Why the Small Space?
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Over the years I've played several space games that have entire procedurally generated planets. Most of them have been straight up barren rocks with very little in the way to do. Though there are a couple of games that have done a very good job in filling out the surfaces of their planets with a plethora of interesting content.
Having listened to the developers of No Man's Sky and Star Citizen give talks on their technology at conferences, I took away from those talks the understanding that even if had the ability to build the systems necessary to fill out an entire planet with content, I simply did not have the resources to make or obtain the content required to use those systems effectively.
In short, it takes a LOT to fill up an entire planet with interesting things to do. But something else was bothering me though. In all my years of playing space games there is one thing that has always bothered me about the genre.
Travel times.
In nearly every space game I've played since Freelancer, traveling between locations made up a significant amount of the play time. And traveling in a space game often involves decent stretches of time where you're basically doing nothing while the stars fly past your screen.
Both Freelancer and Elite Dangerous tried to solve this issues by giving NPCs, and other players, the ability to interdict your travel but at a certain point this became more annoying and frustrating than anything else. Especially in the case of Elite Dangerous where you could be spending as much as 30 minutes in FSD only to be interdicted during the last 2 minutes of travel.
So when I was thinking about how to structure travel between locations in Frontiers Reach I really wanted to get away from relying on long travel times to make the game feel big. And for the record, all of this is ignoring the fact that almost every game that has done full procedurally generated planets feels off in terms of scale. Especially when you're on the ground. So for Frontiers Reach I choose instead to go a different route. Especially since the game is combat focused game.
In warfare, unless you manage to catch an opponent in transit across an open desert, there are very few instances where you would be fighting in the middle of nowhere over absolutely nothing. Most of the actual fighting is going to be taking place in an area of strategic concern. Which could be a facility of importance, a choke point created by a land feature like a valley or a canyon, or a particularly mineral rich field of asteroids in orbit around a star or planet.
When I first started development my tools and knowledge in making space games were quite limited, and so I did the best I could with what I had. And for the longest time that meant the play spaces in FR were under 30 kilometers of horizontal space and the terrain scaling was off. But in the past year I've gotten some new tools and learned a lot about managing larger worlds, and the payoff for all of this learning is that all of the locations in Frontiers Reach can now be expanded by a significant margin.
I'm still discussing with my publisher how best to release these new locations, but right now it's looking like Jan 1st is going to be the day that the Frontier is expanded.
For planetary locations the containment zone is being expanded from 30 kilometers to 60 kilometers horizontal space with a flight ceiling of about 22 kilometers. Meaning dogfights can now take place at the edge of space.
For space locations the containment zone is being expanded to 90 kilometers in just about every direction. With the skyboxes having been completely replaced by a dynamic sky system that allows for multiple planets which now spin.
These new locations are so large in fact that I've had to create a new navigation overlay for objects and locations that fall outside of the camera render distance.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a giant leap for Frontiers Reach in several categories. For now though it's time for me to get back to work in prepping this massive update for the Jan 1 release.
Till next pilots, happy hooning!
Over the years I've played several space games that have entire procedurally generated planets. Most of them have been straight up barren rocks with very little in the way to do. Though there are a couple of games that have done a very good job in filling out the surfaces of their planets with a plethora of interesting content.
Having listened to the developers of No Man's Sky and Star Citizen give talks on their technology at conferences, I took away from those talks the understanding that even if had the ability to build the systems necessary to fill out an entire planet with content, I simply did not have the resources to make or obtain the content required to use those systems effectively.
In short, it takes a LOT to fill up an entire planet with interesting things to do. But something else was bothering me though. In all my years of playing space games there is one thing that has always bothered me about the genre.
Travel times.
In nearly every space game I've played since Freelancer, traveling between locations made up a significant amount of the play time. And traveling in a space game often involves decent stretches of time where you're basically doing nothing while the stars fly past your screen.
Both Freelancer and Elite Dangerous tried to solve this issues by giving NPCs, and other players, the ability to interdict your travel but at a certain point this became more annoying and frustrating than anything else. Especially in the case of Elite Dangerous where you could be spending as much as 30 minutes in FSD only to be interdicted during the last 2 minutes of travel.
So when I was thinking about how to structure travel between locations in Frontiers Reach I really wanted to get away from relying on long travel times to make the game feel big. And for the record, all of this is ignoring the fact that almost every game that has done full procedurally generated planets feels off in terms of scale. Especially when you're on the ground. So for Frontiers Reach I choose instead to go a different route. Especially since the game is combat focused game.
In warfare, unless you manage to catch an opponent in transit across an open desert, there are very few instances where you would be fighting in the middle of nowhere over absolutely nothing. Most of the actual fighting is going to be taking place in an area of strategic concern. Which could be a facility of importance, a choke point created by a land feature like a valley or a canyon, or a particularly mineral rich field of asteroids in orbit around a star or planet.
When I first started development my tools and knowledge in making space games were quite limited, and so I did the best I could with what I had. And for the longest time that meant the play spaces in FR were under 30 kilometers of horizontal space and the terrain scaling was off. But in the past year I've gotten some new tools and learned a lot about managing larger worlds, and the payoff for all of this learning is that all of the locations in Frontiers Reach can now be expanded by a significant margin.
I'm still discussing with my publisher how best to release these new locations, but right now it's looking like Jan 1st is going to be the day that the Frontier is expanded.
For planetary locations the containment zone is being expanded from 30 kilometers to 60 kilometers horizontal space with a flight ceiling of about 22 kilometers. Meaning dogfights can now take place at the edge of space.
For space locations the containment zone is being expanded to 90 kilometers in just about every direction. With the skyboxes having been completely replaced by a dynamic sky system that allows for multiple planets which now spin.
These new locations are so large in fact that I've had to create a new navigation overlay for objects and locations that fall outside of the camera render distance.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a giant leap for Frontiers Reach in several categories. For now though it's time for me to get back to work in prepping this massive update for the Jan 1 release.
Till next pilots, happy hooning!