[Iain Baker]

Hi all :-)

Something I have noticed in most space combat games, and space RTS games such as Homeworld, is that despite space offering a fully 3D battlespace, most of the time the action remains in a relatively 'flat' plane. Homeworld had a few instances where attacking ships would approach from above or below, but this was the exception as opposed to the rule.

This clip form Babylon 5 shows what I mean. The Vorlons come up from underneath the Shadows at a 90(ish) degree angle. Imagine a whole fleet of ships doing that against an enemy who's cap ships are not as fast or agile as the Shadows were, and so an entire fleet could find itself getting attacked from an unusual vector - perhaps taking advantage of the defending fleet's turret placements and blind-spots etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2nXCjvs0s

Has anyone played a game / mission which takes full advantage of a fully 3D battlespace - apart from the Descent series  of course. If so, what was it like to play? Was it interesting, or just confusing?

[Nyctaeus]

I'm working on one. Stay tuned :]

[Novachen]

I remember Shattered Horizon. That was very interesting back then :-).

And Miner Wars 2049 of course, but that is very Descent/Freespace-ish anyway, because people of both games were involved in it.

But as far RTS goes... i do not remember actually. I think Nexus was the closest to real 3D-strategy. Next to Starshatter: The Gathering Storm  .

But i did not played many Space-RTS so far.

[Iain Baker]

I'm working on one. Stay tuned :]

 

[0rph3u5]

So there a few fundamental problems with using a 3D space:

Human eye-sight is actually configured to prioritize horizontal over vertical scanning. As a result it is much harder to to present objects that vertically tall and to use plains of action that are at a right angle to each other.

And when estimating distances your brain uses the relative size of objects to another and to a fixed point and vice versa - the absence of a fixed point tend to throw of estimates of distance, e.g. at sea. One way to provide a fixed "point" is to have a fixed horizont, e.g. by having a main plain of action.

[Iain Baker]

So there a few fundamental problems with using a 3D space:

Human eye-sight is actually configured to prioritize horizontal over vertical scanning. As a result it is much harder to to present objects that vertically tall and to use plains of action that are at a right angle to each other.

And when estimating distances your brain uses the relative size of objects to another and to a fixed point and vice versa - the absence of a fixed point tend to throw of estimates of distance, e.g. at sea. One way to provide a fixed "point" is to have a fixed horizont, e.g. by having a main plain of action.

Coming from an evolutionary biology background that's pretty much what I figured too - our brains are not wired for fully 3D movement in a medium with no visual cues. A hypothetical sapient benthic (open ocean) species might handle it better (If we were to hand-wave the small issue of a species that probably couldn't harness fire couldn't ever develop the technology to create video games  )

[Mito [PL]]

I'm pretty sure there were at least some FS campaigns that made use, at least limited, of the full 3D capabilities of FSO. Not sure which ones, though, it would seem that I was more busy with shooting baddies than wondering if the mission uses three dimensions of space properly.

Also the issue of horizontal view priority isn't a problem in FSO since there isn't an apparent up and down directions either way and you can rotate your ship in any axis possible.

[Nightmare]

In theory you could take your finished mission and rotate everything...

[Nyctaeus]

In theory you could take your finished mission and rotate everything...

Unless you've used some coordinate-dependent sexps for [for example] nanojumps.

[Nightmare]

Or tons of cutscene stuff, yeah.

[General Battuta]

Just about every mission using 'arrive 3000m from' event cues (or whatever distance) is going to exploit a pretty broad range of 3D space.

Part of the issue is that any 2 combatants in 3D space define a plane, so unless you have lots of ships involved it tends to turn out looking 2D no matter what their 'absolute' coordinates.

[GhylTarvoke]

Part of the issue is that any 2 combatants in 3D space define a plane

Well, any 3 combatants.

I do feel that War in Heaven was more 3D than any other campaign I've played.

[0rph3u5]

Also the issue of horizontal view priority isn't a problem in FSO since there isn't an apparent up and down directions either way and you can rotate your ship in any axis possible.

On the player side, yes but ...

I don't have enough data but I see it often enough in LPs (and with myself) that people "level off" from time to time. ("level off" is when you use any object and use its orientation to determine what is level in your frame of reference and orient yourself accordingly).

On the design side, you might not notice it but a lot of missions don't use the Y-axis to the same degree as the X- or Z-axis - I can say that for me it is somewhere between 1 to 2 and 1 to 3. And that's before you take the plane and rotate it.

That you scale less on Y than on X and Z does contribute the perception you don't utilize 3D space properly.

[Colonol Dekker]

It's human nature to normalise frames of reference.

[Nightmare]

You could additionally rotate ships around there axis.

[Firesteel]

Homeworld is probably the only 3D RTS out there and the main reason the campaign doesn't use it all that much is because coding AI behavior to work in 3D space like that is hard at that level.

I thought House of the Dying Sun did a decent job of utilizing 3D space.

The problem with fully 3D games (and why there's so few actual 6DOF games) is that humans are really bad at 3D navigation, especially when there are points of reference like in Descent.

At least in more traditional space combat games, you don't have up to worry about.


And to Battuta's point about about random points and distances: yes. The issue is that to make a space actually playable, you generally don't want a massive number of entities moving fully in 3D space. Keeping track of all that is a nightmare for a player and will get them confused.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Creating missions to use all 3 dimensions is easy, making the player aware that action is actually taking place in 3 dimensions, that's trickier.

As mentioned earlier, players tend to redefine The Plane as the mission goes on, depending on were The Action is at any given time. So if you want to give the mission a 3D feel, you need to invest some time and effort. Here is an example approach :
- Define a standard plane or vector for the mission (eg. capships in parade formation, a space station, ship going from A to B, etc.), and make the player aware of that plane (show a bird's eye view of it, either through a cutscene or by having the player fly towards the plane-defining thingy, etc.), then you can play with the direction of the Action to highlight it.
- Make sure the player regularly intersects with the plane or vector, or at least have it in view when having a new point of interest pop up.
- You can also use the starfield to help construct points of reference, for instance : have a planet on the right, a moon on the left, a pair of suns behind, dark blue nebulae in front, bright yellow nebulae on top and an empty starfield bellow. Or any number of big background objects, really (see the Karos graveyard from the Homeworld series).

And of course, you always need to keep this in mind :

The issue is that to make a space actually playable, you generally don't want a massive number of entities moving fully in 3D space. Keeping track of all that is a nightmare for a player and will get them confused.

And it's a lot of added complexity for the mission designer.


tldr;
Making 2D missions : trivial
Making 3D missions: easy
Making the player aware that he's in 3D missions : tricky

[Nightmare]

- You can also use the starfield to help construct points of reference, for instance : have a planet on the right, a moon on the left, a pair of suns behind, dark blue nebulae in front, bright yellow nebulae on top and an empty starfield bellow. Or any number of big background objects, really (see the Karos graveyard from the Homeworld series).

If I would do "more 3D" missions I'd rather particular avoid that unless it makes astronomically sense.

[Mito [PL]]

I'd rather say that multiple Freespace missions take place not in a 2D plane or a more widely defined 3D space, but along a friendlies - space - enemies axis. I didn't play Freespace too much recently so I can't remember many missions well, so I'll just be taking several widely known missions from War in Heaven as examples.

Delenda Est and Her Finest Hour take place in such environments, where the friendly force roughly moves along a single vector and most of the action takes place there too. In both I tend to align myself in space in such a way that the planet nearby remains to my right - just as in the start of these missions. The layout of Delenda Est is strictly related to a single vector (except the first two enemy wings and the ending section. On the other hand in Her Finest Hour, you actually want to be away from the action - you're supposed to depart from the main battle axis to hit vital targets and catch the enemy off guard. Collateral Damage initially uses a more or less 3D bubble of action, then selects a single vector, and then changes to a different one. Darkest Hour is mostly flat with the exception of a single vector of the Trebuchet strike. One Future is an interesting case - only the player's preference decides whether the asteroid is below you, or to your right (with MacDuff being directly in front of you).

So I guess that the perception of up and down is mostly up to the presence of background objects and the orientation of major capital ships.

I think that we also need to consider turret coverage when it comes to full 3D battlespace. For example, I think that most FS2 capships have got holes in AAA coverage in their horizontal planes, which kinda streamlines the gameplay. But on the other hand, many ships tend to have large zones with no anti-cap weapons underneath them, like Deimos and Sobek.

If I was trying to work with my capships doing battles utilising the full 3D space properly, I'd also introdce ships rolling over to face threats with their best angles.

[Firesteel]

If I was trying to work with my capships doing battles utilising the full 3D space properly, I'd also introdce ships rolling over to face threats with their best angles.

That's something I think is theoretically doable at the AI level (that is if we ever overhaul that with a module). There's some reasonably simple FSM or behavior tree sequences you could do to prioritize facing cap ship weapons and rolling based on density of fighters and bombers in specific angles. Hell, the fact that most ships in FS have minute+ life times, doing some kind of GOAP (FEAR AI) or other planning approach could actually be viable.