.

I like to point to PGI during the Transverse days as a hint of what will happen to Roberts if he fucks of SC.

Toops posted:

Lime Tonics posted:

We should start a death pool for which game, game studio and such die next. My bets on gears of war being a bad game by ranking, killing microsofts store.

I hope.

edit : Or rare dying from that sea pirate game they are making.

Daztek posted:

I wanted to add some spinning pink elephants, but I forgot

Toops posted:

Jesus loving effortpost man. I hope that wasn't boring.

Dusty Lens posted:

Yes. It was a horrible, cynical project and watching it get torn to shreds from all angles was extremely satisfying.

Beet Wagon posted:

To be fair I don't think they stood a chance of pulling it off even if the community had been behind them. At best it would have been Star Citizen Lite. Remember these are the guys whose biggest achievement is a gussied up arena shooter (and I say that as a fan of MWO) and even that was on the brink of disaster for most of its life.

Mr.Tophat posted:

This is truly excellent, well done! Enjoying this a whole lot!

A Neurotic Jew posted:

We got a greenscreen!

Last night about 300 viewers watched as I fooled around and configured our new gamestreaming setup here in the LA office. I don't know why 300 people were watching, but there you were.

Dusty Lens posted:

It pains me that Transverse didn't make it as it would be amazing to watch as it overtook Star Citizen.

But the short term hilarity was also good.

This is a dilemma.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

I wonder what percentage of this project would have been completed if they went with Unreal engine.

Like probably closer to 30% instead of 5%?

Berious posted:

I hope some of them are T posed!

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

And this Splorch, for maximum immersion in all dimensions (and orifices)


This will allow you to get comfortably seated, rest your hands behind your neck, and control your spacey boat through gentle rocking motions - all the while living out your not-at-all shameful fetisch of being infested by alien eggs.

Contact me for pricing details;

o7

Madcosby posted:

wtf is this thing. it keeps getting posted in here and all imagine is that it has something to do with something id rather not know

TacticalNecromancy posted:

I just spotted that ship's covered in airhorns. This is all pretty impressive so far! Makes my little AI voice thing look very amateurish. (Because it is.)


Is there a icon for when the PAAAAARP meter's being used?