Realism Or Colorful Stars, Which way should i go?

First? 60 hours is not a lot of time for concept and mechanics design. I've spent more than 60 hours on single concepts in a doc. Second, you're not "spending extra time on graphics" but wasting time on things that don't matter at this stage.

 

Perhaps people suggest, that you should focus first on mechanics and game play, while for now, you put high emphasis on visuals.

It often happens, that due one, or other aspect, you may need redesign part of the game. Then realizing, that spent time on one thing is no use anymore.

Once you have functional prototype, you go from there. But making something fun an playable is very challenging. I suppose you don't want end up, like No Man's Sky a the release date

Do what you want and feel. Is your game.
But people giving you hints, based on their experienced.
You got enough at this point for visual display. But practically 0 on gameplay aspect.
This is why you get such responses. And some getting impression, of not listen to others.
You either make product for yourself, or for people.
But if you don't listen your potential stakeholders, it will be hard to get grip later.
You trying going publicly, by presenting progress.
Then you probably should get some advice from fellow developers.

All above, doesn't mean you wont make successful product.
But is just unnecessary burden.

 

Not everyone moves at the same speeds, some people are slower than others. Thank you for your opinion. I hope you enjoy the next "planets" update.

 

Personally I spent totally months past few years, to think about mechanics and game play aspects. Reviewing all the time. And I know, I only smoothed tip of iceberg.

 

Duderino, the literal premise of this thread is that you couldn't even decide what colour stars to use. What do you think is going to happen when you get into nitty gritty of actually implementing gameplay features?

 

I will prove this wrong when i get to doing the "game" that is built on the "environment", with reduced testing times and rapid deployment.

I understand where you are coming from but you should enjoy my updates! I'll get to the meat oft the game soon enough. Unlike other developers it's not like i have to have this done in 3 months. I have 3 years to get this game released.

 

I have a forum setup on the website for that purpose if you goto galacticarmada.com and click forum. I can't finish the site until i have content from the game, more specifically the galaxy which ill be using in parts of the website.

Some point in the future ill be using the forum and community for that.

And by the way i did make a decision as you can see in the latest videos.

You guys played a roll in that, you wanted more realism, I delivered.

Anyway, We don't need to rehash what we already discussed, I am building the galaxy first including planets... so moving on....

 

Since the topic of this thread is "resolved", I'm moving on from it.

If you want to follow my progress, check out this thread and sub to the youtube channel:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/galactic-armada-fleet-commander-overview-mechanics-videos.516871/

Thanks guys and gals.

 

Broseph, you are missing my point entirely.

1. You won't have a community if you don't have gameplay to show. Nobody is going to show up when you only have a vague premise for what you're doing. This is another example of you doing things completely out of order.
2. You ran into a trivial problem, one you should have been able to figure out on your own in a couple minutes of testing, and then had to make a thread on it. Hell, you should have planned for this sort of thing when you were done planning the gameplay.
3. On top of this, if you're going to constantly crowdsource solutions, how much do you think your game will resemble your original plan? In gameplay, a single change often ripples through the entire series of connected systems. This means that you're going to be redesigning things on the fly constantly. This is something that happens in games a lot, but is only made worse by crowdsourcing solutions rather than hunkering down and really focusing on design and prototyping.
4. By implementing the graphics now only to focus on the gameplay later, you pretty much guarantee that your graphics will look that much out of date by the time your game actually comes out. Which means you'll need to bookend your entire development process with needless graphical work.
5. Dude, you spent $2000 on a domain.

 

This is very valid point.
And should really put red light with proper project management.

Technology evolving. Unity is evolving. New assets coming. Within 2-3 years, maybe we got raytracing (a bit too optimistic )
Unity may find solution out of the box, with 2 clicks, where now spending instead few weeks on. Or Unity will completely ditch graphical mechanics. Then all effort go to bin, because working no more. Or sticking with outdated Unity Editor. With unity evolving, asset my stop working as well. Who going to fix them, if not supported. Shades breaks etc. That means, instead focusing on game, constantly coming back to FX problem.

And yes, unfortunately withing 2-3 years, it is easy to get outdated with graphics.

 

1. I'm not expecting anyone too, why do you think im not "focused" on the website right now.
2. Once I am doing combat and other mechanics I will be more focused on the website and getting people involved there.
3. It's a really awesome domain name. Acquiring a good name that is "brand-able" marketable is not an easy task, especially since just about every name is taken for "space games". More specifically one that is relative and describes that game well.
4. No one said i was going to "constantly" crowed source anything but at a certain point I will be building the community on the website and allowing alpha-testers which will be able test alpha builds and vote up and down functionality on those releases to help "gauge" the audience "quickly". I am willing to make changes if a large number of people disagree with the functionality of a mechanic.
5. Let's not rehash this again, moving on.

 

I am not doing anything "special" that unity is going to remove or make drastic changes too anytime soon, or probably ever. Unless you think they are going to "remove" shaders.

There is nothing in my current system that will be "changed" by unity. Everything I am using has been there since pre Unity 4.

 

And besides Kevin says to stay on the path.

 

Broseidon, Lord of the Brocean, the point isn't that rendering technology will be changed by Unity, but by the ongoing march of progress. The way you completely miss points like this is what makes it seem like it must be deliberate. This is why I think you're trolling.

 

Well then ill come back to it later if the need arises. The time that was invested into what you see was not in the graphics. The graphics were relatively fast and easy consisting of 3 shaders that are rather simple shaders.

So you are going on and on about something I invested very little time into and yet it still looks pretty decent.

The time i have spent has been on programming. The framework for the game, AI and systems that will be tied into just about everything else in the game.

Sure i did a flare system, big deal it took me 2 days. Not a massive amount of time in the grand scheme of things.

 

Dudetrino, a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but has no electrical charge and a very small mass, which might even be zero, you are again missing the point. This is all effort you should be putting towards making an MVP.

 

So, I started on my own system then decided to check out the asset store because a procedural planet system will take a while to make, why not save my self that time if i can and i found a really nice looking asset

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/sci-fi/procedural-planets-95581

Oh yes this will save me a bunch of time, well worth the money. The shaders look nice as well.

You can tell the guy that made this put a lot of work into it.

 

How do you like it now?

These planets will be replaced with procedural eventually. I am just using some non-proc for now to build out the positioning and spawning system for galaxy creation as well as the navigation systems for ship navigation after.

Yes, I am soon starting on mechanics starting with navigation systems on player and npc ships as well as the "galaxy minifier" system and interactive galaxy map system which will be tied into the navigation systems as well as a targeting indicator system for on-screen awareness and targeting.

In this game, the environment and navigation systems and framework will be part of the foundation which other systems are built and tested with, ships will be moving too and fro and in order to start on the background simulation system they need to be able to at the very minimum run simple navigation tasks around the galaxy and then i will build and test my theoretical system to see how many ships i can translate in and out of my background simulator into 3d space smoothly.

Of course i have "ideas" for guaranteeing smooth transitions by for example slowing the player ship down when exiting a hyperspace jump and "slowly spawning ships in", or doing it during the traveling transition or both. Whatever it takes for a smooth transition that the player will not be aware of.

I want my galaxy to "feel" alive and i don't want the player to actually be aware of the fact that ships only exist physically in the galaxy in their immediate area.

 

I think the best graphics in a space game were in the Homeworld series. Everything else looks like crap in comparison. In Homeworld there were many colorful nebulas as backgrounds and almost nothing was black. That game was highly praised for its visual style. It's still unmatched today.

 

sorry for posting offtopic vid, but this thread reminded me of a clip from Friends, actually quite many levels:

Anyway, @FirstTimeCreator , i really like your idea and goal, but most of all; i love to watch anything about space, and your recent videos with all fx looks really good. Inspirational eye candy!
However, you write a lot, so please don't use "quotations marks" when you mean to use italics or bold. I can figure it out, but it's confusing to read, when i can't know for sure at the moment, if you want to emphasise something or if you are being sarcastic. Whatever, keep posting!

 

Find me a space game in 3d that contains a traversable galaxy in real-time and has sunshafts, I bet you can't. I bet this is the only one in existence.

I don't use sarcasm, human language really isn't my thing.

P.S. I started on flight control models:

 

No Man's Sky.

 

Homeworld

 

Also worth noting that most games set in space don't use light shafts at all because the atmospheric properties of space are kinda

not there.

 

Just to add image from ISS
Showing god rays, but just because of camera lenses with filters. No sunshaft ...

 

This. Crepuscular rays (aka sun shafts and god rays) are caused by dust and water particles in the atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular_rays

Just a random thought that I haven't done a lot of research to verify, you might be able to see them under the right conditions in a cosmic dust cloud and/or planetary rings. You definitely wouldn't be able to see them otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_dust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn

 

After vaporizing enemies into space dust, that would be a good time for sun rays to appear. Let player bask in their violence born creativity.

 

It's a game. It looks cool. I don't care if there aren't really sunshafts in real space.

And none of those games had sunshafts, homeworld had bloom.

 

No Man's Sky has literally had light shafts for multiple patches now.

 

in space coming off of stars around objects? I was looking but couldnt find it. Anyway..

 

Keep movin' those goalposts buddy. You said "sunshafts" not "sunshafts in space" which, again, make next to no sense in 99% of cases which is why you don't see them happening.

 

You can do what you want, I'll do what i want. And it was obvious that i meant in space. Anyone can add sunshafts in a terrain based environment. The problem is when you have emissive objects everywhere around the shaft in the post render.

How about this, in space with emissive objects behind the shafts.

I get that you are jealous, which is why you have such a tone. Go create a game instead of following me around just to be rude.

 

You are:

• dramatically overestimating the difficulty of adding sunshafts to a "non-terrain enviroment" (this is trivial)
• somehow thinking that you invented the concept of the inverse square law I guess?
• again, still focusing on the stuff that is entirely pointless at this stage
• pretending that I, like the many other people around here, am not speaking from literal years of experience

 

I'll decide what is pointless and what isn't. What space related games have you created again, please enlighten me.

How about you link me your linkedin so i can see your "vast" portfolio.

 

Yeah, I'm going to do that for you, even though I've made a very specific point of not revealing where I work for five years.

And, of course, you still ignore what was actually said.

 

How about this you go build a galaxy and then you build it the way you want to build it. MMMKAY?

Claim to have all this "experience" and yet won't list a single game or even a prototype you have built.

I proudly show off my work even the crappy stuff i did. I own it.

What about you, nothing but "words" and a post count on the forum.

 

America the Dudeiful, you literally spend your entire posts addressing why you'll never address any of the concerns people are bringing up.

 

Can see obvious rays, behind a ships. The shaft is not something just invented. Is been used for years. I am showing as you asked. In fact nothing in games is really invented. All has been there for years. Is just implemented and re implemented. Some does better than others.

 

That is not the same thing, it is coming off the last camera in the index the background, not an object in 3d space. I see now but im telling it's easier to do what is done there because it's coming off of the skybox which is the last thing rendered in the distance instead of the first.

With rays its easy to add the image effect to the last image in the render. Adding it to images prior is where emission becomes a problem unless the ray system is designed to specifically use certain colors to produce the rays thereby occluding other emissive colors on the image.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

 

It is irrelevant how is done, according to your question of the shaft implementation. It is there, isn't it? Hard to argue about the fact. That was the question. You apply techniques adequate to the situation. And we won't know, how exactly light / rendering has been applied in shown example. They had probably own solution. Mind, they don't use Unity. So not all what it seams, is we think it is. Whole clever trickery nothing more. In this case shaders probably does the most of a job.

 

Dude, for the last time i have been working on mechanics. I spent like 1 hour on the shadows if that.

Ive already start on a mouse-driven flight controller and input keymapping API to tie the future GUI API.

I honestly have no clue what you are going on about claiming i am focusing on that isn't relevant. I have not spent much time on graphics.

 

You spent two days implementing sunshafts.

 

It's a camera render image effect. It's a shader being applied to the camera image rendering the background 100%.

 

No i did not. I already knew how to implement the sunshafts from my previous prototypes.

I have been working on all sorts of things, sunshafts not included. I might of tweaked a little here and there but i was working on other things related to the galaxy, lod and transition systems, planet spawning and position.. navigation system framework for the AI as well well as the player.

And now im working on a mouse driven flight controller model, as well as the system which allows me to create multiple models and allow the player to choose one.

There are certain things i need done related to the navigation system before i start on the galaxy minfication system and the Galaxy map GUI which will contain an interactive version of the galaxy which is on a minfied scale.

 

Oh, my mistake. It was the flare system.

You know.

Another thing that has been trivial to implement since forever.

 

@Murgilod ,

what do you care so much? Let the guy enjoy himself.

 

You know what? You're 100% right.

Peace out, nerds.

 

Hey Unity 2018.3 beta is out. Lets grab it, who didn't yet and enjoy

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll