I'm creating a realistic free flight space combat game (most easily compared to Freelancer) from scratch, and I need some realistic "SciFi" theories to base it off of, so I came here. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'm leaving most things unspecified until I find that nitch that I want. You play as a character you create. You can fight, trade, salvage, build, steal, and pretty much do what ever you want. There will be and FPS aspect to the game, ranging from meeting people in bars to boarding ships and taking them over. As for plot, the "AI wars" are the reason true artificial intelligence is completely banned. Earth was lost (Destroyed, Glassed, Poisoned, ect.. Idk which yet) and we now live far away (or not) some where in the galaxy So computers are not allowed control of anything capable of harming humans and AI is banned entirely by everyone. This explains why space combat is still handled by humans and not computers that could blow you out of the sky with ease. Missile guidance and a few defensive capabilities are the few exceptions to said rule and of course auto pilot could ram a ship into some thing and kill you but it's still allowed Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (theres more to it of course, but i dont want to give it all away) So on to my questions... (I'm limiting it to a few for now) 1) How fast can a ship fly around? Leaving out wormholes and folding space for a minute im referring to actual movement via propulsion like in combat. Im thinking that there is a max speed a ship could move because of all stuff floating around in space, some1 on this forum said 600 meters per second? 2) What do you think power sources would be? Of all the ideas we have about generating power today, which one would generate that most that we can actually predict existing some day? I know the first question is very dependent on this... 3)(Not exactly science I kno) How do you think the monetary system would work in a universe like this? I think that money would all be handled by banks and when you want to pay some one you just select an amount and give a finger print (which would go as far as a DNA scan). But lets say you ran into a junker in deep space, and wanted to buy some of his loot off him... how would you pay him? Gold plated latinum? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! jk So remember try to stick to realism when coming up with awesome ideas for this (yes I have my own ideas on these, I just want to see what other people think) Thanks for reading!
I'm a gaming virgin. What is "FPS"? Minimum orbital velocity is about 22.5Km per hour. Since we can do that, a future vehicle should be able to do much better. Even in an asteriod belt, space is 99.9999% empty space. What is shown in science fiction TV is totally unrealistic. Trained astronauts can take 8G for a few minutes and 3G for days. If you want to go faster than that, you're going to have to assume some kind of inertia-less drive. Matter/anti-matter. Probably even doable eventually. If you assume instantaneous communications, every trading building/ship can have an ATM. Otherwise, you're back to currency. If your future has replicators like Star Trek that can make anything for nothing (requires vast amounts of energy), then there is no need for currency or trade.
FPS = First person shooter (it means the game is played from the perspective of a person walking around), and no replicators in this game XD... a large part of the game will be building and upgrading which costs money, and the main way to make money out side of missions will be trading this will even extend to a full on process of mining, refining, building, and then selling so a currency system is a must, im just wondering if any1 has a unique idea for currency, bartering with the computer would probly getting pretty boring and repetitive but if the game were made multiplayer it might be a neat feature matter/anti matter i agree on, but I hope for other ideas to tho, so that there will be some diverse energy generation types as for inertia, i was hoping some1 would bring this up... have any SciFi shows explained y traveling as fast as they do doesnt kill every1? I dont mean through worm holes and such but more like light speed in star wars? any theories on how we could remove it from the equation? good comments.. thx Ps: and just to clarify, a player might go tho whole game without firing a gun on foot, or he might be a bounty hunter and need to fight people on foot all the time, so while it will be an FPS the game will not be based on it
what kind of energy? The biggest mistake of science fiction is saying "pure energy". That's as moronic as saying "that machine uses hertz." Or, "that computer uses science." Its not specific.
It's your story. But I would fall back to Star Trek logic- you can't have a fight in space while at light speed. Ships can go past light speeds as easily as you can go from 0 to 60... it's your story. Black Matter Drives, naturally. Currency would be in DNA... in life forms. The currency of the future is DNA custom made to do X,Y and Z for you. Microbes that eat up Global Warming- no problem. Microbes that leave gold as a waste product- no problem. Extremophiles that terraform a planet for you to your specifications- that'll cost a little bit more. You have a story set thousands of years into the future. As a sci fo writer, the ,more futuristic it is, the more gaps you have to fill in. Get writing.
Cool. It would have to be some sort of reactor core. Not sure what would cause the reaction's however. Something material. Along the lines of Star Wars' Credits, and BSG's Kubits. Nothing paper. No problem.
>1) How fast can a ship fly around? Realistically ships with humans in them can accelerate at 4-5G's continuously or 10G's for short amounts of time. No effective limit on speed. For gameplay you might want to choose some gas density in gamespace (call it "industrial outgassing" or something) that limits speeds to something more game-able. >2) What do you think power sources would be? Of all the ideas we have about >generating power today, which one would generate that most that we can >actually predict existing some day? Antimatter is far and away the highest power. I'd think you'd want an assortment of sources though, from cheap/heavy (thorium fission) to moderate (D/T or H/H fusion) to ultra high power/lightweight (antimatter.) Fusion fuel can be gathered in interstellar space, especially if you postulate "polluted" space to keep your top speeds down. For ship drives you'd also need to come up with reaction mass. For fusion it's probably the reactants themselves. For antimatter it will be the matter used as a reactant. Fission will probably need a separate reaction mass, like xenon or cesium (for ion engines.)
Awesome IDEAS SO FAR PROPULSION 1 Limited by 8gs/10gs for minutes/hours and 3gs/5gs for days/weeks unless inertia-less drive created 2 Reaction mass 3 Ion Engines 4 Fusion Drive 5 Antimatter Drive ENERGY PRODUCTION 1 Antimatter 2 Black Matter 3 Reactor 4 Fusion CURRENCY 1 Barter system 2 Every one has access to banks from everywhere at all time. Assuming universe wide instant communication 3 Replicators remove need for currency (currency will be a large part of the game tho, so not this 1) 4 Blood/DNA 5 Units of energy 6 Some form of credits What I'm aiming for is not really "SF" but more like "science fiction realism". Star Trek is more like science fiction fantasy. The reason I discriminate between the 2 is that when I'm playing a game that's based on reality not fantasy and things happen that totally break the line of possible in the real world(without explanation) its not as awesome anymore, and it bugs me. So what I'm doing is basing every little detail on possible reality (and not just possible but probable, if said events took place), and not putting anything in without scientific theory/possibility supporting it (hopefully both). I'm doing this not only because I like it this way, but I think it would just be freakin awesome and would appeal to a larger crowd (the people that don't care(action people who skip story), the SF crowd, and people like me who want to kick ass in a way that is possible some day) A neat idea and something Ive definitely been considering to add to the game, but how could this be implemented as a currency an not just a valuable asset my example (y for different types of DNA or whatever that are worth different amounts) Ill give you X of Y DNA(what) for rights to that Battle Cruiser wreckage How would this work? What would the currency be exactly? First off, before I seem negative any more I want to say GREAT IDEAS EVERYONE definitely worth coming here and I have have some new ideas i hadn't thought of yet! now space is HUGE and the amount of polution/surplus gasses it would take to actually influence all or even chunks of space travel would be freakin ridiculous(don't you think?), but it is a good idea, I could see pockets of the stuff but not everywhere XD and finally I hope for atleast 1 or more types of energy generation. We got Black matter, antimatter, and some forms of fusion (which can very) but i was hoping for more Great comments guys... thanks for reading, keep em coming!
Any story ever told will be man vs. man, man vs. machine or man vs. himself. Everything else is window dressing. Stop worrying about details and stick to the storyline- the rest will fill itself in. For example, I have some wonderful ideas and concepts, I only have to wrap them around a real story. An important part of storytelling is to tell the story itself, not the details. Worrying about propulsion systems is a detail. I don't see anyone crying foul over the game Spore- where you instantly travel light years to reach suitable planets... it's a detail.
Of course your completely correct, but I'm not here for the story, I'm here for the details. The story is my creation and I'm working on it separately, these posts are specific to creating fun and realistic game play outside/beside the story. Let me explain. The story is an almost optional part of the game, but you have to deal with it eventually (you get sucked in one way or another, and you trying to avoid it can bee the story too XD). The point being, the game play itself would still exist without a story, you sort of get to make your own story just by meeting new people, trading, building, making alliances, making friends and enemies, ect... Its a free play game. No restrictions, do what you want kinda thing. EDIT So imagine a game that's really fun to play without a story line, so fun it gets sold massively, now apply one of those great storylines to it that are so good they stir something in us that we cant quite describe. This is what I aim for, because with video games a lot of people could care less about the story, and a lot of people are all about the story, and some like me hold them equal XD EDIT 2 And btw spore is a fictional based universe so your comparison makes no sense
Currently Frontier is developing the Anniversary version of Elite, however there is no ETA, as they are doing like companies should and creating the game at their own pace. (You can't rush a masterpiece) BLQQD, Are you serious? I mean you do realise that Games nowadays are extremely complex, take "years" to create and have the budgets of Hollywood movie's. I mean don't get me wrong, it makes sense that you might want to create your own game, but what actual things have you done or are you doing to make this any more than a pipe dream? You have to remember to try and "scale" your overall game plan to something you can handle. This is the one thing that many games playing teenagers tend to not understand with development. It's all very well dreaming hundreds or thousands of includes for a game, but for every include requires coding functions, for every library or class requires documentation for the programmers to work together (after all programmers can be assigned specific tasks, they don't just work together and script from one end of the code to the other. They work with the documentation to allow their inclusions to be compatible with the end result) You should also take note that if you are switching between different "modes" (flying a Spaceship, First Person Shooter) you will likely be utilising more than one engine. I mean you can pick up something like DarkBasic or even use Blender to generate very simplified games which some developers will do to generate a portfolio of the project they want to upgrade to a higher version. Most companies will likely jump to using various Engines that they then tailor (Main ones nowadays is the Unreal and Havok engines which cost to license if developing, although it's obviously cheaper for the games developer want-to-be to gain access to the Hammer editor through Steam to use the Source engine, but even that's getting old now) Obviously even with an engine they might tailor their own motion engines into the universe like Endorphin and Euphoria(Which GTA4 used) or physics engine. As for actual games mechanics, the answers to your questions really reside with how far you want to push an overall game. Some people like the notion of realism. In "realistic" games the speed of a space craft is actually defined by physics and mathematics, which the engines are quite happy to work with. The problem is with realism however is do you really want to spend 75 years to reach that planet in the next system? This is usually where the realm of fantasy comes in, with someone creating a "Work around" to manipulate a desired outcome with a pseudo-scientific reasoning. So they usually put "Jump drives" in, or hidden relays that generate jumps (which are also very handy for making smaller loading areas that can quickly load and have little code to debug, and don't overtax the systems resources on the platform you intend to use.) I for instance have a very complex working universe that I have planned, however It's something I can only Storyboard a little, perhaps write a simplified synopsis for, as I know that *if* it was to get any further than the drawing board, I've got to be prepared for writers and designers to want to pull apart my initial concepts and put their own interpretations into the mix, I'd also have to be prepared for a developer team to suggest which extra's that they feel would have to be left out from complexity, resource limits, costs or time.
Gawd.... Ok so, it's not a pipe dream, but it is a dream. Yes I understand the complexity of the task, yes I understand about the engines, I plan to create one, no not by my self. Yes I understand its fantasy(the game), what I want its realistic fantasy, as in star trek is not realistic in the slightest. I'm coming up on a crap load of money and plan to make a lot more with it, trust me when I say money isn't the issue. All I'm doing is thoroughly blue printing the game from head to toe. This way, when I get a team of people on it, they can see the WHOLE picture, and not just the idea. I don't even dream that it's going to be produced sooner than 2021 and I wouldn't want it to. Like you said, master pieces take time. As for things I've done, I've probably logged 30% of my life on the computer, playing games and designing maps and models and such.(I mean that literally) but other than that, nothing of note. So Stryder, you seem like you are skeptical, but interested. Did you want to share some ideas? Anyone else got any Ideas? It's been a little slow recently.
Let me approach it differently then. What you propose is the ultimate FPG where players can do ANYTHING within the galaxy with realism down to the finest small detail. Where exactly are your 250 programmers to make this a reality? And the $20 million plus in upstart funds? Plan to upend WoW? Many have tried, all have failed. Even WoW has its glitches.
