Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Enigmatic Entity on September 18, 2009, 02:12:29 am
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Infinity game engine. Space to atmosphere, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCzDKj3hjOE&feature=related)
and combat. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2rcjpVTmm4&NR=1)
Now go and make FS3... ;)
Has anyone tried to put some FS2 stuff into this?
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There's a lot of horribleness in that engine, just for the cuteness of having planets/atmospheric entry :<
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It looks nice, but what are the flaws that QuantumDelta said the engine has? Because I'd love to see FS2 like this...
We'd have a lot of work to do, though.
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The engine is unfinished and unreleased.
The associated game, as far as I know, hasn't even been really started. The "combat prototype" is just that, and doesn't reflect any actual progress on the game engine.
The whole project, while interesting, has a long way to go before I get my hopes up.
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For what they have so far, it looks really good.
I just really hope they won't stick with the uninteresting blue/red pew pew pew laser show though :p
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i actually found that i didnt look pretty , infact it looked a lot worse than fs retail but hey its just an opinion
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Maybe its too long since you tried the retail :p
That said, most of it looks like it could be a mod for FSO.
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Looks like it's got promise. I feel like the planetary atmosphere was a bit thin, though...
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Again, I have to ask how you can substantiate your opinions on the engine when it's not up for public testing. The combat prototype, as far as I know, is the only thing released to date.
By the way, the combat prototype is quite fun to play around with. If you've not tried it, I encourage you to do so. :yes:
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I like the look of Infinity, but I can't help feeling like there's a lot of feature creep going on. Every programmer aspires to write a program that does everything, but, as the saying goes, the only model complex enough to model the entire Universe is the entire Universe.
That said, I'm quite excited to see how this evolves.
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The engine also has a very generous poly budget (100000+ polys for 3km ships) and neat lighting effects.
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Planetary entry was more like a googleearth episode than a piece of sci-fi, read; cheap and shoddy jpg meshing into a ground model that slowly gained more meshes as you closed in.
The Newtonian physics and resultant combat is horrific.
The planet didn't really feel like a planet, more like a big green golf ball.
Newtonian Physics.
The station wasn't metal it was a MIRRORZ.
Newtonian Physics.
Weapon graphics were terrible.
Newtonian Physics.
Atmosphere was thin but foggy ?!?!?
Newtonian Physics.
Look at 1:20 and pause it.
Newtonian Physics.
It looks terrible.
Newtonian Physics.
Terrible Primaries of Terribleness.
Newtonian Physics.
Terrible Radar of Terribleness.
Newtonian Physics.
The inside of the capship the pilot launches from is a MASSIVE example of how terribad the current env_mapping is.
And, Ugh, I can only imagine what a 100 thousand poly model will be like with a half decent map on it (good enough not to be an eyesore -> FPS hell, optimised enough to not be FPS hell? -> eyesore).
No, just keep it away.
Happy now Thaeris?
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A little aggressive...
It looks very intriguing, but how would FS fit in?
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*SNIP*
You a troll?
Did Infintiy rape your mother when I wasn't looking?
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*SNIP*
You a troll?
Did Infintiy rape your mother when I wasn't looking?
Hardly, but as I mentioned in another thread a few weeks ago, out of the dozens and dozens of space sims that use newtonian physics - only about 3 are any good, and that combat video is a classic example of /why/ none of them are any good.
Combine that with only one type of primary weapon, explosions that the FSO engine beats, and it's horrible use of google-earth style planetary graphics, along with other flaws and it just looks like it's heading in the completely wrong direction.
Worse than that, the creator of the video makes a quip about Newtonian physics flying requiring 'skill', when it really, really doesn't, suggests that there's a sense of pride in the fact that they're using a crappy physics engine.
GL to 'em, but dear god it's gonna be terrible.
Still, people never learn.
OR WELL, I guess they might be X:Series fans, those people are beyond hope anyway :<
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I for one enjoyed the Newtonian physics. Flaming me for that... is odd.
Once again, the engine's NOT finished. This program won't be out for quite a while. And, as someone else said, with all the program is supposed to do, it can't do everything perfectly and still run efficiently. That it can do what it does even now is quite impressive.
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You weren't flamed.
The engine trying to be a JOAT on a budget is a flaw not a strength, and not one to be pampered to.
Newtonian Physics fanboi-ism is a lot of what's wrong with the modern space sim genre.
Did you notice that the games that sold well "recently" that had much to do with space, didn't use such physics, or avoided having space combat that was player controlled?
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i've not try or see much infinty's video but quantumdelta got some points i have to agree with :
-The only good newtonian physics game i had to play with was iwar and it's sequel.
I find very disgusting the way ship's react and general physics in the x series.
I prefer 1000 times faked newtonian physics with very high dampening setting/glide and such than real newtonian (especially the problem with n. physics is that it always miss to be applied on the rolling axis)
But ok that's just my subjective point of view :nervous:
Anyway i hope infinity will result in an epic success, as we haven't many space sim games to play with nowadays.
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You a troll?
Disagreeing with your opinion =/= being a troll
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How is wanting a more realistic/plausible simulation wrong? Is it wrong to enjoy things like flight simulators... because they might be attempting to replicate the flight of an aircraft in a believable fashion? No, not at all. If the user enjoys it, there's nothing wrong with a developer producing it. In the case of FS, no one on the development front seems to think it a worthwhile investment. Everyone here, including yourself, knows that. If a group of independent developers... in this case, basically one person working with the engine... wants to attempt to create a sim/game engine of that magnitude, I commend him.
In terms of terrain detail... I'm not sure what you mean. As far as auto-gen terrain goes, this looks DAMN good:
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=101&Itemid=27
Also, the combat prototype is not a good measure to judge the finished product by. If anything, it's adding some elements to a restricted environment so the user/developer can see them in action.
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Don't turn this into a flame war, guys. QD just said his opinion about the engine, and i think he knows what he says.
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We're not gonna agree and there's a long history/series of reasons as to why Newtonian (fake, pretending to be real, 'real') physics fail horribly compared to fake, "designed for games, to be fun, competitive, and intuitive to combat" physics in my mind.
As for the stills, they DO look a lot better, however the problems were not with the final phases, they were with the transition.
The surface of the planet ended up in Pixelation-Hell before he got down to the area where the last LOD took over, and his attempt at 'atmospheric fog' just looks like a cheap attempt to save processing power.
The last few screen shots including the lava/tree related ones look a little more 'alive' than a random ball of mud which is better, but he still has a long way to go, even with the stills.
Edit; forgot to throw in, the tidal effect seriously helps too.
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It's been a long time since the last time I played the combat demo (in fact I think is one of the things I keep on my hard drive just in case)... what I can say is that I loved the Newtonian phisics feature, it makes it more realistic IMO... sure it's hard to play with that settings but it's worth it, you can do stuff you can't on a FS environment.
About the other stuff going on... I say patience (like obi), this game is still on development and it's looking good so far IMO.
release date... well probably the downside of all this project ^^
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No-one actually linked to a site for the engine, all i can find is this..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Engine
Different i assume :rolleyes:
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Booted to Gaming.
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No-one actually linked to a site for the engine, all i can find is this..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Engine
Different i assume :rolleyes:
can be found here (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=23&Itemid=51)
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Newtonian physics are not applied on roll rate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUZaFTGVPT8&feature=related (0:40-0:50)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NrJCkmDnr4 (Basically the whole video)
Yes they do roll that fast, and also stop the roll really quickly.
EDIT:
Actually, there is a lot more of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4enCQOaSz8&feature=related
As a small exercise, think of the reason why the aircraft turns so quickly around roll axis but changes pitch or yaw a lot slower.
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So spent a few hours with the community.
As far as I am concerned the game can burn in hell and they're all ****.
As are most people who prefer Newtonian physics because they can't handle fast paced, higher skill action.
But yea, so far, the trailers, the website, and the community has screamed "ButtHurtEvEOnlinePlayersHidingBehindTheyWantSkillInAGame." - When they're off to something that is mid-range skill requirement, at best.
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As are most people who prefer Newtonian physics because they can't handle fast paced, higher skill action.
<Thaeris calls Shenanigans>
You just basically said you didn't like Newtonian physics because they're hard to work with. And now you call arcade physics "higher skill"? If you're not going to contribute to this thread in any way besides flaming the topic or anyone who has anything positive to say about the concept, please, refrain from posting here.
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At NO point did I say Newtonian Physics were harder to work with.
I said (well, tried to, politely) that they were counter intuitive to competitive and skilful gameplay.
They don't in the slightest bit content with arcadey physics in that department.
And don't try and censor my opinion with a personal attack.
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I said (well, tried to, politely) that they were counter intuitive to competitive and skilful gameplay.
Why?
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Newtonian physics can be a lot of fun, but they take a lot of skill to utilize effectively. It's far too easy to just boost into position and turn yourself into a turret.
Oh, and Thaeris: If you call expressing an opinion contrary to yours flaming, I don't want to know what you would consider trolling.
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What you guys keep referring to as "Newtonian Physics", aka Galilean Invariance, Newtonian Relativity, etc., is the realistic approach. Unless you want to start talking Einsteinian Relativity or something.
I for one would like to see at least one well-made game that gets the physics right, and this might turn out to be it.
Edit:
It's far too easy to just boost into position and turn yourself into a turret.
Ah, but if you do that, your trajectory is linear, and enemies can aim right for the lead indicator (provided one exists) and be guaranteed to get a hit.
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At NO point did I say Newtonian Physics were harder to work with.
I said (well, tried to, politely) that they were counter intuitive to competitive and skilful gameplay.
No, they're not. If anything, you need to be more skillful. Flying around at 2,000+ m/s and making an attack run on a target is not that easy. Dodging a blast/projectile requires constant use of the RCS on the ship's x- and y-axes. Since thrusters aren't as potent as the main engine, you need to change the ship's entire direction to get a serious change in the flight vector. That's hard, down-'n-dirty space combat, and it becomes really competitive if you don't want to die. And if you're not going to die, you better have some skills.
The problem I've found with full-Newtonian sims is that the HUD symbology is often lacking, making what you're actually doing harder to get a grasp of. And, if you want something easier to get a grip on, you just give the ship an artificial stability system (which Infinity will have) which will make the ship go in the direction the nose is going. If you want it really simple, you limit turn and roll rates due to the forward velocity of the ship, etc., etc. In a way, TBP, which is described as semi-Newtonian, is EXACTLY the same way.
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True.
The other extreme would be a kind of continual jousting. A series of high-speed, head on passes trying to inflict damage on your opponent. Oh well. I'll have to play the combat prototype one of these days.
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I said (well, tried to, politely) that they were counter intuitive to competitive and skilful gameplay.
Why?
Well, lets see, changes in momentum(inertia) of your ship are sluggish, and predictable, no matter how good a pilot you are against someone who knows the mid-level skill range - they wont die.
For the most part space 'sims' that are attempting to be 'true to life' have a 'low ceiling' on their skill levels, that can't be broken.
FS2-style DOES have a ceiling, but it is significantly higher, insofar as that it took people +-5 years to actually 'master' it in an extremely competitive environment, and those that did 'truly' master it were absolutely untouchable, unmatchable and indisputable gods of the game, the difference between them and even people only very slightly below them was incredibly dramatic.
In Newtonian games, this doesn't happen SO.
-> Newtonian games, not noob friendly, but not elite friendly either.
-> Non-Newtonian games/Pseudo-physics games, noob friendly AND with greater distinction between skill levels.
They want that game to be a non-skill grinding competitive PvP-MMO vaguely based on the concept of the EvE universe, using a skill set that doesn't cater to the upper echelons of the gamer community, and then 'claim' to be better than EvE because their game requires skill?
**** that.
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As are most people who prefer Newtonian physics because they can't handle fast paced, higher skill action.
What does "skill" mean in this context? Do you mean something like hand-eye coordination?
The most challenging and action packed games I have played are actually combat flight simulators. They have turned out to have a really long lasting appeal, being interesting for years. Their requirements being understanding of strategy, tactics and capability of doing split second decisions (and in bad cases, reactions). The key difference here is that you really need to think quickly. And the adversary is likely very, very, good.
If done right, a space combat "simulator" could be really interesting arena for the simulation oriented folks. I'd be interested in seeing if they have modelled some kind G-onset in the Infinity (deducing from the turn rate of that demo tape they haven't). I really liked the head-on approach speed in that game. The planetary entry speed was hopefully enhanced by an order of magnitude. Would have been fun if they had also given the window for entering the atmosphere in the HUD while having a bumpy ride and windows burning...
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Well, lets see, changes in momentum(inertia) of your ship are sluggish, and predictable, no matter how good a pilot you are against someone who knows the mid-level skill range - they wont die.
For the most part space 'sims' that are attempting to be 'true to life' have a 'low ceiling' on their skill levels, that can't be broken.
About the sluggish changes in momentum, this is a game design decision. There would be several ways to make these unpredictable: weapons have weight, and affect the momentum of inertia, as does fuel. Turning more would burn more fuel and make the ship more manueverable, the downside is that at some point when fuel runs out there is nothing by which to steer the spaceship. The other factor is the human G-tolerance. I'm not trying to defend Infinity here, just saying that there is also a lot of potential in that video. I'll be waiting to see if that potential comes into existance at some point.
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One more comment: there is something wrong with how that Saturn type planet behaves as the ship turns. The bank angle of the rings should really not change, neither should the size of the planet (unless the cockpit window had some optical power). I think I have seen something like that in FS2, but the effect was not that pronounced. I don't know why, but these kind of details irritate my eyes so much that the gaming illusion breaks.
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The ICP uses a skybox and has a speed cap. The full game won't have those things. You'd be able to fly to the planet.
The responsiveness of a ship is the question of how massive it is and where/how powerful its thrusters are. In that sense, Mika is right. With any combat sim, you better be aware of what your enemy can do. If anything, FS, using a fixed table, is more easy to predict than a properly modeled Newtonian sim.
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Hand-eye coordination is a given, it's a skill index on it's own, but I'm talking beyond that as well.
The more restrictions you place on a pilot in terms of quick reflexive actions the more predictable they're going to end up being.
Unfortunately, I've been a gamer my entire life and most of that time a clan/squad/raid/guild/whatever, leader (well ok, most = ~14 years), 'thinking' about enemy strategy is something I've done all my life, I'm not as good at it on RTSs as I should be, but most other games, especially when the human element is the bigger influencing factor in tactics and strategy on the battle field, I /tend/ to dominate.
For example, in WoW - a game that is highly competitive and very complex (leading to some major balancing issues in PvP, but anyway), when the Arena was in it's first season my battlegroup was europes most competitive, I was the strat/tactics guy for my team and we basically just took other teams to pieces, with a comp that wasn't very powerful, we ended up #1 for season 1, though we couldn't go to the regionals because of the nationalities of some of our team members.
Live tactics being formed to manipulate people into a dead end of abilities/cooldowns or just break up the flow of their nukes or what have you to leave them in a vulnerable or exhausted position, and that's monitoring my own performance whilst noting the complex behaviour of 5 hostiles who have anything between 10 and 40 'main' abilities, and 4 of my own team, managing their ventrilo comms input + macro fire, and administrating them with my own instructions at the same time.
"Simple" Physics estimations and player prediction at the same time really isn't hard, especially in an environment as restricted as a flight sim.
This somewhat applies to FreeSpace 2, quite a lot of the time I can, moreso in the past than now, I could fly in a way that would subtly put a player where I wanted them to be even if they didn't want to make that choice, and then abuse the snot out of them due to it.
It's even easier in most 'realistic' sims, though I can teach most people to do the basics of it in FS and probably not so easily in those games.
If you want to see 'thinking' 1on1 skill go watch a star craft tourny.
Squad based fighting in FS2 has absolutely no equal of all the games I've played, which is a great many.
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ICP is far, FAR from the finishing product.
- It only has those temporary laser thingies as weapons (the final verison will have lasers that act like real lasers, mass drivers of various kinds, plasma weapons, etc.)
- no shield managment (at least for capital ships, you'd have some options and setting for the shields)
- outdated models (I don't even think that the ships that is labeled as a BB in the ICP will be in the final game at all. If it does, it certanly won't be a BB. Ships longer than 2km are considered battleships)
- it has fixed caps on some things and no atmospheric entry, no travel between systems, etc.
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"Simple" Physics estimations and player prediction at the same time really isn't hard, especially in an environment as restricted as a flight sim.
I think I will go to sleep and reply on tomorrow, but meanwhile if you read this during that time, what flight sims have you played? Just curious.
The more restrictions you place on a pilot in terms of quick reflexive actions the more predictable they're going to end up being.
And here I thought that's exactly what was supposed to happen.
Anybody else notice how strange is it that the space shooters have actually worse aiming sights than modern jets?
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I'm curious how a full Newtonian sim places more restrictions on the player. If done properly, it shouldn't... or at least shouldn't given that the sim is realistic enough. Such a sim is no different than any other realistic flight sim in that regard.
FS is actually more restrictive. You can't loose control of the ship. You actually can't do a lot of things. Mods like TBP, the BtRL demo, and Diaspora when it comes out will, be closer to being more like the "real thing" in a way. But, that is the extent of FS.
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Well, lets see, changes in momentum(inertia) of your ship are sluggish, and predictable, no matter how good a pilot you are against someone who knows the mid-level skill range - they wont die.
For the most part space 'sims' that are attempting to be 'true to life' have a 'low ceiling' on their skill levels, that can't be broken.
FS2-style DOES have a ceiling, but it is significantly higher, insofar as that it took people +-5 years to actually 'master' it in an extremely competitive environment, and those that did 'truly' master it were absolutely untouchable, unmatchable and indisputable gods of the game, the difference between them and even people only very slightly below them was incredibly dramatic.
In Newtonian games, this doesn't happen SO.
So what you're basically saying is that you always go for raw speed instead of being able to change vector in such games, and you've never encountered a sufficently skilled pilot with them. Since you can't actually, you know, offer statstical evidence or anything.
You're also saying you don't want games to be friendly to intermediate-level players, since you want these "gods" to exist and lord over all.
They want that game to be a non-skill grinding competitive PvP-MMO vaguely based on the concept of the EvE universe, using a skill set that doesn't cater to the upper echelons of the gamer community, and then 'claim' to be better than EvE because their game requires skill?
**** that.
Hilarity. EVE isn't about pilot skill either, but tactics. The difference you describe is present in EVE, too (go watch Pandemic Legion rape all who challenge them in the Alliance Tourney with an inferior fleet if you don't believe me) but EVE is not a game of twitch territory masters like you seem to prefer.
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From what I'm reading here, the ICP seems to be little more than something to keep the fans quiet whilst development of the actual game takes place, and, in part, a pre-Beta test of close-quarters interaction. So I think that possibly taking ICP as an example of Infinity as a whole is a bad idea.
From what I've read in the last few pages, practically nothing from the ICP is actually going to feature in the actual game, from the ships to the lasers to the backgrounds, I'm not even certain that full Newtonian physics will apply in the final version of the game, but if it does, it's down to implementation. Elite:Frontier was an example of bad implementation of Newtonians, it frequently did boil down to jousting at several hundred kps, whereas I-War implemented it better.
My own thoughts on the matter is that it might be a good idea in the case of Newtonians to limit the upper speed available anyway, there's plenty of excuses for doing so, the first one that springs to mind is potential damage from micro-meteorites and debris at very high speeds. that way you won't get situations where ships pass into and out of firing range in fractions of a second.
Edit: As for X-Universe stuff, I actually quite like X, but then, I do very little flying myself, I get more fun from setting up the trading systems and watching them tick over than from physically interacting with the engine, I'd actually prefer X more if there was less player-based work and more done with the automation-based systems.
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I like X(3) it's like a muhmorrupguh without the asshats.
This is getting pretty heated for something so trivial.
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I'm curious how a full Newtonian sim places more restrictions on the player. If done properly, it shouldn't... or at least shouldn't given that the sim is realistic enough. Such a sim is no different than any other realistic flight sim in that regard.
If the question was aimed to me, I meant that in a combat flight simulator you are trying to take away the enemy's capability to maneuver, and thus become predictable. Of course, there are ways to be unpredictable even after speed has been lost...
But QuantumDelta, maybe I could hook up with you and fly some Falcon 4: Allied Force together. Just that I could understand those combat tactics better. Then I have some friends who frequently do IL-2:Sturmovik. I guess they would like to take a lesson also.
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Flying around at 2,000+ m/s and making an attack run on a target is not that easy
I'd say. 2 km is quite the speed, and if your opponent is also going to same speed at you, then you are really going to have troubles.
At that speed, imagine the kinetic energy when two ships were to collide.
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Anyone who's played i-war 1 can appreciate that.
That was the pinnacle of newtonian combat for me.
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My "wicked-fast attack run" experience comes from Laminar Research's "Space Combat," a program built with X-Plane 7ish graphics and generally incomplete features. But, if you wanted to build a space ship and blast a target... or fly around some imaginary region is space... it was pretty neat.
Here's the original page... now archived:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080727005743/www.x-plane.com/SpaceCombat.html
Not sure the links for the downloads work anymore... (it's freeware, but you'd need the X-Plane 7 or 8 app for it to run. 9 might work... but I've never tried)
Mac: http://dev.x-plane.com/update/SPACEMAC140.sitx
Windows: http://dev.x-plane.com/update/SPACEWIN140.exe
Linux: http://dev.x-plane.com/update/SPACELIN140.tar
The program had potential because of its concept... but was very obviously unfinished. If this is test/discussion-worthy, it might be worth making a thread of it. But probably not until then...