Forums » Suggestions
Gas field mining
What about adding gas fields to mine? It would give the chance to add more mining options (new beams, scanners, etc.) and add a new element to the game. Now, I dont mean just little puffs of clouds here and there, but gigantic gas fields a player can fly through . . . kinda like a nebulae. Just let there be concentrated pockets within this big cloud that can be mined (they could made easy or very hard to see depending on how they were colored in comparison to the rest of the cloud) Throw in some bots, or some opposing players and you have a very interesting place for combat. (Especially if a few of these gas pockets in the nebulae were comprised of flammable gasses that exploded if weapons fire hit them or went off while flying through them!)
Here are some nasa images of nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that would make a good base to design some nebulae for the game. www.astro.washington.edu/balic/WFPC2/ The Dandelion Puff Ball Nebulae is my favorite though they all are neat.
Here are some nasa images of nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that would make a good base to design some nebulae for the game. www.astro.washington.edu/balic/WFPC2/ The Dandelion Puff Ball Nebulae is my favorite though they all are neat.
Do it with Ion Storms! I think this would rock (lame pun intended).
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This would also help with the annoyance factor of Ion Storms, discussed in this thread: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7579
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Maybe make Ion Storm mining a seperate idea from the original Gas field idea; something like mining 'roids in an Ion Storm yields "Ionized <mineral> Ore" that is worth more... but the Ion Storm makes the 'roids heat up faster (and cool down faster too). Or something like that.
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This would also help with the annoyance factor of Ion Storms, discussed in this thread: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7579
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Maybe make Ion Storm mining a seperate idea from the original Gas field idea; something like mining 'roids in an Ion Storm yields "Ionized <mineral> Ore" that is worth more... but the Ion Storm makes the 'roids heat up faster (and cool down faster too). Or something like that.
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Not every computer would be able to do calculations for 'mist' all that well. As far as minable clouds go, nebula are nowhere near your most likely choices. Most nebula are so diffuse that they are basically impossible to see unless they are several light years thick. With no force to hold it together, gas very rapidly diffuses in a vacuum. The only reason that nebula exist at all is the very weak gravitational field produced by a diffuse cloud of hydrogen and dust.
Imagine being in a nebula is like being outside on a dry day with almost no air polution. You can't see it, unless you get somewhere where you can view some mountains 20 or 30 miles off, and then you notice that the mountains look just a little bit hazy. That's what being in a nebula is like, except that the 'polution' is so diffuse that the distances involved are more like 20 to 30 lightyears.
I suppose you could exagerate certain features to produce minable clouds. What you need is a very strong gravitational force holding the clouds together. That implies something like a neutron star or a black hole, or a small start in close rotation to a much larger one. Those celestial objects can produce 'small' concretion disks of a couple of AU in which it might be reasonable (if not entirely realistic) to suggest that the clouds were thick enough to mine. It seems like Larry Niven wrote a series of science-fantasy stories about just such an environment, but I forget the titles off the top of my head.
With the right skybox featuring a black hole with a concretion disk nearly parallel to the to sector, you might could have 'asteroids' composed of gas.
Flamable gas is really unlikely though. Even if you had a big cloud of methane, you could shoot a laser through it and not have it explode. That's because the real source of flamablity is oxygen, and having molecular oxygen floating around mixed in a cloud of molecular hydrogen, methane, or some such is really unlikely.
Imagine being in a nebula is like being outside on a dry day with almost no air polution. You can't see it, unless you get somewhere where you can view some mountains 20 or 30 miles off, and then you notice that the mountains look just a little bit hazy. That's what being in a nebula is like, except that the 'polution' is so diffuse that the distances involved are more like 20 to 30 lightyears.
I suppose you could exagerate certain features to produce minable clouds. What you need is a very strong gravitational force holding the clouds together. That implies something like a neutron star or a black hole, or a small start in close rotation to a much larger one. Those celestial objects can produce 'small' concretion disks of a couple of AU in which it might be reasonable (if not entirely realistic) to suggest that the clouds were thick enough to mine. It seems like Larry Niven wrote a series of science-fantasy stories about just such an environment, but I forget the titles off the top of my head.
With the right skybox featuring a black hole with a concretion disk nearly parallel to the to sector, you might could have 'asteroids' composed of gas.
Flamable gas is really unlikely though. Even if you had a big cloud of methane, you could shoot a laser through it and not have it explode. That's because the real source of flamablity is oxygen, and having molecular oxygen floating around mixed in a cloud of molecular hydrogen, methane, or some such is really unlikely.
why not have mining stations that are mining the GAS GIANT PLANETS that proliferate the game. Even though the planets are in the background, perhaps a mining buzard collector(ram scoop) like in Star Trek, this would allow you to suck in any diffuse particles in an area. While deep space may have few particle per billion, areas in and around gas giants and other gasing bodies (comets, planetary rings) would have a higher value of particles, enough to scoop up. Things like Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen, Argon, Methane, could all be collected that way.
Speaking of comets, its worth noting that all those 'ice' roids need not necessarily contain aqueous ore. It's just as likely or even more likely that any 'ice' you find in space is frozen nitrogen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, or methane. All of those would be a good deal harder to mine than water, because they'd heat up faster and start outgassing explosively if you weren't careful.
A sector that represented the near surface of a gas giant just might be possible to do. Big gas giants like Jupiter are relatively dence, and so mining is out of the question. But Saturn and smaller gas giants can, depending on thier composition have relatively low 'surface' gravities. You'd have to fill up one half of the sky box with a good planetary texture (NASA probably has some good source files). Getting the curve of the planet to look right against the cubical skybox could prove interesting. You also might want to implement 'gravity' in the sector - some sort of extra velocity or thrust vector acting on ships that would have to be countered eventually if the played didn't want to drift too much. Presumably, you could put mining stations in near orbit of a medium sized gas giant (200km up above the 'surface'). It would take only a little bit of exageration to have belts of high flying clouds in reach of such a station.
There are some problems though. You'd have to slice the sector up into 'belts' along one cordinate plane. One belt would be the 'destruction belt'. If X>n, trigger burn_up_ship. Sooner or latter you are going to want to mimic 'reaching the surface' and at that point to avoid dealing with the complexities that would result with a sector having a 'surface' and the textures involved you'd probably just want to destroy the ship. Something like the spinning animation used when you enter an ion storm followed by an explosion would probably work for now. To keep people from just straying into the destruction zone accidently you'd probably want a 'damage belt'. Something like the ion storm animation only with an orange filter might suffice for 'burning up in an atmosphere'. A slow drain on hull points and a warning, 'You are burning up in the planet's atmosphere' should do the trick.
Beyond that there is a serious question of how far away from a planet you'd need to be to jump. I mean, if you have to be 3000m from a weenie asteriod, how far do you have to be from something the size of Saturn. I'd think at the least you'd want a 'no jump' belt extending from the destruction belt up to a few thousand meters beyond the damage belt.
Anyway, its not a high priority for me, but its at least possible I would think to make an elaborate psuedo-planetary sector.
A sector that represented the near surface of a gas giant just might be possible to do. Big gas giants like Jupiter are relatively dence, and so mining is out of the question. But Saturn and smaller gas giants can, depending on thier composition have relatively low 'surface' gravities. You'd have to fill up one half of the sky box with a good planetary texture (NASA probably has some good source files). Getting the curve of the planet to look right against the cubical skybox could prove interesting. You also might want to implement 'gravity' in the sector - some sort of extra velocity or thrust vector acting on ships that would have to be countered eventually if the played didn't want to drift too much. Presumably, you could put mining stations in near orbit of a medium sized gas giant (200km up above the 'surface'). It would take only a little bit of exageration to have belts of high flying clouds in reach of such a station.
There are some problems though. You'd have to slice the sector up into 'belts' along one cordinate plane. One belt would be the 'destruction belt'. If X>n, trigger burn_up_ship. Sooner or latter you are going to want to mimic 'reaching the surface' and at that point to avoid dealing with the complexities that would result with a sector having a 'surface' and the textures involved you'd probably just want to destroy the ship. Something like the spinning animation used when you enter an ion storm followed by an explosion would probably work for now. To keep people from just straying into the destruction zone accidently you'd probably want a 'damage belt'. Something like the ion storm animation only with an orange filter might suffice for 'burning up in an atmosphere'. A slow drain on hull points and a warning, 'You are burning up in the planet's atmosphere' should do the trick.
Beyond that there is a serious question of how far away from a planet you'd need to be to jump. I mean, if you have to be 3000m from a weenie asteriod, how far do you have to be from something the size of Saturn. I'd think at the least you'd want a 'no jump' belt extending from the destruction belt up to a few thousand meters beyond the damage belt.
Anyway, its not a high priority for me, but its at least possible I would think to make an elaborate psuedo-planetary sector.
when you speak of "surface" of the planet, you mean the upper most atmosphere correct? There would be no way to land on a true gas giant. =)
"when you speak of "surface" of the planet, you mean the upper most atmosphere correct?"
Yes. That's why I put 'surface' in scare quotes. I was highlighting the fact that in this context doesn't mean what it usually means. I honestly don't know how surface is defined for gas giants, but I would assume that its defined by a certain ammount of atmospheric pressure. In fact, just as a wild guess, the surface of a gas giant might be defined as the point at which the atmospheric pressure is equivalent to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level. Since you've made me courious, I'll see if can't look it up and get back to you.
UPDATE: That proved to be a good guess. Interestingly enough, the first place I found the information was a role playing site (for Traveller). It would be a gamer geeks that condensed all the important reference information down into one article.
Yes. That's why I put 'surface' in scare quotes. I was highlighting the fact that in this context doesn't mean what it usually means. I honestly don't know how surface is defined for gas giants, but I would assume that its defined by a certain ammount of atmospheric pressure. In fact, just as a wild guess, the surface of a gas giant might be defined as the point at which the atmospheric pressure is equivalent to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level. Since you've made me courious, I'll see if can't look it up and get back to you.
UPDATE: That proved to be a good guess. Interestingly enough, the first place I found the information was a role playing site (for Traveller). It would be a gamer geeks that condensed all the important reference information down into one article.
Mineable gas clouds is a great idea. I don't know if ion storms ties into it very well, because the clouds should be in fixed locations. I do think radar efficiency should suffer inside a cloud, though.
CLOUDS WE WANT CLOUDS (and if it ties into actual physics so be it..... but noone would mind except Celebrim)
:)
/givemoney Devs 2c
:)
/givemoney Devs 2c
hehe thanks CharleiH :)
I do like the idea of gas giant's too, but I really want to fly through a cloud. And if people's computers can handle an ion storm's effect's I dont see why they couldnt handle a cloud's. A few people have been asking for some improvements to VO's graphics anyway, a giant gas cloud would definately count in that department. As far as realism goes . . . we are still learning about space as it is. Who's to say there arent mineable or explosive gas clouds in the whole of the universe? It isnt that hard to think up some condition that would explain it, if you really needed an explanation to begin with. If Star Trek can have em, then we can too! :)
I do like the idea of gas giant's too, but I really want to fly through a cloud. And if people's computers can handle an ion storm's effect's I dont see why they couldnt handle a cloud's. A few people have been asking for some improvements to VO's graphics anyway, a giant gas cloud would definately count in that department. As far as realism goes . . . we are still learning about space as it is. Who's to say there arent mineable or explosive gas clouds in the whole of the universe? It isnt that hard to think up some condition that would explain it, if you really needed an explanation to begin with. If Star Trek can have em, then we can too! :)
"Who's to say there arent mineable or explosive gas clouds in the whole of the universe?"
Some things are merely unlikely. It is unlikely that in the whole of the universe there is a planet inhabited by a race of tutu wearing pink elephant people whose god is named Britney Spears.
However, that is only very unlikely. It is however much more exceedingly unlikely and approaches the realm of impossiblity that there are floating in space dence clouds of explosive gas. The first violates nothing save our own common sense. The second violates the laws of physics.
To you, the first one would seem absolutely ridiculous and comic and would not seem appropriate to a serious science fiction game. To me, the latter would seem equally ridiculous.
Some things are merely unlikely. It is unlikely that in the whole of the universe there is a planet inhabited by a race of tutu wearing pink elephant people whose god is named Britney Spears.
However, that is only very unlikely. It is however much more exceedingly unlikely and approaches the realm of impossiblity that there are floating in space dence clouds of explosive gas. The first violates nothing save our own common sense. The second violates the laws of physics.
To you, the first one would seem absolutely ridiculous and comic and would not seem appropriate to a serious science fiction game. To me, the latter would seem equally ridiculous.
Tut tut Celebrim. Didn't you ever learn the first law of the universe?
"In infinity, everything happens."
If you are a believer in the Multiple Universes Theory, a new "bubble" was formed at every "choice" made by every quanta. Thus, every possible law of physics (and none at all!) must exist in a bubble somewhere.
"In infinity, everything happens."
If you are a believer in the Multiple Universes Theory, a new "bubble" was formed at every "choice" made by every quanta. Thus, every possible law of physics (and none at all!) must exist in a bubble somewhere.
Yes, the Multiverse!!! Woohoo!
> And if people's computers can handle an ion storm's effect's I dont see why they couldnt handle a cloud's.
Not necessarily. Lots of view-space alpha-blending polygons still don't match amount of fill rate taken up by huge screen-sized polygons (the same effect basically as if you made the ions in the ion storm 20x their size--framerate would just drop sharply on lower end cards).
There are some volumetric fog techniques that could be used to good effect for large gas clouds or nebulae (the thick sci-fi kind, not the accurate barely-able-to-see-in-the-middle-of kind). However, IIRC, the least it needs for implementation is a stencil buffer or one or more offscreen buffers, neither of which are supported on the lowest end hardware. Granted, Vendetta has high-end effects now (shaders), but the nice thing about them is that Vendetta will run without them and it doesn't affect gameplay. However, something like a gas cloud would obscure vision and thus affect gameplay if one of two dueling players couldn't render the cloud (and thus had an unobscured view).
Continuing my thinking out loud: perhaps just a single pass buffer effect where a low-res fog was rendered to a texture and then blended into screen space. The resolution would have to be low to do it in realtime, although the texture blending would make it less obvious (there shouldn't be any sharp edges in the fog anyway). Objects in the fog could then just be rendered over the fog with some sort of opacity that is the inverse of the density of the fog between the object and the camera. It'd be rough, but it'd only require a small texture render offscreen, possibly not even every frame, with a single screen-size blended polygon.
Damn, now I'm wanting to go off and code a demo...grrr...
--mcn
> And if people's computers can handle an ion storm's effect's I dont see why they couldnt handle a cloud's.
Not necessarily. Lots of view-space alpha-blending polygons still don't match amount of fill rate taken up by huge screen-sized polygons (the same effect basically as if you made the ions in the ion storm 20x their size--framerate would just drop sharply on lower end cards).
There are some volumetric fog techniques that could be used to good effect for large gas clouds or nebulae (the thick sci-fi kind, not the accurate barely-able-to-see-in-the-middle-of kind). However, IIRC, the least it needs for implementation is a stencil buffer or one or more offscreen buffers, neither of which are supported on the lowest end hardware. Granted, Vendetta has high-end effects now (shaders), but the nice thing about them is that Vendetta will run without them and it doesn't affect gameplay. However, something like a gas cloud would obscure vision and thus affect gameplay if one of two dueling players couldn't render the cloud (and thus had an unobscured view).
Continuing my thinking out loud: perhaps just a single pass buffer effect where a low-res fog was rendered to a texture and then blended into screen space. The resolution would have to be low to do it in realtime, although the texture blending would make it less obvious (there shouldn't be any sharp edges in the fog anyway). Objects in the fog could then just be rendered over the fog with some sort of opacity that is the inverse of the density of the fog between the object and the camera. It'd be rough, but it'd only require a small texture render offscreen, possibly not even every frame, with a single screen-size blended polygon.
Damn, now I'm wanting to go off and code a demo...grrr...
--mcn