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Work in Progress / Worlds Apart

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KISTech
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Location: Aloha, Oregon
Posted: 27th Feb 2008 23:01 Edited at: 11th Nov 2008 18:08
[ The Beta Server is currently UP ]

[ November 11, 2008 ]
BETA 4 has been released. This version introduces combat mode, and some major bug fixes. The login and character selection methods have also been rewritten for a smoother login process.

[ October 18, 2008 ]
The beta is ready for testing. I'll warn you now, it isn't pretty yet. There's lots to do including getting some new art into the game, but for functional and network testing, it's ready.

Go to www.kistech.com and register for the beta. Once you've downloaded and installed the game client, it's front-end app will handle online updates as I put out patches and new media.

[ October 3, 2008 ]
New screenshots from the beta. The beta will hopefully be done sometime this month. I'm working out some of the final kinks in the contract system, and trying to add some more content so it doesn't get boring. Please let me know if images aren't coming through.

A view of Solana


A few other planets closer in to the Solan system's sun


Following closely behind an NPC ship



[ September 30, 2008 ]
Backstory rewritten. Included less detail so the nit-pickers would hopefully have less to pick apart
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late 21st century - We've made some huge technological breakthroughs in manufacturing, power generation, medicine, and more. However we couldn't save the Earth from what we had unwittingly done to it. As the Earth moved out of the ice age phase it was supposed to be in during the mid 20th to mid 21st century, global warming escalated beyond our ability to control it. The Earth was dying and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

It was decided that there was enough time to build a fleet of 10 ships. Each ship would have a specific purpose, such as growing food, raising animals, recycling and reprocessing. Everything needed to sustain life in space for a long journey.

10 ships were unfortunately only going to be able to save 100,000. Humanity would be saved, but the rest of the population of Earth would be left behind. A lottery was held, and those that were chosen would make their way to Greenland where the climate was still tolerable, and where the transports were supplying the ship builders with the materials they needed.

The last transports headed for the ships with the last few supplies, and as they docked the ships began their journey.

The closest solar system with the possibility of having a habitable planet was Alpha Centauri, so that was the course they set. 122 years after leaving Earth, something appeared in their path. It was identified as a spacial rift 0.3 light years away, and it was pulling them towards it. There was nothing they could do, and the entire fleet was pulled in.

Passing through the rift was instantaneous, and on the other side there was no sign of the rift. The ships came to a stop to make sure there was no damage, and they soon realized they were nowhere near where they had been when they entered the rift, but even more serious was that 4 of the ships were missing. They had been taken somewhere else by the rift, and there was no way to know what happened. The 6 remaining ships waited for 7 days and scanned the area searching for the lost ships, but there was no trace found.

After conducting long range scans, and mapping out the stars, they were able to determine that they had been transported 7,500 light years to another arm of the milky way galaxy. They were also able to detect the closest solar system, and it appeared to have at least 1 habitable planet.

78 years later they arrived in what is now known as the Solan system. The Earth-like planet Solana became their new home. 2 other planets in the system, Dakar and Arcada, had breathable air but harsh conditions.

It's now 150 years after the discovery of Solana. Corporations have been created to form the base of an economy, and stimulate expansion and exploration. Mining colonies have been established on Dakar and Arcada to mine materials that were illegal to mine on Solana to protect it's environment.

The economy of this new civilization is only now forming as manufacturing facilities are being built, and supply chains are being established. The largest need right now is for cargo transport captains. You have been provided with a small transport ship capable of hauling a 10,000 cubic foot cargo pod. Your job is to travel from planet to planet and fill the cargo contracts posted by the Corporations. You'll earn credits for your completed contracts, and will have the ability to purchase larger ships as you gain experience.

Good luck.

KISTech
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Posted: 27th Feb 2008 23:14 Edited at: 11th Nov 2008 18:10
Screenshot 1.


Please let me know if images or links aren't working. Thanks.

Sven B
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 08:55
Well, out of my experience, DBP is not fast enough to create a server program for a massive multiplayer online game. It pretty much lacks the efficiency/speed to handle thousands of players.

Make sure you keep your server processes to a minimum, and try to do as much as possible with the client-program.

It's the programmer's life:
Have a problem, solve the problem, and have a new problem to solve.
KISTech
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 16:15
That's the overall plan. For now just trying to see what some of the upper limits are.

I'm watching the live router statistics when people log in to the server and for the moment there really is very little data being passed back and forth. One guy I was watching was in for about 5 minutes and during that time he only sent 38K bytes.

The real challenge is going to be keeping the size of the data from the server to the clients as small as possible.

In your attempts, did you have the server set up so that it didn't create any objects itself, it just shuffled data? or was it also sort of an Admin Client?


Don't think, just code.
Sven B
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 17:45
In my program, you didn't have to register. You sent your username on login which was sent to all players.

Every sent message, was preceded by an integer containing the player number so the server didn't have to search anymore (-1 = all players). The second byte was some sort of type to describe the data. (eg. 1 = player oined, 2 = player quit, 3 = request for a battle, ...)
And all data afterwards depended on the type.
The received messages were the same structure without the first integer.

As you can see, the server didn't have to do much. I kind of felt like there was some lag already with only a few players online.

It's the programmer's life:
Have a problem, solve the problem, and have a new problem to solve.
Ben Johnson
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 18:08 Edited at: 28th Feb 2008 18:12
Heya, although I don't post much I'd like to say that I have worked on something similar and would like to share some of what I have learnt, first being I like your 'mouse free' targetting system its a very good idea rather than the mouse controlling rotation of the ship and I much more prefer it! Network wise, in the end I ported my server code into c++ since it performs much better as a server and can be run on Virtual and Dedicated servers whereas you'll find with most 'rent a server' that you'll not be able to run DX applications. Benjamin's libary can be accessed in it very easily since he has kindly enabled a version for that very purpose with c++ and is alot easier than it sounds it just a matter of recreating equations in c++. The only bad point from your stress test/demo I can point out is the rotation, DB's built in rotation commands aren't great as they use a global access of rotation, I suggest using EZRotate if you can afford it since it lets you 'truely' roll other methods your DB objects on their own individual axis.
KISTech
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 18:17
Hmm.. That's basically what this is doing.

The first byte is the packet type flag, and the remainder of the packet depends on what that is. I've got the logins already connected to a MySQL database and working, I just haven't set up the registration on the web site yet. That's why I just made it allow anyone in with whatever they typed in.

I think DBPro itself may be fast enough to handle the load if I disable all 3D display on the server screen and just use text output to display anything relevant. It's just a server so it doesn't have to be anything fancy.

The real bottleneck I fear is going to be handling network packets, thus the need for this network test.


Don't think, just code.
KISTech
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 18:20 Edited at: 28th Feb 2008 18:20
@Ben,
Excellent. I'll check that out for the next update.

I purchased one of the DBPro bundles that had DarkPhysics, DarkAI, and EZRotate. So getting my hands on it isn't a problem.


Don't think, just code.
Ben Johnson
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Posted: 28th Feb 2008 18:34 Edited at: 28th Feb 2008 20:21
Glad I could help, rotation was one of the biggest problems for me, and ezrotate pretty much solved it(after manually trying to do it with maths. ). Also if you haven't already and you want to cut down on net bandwidth even further you could try using prediction methods which are quite easy to do in space travel to predict movement between packets to cut down on packet sending. If you wanna discuss anything then give me a bell on MSN. Also don't know wether you've seen it but theres low level access network commands in Ian's Matrix1Utilities plugin. Might be something interest to stress test - although I have never used it.
KISTech
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Posted: 5th Mar 2008 06:14 Edited at: 17th Mar 2008 19:27
Ok, server was down for a while. Turns out Windows Server 2K3 insists on have DX9 from November 2007 rather than February.

The server is up now and awaiting some solid banging on.

So, if you have a good computer, and a fast internet connection, I've made a test application that signs on with a dummy username and acts as a client moving their ship around in the game in a circle around the sun.

You can download the client here..
http://www.kistech.com:81/StressTestClient.exe

Open as many of these at once as you are comfortable with, and let's see how many we can get packed on the server at once.

You can also download the actual client app at the top of this thread and roam around watching all of the ships circling around.

Thanks.

Grandma
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Posted: 5th Mar 2008 10:30 Edited at: 5th Mar 2008 10:53
I'm running 6 clients now. Tried the game too, looks cool.

Edit:
Quote: "object number illegal at line 857"


I got it as i tried shifting weapon type while i was firing.

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KISTech
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Posted: 5th Mar 2008 17:06 Edited at: 17th Mar 2008 19:28
Fixed.

Thanks for that.

Coming Soon ! ! !

- New version of the server supporting more options, and packet optimization
- New client with a new look. Complete with HUD.
- Much more that I'll leave until it's ready.

Dr Schnitzengruber
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Posted: 6th Mar 2008 00:39 Edited at: 6th Mar 2008 00:42
I just test it. It seems like it will have a good future once you finish it and have players on it. My only suggestion is to make the turning speed faster when the ship is stopped and slower when it is moving to make it more realistic. Ohh, and can you make some NPC object to shoot at. I couldn't find anything to test my gun on.

[edit: never mind about the NPC. Jupiter was enough]

Grandma
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Posted: 6th Mar 2008 01:06 Edited at: 6th Mar 2008 01:12
Quote: "My only suggestion is to make the turning speed faster when the ship is stopped and slower when it is moving to make it more realistic."


Actually, in space you would turn (or more specifcally, rotate) at the same speed no matter if you are moving* or not, but it does take longer to adjust your kinetic course.

*highly relative when in space.

Quote: "Ohh, and can you make some NPC object to shoot at."


Quote: "I've made a test application that signs on with a dummy username and acts as a client moving their ship around in the game in a circle around the sun."


Yeah, i love games like this. I'll keep my eye on the progress.

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Dr Schnitzengruber
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Posted: 6th Mar 2008 01:21
Quote: "Quote: "Ohh, and can you make some NPC object to shoot at."


Quote: "I've made a test application that signs on with a dummy username and acts as a client moving their ship around in the game in a circle around the sun.""


I know, i just can't ever find them. How far from the sun are they?

Quote: "Actually, in space you would turn (or more specifcally, rotate) at the same speed no matter if you are moving* or not, but it does take longer to adjust your kinetic course."


Then make it less realistic

tha_rami
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Posted: 6th Mar 2008 01:53
Why? Inertia is the coolest thing about space. A famous quote: "'t ain' no dam' flight-sim, laddy!"


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Grandma
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Posted: 6th Mar 2008 08:33
Gotta love inertia.

Quote: "I know, i just can't ever find them"


Hard to say. When you get close enough, a hud thingy should automatically track them on your screen, i just followed that thing until i found one.

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KISTech
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Posted: 9th Mar 2008 22:17 Edited at: 17th Mar 2008 19:28
The backstory of Worlds Apart is now available in the first post of this thread. I invite you to have a look at the story and tell me what you think.

Thanks.

KISTech
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 17:53 Edited at: 17th Mar 2008 19:28
Um, no comments? Was it that bad?

Ian T
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 19:28
I grabbed the client a few days ago, but it won't connect. I imagine I have to have certain ports open, which I can't do on this PC. When I move at the end of the month, I'll have access to my router and I'll give it another shot.
Grandma
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 20:03
Quote: "Was it that bad?"


Yes.

I read it. The only criticism i have is that 2018-2024 seemed a bit early. Also the kindness of the "world government" was very unrealistic as "All who wanted to leave, would have a place within the fleet". If there ever was such a disaster, i'm sure there would be tough screening processes for the people who wants to evacuate. For example no people over 60, no people with illnesses or diseases of any kind, no chavs and it would require you to pay atleast an arm and a leg.

Also, i was kidding with the "Yes".

As for the game itself, i like the idea your going for there.

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KISTech
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 21:19 Edited at: 11th Mar 2008 21:22
@Ian T,

Give it another try. I was having DNS issues the other day. That might be why you couldn't get in. Configuration on your end shouldn't matter for the ports I'm using, unless you are behind a corporate firewall that blocks everything but web and email.


Quote: "is that 2018-2024 seemed a bit early"


You mean to close to 2008? or to short a time span to build the fleet?

Quote: "Also the kindness of the "world government" was very unrealistic"


True enough. Even in 10 years I highly doubt something like this would go smoothly. We would probably end up like the ones left behind. Killing each other trying to get out of here first, rather than cooperating to save as many as possible.

Quote: "For example no people over 60, no people with illnesses or diseases of any kind"


Hmmm... Not a bad idea..

How about this...

The world government has brought together all the companies capable of producing the parts needed for the rescue fleet. Trying as hard as they can they are only going to be able to come up with enough ships to support 1 billion people. So a lottery is held.

The requirements for the lottery must be met in order to have a chance of being chosen.

- Age 40 or less
- Able to have children
- Pass a blood and DNA test to screen for disease and genetic disorders

I could actually see something like that happening. With the rich trying to buy their way in.

Maybe I should just tone down the detail for that part of it. The details of how all that happened aren't relevant to the game itself.

Grandma
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 21:53
Quote: "You mean to close to 2008? or to short a time span to build the fleet?"


Both, from a technological and practical viewpoint. Right now, NASA can spend years planning one un-manned trip to the moon. Ofcourse that's with limited political power and economic support. nevertheless, i find it hard that a fleet supporting 8 billion is ready to go permanently beyond our solar system within 6 years (from 2018).

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KISTech
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 22:12
Motivation baby, motivation.

How about 2025 - 2048, and discovering in 2022 that the sun would supernova by 2050. It takes them 3 years to figure out they only have time to build enough ships to save 1 billion.

Grandma
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 22:25
Haha, do what you wish. It's your game.

You could even say that the vikings built the fleet, and get away with it. The new draft is fine.

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KISTech
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Posted: 11th Mar 2008 22:42
WOW, Vikings!!!

Now there's a plot twist..

KISTech
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Posted: 17th Mar 2008 19:58
I've posted the second draft of the back story. Hopefully by removing a lot of the unnecessary fine detail the story is a little more believable. Sometimes less really is more..

I'm making good progress on the game itself. I've been roaming around the net looking for appropriate human models with animation. So far I've found a few, now I'm working with the modelers to get the animations set up correctly to work in DBPro.

Working with these models so far has been a real mess, but I think it's starting to come together. If all goes well I should have around 5 adult body styles with various skin, hair, and clothing options. I'm still looking for a few animated models of kids to use as NPCs.

The rest of the game is coming along nicely but I'm holding off sharing to much about what it will contain. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have some good screenshots to share.

qwe
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2008 00:11 Edited at: 2nd Jun 2008 00:12
@ a prev. comment

our star is not massive enough to supernova (wiki it)

however, it will turn into a red giant, its radius surpassing the orbits of mercury and i think venus maybe even earth too, but that wont be for several bil years

the only way for our sun to die, would be for us or another race or some sort of natural disaster to do something to it. for example, throw a black hole into the sun. that would be a spectacular sight, till the lights go out. earth would be un affected, it would just happen to be night all the time, and pretty much all living things would die

(if the sun was replaced by a black hole of equal mass, we wouldnt notice, and wouldnt be sucked in)

p.s. since youre working on a space game, feel free to contact me (email contcj01 at ipfw dot com) as ive been studying astrophysics extensively for the past several months for my space game
Zuka
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Posted: 30th Jun 2008 09:02
Quote: "(if the sun was replaced by a black hole of equal mass, we wouldnt notice, and wouldnt be sucked in)"


Without the sun, it'd get really, really cold.

Sven B
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Posted: 30th Jun 2008 10:48
Quote: "Without the sun, it'd get really, really cold."


And dark

It's the programmer's life:
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KISTech
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Posted: 30th Jun 2008 23:56
Cold and Dark.

..and it would do it rather quickly.

Agent Dink
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 04:36 Edited at: 1st Jul 2008 04:37
Lol, and the funny part is we wouldn't know for about 7 minutes at the rate light travels

It might have already happened!

tha_rami
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 05:24
Based on the fact your post was more than seven minutes ago, you were wrong. It did not happen yet. It might've happened just now though.


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Agent Dink
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 05:58
The same could be said for your post. But you fail too.

tha_rami
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 06:06
Darn, dude, you just took the pace out of the joke - the idea was that you reply in a similar way, so I could reply in a similar way, so Grandma could make a lame reply and we could end up keeping a good-looking space-simulation high in the WIP boards!


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Agent Dink
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 06:09
KISTech
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Posted: 1st Jul 2008 21:10
Quote: "and we could end up keeping a good-looking space-simulation high in the WIP boards!"


Thanks. I'll have a beta of the real thing posted soon. If life doesn't get in the way again.

Serial Velocity
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Posted: 19th Sep 2008 17:51
The screenshot is looking good Can we have a few more?

Good work so far, its cool your making a MMORPG

KISTech
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Posted: 19th Sep 2008 18:17
Actually that was the networking test. I've since changed it so you're in the cockpit rather than viewing the ship from behind.

The game itself has been completely rewritten from scratch since this was posted. I just wanted to test the limits of Multisync in a multiplayer environment.

The game itself will be Massive as far as area to explore, but for this first version I really don't know how many players it's going to support at once. The networking is all TCP, so I'm guessing it will be less then 100. The next major version upgrade will be rewritten in DarkGDK or GDK.Net and will likely use RakNet, or that other network library I saw on here recently. (MikeNet I think...) Then it will support many more players.

Serial Velocity
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Posted: 19th Sep 2008 18:43 Edited at: 19th Sep 2008 18:45
Will you be able to explore the whole galaxy? If you want to do this, it could be a good idea to research procedural generation of planets, like spore space stage (i love that game )

Maybe to achieve this you could try and recreate the Diamond-square algorithm to make heightmaps then make supertextures using memblocks and then make a sphere and edit the geometry to use the heightmap with

Heres a link for the diamond square algorithm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond-square_algorithm

KISTech
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Posted: 19th Sep 2008 20:32
Actually the "universe" is broken up into zones of 200,000 x 200,000 x 200,000. Each zone may be empty space, or there could be a solar system in it. As you move out past 199,000 in any direction it loads the next zone that you are headed into.

I have a fairly elaborate map created with 27 zones created so far. The beta version will just have the 1 solar system and empty space in the zones around it.

The planets and other solar system media loads rather quickly, it's the NPC ships and other player's ships that take the most time. I'm trying to keep the load times under 20 seconds when there are 50 players and NPCs or less in a zone.

Serial Velocity
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Posted: 25th Sep 2008 18:21 Edited at: 25th Sep 2008 18:24
Good idea but i tried a few days ago making my planets into a proper solar system with a visitable sun (which was previously part of the background) but when the spaceship goes too far from the sun (which is at x=0 y=0 z=0) the spaceship begins to "vibrate" and i cant find a fix for this (i searched the forum) and now i have to use my old way, which is just hyperspacing to another planet, not flying to it.

Hopefully this bug will be fixed soon.

KISTech
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Posted: 25th Sep 2008 21:06
How far out from x=0,y=0,z=0 did you go before the vibration set in? I've gone out to x=1,000,000 by z=1,000,000 and didn't see any vibration.

I saw this problem in the Torque Gaming Engine and moved my project to DBPro because it didn't have that problem. (there were other reasons, but this was one of the bigger ones.)

TGE had the problem because of rounding errors. They were using a float rather than a double float for player position, and so the further away you get from the center, the less accurate your position is. Thus it "jitters" between one position and the next.

Mr Tank
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Posted: 25th Sep 2008 21:57 Edited at: 25th Sep 2008 22:00
You could keep track of your object positions using dwords, or integers, and get the difference between the camera position and object position, and then convert to floats to tell DB where to position the objects. The camera would then be centred at the origin. This way your steps between available positions are proportional to the distance from the camera, which is ideal.

Obviously this would require a lot of reprogramming. Another downside is that repositioning objects every frame can cause a lot of slowdown. You can decrease this by checking if an object warrants repositioning. In a large scale space game, given that you don't want the ratio of your far and near camera range limits to be too big anyway, you might want to do a bit of jiggerypokery and make distant objects closer and smaller.

You could also use a second 3 co-ordinates, expressing where in a 3d grid an object is, and the first three coordinates is where in this grid cube the object is. A grid system is kind of a smart thing to have anyway.

Either that or just keep your universe in small bits and do the hyperspace thing.

PS The game looks cool. I want to do multiplayer soonish too. I wish you luck!

Serial Velocity
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Posted: 25th Sep 2008 22:43 Edited at: 25th Sep 2008 22:45
I went out about x=20000 and z=20000 when the vibrations came but when my spaceship is near a planet 20000 units away from 0,0,0 the spaceship is the only thing that seems to vibrate, the camera and the planet doesnt. I use a hidden plane to control the movement direction of the spaceship (for inertia effects) and the spaceship is positioned on that, this is how it works:



Could this be why my spaceship "vibrates"?

KISTech
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Posted: 25th Sep 2008 23:41
I don't think that's why. I'd have to see more of your movement code though. Here's a taste of my ship movement code..



Serial Velocity
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Posted: 26th Sep 2008 17:47 Edited at: 26th Sep 2008 17:50
This is the part of my ship movement code:



KISTech
16
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Joined: 8th Feb 2008
Location: Aloha, Oregon
Posted: 27th Sep 2008 00:50
It's hard to tell what might be causing it for you. I've done several tests with various methods of movement and haven't seen any jitter in my models. Very strange...

Serial Velocity
15
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Joined: 24th Aug 2008
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Posted: 27th Sep 2008 00:51
What version of DBPro have you got? Ive got Version 7.0 beta

KISTech
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Feb 2008
Location: Aloha, Oregon
Posted: 27th Sep 2008 00:52
I started with, and initially tested, version 6.6b almost a year ago. I've since used 6.8, 6.9, and currently 7.0 beta4.

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