Pages: [1] 2 :: one page |
|
Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
7
|
Posted - 2014.11.19 23:35:14 -
[1] - Quote
Summary of complimentary changes to make manual control that much more awesomer
Several of these were already mentioned by others in the devblog thread:
1- Add a camera reference that provides first person tracking of sorts (simply seeing in front of the ship without having to fiddle with the camera) 2- Some form of orientation reference when zoomed out, either on the tactical or a mini hud/zoom-in ship window, or both 3- Decouple an orientation for the ship so that there is no up or preferred orientation 4- Add two additional key-maps for roll (most joysticks allow you to twist for yaw control, while left and right determine roll) 5- Allow sliders or other inputs to determine speed (not sure if + - can be mapped to a joystick now or the mouse wheel) 6- Toggle mouse override hotkey option for fine mouse adjustments as needed |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
7
|
Posted - 2014.11.19 23:35:56 -
[2] - Quote
reserved for additional feature recommendations.... |
Captain Davison
Malachi Keep Detachments
1
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 02:06:57 -
[3] - Quote
'Spinal' Guns in Light/Medium/Heavy variants for ships up to Battlecruiser size, with a fixed 45-90 degree cone of fire dead ahead. Implement a 'line up on target' command to the piloting AI, and allow pilots to manually fire in manual mode. These guns have higher alpha DPS, but more chance of missing the target the larger your ship is. Could give the players a chance to punch above their weight in certain situations, but requires them to have actual skills in piloting their ships to take advantage of these hard to use weapons. |
FireFrenzy
Satan's Unicorns
82
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 09:52:23 -
[4] - Quote
The megathron and the naga could be designed specifically for a spine mounted railgun... |
James Baboli
Ferrous Infernum
274
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 09:54:50 -
[5] - Quote
FireFrenzy wrote:The megathron and the naga could be designed specifically for a spine mounted railgun... And if the rokh isn't just a big barrel shroud already, it would make a great one if we're making spinal the new meta.
Making battleships worth the warp
Tech 3 battleships.
Moar battleships
|
James Baboli
Ferrous Infernum
274
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 09:58:34 -
[6] - Quote
The space sails on minmatar hulls turn out to be functional deflection field generators and shots which would have otherwise hit them along these vectors end up, well, deflected.
More seriously, Add an option for locked targets to display a 1 tick cone of where they can be in the next second baring module activation/shutdown
Making battleships worth the warp
Tech 3 battleships.
Moar battleships
|
Ix Method
Brutor Tribe Minmatar Republic
317
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 09:59:52 -
[7] - Quote
is allowing you to choose the direction of your orbit a thing? Test server too complicated, dunno. If not, it utterly should be.
Travelling at the speed of love.
|
James Baboli
Ferrous Infernum
274
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 10:03:59 -
[8] - Quote
Ix Method wrote:is allowing you to choose the direction of your orbit a thing? Test server too complicated, dunno. If not, it utterly should be. not yet, except as the annoying work around of manually orbiting, which mostly doesn't respond quite well enough IMO.
Making battleships worth the warp
Tech 3 battleships.
Moar battleships
|
Adrie Atticus
Shadows of Rebellion The Bastion
559
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 11:51:34 -
[9] - Quote
So you want to make large arties/rails/beams track like small weapon systems?
Stop destroying the game with your fixation on turning eve into a twitch-based first person shooter. |
TheExtruder
Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic
22
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 13:06:33 -
[10] - Quote
For example if you click 'orbit 500m' on your enemy. There should be a camera you can switch to when you are manually controlling so that you can manually follow a preset/charted course. Which means there needs to be markers on the screen that you can follow. The question is what would be the advantage of taking manual control on a precharted course? There should be a bonus involved in taking manual control, some kind of advantage one can gain over the opponent for all that trouble and extra work. Im thinking an agility bonus or even an ability to make short bursts forward to make it easier for you to stay on course while also being able to accelerate from 0-1000m/s faster than you would on 'autopilot' |
|
Jur Tissant
The TERRA Guardians of Serenity
325
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 13:40:14 -
[11] - Quote
Let's remember what EVE is, it's not a first person flight sim, the WASD controls are fixing a fairly terrible manual movement system but shouldn't be taken to that much depth. That said, cockpit view might be a cool gimmick for pretty views... |
Adrie Atticus
Shadows of Rebellion The Bastion
559
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 14:39:10 -
[12] - Quote
Jur Tissant wrote:Let's remember what EVE is, it's not a first person flight sim, the WASD controls are fixing a fairly terrible manual movement system but shouldn't be taken to that much depth. That said, cockpit view might be a cool gimmick for pretty views...
You're not in a cockpit when you fly, you're in a pod at the middle of the ship surrounded by loads of wires with a simulated space being fed into your brain. |
Ix Method
Brutor Tribe Minmatar Republic
318
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 15:07:44 -
[13] - Quote
TheExtruder wrote:The question is what would be the advantage of taking manual control on a precharted course? There should be a bonus involved in taking manual control, some kind of advantage one can gain over the opponent for all that trouble and extra work. Im thinking an agility bonus or even an ability to make short bursts forward to make it easier for you to stay on course while also being able to accelerate from 0-1000m/s faster than you would on 'autopilot' Colour me genuinely curious, why do you play Eve? All your suggestions seem to involve completely changing fundamental parts the game, guess I'm wondering why you don't play something else instead?
Travelling at the speed of love.
|
MidnightWyvern
Night Theifs DamnedNation
70
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 15:16:58 -
[14] - Quote
Harry Saq wrote:Summary of complimentary changes to make manual control that much more awesomer
Several of these were already mentioned by others in the devblog thread:
1- Add a camera reference that provides first person tracking of sorts (simply seeing in front of the ship without having to fiddle with the camera) 2- Some form of orientation reference when zoomed out, either on the tactical or a mini hud/zoom-in ship window, or both 3- Decouple an orientation for the ship so that there is no up or preferred orientation 4- Add two additional key-maps for roll (most joysticks allow you to twist for yaw control, while left and right determine roll) 5- Allow sliders or other inputs to determine speed (not sure if + - can be mapped to a joystick now or the mouse wheel) 6- Toggle mouse override hotkey option for fine mouse adjustments as needed While I support ideas like the OP, some of the replies on this one are getting a bit too outlandish.
Part of why some people are making a fuss over adding the keyboard directional controls is because they fear EVE will eventually evolve into some of what's being posted here with the idea of manual weapon aiming and "spinal railguns" and other such things.
EVE is a point-and-click game, yes, but I and many others believe it should stay that way. I like changes such as the ones proposed in the OP because they firmly establish manual operation as an alternative to clicking buttons, but still mean that someone who clicks buttons isn't left at a disadvantage.
The idea here - as it appears to be from what we've seen so far - is to provide players with more options for how to play EVE, not force a change in how EVE is played.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=eaUaJUhTZfw#t=148s
An excellent example of why pod killmails are the best feature to be implemented in EVE Online since warping at zero.
|
TheExtruder
Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic
23
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 16:31:46 -
[15] - Quote
Ix Method wrote:TheExtruder wrote:The question is what would be the advantage of taking manual control on a precharted course? There should be a bonus involved in taking manual control, some kind of advantage one can gain over the opponent for all that trouble and extra work. Im thinking an agility bonus or even an ability to make short bursts forward to make it easier for you to stay on course while also being able to accelerate from 0-1000m/s faster than you would on 'autopilot' Colour me genuinely curious, why do you play Eve? All your suggestions seem to involve completely changing fundamental parts the game, guess I'm wondering why you don't play something else instead?
trolling other trolls on the forums how original. Quick gather my tears! |
Ix Method
Brutor Tribe Minmatar Republic
319
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 17:00:33 -
[16] - Quote
Have no idea who you are, just noticed you taking it to people advocating roaming in the Dojos thread, suggesting safe overheating and magic buffs for manual piloting.
You seem to be for a game with instanced, twitch-ie dogfighting and safeguards to stop you ******* up too much, just seems an odd fit. Hence the question
Travelling at the speed of love.
|
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.11.20 20:45:49 -
[17] - Quote
I agree that alot of the manual features eluded to here would add some spice, but in terms of baby steps, the changes I captured were trying to keep in spirit with what eve is now, and just make the joystick control more relevant, and actually easier. Having the ship want to rotate to a set position (when at rest and it settles back to the system orientation) actually makes minor navigation quite annoying. I spend most my time zoomed out, and never really have situational awareness of my direction at any given time (unless ofcourse I am aligning for the gtfo, or trying to kite of course).
The changes mentioned above have short term changes in mind, that will allow manual control making sense and getting us from a submarine captain mentality, to a space ship captain mentality.
However, all that being said, the add-in commentary regarding manual spine like weapons are not game breaking right now anyway, they are just different variations on what bombs are now. A bomb goes in a straight line vetor out the front of a ship and blows up at a range without ever locking or tracking. No reason not to have a variety of those types of weapons in the form of the weapons types we use now (projectiles hybrids, lasers, missiles). I welcome a low transversal ship approaching me as a nice juicy target for my drones or targeting (requires locking on) weapons ;). But at the same time would find it equally compelling to try and line up and fire manually at folks. It wouldn't be a first person shooter, just a different type of weapon and another element to game play like the stealth bomber is now.
....and finally, yes, we are in pods in the belly of the ship (even though frigs and other ships clearly have cockpits...derp) and are fed neural data to more effectively control our minimized crews. So all perspectives would follow that they are from the external camera or fixed cameras on the ship to provide reference for the pod pilot. There is no reason this can't be mega-awesome and add all kinds of variety to the game for future scope features, that allow for the point and click commander as well as the manual control pilots among us (Ryker did use the Enterprise as a crop duster for the love of God ;) ). |
TheExtruder
Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic
23
|
Posted - 2014.11.22 16:34:02 -
[18] - Quote
The nr1 issue with WASD manual control is for it to give the desired effect (third person control) you need to be zoomed in on your ship quite a lot, which means you will be at a big disadvantage in terms of situational awareness and having a birds view of the battlefield (which is like 90% of the time i spend zoomed out)
Idea: if we have the ability to assign destinations to each WASD button then that means we can in our minds align ourselves or warp to a preassigned destination. For example if i assign button A to planet5 and then i click A once which means 'align to planet5'. If i tap A twice then it means 'warp to planet5'
While this idea removes complete manual control (if you decide to assign the buttons to specific destinations), it gives a nice semi manual control which people can easily understand. I guess thats thw beauty of WASD that its instinctual and natural use for navigation, but who says it HAS to be 100% manual control, are there any reasons we shouldnt be able to assign specifix destinations to those buttons? It would help the pvp vets to appreciate the manual control and i have doubt it will eventually develop into a pretty cool and useful mechanic |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.11.26 18:50:04 -
[19] - Quote
TheExtruder wrote:The nr1 issue with WASD manual control is for it to give the desired effect (third person control) you need to be zoomed in on your ship quite a lot, which means you will be at a big disadvantage in terms of situational awareness and having a birds view of the battlefield (which is like 90% of the time i spend zoomed out) I agree for the most part, however, that is the purpose of main point number 2 in the OP. Where someone is zoomed out scoping the battlefield (well, fighting grid to be accurate) you are more focused on macro-movements and will more likely orbit, align to, or even use manual but much less liberally to make adjustments to obits etc. In cases where you need to see the bigger picture, such as FC's or anchors you have an alt providing a cloaked perched set of eyeballs anyway.
Off-Topic Warning That being said, it is nice that CCP acknowledged our use of multiple accounts and supported it, but I do think all mechanics that are negated and or done easier with multiple accounts are bad mechanics and should be moved away from. I personally have three accounts and feel to be any good at anything you absolutely need multiple accounts. In arguing for removing clone costs, one of the devs said mechanics that provide a choice that really isn't a choice (i.e. there is no benefit to not choosing one over the other, and you pretty much only ever want to pick a certain one) is a bad mechanic and should be removed or changed. I feel very similarly if not the exact same regarding multiple accounts. Most of what I do with alts can be achieved through other means (remote surveillance probes for cloaky eyes/scout, NPC hired help or remote control ships for moving stuff etc). All mechanics we use to be better while using multiple accounts (that aren't force multipliers) could be made irrelevant by new or modifications to mechanics.
The reason I think alot of people are resistant to the idea of a first person perspective is that EVE is more about space commandering, over fighter pilot jockey type fighting (in most cases, where fast tackle frigates and bombers would be examples of exceptions). I agree that for me, what makes EVE unique and always pulls me back, is that I am not just a space pilot, but a commander of an empire as big or small as I make it. My alts represents extensions of that empire. Any implementation of WSAD would need to keep this in mind, and I think the summary captured does this.
TheExtruder wrote:Idea: if we have the ability to assign destinations to each WASD button then that means we can quickly align ourselves or warp to a preassigned destination. For example if i assign button A to planet5 and then i click A once which means 'align to planet5'. If i tap A twice then it means 'warp to planet5'
Keymapping can be pretty much done according to user preference anyway, and CCP would just be unlocking/creating the ability and setting default keys, so they don't have to be WSAD. I say that so it is clear they are mutually exclusive control mechanisms. I think this would be another feature entirely where essentially what you are really doing is creating hot keys for how we already navigate (i.e. right click - align, orbit, or keep at range etc). So perhaps adding a menu option to hotkey the action when right clicking might be a simple way to implement it, but I think that is an entirely different feature, and deserves its own topic. I like the idea by the way. |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.11.28 23:07:23 -
[20] - Quote
Here is the feature demonstrated by JonnyPew...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlgTZQtwpQQ
I stand by the recommended features to make this better over time... |
|
Adrie Atticus
Shadows of Rebellion The Bastion
588
|
Posted - 2014.11.29 16:34:41 -
[21] - Quote
To make manual control better or to make Eve Online better? |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.11.30 22:14:10 -
[22] - Quote
Both |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.12.01 17:06:27 -
[23] - Quote
More specifically, I just spent most the weekend in big fleets where I was zoomed way out across three toons relying on orbit, keep at range, and alignment broadcasts for any and all navigation. So in terms of line member type piloting in big fleets sucking down 10% TIDI, the current navigation is adequate in that specific circumstance (I was in battleships).
My third toon however was scouting in various areas in a cloaky frig, and also used the same navigation, however there were several close calls where I had to double click here there and everywhere to get out of bubbles while avoiding incoming inties burning at my last blip before I cloaked. In this circumstance it would have been way more immersive for both myself and the pursuers I am sure, if we had more direct control. In those circumstances I find myself really disconnected from the ship and I am more fighting the navigation mechanics to get to where I can warp. I don't think about orientation, or the 3D environment around me really, just, am I aligned and how quickly can I warp to a perch or a celestial so I can go back to being zoomed out and scoping the big picture. That entire sequence presents an opportunity to expand that particular game experience with the new mechanics. The game isn't fundamentally changing, just getting more interesting and immersive for moments that require it.
I will say, it would be pretty frustrating trying to fly a MWD tackler in a massive fight in 10% TIDI, if you just went on manual, but maybe not. As long as the current mechanics are there you can go back and forth between orbiting, keeping at range, and aligning to manual inputs and actual ship orientation (given the changes recommended, not with just the WSAD only change). |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
9
|
Posted - 2014.12.08 16:33:19 -
[24] - Quote
1 more day until the release...curious what the feedback is going to be, and if this feature will be lost in all the new UI stuff, or enhanced a bit more by it.
Be sure to post feedback once you have tried it! |
TheExtruder
Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic
36
|
Posted - 2014.12.08 19:41:43 -
[25] - Quote
i think manual control has a lot of potential, and i am glad ccp is exploring the possibilities. its such a instinctual way for people to navigate in a game.
idea:
what if you did have 100% manual control and you set a goal for youself to align toward something (so you are ready to warp out if some frigate suddenly charges at you).
So after having just warped in, you quickly look around for whatever you can align to that is closest to the nose of your ship (so that you dont have to take as much time to turn your ship).
What im suggesting is an audio/visual based guidence system that will signal you with beeping sounds or whatever (while you are turning) that you are getting closer and closer to where you want the nose of the ship to be, once you are somewhat facing the right direction the ship will automatically adjust itself so that you are in 100% alignment toward your goal destination (an auto correction system takes over).
how does eve know where your goal is to go? you will have to pre-assign certain destinations (plants, stations, gates) to certain hotkey buttons, and then when you click on button A for example then that means your goal is to go to planet5 (if thats the destination you assigned button A to) |
TheExtruder
Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic
36
|
Posted - 2014.12.09 12:09:31 -
[26] - Quote
Probably the biggest problem with manual control is that there is no sense of constraints/boundaries b3cause there is no clear road, and roads have boundaries.
Idea:
What im suggesting is basically some sort of road which is only viewable on a pilots UI (it doesnt really exist and it is customizable by the pilot depending on his intensions and style of pvp.
A "holographic visual roadmap" will have to exist so that you know you are slowly steering your ship in the right direction (like a big truck on the highway or a bus is constantly checking if he is on course or not while he is slowly adjusting the direction)
Currently you have two main points of comparison, nose of the ship and the destination you are trying to point the nose toward, i think pilots will ultimately need another source of comparison (you need more than two points of comparison, the nose of the ship, the destination and everything in between). |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
10
|
Posted - 2014.12.09 18:08:56 -
[27] - Quote
So like a forward (or rather directional) flight track vector?
Something like this?: http://www.jmargolin.com/svr/auvsi_answer_files/image026.jpg
That may be an offshoot of item number 2, but where is is a projected arrow that curves according to the user's input?: 2- Some form of orientation reference when zoomed out, either on the tactical or a mini hud/zoom-in ship window, or both
That may be something interesting as part of the tactical overlay, and maybe like a vector layer that is optional. |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus Get Off My Lawn
10
|
Posted - 2015.01.06 17:59:10 -
[28] - Quote
Now that this feature has been in awhile, what are everybody's thoughts on it? Has anyone been using it really, or was it just simply a "wow, look at how I can move my ship", then back to the same old same old? Anybody find any novel uses for it? |
Liet Ormand
Center for Advanced Studies Gallente Federation
18
|
Posted - 2015.01.07 17:49:30 -
[29] - Quote
Quote:Let's remember what EVE is, it's not a first person flight sim, the WASD controls are fixing a fairly terrible manual movement system but shouldn't be taken to that much depth. That said, cockpit view might be a cool gimmick for pretty views...
I want to point something out for purposes of this discussion: What's stated in the quote above is probably the technical limit of what Eve could be changed to do. IE, it's actually impossible to make Eve into a first person space combat sim even if you made all the changes OP suggests and changed the controls. Here's why... please bear with my wall of text, I'll put a Tl, DR; down at the bottom.
In any MMO, you have to achieve several goals if you want to keep getting subscription money. The game has to be (obviously) fun and interesting. It also has to handle degraded network conditions well - if your game gets unplayable when the Internet glitches, then you're going to have a lot of unhappy people because the Internet isn't reliable and fast world-wide yet. The game has to be fair, it has to be designed to avoid cheating. Usually this means server-mediated architecture... if you permit decisions made on the client to determine anything non cosmetic, the game can be exploited. So the server does everything... it works like a GM in tabletop gaming. Clients tell the server what they want to do, the server tells them whether they can do it.
Directly opposed to that last one is the need to keep server hardware and software needs under some reasonable cost limit. Since this is a subscription game, at the very least the server must not cost more per month than monthly revenue. Usually you want it to cost much, much less. Ideally you don't even want multiple shards because each copy of the server hardware costs a lot of $$. The server needs a lot of horsepower because it's doing everything for the game multiplied by the number of players online.
If you think about the standard MMO like WoW in this sort of way, you see how much work the server has to do for every single character... the client says "I want to run SE at full speed" and the server has to figure out whether the client collides with a wall or if there's a door, whether moving that way will aggro a monster, whether the player can move at all, and if he's escaping from a fight at what point he actually moves so it can determine how much damage he takes.
MMOs based in that kind of world have to do lots of calculations to simulate a 3d world around a player. This is actually why you don't see any MMOs that simulate combat on a twitch level... the calculations involved to determine if a player hit something based on their body position and arm swing are even worse than basic 3d stuff, they really can only be done fast enough for single player games. Even running WoW on a supercomputer wouldn't be enough. All these calculations have to be done in real time so the player doesn't notice a lag or worse lose a fight because the server didn't raise his shield fast enough.
So.. back to Eve. Eve amazingly works even on poor net connections, there's not a lot of advantage to having an extra fast net connection, everyone is on one shard... in short, it does some apparently impossible things for an MMO. How?
If you like you can read the following:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132563/infinite_space_an_argument_for_.php
..for (somewhat dated) information on Eve's server architecture. The primary thing I want to note here is that Eve is always pushing the boundaries of the hardware in the server; There is no massive surplus of server memory/CPU/storage available for extra work, CCP puts it all out there and barely keeps ahead of the upgrades required by new code and new users.
I want to give an explanation here of why FPS type gaming in the Eve client/server model wouldn't work, but it would take pages. So I'm just going to summarize very quickly and hopefully you'll understand.
Eve is able to handle more people on one shard than any other MMO I'm aware while keeping their experience not only good but responsive and lag free using some smart design decisions. Many of these revolve around designing to keep the server's workload to a minimum. A big part of this is avoiding collision detection where possible and designing to enable easy prediction of future game state. The easier it is to predict the game state, the less network traffic there needs to be.
One of these good decisions is the setting of Eve... space. In space, there's no ground, no trees, no mountains or uneven terrain. This means there's no need to avoid collisions with any of these, nor adjust player altitude so they're on the ground, nor to check if they slowed down due to mud or fell in a hole... this choice alone removes a huge amount of overhead required for other MMO servers, especially those that operate at a first person non vehicle level. Another important point is that the path any object in space takes is determined by a simple equation... even setting aside classic newtonian physics for things like higgs anchors, it just takes a few math operations to not only locate a ship but to predict where it'll be in X ticks from now, which I'll get to in a bit.
(continued in following post)
|
Liet Ormand
Center for Advanced Studies Gallente Federation
18
|
Posted - 2015.01.07 18:23:07 -
[30] - Quote
The second great design decision CCP made is the model for determining how much math has to be done to check for collisions in space. They use a path projection based on your ship's bounding box and speed. Essentially, they use motion prediction (which itself is computationally cheap math) to figure out where your ship could potentially be in a number of ticks dependent on your speed and direction and ship size, then determine if that overlaps with anything else (other ship's predicted paths, structures, etc). This cuts down further the number of calculations needed to figure out who hits what. Instead of the million calculations the WoW servers have to do to figure out if a player makes it out a door, the Eve servers do a couple of geometric equations to determine if a player's ship is near enough to anything to interact with it (a station, another ship, etc). If not (which is 99% of the time) the server just updates the client with a position and state and goes on to serve other players.
Have you ever watched your ship try to auto-pilot around an obstacle, wobbling back and forth at low speed like a blind man looking for the door? That's the bounding box... it only projects forward a little at low speed, so your ship literally does not "see" that it has to turn 90 degrees and thrust away to get clear... it only sees a few feet, beyond that it can't predict.
Even the events that would need collision detection (which again generates load) are handled in ways that avoid it. For example docking in a station. Ever wonder why you just fly up to a station and request to dock, then you get towed in? You'd think it'd be simpler and more fun to just mark a blinking landing pad for everyone and let them fly in, or maybe have robot arms grab your ship as it goes by. The answer is that an automated docking sequence avoids needing collision detection entirely. Once the player is approved to dock, their ship is removed from space and they're docked.
You might also have noticed that ship attitude doesn't matter much except for looks. Even if the blasters on the port (left) side of your ship are facing away from the target, they can still fire and hit. Eve models account for this by putting extra copies of the weapons on either side of the ship, so it doesn't look like they're firing through their own hulls. Not having to take ship attitude and angle into account when figuring out anything also keeps calculation cost way down.
Combat in Eve is likewise kept computationally cheap. For any weapons fire event you calculate hit and damage based on the positions and speed of both ships, the stats of the weapon, skill levels of the player, any environmental items, any effects from modules, etc. and get a couple numbers out. It's essentially solving one medium complexity equation after which numbers go to the client. Just like a GM rolling dice.
Also in order to keep Eve's server and network load to a minimum, Eve doesn't update client state more than a couple times per second. That means slow networks can keep up with the traffic load, the Eve servers can keep up because the only have to update everyone's position a couple times a second, and client PCs get a break, too. While this would make for horrible play in Counter-strike, in Eve it works because the client and server can easily predict the game state and show what's happening in between ticks and they're rarely getting different answers. This is the major reason Eve is playable world wide, so it's a huge win for CCP.. a bigger market means more players.
So... back to the original comment. Hopefully if you read the above you'll see that trying to put basic flight sim mechanics into Eve won't work without a major re-write of the entire game. Sure, you can turn/move your ship with WASD now, but taking the step to allow ships to "line up" on other ships and fire with the press of a trigger would require the server (can't use the client, remember, because it's exploitable) to do calculations for ship attitude and most critically would require a near real-time response level from the server... which would require faster network updates than Eve can do. That right there kills the possibility of twitch anything in Eve.
Plus player input for anything besides ship attitude means a lot of calculations, too. Right now the game saves itself a lot of math by prediction of ship locations (simple equations, remember) which would be impossible if a player could change ship direction like a fighter maneuvering by pressing a button. Think about it - allowing a player to really fly a ship would require the client to receive/send network updates to the servers at 10x (at least) the current speed, and there would still be lag. The server would have to perform ship collision calculations at a proportionally increased rate (lots of 3d geometry), the number of locations a ship could be in in the future few seconds would be much greater and harder to predict (humans are unpredictable) requiring a lot more path to cover all possibilities, and all these calculations would have to be multiplied by the number of players online at a given time, many of whom are interacting with each other in the same system.
Also remember that the way Eve handles extreme load at the moment is TD... slowing down its update rate, giving the servers more time to predict future positions and game state. That's the opposite of what they'd have to do for fighter style combat, you want more updates, not less. The number of people who could be flying in a single system at once would be cut to 10% of the current number or less.
TL, DR; Eve's big design wins that let us have everyone on one shard and good play with slow networks directly oppose the changes needed for twitch gaming or manual flight. Changing this requires a complete re-write and more hardware than players would want to pay for. Effectively, it's impossible to do.
|
|
|
|
|
Pages: [1] 2 :: one page |
First page | Previous page | Next page | Last page |