Topic: Opinion for Gaming

[[UFP]Exeter]

The base system I am developing on is an older laptop.  Intel Dual core 2.66Ghz, 8G Ram, NVidea GEForce 9600M GT running Win 7 64 bit, with DirectX 11.

As with most GPU's on laptops they use the system ram.

This 4 year old system will be my minimum benchmark, to get the game performing well on this system.  It will be the minimum system requirements except for the RAM, as I need the extra to debug code.

[Czar Mohab]

How does that Nvidia compare to an AMD Mobility Radeon 4200? Or Intel HD Graphics integrated on an Intel Pentium P6100 (honestly I hate Intel graphics... can't do much with it...)? Either of these would be the laptop that I would use for this game. Both are DX11.

The CPUs and RAM are comparable, more or less, to your baseline (AMD Turion II Ultra Dual-Core Mobile M640 @ 2.6GHz, 8GB RAM; and Intel Pentium P6100 @ 2.0GHz 4GB RAM; both dual core) so I am not concerned here.

Then again, like I said, I don't need super pretty. I just need to be able to tell things apart.

Fun fact: the AMD has 256MB dedicated VRAM with the rest shared with the system. Makes things interesting.

The Czar

[TheStressPuppy]

Intel graphics did kinda suck on older laptops i had, but so far i have not had any issues with this one. Which is a pleasant surprise.

If the game looks anything like the Nanofx evolved engine i dont think ill have any issue.

[[UFP]Exeter]

I wish I knew more about the evolved engine.  I found a post saying they used Bullet physics and another one saying they used Newton.  Not te mention NanoFX was DirectX 9.  But all third party, nothing on teir site and too lazy to search the forums.

[[UFP]Exeter]

I have taken assl the suggestions and redoing the game design.  I was going to post it in the Development forum but do not have access to give anyone access

[Starfox1701]

I know the version they are using is more advanced then the last version of the viewer that is up for download. I also have a pdf I found detailing how they want models prepared. I haven't finished reading it yet.

[TheStressPuppy]

We really don't need the "newtonian physics" unless you plan on doing ginsu damage effects. The ships themselves should move like hulking big ships that don't turn on a dime, and not like fighters. That is the one thing that bugged me about late TNG, and Dominion War era. The way the ships zipped around like they had no mass at all.

 I am sure if you contacted Nanobyte he would be more than happy to explain his engine to you.

[[UFP]Exeter]

Not true, the lack of "proper" physics is why ships move like they have no mass.  Some of the things we need the physics for, Thrust, impulse, velocity, acceleration, mass, other forces and very important is collision detection.

[Czar Mohab]

I see these giant ships as having a foot deep into the door of subspace. It allows them to bend Newton's physics, but not necessarily break them. SFB & SFC 1-3 show this perfectly - big ships accelerate and turn slower than small ones. Speed 0 is stopped. Etc., etc., etc. Even KA had this (with the added bonus of collisions being Newtonian until you regained control, that whole equal and opposite thing...).

One game I played long ago used similar non-Newtonian physics, except when you "cut the engines" - then our old buddy Newton took over and you could coast. Granted, you did eventually slow down (never tried it long enough to see if it would eventually stop or if gravity had any effect, such as crashing into a planet instead of coasting by it). The game was (and I suppose is still) Freelancer.

Just my 2cp.

The Czar

[[UFP]Exeter]

SFB & SFC 1-3 show this perfectly - big ships accelerate and turn slower than small ones. Speed 0 is stopped. Etc., etc., etc. Even KA had this (with the added bonus of collisions being Newtonian until you regained control, that whole equal and opposite thing...).

One game I played long ago used similar non-Newtonian physics, except when you "cut the engines" - then our old buddy Newton took over and you could coast. Granted, you did eventually slow down (never tried it long enough to see if it would eventually stop or if gravity had any effect, such as crashing into a planet instead of coasting by it). The game was (and I suppose is still) Freelancer.

All Newtonian physics.  But some exceptions, for example the series demonstrate a "limited" inertial damping system.   Normal deceleration, the crew is not affected.  But torpedoes hitting, collisions and the dampers do not work.  So there is some bending of physics, but not that much

[Captain Adam]

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[d4v1ks]

I have taken all the suggestions and redoing the game design.  I was going to post it in the Development forum

That's great news. I'm curious about the game design you want to implement.

[d4v1ks]

Just remembered.
About those missions scripts. How people could give ideias, or talk about, the kind of missions they would like to have, if we have no ideia about the current ships designs or systems? 
Please, are you hable to give us some insight about your current ships designs?

[[UFP]Exeter]

I hope to have the design completed and posted this weekend.  That will provide more information.  The public version will be missing the implementation details.  You can see what it will do , now how it does it. 

Sorry no videos, need to get the in game physics working.  And I really need modes in .x with dds textures to test that out also.

[Captain Adam]

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[[UFP]Exeter]

Starfox has stepped in to corrdinate the effort.   I have test models for building the game, but I do need models we will use soon to start designing the loading of textures and the hot point data from the models.

[TheStressPuppy]

The stuff i made, and converted to the nanofx viewer is yours if you want to test it. All .X format with dds textures. Fair warning. I made this stuff years ago, and the poly counts are not very high. Where do i send it? PM me with an email.

[[UFP]Exeter]

I appreciate it. 

[[UFP]Exeter]

A thought on strategic overlays, long range sensor, the works.

How about, from the main gaming screen, a tactical view, is the ability to view the quadrant map, tha twill only show your position in the quadrant.  Then a long range sensor display that shows a hex map out to the distance of long range sensors and shows contacts.  And with probes, they can modify the range of long and short range sensors.

Comments of suggestions?

[Captain Adam]

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