How ships are controlled, the basics.

Today's lesson is on how the control chair will allow you superior flying capabilities.:


The way ship view (when you are flying the ship from the control chair) will work is that you will be in a free cam perspective. You will be able to fly through and around the ship as if you were actually in it (of course, as a virtual representation of the ship, you can pass straight through the blocks, and people inside it, and you can't be seen).

Any device that is connected to the control chair (everything on the ship) will appear glowing red (or some such) in ship view, along easy location. Also, from where ever you are on the ship, there will be arrows pointing to all the people on board the ship.

Ship can still be sabotaged, it just makes it very difficult to when you have an omnipotent controller.


Next lesson: what computers do, and how to control your ship using them.

Questions?

I think that when you control the ship you should be able to see it from the player's perspective. OFC this view sucks so the computers may have a program that allows you to view the ship from 3rd person (outside) with the ability to rotate around the ship or maybe the free cam as you said, though I find it difficult to manuver the ship and the cam together (It is much easier when the cam moves with the ship). It also brings us to the use of computers .

The free-cam is only one option, the other is a locked third-person view above the ship. The problem with this is that you will not be able to see underneath the ship, or behind it. That is why a free-cam is important.


The physical controls for the free cam and ship will be different (e.g. "w,a,s,d" tilt free-cam, plus "q,e" to move forward and backward in free cam and then the arrow keys and mouse to control the ship. [Although it is just as likely to be the other way around])

Lord Mackeroth wrote:

The free-cam is only one option, the other is a locked third-person view above the ship. The problem with this is that you will not be able to see underneath the ship, or behind it. That is why a free-cam is important.


The physical controls for the free cam and ship will be different (e.g. "w,a,s,d" tilt free-cam, plus "q,e" to move forward and backward in free cam and then the arrow keys and mouse to control the ship. [Although it is just as likely to be the other way around])

why not just hold o and move the mouse around in third person to see around you.

It will be quite annoying to hold O all the time as you'll need to move your view allot. BTW what's about the crew ? Shouldn't those be replaced with NPCs ? Otherwise its too many people for the server... Like beds, food and stuff per person which allows you to activate and use a turret.

Did I ever specific that the crew were players? No, I just said "crew"

A free cam would be very complicated (keyboard wise, in my opinion), trying to control a ship and control the player would be just annoying in a combat situation.
I propose something like the Zeppelin mod.
In addition, radar and heat scanners would be necessary to maintaining a ship.
besides with larger ships, more than one person should be needed to fly a ship of that scale.

Here is my idea: Middle mouse button clicked activates panning around the ship, scrolling middle mouse button zooms in and out.

Maybe the freecam should display a virtual ship, the blocks themselves could look normal, but crewmembers look hologram-y and non-crewmembers are invisible untill a crewmember sees them.

Internal sensors could also detect them.

Naw.

Lord Mackeroth wrote:

The free-cam is only one option, the other is a locked third-person view above the ship. The problem with this is that you will not be able to see underneath the ship, or behind it. That is why a free-cam is important.


The physical controls for the free cam and ship will be different (e.g. "w,a,s,d" tilt free-cam, plus "q,e" to move forward and backward in free cam and then the arrow keys and mouse to control the ship. [Although it is just as likely to be the other way around])

Theres also my spherecam idea.

Think, another game had almost the exact same problem, EVE. What did they do? They used a spherecam.

For those who have never played EVE:

A spherecam is a small drone with a camera, powersource, and transmitter on board. It is manipulated by the ship using carefully tuned magnetic fields, in such a way that the location of the spherecam can be precisely controlled. It can rotate to any position within a sphere based on the magnetic generator, more powerful gens increase the radius of the sphere. The cam can also rotate in place, but is incapable of moving while doing so.

The cam cannot move completly freely though, it can either fly around sideways in in the sphere(scroll), move up or down(zoom out or in), or rotate freely(look around(these are the actions that these movements cause, not the controls)).

TL;DR: Go play EVE. That camera.

Dunno about you guys, but I like to stroll about my ship while we're in motion. I think there should be an optional navigator NPC that when right clicked opens up a map of the system you're in for movement, and will automatically adjust on the vertical plane for any obstacles/evasive action.

On that note, how will ascending in space be handled? Will it be like Zeppelin where you just go up, or like the Planes mod where you can yaw/rotate?

6 degrees, I would assume.

Yes, there will be all 6 degrees of freedom.

Which makes stuff even more complicated ... so who works on the ships' movement ???

Fr0st.

It was a rhetorical question ...

Idea: we do it like Gmod's Wiremod. You hook individual or groups of engines to a computercraft esque computer and then either set them directly to keys or trigger them by a function or whatever it is that does stuff in programming languages.

That requires braincells, dummy! Everybody knows few people have any these days.

I would like that, nobody else would, I think.

I do. I just chose to not use them, quite often....

Although engines will be modular like that, the sophisticated engines that we are using do not require maneuvering thrusters.

I like that idea. It means you can't just stick an engine on it and call it a day, but make it a convoluted process not for the lighthearted. The more unwilling people are to create their own ships, the more profits people like me make

I'm not sure what would constitute convoluted. Some people think redstone is prohibitively difficult.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a difficult process, but just be a deceptively hard task similar to, say, building a PC. Both are easy, but many choose to buy from manufacturers because they're intimidated by the steps and part models needed.

Ok, enough off topic, we need to settle this.

Lets take a page from the basis of the mod itself: Minecraft. Minecraft, in it's start, gave its players a bunch of blocks and the means to move them around; it gave them a framework. And what happened? It sold millions.

Lets take a look at a few other mods; Like Redpower. Redpower adds a bunch of new things, and their all virtually useless on there own. Yet its one of the biggest supermods out there, because it gives it's players a framework

Industrial craft? It also gives a sort of framework, and it's incredibly popular.

Computer Craft? Framework. Very popular.

We need to take a page from all of these mods, and all of those that failed before them.

We need to give our users a damn framework.

For some, it will be too complex, yes, but that will drive the economy! Shipbuilding will be a viable method of revenue generation, in whatever form that takes. We CAN have programmable computers, because those who DO know what their doing can give those who DON'T what they need! Or sell it to them! And if they won't give it away? Learn! It won't kill you! It only ever killed that guy who got that prank chemistry book!

We need to stop trying to force feed simplicity to MINECRAFT users! We need to follow the book of frikkin REAL LIFE. NOTHING in life is simple, yet we are all ALIVE are we not?

WE NEED TO GIVE OUR USERS


COMPLEXITY!