Jump Bubbles or Jump Buoys?

Okay as long as the distance to the epicenter of the jump point is independent of the way of marking it. The way it is now, when I'm in the Vega sector, the balls are small AND you have to be within it to jump, which gives you a very small window of opportunity.
 
spiritplumber said:
Good ideas, but that's really not seen outside of Priv 2 and a lot of people consider it off-canon. Plus, jump gate sizes are a PAIN to implement...

Right now the way I'm having it is that every faction has their method to mark jump gates: merchant systems (i.e. all of gemini, pretty much) have the "blue ball" thing, Confed has buoys, and pirate systems have none because you're supposed to be in the know to get there in the first place. Kilrathi systems will have a more Kilrathi-looking buoy as soon as I get around to making it... Kat designs, being asymmetric, are a pain to model. (for pirate and retro systems, the nav point still appears and you can jump normally, just you have to guess when you're close enough).

Is this acceptable?


(This is what I am working on today btw -- download sometime tonight)
Click to expand...


Well, it would make sense(for pirate bases) for the jump point to show up anyway, based on your reasoning. Most pirate bases seem to be old mining bases that failed or something. And as such, the jump point into the system was well know. It's the actual bases themselves that were removed from the lists. So the jump point location should be 'visible'.

Also, keep in mind that the blockade systems and the kilrathu systems you have access to in Privateer all had the blue ball.
 
It's just that it's a LOT easier to tell the game "distribute jump points by faction" than make a case for each system -- the way I'm handling it is that the "balls" are subunits of the "jump point" dummy unit, so if you want to script a jump point a particular way in a non-autogen system, you still can.
 
there shouldn't be any 'factions'

wing commander wasn't one of those faction things. yeah, there were the merchants, etc..etc..etc.. but they're not freaking star system holding iron fisted republics you know?

if you want to really break it down to brass tacks....you've got 3 main factions that are listed straight out of the novels..

Confed
the Kilrathi
Firekka

why are there 'merchant' sytems. they don't have empires. same goes for all the other 'factions'. seriously.
 
Hmm well it would seem if its a HUD thing then no. If the Confeds have a reason (burst transmision relay points, navagation markers, listening post, etc...) then there should be a Confed bouy (if destroyed a replace bouy misson should spawn, and drop from the rosster if a confed cap ship jumps through (as it would leave a new bouy behind as SOP)).

If the Kilrathi would have a reason to place a bouy then there should be one (same as above).

Pirates would leave no bouy for obvious reasons. And destroy any placed on their jump points (possable pirate mission). Pirates may also destroy bouys as a tactic during operations to prevent SOS communications from leaving the system.

Civilian trade routes would be marked only if Confed bouys are not already present and a bouy is needed. These could be remote systems (dead ends) that have economic operations (mining, research, etc...).

Upon reaching a systme any jump point with a bouy is automaticly marked on your map. If the bouy is friendly then it also marks the jump points destination and you may communicate through it.

Jump bubbles should be a HUD effect. In a confed ship it could be a blue bubble or crosshare or something. For civilian ships this could be a green bubble. For Kats a red one. If jump point sizes are implamented then the bubble size would adjust accordingly (with max jump weight/size marked on the bubble and/or map). Ships with crappy or older sensor/avionic packages would not project a bubble on the HUD, you just have to guess. If your ship is too large to pass then the jump simply fails.

Or not, just my opinion. Im not contributing anything but suggestions so its up to you. My personal vote is for freespace style 3D crosshare markers instead of bubbles. They clearly denote an area of space without ubstructing your view (too much) and cannot be confused with anything other than an artificial image generated by your avionics package.
 
BradMick said:
there shouldn't be any 'factions'

wing commander wasn't one of those faction things. yeah, there were the merchants, etc..etc..etc.. but they're not freaking star system holding iron fisted republics you know?

if you want to really break it down to brass tacks....you've got 3 main factions that are listed straight out of the novels..

Confed
the Kilrathi
Firekka

why are there 'merchant' sytems. they don't have empires. same goes for all the other 'factions'. seriously.
Click to expand...


Good point, seeing as merchants would be a 'faction' of Confed. The Merchant Marine and all that jazz. :)
 
yeah, i've always thought of bouys as just that. bouys. i'd imagine them being in coreworld-ward systems marking safe travel lanes for shipping and the like. out on the frontier, not so much.
 
I meant "faction" as they are referred to in the game; Gemini is mostly held by the merchant faction in the autogen system, except for say, Perry and the blockade point systems, and so on. Sorry for the confusion. My point is that for all we know from Priv and the other WCU games, blue bubbles are used in civilian systems and buoys (if anything at all) are used in military systems....

I find the bubbles very goofy and found them so in the original Priv too honestly, but I'm trying to be accurate ^^;
 
BradMick said:
there shouldn't be any 'factions'

wing commander wasn't one of those faction things. yeah, there were the merchants, etc..etc..etc.. but they're not freaking star system holding iron fisted republics you know?

if you want to really break it down to brass tacks....you've got 3 main factions that are listed straight out of the novels..

Confed
the Kilrathi
Firekka

why are there 'merchant' sytems. they don't have empires. same goes for all the other 'factions'. seriously.
Click to expand...
The idea is not that the merchants own the systems, they are not little merchant fiefdoms. Designating a system as a 'merchant system' is nothing more than an easy method of specifying what sort of ships one is likely to encounter there.

Systems likely to have pirates are called 'pirate systems' and get a more piraty mix of ships. 'Confed systems' have more confed ships, they are clustered near the border. Systems farther from the border are less likely to see large amounts of military ships, so they are labelled 'merchant systems' and are given a ship distribution to match. It's a method to give different systems different types of ships, not a reflection of Wing Commander politics. That's it.

The devs could make all systems 'confed systems' but then all systems would have the same ship ratios. If a better method is implemented, then by all means, axe the factions.
 
As for autogen -- yeah, having mutliple factions like this makes it a PITA to get the siege system going. But, it works by and large -- for me assigning a system to merchant means it's a civilian system, militia means it's semi military, and confed means it's on the frontlines.

I ***REALLY*** prefer buoys, but I'm going to try and make sure it's easy to pick which you want for each system.

uhm, actually irl i don't really prefer boys that much.... 50/50 really.
 
The devs could make all systems 'confed systems' but then all systems would have the same ship ratios. If a better method is implemented, then by all means, axe the factions.
Click to expand...

Spirit, if the purpose of classifying bases by "faction" is to regulate ship ratios, maybe Brad's concern might be addressed simply by removing the lables. After all, if I go to New Detroit and see mostly merchant ships, I'll think of New Detroit as a merchant kind of place, without the need to have a "Merchant" lable in my HUD. In other words, make the "faction attribute" a hidden attribute. I'm sure Hellcat can give you a quick patch to have the lable removed.

Going back to the (jump) point: I agree with you that blue balls look goofy. Maybe I shall use a stronger word: "unscientific", unless there's some reasonable explanation somewhere in the literature. That's why I thought that gates, like in P2 might make more sense. But I realize that this would be too much of a departure from the tradition. So let me assume that the technology to open a wormhole is contained within the "jump drive" alone, and that what the jump drive is doing is precipitating an opening of "hyperspace", but can only do so at locations where hyperspace is very close to normal space. Now, the purpose of the buoys or bubbles is to identify those locations for traveling ships.

Now, then, we could say that the location could be marked by an external object, such as a buoy, or simply be triangulated by your ship's computer. There are many references in Privateer to jump-points being "programmed" into the ship's computer, by the way. These two methods could overlap.

Now, the bubbles:

The bubbles could just be artificial projections of the ship's computer onto the HUD. Now, what IS an HUD. In fighter planes, there's a piece of glass tilted at 45 degrees from the vertical, with a CRT display flat on the dashboard, under it; such that you see the reflection of the display image on the glass, as if it was overlayed on top of what you see in front of you. That way, a box can be drawn around an enemy plane, when you have lock, for instance. So, if the ships in WC or in Privateer have an HUD, the computer can project a (goofy?) image onto the HUD, just to let you know that's the place to fly to. In which case, some ship computers might project it as a blue ball, some as an orange cube, or whatever.

Makes sense?

If we were to adopt this policy, we'd need a little engine patch to make the blue balls NOT show up when you're looking through the side windows, or from an external view, though.

As for buoys, perhaps the military prefers to have physical markers as a back up, in case a ship's computer has been damaged, and the pilot needs to make it back to base by eye-ball.
 
The way I'm doing it right now is:

In inhabited systems there is NEARLY ALWAYS a jump buoy in the center of the jump "zone". It's small and it has confed, BW or kilrathi markings depending on where you are.

Sometimes there is a faint "ball" like the Priv one around it -- it's a semitransparent grid, the idea is that it's projected by the buoy IF whoever placed the buoy felt like installing a projector on it. I'm going to go out on a limb and calling this the origin of the Priv "balls".

In pirate systems there might be nothing at all because the original buoy was blown up at some points and nobody bothered replacing it.

In unexplored systems there is nothing at all.

You have a good point on the HUD, but there is already a HUD image -- the square (or brackets) you get around that. Those are really WC standards, so having other stuff other than them doesn't look right, surprisingly (I tried -- you can never get the wireframes to look superimposed just right)

All this is eye candy and has no effect on navigation.
(Screenshots to follow ASAP)
 
I don't think that's true. I don't remember EVER being able to jump where there's no blue ball. There are NAV points without blue balls, but they are just NAV points, NOT jump points.

In the missions off Rygannon, when you explore each of the systems the first time, there are no blue balls, and in fact there are no jump points. When you get back to ES headquarters, they "program new jump points INTO YOUR COMPUTER", and now you see blue balls.

And there are no buoys, there, since you were the first one ever in there, and you didn't install one.

Ergo: Buoys don't project blue balls. The blue balls are generated by the ship's computer, and projected as visual navigation aids, onto the HUD.

So, in fact, it was a "bug" in the original, that you could see the blue balls from external ship viewpoints; or through the side-windows. The blue balls should only be visible in the forward cockpit view, as they only exist in your computer's display.

Q.E.D. ;-)
 
Ok, like I just edited my own message, it's just an error that they made them visible from external views, or through side windows. And the reason they only exist in Privateer is because commercial ship computers generate them as such, but the military find them "goofy"... ;-) . ;-) . ;-)
 
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