Spreadsheets not in Space?

[Joose]

I wrote a big reply, then my wireless connection farted and I lost it. Cant be arsed to rewrite it, so trust me: My argument was awesome and proved you wrong. You may worship my greatness if you wish.

[HereComesPete]

I don't think I've explained myself or how I'm imagining the system will work very well, but I'm of the very strong suspicion that it's entirely workable.

I find your argument perfectly clear and agree with you entirely. Procedural generation handled by the client would reduce server load and allow a smaller cluster to track and control the data paths of the players far easier.

It was the whole bit about relative size of imaginary and perception lead ideas/objects that I was arguing. You seem to think I'm calling bullshit on the whole 'size of the giant cubes thing' but you yourself said this

between the systems is only the illusion of distance.

My point that you and 'slinger seemed to miss was that because it's not real those 'massive cubes. Period.' are in fact not massive, nor do they exist anywhere except as graphical representations of code*, it's all an illusion of size.

Space is a good thing to use for this illusory purpose as we naturally expect it to be filled with fuck all and it's not like many of us have had a good look round it.

Like Joose said it's the decreased size and increased codez and particularly storage of the code I see as problematic. Not because it can't be done, but because the company who are apparently ripping a gui from eve obviously can't afford or don't possess the ability to build or maintain such a thing.




*although you could of course argue that their existence in the minds of eve players generates an existential state for them to inhabit conscious thought that then has a quantifiable mass in terms of neurons fired and mind space occupied. If you wanted to.

[Joose]

because it's not real those 'massive cubes. Period.' are in fact not massive, nor do they exist anywhere except as graphical representations of code*, it's all an illusion of size

Slightly off topic, but this caused me issues with SupCom. Because everything in it was hueg, from the units to the buildings to the maps to the gun ranges, it didn't feel to me like I was playing a huge scale game. It felt like it was a regular scale game with tiny tiny trees. Quite odd.

[HereComesPete]

Very that.

It weirded me and I couldn't get on with it at all. I'm shit at rts most of the time and lose interest very quickly. I couldn't summon the energy needed to send my tiny giant robots stomping off to fight other tiny giant robots on the huge midget landscape.

[buzzmong]

My point that you and 'slinger seemed to miss was that because it's not real those 'massive cubes. Period.' are in fact not massive, nor do they exist anywhere except as graphical representations of code*, it's all an illusion of size.

Alreet, what would you call the main world map in Oblivion then? I'd say it was fairly big.

[FatherJack]

Very that.

It weirded me and I couldn't get on with it at all. I'm shit at rts most of the time and lose interest very quickly. I couldn't summon the energy needed to send my tiny giant robots stomping off to fight other tiny giant robots on the huge midget landscape.

That's just what I liked about it - sending my midget robot minions off to attack the blob of another colour while safely observing from my orbital superhideoutbaselair from afar. More precisely it was the way you could set patrols, travel routes and link actions in the macro scale I liked, instead of having to zoom right in and check that each one of my serfs were doing as instructed.

[FatherJack]

Alreet, what would you call the main world map in Oblivion then? I'd say it was fairly big.

Some would say the original Elite was big - particularly given the memory of computers at the time - and while that game's universe was seemingly impossibly vast, and was the same for everyone (ie: not random, which would be cheating) it was generated procedurally so that a few lines of code contained the instructions necessary to draw thousands of systems.

Likewise Oblivion's expansive world map, like most games would be defined quite concisely with it's height, texture and presence of prefabricated structures being all that's stored - the game only drawing what you can see from your current position. One of the more impressive applications of this was with the original Dungeon Siege - whatever virtual 'tile' of the 'world' you were on, it preloaded the eight surrounding tiles so that whichever way you moved you'd get a seamless transition and it would appear you inhabited a single, huge world with no loading screens - all the areas outside of your immediate vicinity though ceased to 'exist'.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Alreet, what would you call the main world map in Oblivion then? I'd say it was fairly big.

Really? ISTR it's 16 square miles. That's 4 miles across. Not big really.

[FatherJack]

Fuel has a big map. Doesn't make it especially good, though.

[Grimmie]

Obliveen was also loaded in chunks as you navigated around it, if you recall.

[HereComesPete]

I would call it an illusion that possesses no actual size. They could just as easily quote 16 square nanometres but our characters and all objects within are built to scale.

[Joose]

Really? ISTR it's 16 square miles. That's 4 miles across. Not big really.

Also, its interesting that you should bring up Oblivion, as one of the earlier titles in the Elder Scrolls series (cant remember which one off the top of my head) did indeed have a stupidly large game world. Again, cant remember the details, but it was something sillyhuge like twice the size of england.

It was shit, as it had all been autogenerated (obviously, they are not going to hire an artist to map out a world that big in that level of detail), so everywhere was basically the same place, over and over, with different names. Thats why they scaled it down for Morrowind/Oblivion, so they could actually model the whole thing by hand and it wasnt set in the land of Generica.

[Dog Pants]

It was shit, as it had all been autogenerated (obviously, they are not going to hire an artist to map out a world that big in that level of detail), so everywhere was basically the same place, over and over, with different names.

Which brings us back to my original point. Technical issues aside, how would you fill a world as huge as Eve with viable PvE? It might be that this game doesn't, but I think Eve with mechs wouldn't work. Eve works, I think at least in part, because it is in space and the sense of scale lends to that sort of game. Who's ever played a mech trading game though? Put it in a more 'theme park' (I hate that term, but it makes the point) environment and you have to fill a vast enough area to comfortably house tens of thousands of players with meaningful quests/missions. That wouls be quite a feat.

Of course chances are Mech Trader is exactly what this is, or else some vast procedurally generated world with nothing in it designed for large scale mech combat and none of the depth of Eve. It's not like that screenshot sets a precedent for a quality, original MMO.

[Gunslinger42]

My point that you and 'slinger seemed to miss was that because it's not real those 'massive cubes. Period.' are in fact not massive, nor do they exist anywhere except as graphical representations of code*, it's all an illusion of size.

Space is a good thing to use for this illusory purpose as we naturally expect it to be filled with fuck all and it's not like many of us have had a good look round it.

Like Joose said it's the decreased size and increased codez and particularly storage of the code I see as problematic. Not because it can't be done, but because the company who are apparently ripping a gui from eve obviously can't afford or don't possess the ability to build or maintain such a thing.




*although you could of course argue that their existence in the minds of eve players generates an existential state for them to inhabit conscious thought that then has a quantifiable mass in terms of neurons fired and mind space occupied. If you wanted to.

I didn't miss your point, I just think it's kind of obvious and a tad irrelevant. Of course it's not 'real' space, it's a computer game, pointing out that it isn't large because it only exists as some bits in computer memory seems kind of irrelevant when discussing the 'size' of the game world. I mean if we were discussing the size/difficulty in making/maintaining a map like cod4's shipment vs supreme commanders maps then basically saying "they're not large they don't really exist" seems kind of off-topic. As far as being a virtual environment that your character/ship can move around in, the eve systems are 'large' and the discussion seemed to be more about how eve can make these large environments (due to it being 99% empty with just a background picture) and how it'd possibly more difficult for a more standard environment with a landscape to be made as large

[Dog Pants]

the discussion seemed to be more about how eve can make these large environments (due to it being 99% empty with just a background picture) and how it'd possibly more difficult for a more standard environment with a landscape to be made as large

That was a point I did make at the beginning, although I'm open to the idea that it might actually not be that hard to have an Eve sized game with a physical landscape. Of course loading screens work fine in Eve, whereas a persistent land based environment wouldn't.

[MORDETH LESTOK]

Eve sized game with a physical landscape.

There better be teleporters everywhere! Otherwise, its gonna be a long ass walk...

[friznit]

You mean jump bridges and cyno generators of course.

[bomberesque]

I predict that Friz trains lawyer 4 just so he can sue the pants off these jokers on behalf of CCP (Pro Bono ofc) for defaming the glorious game so

and EVE is not real space? that's just crazy talk

[Roman Totale]

This post makes me hurt.

[HereComesPete]

Possibly need to remove it from your rectum then?