Scope of content of part II (Questions for george)

[Aury]

Given what I have read in the topology thread, how much content is going to have to be in the galaxy? From what I can tell, the galaxy is far, far bigger than the QZ - and you can explore it all. However, this leads to some interesting issues.
1) A galaxy that big is going to have to be populated with an incredible amount of content. That would translate into a lot of work.
2) If quantity is skimped on, (ie, QZ-sized chunks of space are being assigned to all of the same faction), then there would be much less of a motivation to explore for a newbie (or even more veteran players), aside from trying to get good weapons/loot/etc. Things risk becoming monotonous, or in some cases, even unbalanced due to the monolothic regions of space.

So how do you plan on addressing these issues?

[george moromisato]

That's a really good question and I don't have a complete answer. But I have some thoughts:

1. My current plan is to create a galaxy with a few hundred nodes at most. Far less than the billions of systems that actually exist, but still more than ten times the number in Part I. That makes the problem hard, but hopefully manageable.

2. It will certainly be possible to finish Part II without visiting every system. There will most likely be key systems scattered around the galaxy (in random locations) that the player will have to find and complete in order to win. But as always the player will have control over their own path and pace.

3. Certainly the first complete version of Part II will have lots of duplication. But there will be more and more content over time.

4. Obviously, mods have a role to play here. It might be possible to design the galaxy such that mods can plug in new alien species and new regions. For example, imagine that the core game comes with ten alien races. Initially the galaxy might be carved up into 50 regions, and each of those regions might be assigned a random alien race, with 5 regions per race. Eventually, mods could add new races, which would decrease the number of regions per race.

5. As much as possible I want to create combinatorial complexity. For example, there might be 8 different environments that determine the kinds of resources in a system (metals, rare crystals, etc.); there might also be 10 different alien races, each reacting differently to each environment (for example, one alien race might have more mines if the environment is volcanic); finally, there might be 10 alien enemies, each of which reacts differently to friendly alien races. 8 * 10 * 10 = 800 different combinations.

6. One of the biggest problems will (as always) be balance. The number of systems of level N that a player has to clean out to gain level N+1 is smaller than the number of level N systems in the galaxy. So how will the game stay interesting? One possibility is that alien races adapt to the player's power. If a level N+5 player starts beating up enemies in a level N system, perhaps N+5 level enemies start spawning.

7. As always, we will learn the most once Part II is playable. My goal is to get a skeletal version of Part II running as soon as possible (before all the content is done). Then we can tune and enhance. Of course, even a skeletal version is going to take a lot of time.

[Periculi]

. For example, there might be 8 different environments that determine the kinds of resources in a system (metals, rare crystals, etc.); there might also be 10 different alien races, each reacting differently to each environment (for example, one alien race might have more mines if the environment is volcanic); finally, there might be 10 alien enemies, each of which reacts differently to friendly alien races. 8 * 10 * 10 = 800 different combinations.

Does this mean that you are going to add to or replace the existing Fire, Earth, Air and Water type of environments that the Star Systems use in Earth Space?

[ThePrivateer]

George, is Part II going to coincide with Trancscendence version 2.0?

Or will Part II be Version ~1.X?

Just wondering what your milestone is going to be for PII/PIII. And will Part II and Part III simply be a new Adventure Extension (like how the main game is Stars of the Pilgrim?)

One last thing....do you have a pencilled in name for Part II? Just so that we can stop saying Part II all the time? >.>

[Aury]

Ah, so scaling the enemies to the player? I suppose that helps to address the problem with non-linear balance, especially with a topology like this. Still, these alien factions would likely be highly developed, like on the scale of the CW or Ares, ok, well, maybe not /that/ much, but still, they would require (At least in the end) a good deal of development.

[Jeoshua]

I like the idea of them scaling. After all, if a weak ship comes into your space, you're not going to send your biggest, baddest ships after it. Then again there may be enemies that would do JUST that.

[Aury]

I like the idea of them scaling. After all, if a weak ship comes into your space, you're not going to send your biggest, baddest ships after it. Then again there may be enemies that would do JUST that.

Such enemies would have been eliminated long ago because of how horribly ineffective such tactics would be. x_x - unless it's the case that you have only one kind of combat ship >.> *cough himal cough*

[Song]

I like the idea of them scaling. After all, if a weak ship comes into your space, you're not going to send your biggest, baddest ships after it. Then again there may be enemies that would do JUST that.

Such enemies would have been eliminated long ago because of how horribly ineffective such tactics would be. x_x - unless it's the case that you have only one kind of combat ship >.> *cough himal cough*

"Look! A small rock! SCRAMBLE THE INTERCEPTORS!"

"Geez, man, this job is boring...."

"Look! A HUGE FLEET OF COMMONWEALTH DESTROYERS!.....SCRAMBLE THE INTERCEPTORS!"

"You know, we actually *liked* the boring all along, sir...."

[Atarlost]

Perhaps the Huari would be a better example.

[Drako Slyith]

I am worried about the lag. The RAM needed to process the information for so many systems would be enormous. As far as I can tell once you enter a system the setup is saved. That means that with hundreds of systems, the save games near the end would take a lot of space. Also, if you have dynamic responses, the processing RAM would be high. As it is with the simple chase, standoff, ect attack strategies, once you get around two hundred ships in a system (Not as hard as you would think, St. Kats does sometimes) the game lags. Once you get the hundred or so lines of code to create the reactive responses of the higher races, you might lag after only 100 or so ships, which is in most systems. Combined with a few hundred systems... Lag may become a big problem.

[Aury]

What are the stats of the computer you are playing with?
It takes far more than 200 ships to lag my netbook, when freshly booted and nothing else started. (That's because the only other thing I really run on that computer is firefox with buttloads of tabs, and that takes up lots of ram >.>)

[Atarlost]

There's a point at which it's of declining marginal utility to support a computer, even for a game like this one. If your computer can't handle a current complicated system and you're worried about storing star systems you're probably in that category. Either you really should replace your computer anyhow because your luck with parts not failing is going to run out eventually, or you desperately need to clean house. Or you have Wolfy's browsing habits and do breadth first wiki walks, in tabs.

If you have inadequate hardware upgrade now and pray your current computer doesn't die on you before you can move your important files.

If you have a computer that should be adequate (a single core athlon with a gig of memory should be adequate unless you were foolish enough to upgrade to vista and that's not necessarily the slowest that is adequate, merely what I use without lag in normal play) you need to run a spyware and virus sweep. Also change your virus protection. If you're using the antivirus that came with the computer and it's old it's probobly Norton or McAffee and both are worse than the disease. AVG is good and has a free version. I also recommend http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/. Also look at what's on your hard drive and see if there's any software you no longer use. AAA Games in particular tend to be huge and many have limited replay value for most users. A new hard drive is also an option. They have one of the lowest MTBF of PC components and are much bigger than they used to be. After backing up important files to the new drive you will still have plenty of free space.

In the last case simply switch to depth first wiki walks opening everything in a single tab. Wolfy should probably try to do this too.

[Aury]

We really should come up with a list of minimum requirements (bare min to start game, bare min to run it playably, and recommended for good experience) >.>

Also, I will never give up my 20 tabs of tvtropes! D:

TvTropesRuinsYourComputersPerformance >.> XD

[Drako Slyith]

Maybe 200 is too low, its probably more like 400, but the fact still remains that complicated AI takes a lot of RAM. I use a 3 gig processor. I do usually have several tabs open, but actually the problem is as my last computer was destroyed by viruses, I run a virus scan daily, and that would take a lot of my RAM while it scans... But anyway, it would be awesome to fight an interactive AI. Just that if there are five hundred ships, each with an in depth AI running... it could cause problems, especially on a 2 gig processor.

[schilcote]

About stars and lag;

GalGen Trader's default settings are to generate a galaxy with 10,000 stars, then populate 50% of those stars with planets. It takes about one second to generate and index all of this, and never dips below 55 FPS drawing all this at 1600x900 on my computer.

Now, Transcendence is a good bit more complex than GGT, but still, computers run surprisingly fast. And I don't think the AI in transcendence is very complicated at all, all it does is just fly about in a circle around enemies.

EDIT:

Also, Firefox has a save tabs function. You can have your 100 tabs of TvTropes without using all your ram, just close FF when you're not using it.