The "Cold and Dark" start-up procedure at a station, with electronic checklist assistance. (This is an update of the "ASG Systems power-up" video) Related information at alliancespaceg...
Impressive, not just the depth of the start up procedures, but I really love the Quality of Life features of the checklists like how they are intelligent and point you towards the subject of interest.
Yes hopefully the checklists really help mitigating the learning curve. Otherwise the first contact with the machine would be quite punishingly brutal I'm afraid. 😣 I'm also trying to complete them with "workflows" to help with other tasks such as flight planning.
-How complicated startup process do you want it to be? The Dev: -yes. I can't describe how amazing it looks. All what I can say is just I want to become a specialized startup engineer. You're amazing.
Thanks for the encouraging words 🙂 I'll update this one when the life support systems are up and running! That said the sequence is more a "factory start" as most of the time the ship remains partly operational during stops. That does not make departures much shorter though as these "intermediate states" still need proper configuration.
This video was just randomly recommended to me, and I'm so glad it was! I've played countless hours of Rogue System, and I was always sad to see a game with such potential fall to the wayside. Now finding out that there is a game out there that's already more fleshed out than that, (arguably) better looking, and with much more ambition while still having a very clear track to reach it is amazing! I'll be sure to follow the progress!
I love it. Just the tinkering of the system was worth the price of admission in Rogue System. I hope you are able to create gameplay around this, which is where I suspect RS didn't have a plan. I don't even need an enemy. This thing can be pure PVE. Just give me a rig and janitor chores, ship/station rescue, servicing of modules, building/establishing a system logistics infrastructure, a solar system wide resource/production/utilization frontier presence, a tech progression and we're good. Like a stranded ship and I need to jumpstart it or tow it to a facility. Clear out asteroids so that an automated miner can do its thing. Assist in setting up a fuel extraction, refinery and depot so that mankind can venture further.
Hi Tormod, blending a "game" with the "simulator" is definitely the objective. And as a matter of fact that's the bulk of the work for the months to come :) What I can say for sure right now is that many of the missions / features you are describing and can be part of a Space Guard captain's (extended) job description are on the todo list. Some already have some foundations (typically related to ship maintenance and upgrades). Orbital facilities are being assigned roles and affiliations, and the current work is focused on the persistent NPC ships that the player will interact with. So I must say that's very encouraging that these features seem to naturally make sense in the context, thanks! :D
@@d.c.elington That's so cool. Acting as the occasional respirator for derelicts, stranded and damaged ships/stations until repairs are complete so that gameplay aspects are solved using the bread&butter of where you have placed your emphasis. I also thought that the combat aspect of Children of a Dead Earth had an interesting approach. I think it has potential to lend itself to the gameplay you envision. The combat has phases and you can do "prep" work prior to an encounter, the encounter itself will be all about squeezing the performance out of your system so that you outlast the other guy. And scavenge, lick wounds and then limp back to base. And if you don't want to risk your own ship, you can rendezvous with and patch&boost tactical units of your faction and hence put your thumb on the war scale. I don't think dogfighting is very realistic or even make sense in a game of orbital mechanics. In TV series like StarTrek, the pacing on the exterior combat and interior drama of dealing with internal damage seldom match. You see 15 seconds of volatile combat and then two minutes of drama that would not have time to play out with the pacing that was just displayed. Games like FTL examplify the kind of simplification and pacing that is needed when combining both ship interior and ship-to-ship combat on the same timescale.
Yes clearly there won't be any dogfighting: ships do not have that kind of maneuvering capability. Moreover the closer the engagement the more deadly it is, and requiring less and less sophisticated weaponry. At close range of a few tens of kms even the very peaceful "Galactic Princess" ^^ cruise ship would be lethal using her engine as the gigantic plasma torch it is. I don't want to elaborate too much about combat now as a lot will have to be experimented! What's for sure is that it won't be mandatory and players will be able to manage their career as they please, peacefully should they want to. In the same spirit and for the more adventurous captains I'd like that firing their weapons at anything but practice targets should always feel like a very serious deal. That said I'm expecting that combats will be very tactical, be played over a few critical burns with lasting consequences, and thus depend a lot on the initial orbits and available ΔV budgets of the opponents: there would be no point "winning" ending up with not enough propellant mass to get back home. So the bad guys will likely often flee rather than fight as they'd rather live another day than die "heroically" trying to take down a warship they're no match for. To compensate for this military vessels will carry drones to help cover more "orbital volume". And IMHO their deployment should correspond in essence to the "prep" phase you were mentioning. But all that is still quite many lines of code away I'm afraid! :)
This looks delightful. Do you have any plan for a physical control-room environment with clickable buttons and MFD screens? Or is everything going to be in this virtual space?
Thanks! The whole game will take place in that virtual space. That would be lying to say I would not have preferred a physical rendering of the world but that was clearly out of reach development wise. So the rationale is that this (neural?) interface is processed from the ship's sensors. Incidentally that also enables some "tricks" that would be difficult with MFDs, starting with this 3D schematic view of the ship for instance! :)
@@d.c.elington Thanks for the reply! Can't have everything I suppose. ;) Yeah, I'm a little disappointed, but what you're already got just by itself is amazing here. Looking forward to playing this to the point of knowing how EVERYTHING works without the tooltips. Going to be a real fun time. :)
Ah yes having to master multiple interacting systems will be the thing for sure! :D (Power plant, flight planner and flight control avionics already; life support, maintenance utilities, sensors and mission payload to be added as the development goes on!)
Aaaa so nice so nice. Are you going to be applying system performance graphing to the 3D model also? This is a common feature when modelling the thermodynamic characteristics of reactor systems. You don't need a CFD, just a simple particle or texture rendering system that indicates thermal or mechanical stress. Normally, diagnostic and inspection is the zeroth step, and then startup is automatic but I think doing D&I is something that is less possible on an entire damn ship like this and I presume D&I is pre-checked before checklist start. I really love this.
Will try for the most important points! (Like currently with the color of the main radiators and figuring the exhaust of the maneuvering thrusters). Next task is to rework the main plasma plume and add smaller ones for the DECs. That said as you could see the graphics are very stylized (they're supposed to be some kind of virtual display), and clearly photo-realism is out of the game's scope.
@@d.c.elington Keep in mind that a gradient or even localized colour clustering for thermal or stress indicators can help an operator debug which line in to a cooling bus is generating the most heat and its a common technique for reverse-engineering problems.
Ah sorry my mistake I was thinking you were referring to the external view. So yes all components and circuit nets have individual feedback indicators both on the control panels and on the 3D engineering schematic view. When an abnormal condition is detected the corresponding sections will flash amber or red indeed. (And in this particular video the power plant is voluntarily pushed well outside of its normal ratings, hence the "Christmas tree" with many devices signaling either high temperatures and/or overload)
Besides maintenance visits that full "cold and dark" sequence should not be required very often as most of the time the ship will remained powered when docked. That said the refueling process is not that simple either! But with a bit of practice one can easily run through the usual workflows by heart. Incidentally electrical currents, heat, and fluids always flow in a physical and logical way thanks to the underlying circuit simulator used to model the systems. So nothing is scripted and there is no hard-coded "right" sequence... provided in the end all components are properly powered, supplied and configured as required!
Argh the game is running on a little homemade framework, and I must admit I did not consider simultaneous rendering into multiple windows at all! However when several monitors are present it's possible to select which one to render on (and the most convenient mode is borderless window anyway, so there's no issue with alt-tab or the like).
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Impressive, not just the depth of the start up procedures, but I really love the Quality of Life features of the checklists like how they are intelligent and point you towards the subject of interest.
Yes hopefully the checklists really help mitigating the learning curve. Otherwise the first contact with the machine would be quite punishingly brutal I'm afraid. 😣 I'm also trying to complete them with "workflows" to help with other tasks such as flight planning.
-How complicated startup process do you want it to be?
The Dev:
-yes.
I can't describe how amazing it looks. All what I can say is just I want to become a specialized startup engineer. You're amazing.
Thanks for the encouraging words 🙂 I'll update this one when the life support systems are up and running!
That said the sequence is more a "factory start" as most of the time the ship remains partly operational during stops. That does not make departures much shorter though as these "intermediate states" still need proper configuration.
This video was just randomly recommended to me, and I'm so glad it was! I've played countless hours of Rogue System, and I was always sad to see a game with such potential fall to the wayside. Now finding out that there is a game out there that's already more fleshed out than that, (arguably) better looking, and with much more ambition while still having a very clear track to reach it is amazing! I'll be sure to follow the progress!
I love it. Just the tinkering of the system was worth the price of admission in Rogue System.
I hope you are able to create gameplay around this, which is where I suspect RS didn't have a plan.
I don't even need an enemy. This thing can be pure PVE. Just give me a rig and janitor chores, ship/station rescue, servicing of modules, building/establishing a system logistics infrastructure, a solar system wide resource/production/utilization frontier presence, a tech progression and we're good.
Like a stranded ship and I need to jumpstart it or tow it to a facility. Clear out asteroids so that an automated miner can do its thing. Assist in setting up a fuel extraction, refinery and depot so that mankind can venture further.
Hi Tormod, blending a "game" with the "simulator" is definitely the objective. And as a matter of fact that's the bulk of the work for the months to come :)
What I can say for sure right now is that many of the missions / features you are describing and can be part of a Space Guard captain's (extended) job description are on the todo list. Some already have some foundations (typically related to ship maintenance and upgrades). Orbital facilities are being assigned roles and affiliations, and the current work is focused on the persistent NPC ships that the player will interact with.
So I must say that's very encouraging that these features seem to naturally make sense in the context, thanks! :D
@@d.c.elington That's so cool. Acting as the occasional respirator for derelicts, stranded and damaged ships/stations until repairs are complete so that gameplay aspects are solved using the bread&butter of where you have placed your emphasis.
I also thought that the combat aspect of Children of a Dead Earth had an interesting approach. I think it has potential to lend itself to the gameplay you envision. The combat has phases and you can do "prep" work prior to an encounter, the encounter itself will be all about squeezing the performance out of your system so that you outlast the other guy. And scavenge, lick wounds and then limp back to base.
And if you don't want to risk your own ship, you can rendezvous with and patch&boost tactical units of your faction and hence put your thumb on the war scale.
I don't think dogfighting is very realistic or even make sense in a game of orbital mechanics.
In TV series like StarTrek, the pacing on the exterior combat and interior drama of dealing with internal damage seldom match. You see 15 seconds of volatile combat and then two minutes of drama that would not have time to play out with the pacing that was just displayed.
Games like FTL examplify the kind of simplification and pacing that is needed when combining both ship interior and ship-to-ship combat on the same timescale.
Yes clearly there won't be any dogfighting: ships do not have that kind of maneuvering capability. Moreover the closer the engagement the more deadly it is, and requiring less and less sophisticated weaponry. At close range of a few tens of kms even the very peaceful "Galactic Princess" ^^ cruise ship would be lethal using her engine as the gigantic plasma torch it is.
I don't want to elaborate too much about combat now as a lot will have to be experimented! What's for sure is that it won't be mandatory and players will be able to manage their career as they please, peacefully should they want to. In the same spirit and for the more adventurous captains I'd like that firing their weapons at anything but practice targets should always feel like a very serious deal.
That said I'm expecting that combats will be very tactical, be played over a few critical burns with lasting consequences, and thus depend a lot on the initial orbits and available ΔV budgets of the opponents: there would be no point "winning" ending up with not enough propellant mass to get back home. So the bad guys will likely often flee rather than fight as they'd rather live another day than die "heroically" trying to take down a warship they're no match for. To compensate for this military vessels will carry drones to help cover more "orbital volume". And IMHO their deployment should correspond in essence to the "prep" phase you were mentioning.
But all that is still quite many lines of code away I'm afraid! :)
This looks delightful. Do you have any plan for a physical control-room environment with clickable buttons and MFD screens? Or is everything going to be in this virtual space?
Thanks! The whole game will take place in that virtual space.
That would be lying to say I would not have preferred a physical rendering of the world but that was clearly out of reach development wise. So the rationale is that this (neural?) interface is processed from the ship's sensors. Incidentally that also enables some "tricks" that would be difficult with MFDs, starting with this 3D schematic view of the ship for instance! :)
@@d.c.elington Thanks for the reply! Can't have everything I suppose. ;)
Yeah, I'm a little disappointed, but what you're already got just by itself is amazing here. Looking forward to playing this to the point of knowing how EVERYTHING works without the tooltips. Going to be a real fun time. :)
Ah yes having to master multiple interacting systems will be the thing for sure! :D
(Power plant, flight planner and flight control avionics already; life support, maintenance utilities, sensors and mission payload to be added as the development goes on!)
Aaaa so nice so nice. Are you going to be applying system performance graphing to the 3D model also? This is a common feature when modelling the thermodynamic characteristics of reactor systems. You don't need a CFD, just a simple particle or texture rendering system that indicates thermal or mechanical stress.
Normally, diagnostic and inspection is the zeroth step, and then startup is automatic but I think doing D&I is something that is less possible on an entire damn ship like this and I presume D&I is pre-checked before checklist start.
I really love this.
Will try for the most important points! (Like currently with the color of the main radiators and figuring the exhaust of the maneuvering thrusters). Next task is to rework the main plasma plume and add smaller ones for the DECs. That said as you could see the graphics are very stylized (they're supposed to be some kind of virtual display), and clearly photo-realism is out of the game's scope.
@@d.c.elington Keep in mind that a gradient or even localized colour clustering for thermal or stress indicators can help an operator debug which line in to a cooling bus is generating the most heat and its a common technique for reverse-engineering problems.
Ah sorry my mistake I was thinking you were referring to the external view. So yes all components and circuit nets have individual feedback indicators both on the control panels and on the 3D engineering schematic view. When an abnormal condition is detected the corresponding sections will flash amber or red indeed.
(And in this particular video the power plant is voluntarily pushed well outside of its normal ratings, hence the "Christmas tree" with many devices signaling either high temperatures and/or overload)
Are these steps all mandatory? Like can you try a really sketchy/fast start up, and hope there's no boom?
Besides maintenance visits that full "cold and dark" sequence should not be required very often as most of the time the ship will remained powered when docked. That said the refueling process is not that simple either! But with a bit of practice one can easily run through the usual workflows by heart.
Incidentally electrical currents, heat, and fluids always flow in a physical and logical way thanks to the underlying circuit simulator used to model the systems. So nothing is scripted and there is no hard-coded "right" sequence... provided in the end all components are properly powered, supplied and configured as required!
I wonder if the graphs are generated or if they're hand-made..
Everything is generated indeed!
Do you think multiple monitors will be supportable without too much trouble. I'm just curious.
Argh the game is running on a little homemade framework, and I must admit I did not consider simultaneous rendering into multiple windows at all! However when several monitors are present it's possible to select which one to render on (and the most convenient mode is borderless window anyway, so there's no issue with alt-tab or the like).
@@d.c.elington I'll find some way to build a multi-screen command pod one day.