Which movement style do you prefer in a (slower than light) space game? I'm not looking for a number of votes, but for strong reasons to use or not use a particular style.
In a realistic movement system, the ships have one primary thruster, and attitude thrusters for turning the ship. Rotating your ship has no effect on your current heading, and if you at a new heading, the new direction is the vector sum of the thrust (times time) and the old velocity. If you want to slow your ship, you would have to rotate your ship 180 degrees and thrust in the opposite direction of your current motion. It is like the movement in the old Asteroids arcade game and it's many spinnoffs. Realistic movement is the one I would be inclined to use, but it is also the hardest for players to use. If I were to use this system, I would also include several autopilot functions to simplify navigation.
The simplest movement system for players to grasp simply turns the ship to move in the same direction it is facing. It is the movement style many people assume is correct because it's how it seems to work in their day to day lives. Turn a car, it moves in the new direction. Turn an airplane, it moves in the new direction. However this system is nothing like actual space movement. Automobiles and airplanes are actually fighting friction constantly, when they turn, they simply redirect the acceleration they use to overcome friction to a new direcion. There is nothing in outer space to provide the friction that makes this style of movement possible, yet people expect it. Making a ship turn like this in real life would involve attitude thrusters capable of as much thrust as the primary thrusters. Shame on X-Wing and the myriad other space sims that use this movement style. If I made a space game, I'd like to avoid this style of movement.
ID:154195
 Apr 13 2002, 6:57 am
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Apr 13 2002, 9:29 am
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Loduwijk
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Sometimes it is just fun to be non-realistic. Can you imagine a racing game where you race on earth, but the physics are like that in space (using your definition of space as the void between celestial bodies). That would be interesting. If I were playing a game in a space setting though, I think I would prefer realistic. But if you are going to be so technical about the way things actually are, don't forget to include gravitational pull of all the celestial objects, make it possible for players to create vehicles that are propelled by solar waves, buy solar panels so they can recharge by orbiting a star for awhile, ect. If you want it really realistic though, dont forget to incorporate worm-holes, and extra-terrestrial lifeforms, heh.
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In a realistic movement system, the ships have one primary thruster, and attitude thrusters for turning the ship. Rotating your ship has no effect on your current heading, and if you at a new heading, the new direction is the vector sum of the thrust (times time) and the old velocity. If you want to slow your ship, you would have to rotate your ship 180 degrees and thrust in the opposite direction of your current motion. It is like the movement in the old Asteroids arcade game and it's many spinnoffs. Realistic movement is the one I would be inclined to use, but it is also the hardest for players to use. If I were to use this system, I would also include several autopilot functions to simplify navigation. I like this, mostly because I have one too (:oP!), but I'd be impressed if you can come up with a smoothe way to add a maximum thrust limit. Every way I've tried has resulted in the ship encountering some kind of gravitic pull and changing direction :oP | |
If you're going to be realistic in your assumptions about movement, why not be realisic in your assumptions about people and assume the ship has retrorockets? I can't picture any culture with the technology to reach the stars, but can't figure out a better system for braking then whipping the whole ship around and firing the primaries.
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Well, the primaries are generally so large and powerful that there is only room for one :oP
Now, if the ships were using ion drives, that would be another story. You know those flying saucers? They're round for a reason, since they can thrust from any direction. | |
Yeah, I've often thought if I make a 2D space game, I'd use saucers, for that reason... as well as ease of drawing/rotation, and simple mathematical formulae for detecting overlap/collision.
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Retrorockets are a good idea and I may use them. It will allow easier control without instant turns in velocity.
I'd just like to point out that our past space travel efforts (as well as tenative plans for future jaunts) involve whipping the ship around to slow down. For longer trips, It could be used for artificial gravity. Thrust at around 1 G until you are halfway to your destination, then having a brief period of 0 G while they rotate the ship and begin decelerating at 1 G for the other 50% of the trip. The ship maintains the same relative "down" throughout the trip. | |
Foomer wrote:
Well, the primaries are generally so large and powerful that there is only room for one :oP Heh, since I am going to allow people to design their ships, I could always allow for them to include retrorockets if they can spare the space and expense. Then low budget space programs would have to settle for turn and thrust. Trouble is, that makes more work for me to allow the autonav systems to funtion with both types of systems. | |
The autonav will be capable of many types of action. The most basic is getting to a particular point, but it will also have functions like shadowing, intercepting, or circling a point or craft. Let's not forget the all important "full stop" command. most of these function require the ship to modify it's course and velocity as it goes.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like working on Darke Dungeon ;) | |
The autonav will be capable of many types of action. The most basic is getting to a particular point, but it will also have functions like shadowing, intercepting, or circling a point or craft. Let's not forget the all important "full stop" command. most of these function require the ship to modify it's course and velocity as it goes. Now, now, the appropriate navigational term is "all stop". | |
Granted, but I'm thinking less of our historical culture than of a more advanced culture that has the technological know-how needed to reduce asteroids into smaller asteroids by shooting dots at them.
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Just to put my 2 cents in:
In being a "Trekkie" from way-back-when, I've learned that in ST:NG-level of technology, there is a navigational computer program that controls ship movement using smooth application of thrusters in all 3 axises (x,y,z) to provide 'airplane-like' flight. The pilot tells the ship a heading in 2 dimenisions ("180° Mark 10"), and the ship executes a flight algorithm to smoothly turn the ship into the new heading... my point being that you can provide realistic space flight models for spacecraft in you have the computing power on-board, and the fuel to burn. The standard "flip around 180° to brake" is because existing technologies do not allow us to carry to much fuel with us - and are not fuel efficient either - so this method is the best way to slow a ship down 'in real life'... but hey! your game can do what ever you want! | |
