Sirius

[george moromisato]

A post on the Sirius star system:

http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/news.hexm?id=1042

[PM]

...Though many of the denizens of Eternity Port have long ago ceased to care about physical human, there are still some who see our fates bound together.

Ah, a race of undead or constructs. I would like to exterminate them (because they are already dead and yet another target for typical adventurer protocol), but that would probably make the game unwinnable. I will just have to wait until part 2 to see if I can make Apomoto's worst nightmare come true.

[JohnBWatson]

...Though many of the denizens of Eternity Port have long ago ceased to care about physical human, there are still some who see our fates bound together.

Ah, a race of undead or constructs. I would like to exterminate them (because they are already dead and yet another target for typical adventurer protocol), but that would probably make the game unwinnable. I will just have to wait until part 2 to see if I can make Apomoto's worst nightmare come true.

It stands to reason that Eternity Port would be armored in a similar fashion to the viewers' box at the Arena or else very heavily protected(and it appears to be without any defensive turrets or similar structures from the minimap). The allure of being downloaded is immortality, which wouldn't exactly mean much if a couple of Charon frigates could take you out whenever they felt like looting a few thousand credits worth of CDM archives.

Of course, that begs the question of precisely how the CDM archives the player loots off of Abbasid bases get there in the first place...

[PM]

The Port's defense is the player (presumably) needs them to play. Otherwise, the game would probably be unwinnable if killed or blacklisted the player.

Yes, if the Port has Arena's perfect defenses, they are impervious, which begs the question why various sovereigns have not used them to protect their assets or even seal off stargates for an even tighter quarantine than that imposed by Iocrym (other than player needs to win the game)?

The allure of being downloaded is immortality, which wouldn't exactly mean much if a couple of Charon frigates could take you out whenever they felt like looting a few thousand credits worth of CDM archives.

Immortality would be an allure, if it was actually granted. For all the humans could know, the digital inhabitants could be sinister impostors from... elsewhere. Analogous to a malicious spirit invading an empty corpse and reanimating it as a vampire (or lich) and posing as its host. The vampire is not really the host, only (un)dead and with an forced alignment change, but a completely different (and sinister) entity piloting the host as a meat puppet.

Of course, adventuring murder-hobos or munchkins need no excuse to rampage for loot and power.

[Arisaya]

The distance between the stars is highly disconcerting (Binary systems where the stars are far apart are a known source of lag)

There is the known issue that if the stars are too close together, the background light levels get totally mixed up, so what I did was to simply turn off the secondary's light levels.

[Song]

While I'm not a physicist, I presume it'd be possible to find a lagrange point or something similar between the two stars.....perhaps if a 100% spawning dry dock or fuel station was there? If it's a major system then it'd make sense for someone to make some cash by refueling/repairing peeps on the long trip between primaries.

[JohnBWatson]

While I'm not a physicist, I presume it'd be possible to find a lagrange point or something similar between the two stars.....perhaps if a 100% spawning dry dock or fuel station was there? If it's a major system then it'd make sense for someone to make some cash by refueling/repairing peeps on the long trip between primaries.

From what I've read, the object at the point would have to be very small, and it would still be away from the optimal position 99% of the time.

Of course, physics seems to be abstracted in many scenarios here, not the least of which is the battle arena somehow maintaining a stable orbit alongside all of the surrounding stations in perfect formation. We've also seen many pirate and marauder stations placed between stars, so the question would not be one of whether the location is physically feasible but whether it is logistically safe and desirable in gameplay. On the first note, a safe haven for vessels traveling between the stars would be a very undesirable situation for pirates, and they would thus take care to destroy any transports coming in to resupply it(not to mention attack the ships that were constructing it in the first place). This need not be a deal breaker, however - the station could be set up by Korolov, the militia, or some other organization seeking to weaken the pirates in the area. A more worrying problem, depending on how easily navbeacons can be fitted to a drydock or fuel station, is the fact that a vessel passing between the stars might be unable to locate the station(thus why most friendly stations tend to orbit planets or set up in asteroid belts), severely cutting into both its usefulness and its profit margin. On the second note, I find the absence of friendlies between stars serves a purpose in driving home the isolation of space, and a vast, empty space between the stars where criminals and the like prey freely and congregate fits the Transcendence universe's theme quite well. The addition of an area where the player would need to either turn off their power - heavy shields and armament to get through or stockpile extra fuel also adds a new challenge and strategy to the game, as well as some unconventional danger, which lets Transcendence show its roguelike roots. On the other hand, a friendly station deep in empty space is an as of yet unexplored concept, and, pulled off well, it could add uniqueness to the adventure and make it more memorable.

[Song]

It's worth noting that I actually side with Watson on this one. Binary systems are cool, even though hardly anyone likes them. The fuel-depot is just a suggestion for if it *is* deemed too annoying. Although I'm guessing there's at least one refueling station there anyway (the CDM place), which should be fine. As long as the long gulf is not in the middle of a void with no fuel sources.

[Arisaya]

Well, ultimately there are two huge problems with binary systems which makes them almost universally disliked:
1: the long travel time through the void of nothing to do but watch yourself autopilot across the screen. On a fast computer, this isn't quite so bad (but still wastes time and fuel), but when you try to play on a low end computer (like any netbook ever) you run into the following problem:
2: the fact that this travel time is greatly extended on low end systems due to lag - Im not entirely sure why, but it seems like having entities that spread out makes the engine lag badly

As a result TSB's systems will look more like this: (This is a very early WIP version of Procyon. So ignore the fact that like 90% of what you see is just placeholder/filler stuff)

[george moromisato]

As a result TSB's systems will look more like this: (This is a very early WIP version of Procyon. So ignore the fact that like 90% of what you see is just placeholder/filler stuff)

If you count square you'll notice that your outer asteroid belt is about 13 squares away from the center. That's about the same distance as Sirius B is from Sirius A. I think the systems are about the same size.

[Arisaya]

Interesting! - thats a good point I will need to do some science to determine what is going on then since my tests seemed to be ok in procyon on my old test laptop (Though regardless I will be reigning in its size since the scale is among the many things that are wrong with it)

[Atarlost]

I think Sirius is just a lot smaller than randomly generated binaries. The two stars are on the same grid. Randomly generated binaries are never that close.

[Arisaya]

Oh? good point - thats an interesting observation

[george moromisato]

BTW: Painting the glow around each star in map view is very expensive (probably the most expensive single operation in the game). Since binary stars have two stars, this might explain why netbooks have problems.

To confirm, you can see if the lag only happens (or is worst) in map view. Also, /debugVideo will show timings for each frame and tell you whether the problem is painting or calculating.

If this is the problem, there are a couple of ways to fix it. I can optimize the painting by precomputing the glow (and storing it in a bitmap). Or I can add an option to decrease graphics quality (which would remove the glow or replace it with something easier to paint).

[AssumedPseudonym]

 I never would have guessed that star glow, of all things, was such a resource hog. Neat.
 Speaking for myself and my own decidedly underpowered setup, there is a noticeable drop in performance when I’m on the map, even when I’m not in a binary system. I haven’t run into a binary system in quite a while, but I do remember it being considerably worse than usual. It’s still generally playable, but if there are eleventeen kerzillionty Ferians in a binary system, I have to have pretty much nothing but Transcendence running for more than a brief check of the map to keep everything from lagging to unplayability.