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planetarium mode vs. business model
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| horatiob | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 15:33 | Message # 1 |
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Observer
Group: Users
Germany
Messages: 18
Status: Offline
| space engineer, let me make a suggestion having in mind that one day you want to earn money with this:
if i were you, i'd restrict the planetarium mode to just our sol star system in the next versions of space engine.
Let me explain why: most of the communty including me find a lot of enjoyment in travelling around and exploring all those wonderful locations in space engine. however, if one does this, after some hours space gets a little repetitive. This is because the human mind is very good in identifying patterns, that the currently implemented procedural generation code sometimes tends to produce (patterns like the "canyon-landscape" or the "smooth mountain landscape" or the "flat-land" or the "green-planet" etc.). These landscapes amaze at first sight but lose their magic after a while.
The problem is: the planetarium mode really gives the user the opportunity to immediately check out all the amazing new things that you implemented into the game so they feel kind of obsolete after a while. This process will repeat with every new version in the future. So that means when some day the game will be finished and we start exploring the galaxy there won't be a lot of things to see that we haven't already seen (kind of). however, the motivation for exploring things is to see something NEW.
I hope you get my point: i have the feeling that the exploration part will have already lost its magic once the game gets released. So i advise you to restrict things in the future. don't make all the new landscapes and planets accessible. if i were you I'd make a cut now and restrict the planetarium mode on the sol system. Simply show some screenshots once in a while and release the community in the open space with the final release version of space engine. It'll be much more exciting.
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| CyberItalian | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 16:05 | Message # 2 |
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Astronaut
Group: Users
Italy
Messages: 43
Status: Offline
| But then people would find a game full of bugs and all kind of glitches. 
by restricting the planetarium (which is the ONLY main feature which makes SE what it is), then you wouldn't allow people to actually see the procedural engine at work, and thus it'd mean that when the game releases it'll be full of every kind of bugs which wouldn't have been solved in the past if it weren't for this "open" access to SE. 
Also, as this is a thing which annoys me a lot, you're suggesting to switch to a "closed box" model:
You want people to "pre-buy" a game which would then turn out to not be what they wanted, nor a game which is "bug-free" as SE is getting close to (althought bugs do and will still exist). 
i don't think SE is the kind of game which would in any way find a benefit form such a kind of closure. 
I'd like to point out, also, that if you really wanted to explore, go in intergalactic space, click a random galaxy, approach it, and look around. It's hard to be bored of something that, yeah, IS repetitive, but still gives a lot of diversity and surprises (e.g. look at the image dump thread). 
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| neutronium76 | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 16:26 | Message # 3 |
 World Builder
Group: Users
Greece
Messages: 718
Status: Offline
| I mostly agree with CyberItalian. Howeverthe engine will be further enriched with more features and more eye-candy stuff. I believe the nebula models as well as the galaxy models will be reworked and greatly improved. Now SE is using predefined 2D pics to create 3d nebulaes and galaxies. In the future these will be replaced with trully procedural methods of nebula, dust and galaxy generation! We will be able to witness different shapes, variations of cosmic dust and clouds and it will be amazing! Also the detail level will increase as well. Also there will probably be more variation in the way the engine depicts worlds with life. At the moment life is just - life  ! In the future life will be subdivided into sub-categories like: planet with life - level1,2 up to , I don't know maybe 10 or 12. The higher the more advanced. Anyway I can see your point horatiob but don't worry - it will not be repetitive! Also there can be very very rare features in the SE universe. These very very rare features, either very advanced civilizations, or supernova explosion events or black holes closing in a system with life or whatever else you can imagine, will definitely (hopefuly  ) keep your (and all the rest of us) interest alive.
PC1:Core i7 970@3.34GHz, 6 cores/12 threads, 12GB DDR3 RAM@1.34GHz, 2x(SLI) GTX-580 GPUs 3GB VRAM(GDDR5)@1GHz, OS:Win7x64SP1
PC2:Core2Quad X9770@3.2GHz, 2 cores/4 threads 4GB DDR2 RAM@1GHz, GTX-285 GPU 1GB VRAM(DDR3)@1.24GHz, OS:WinVistax64SP2
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| horatiob | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 16:29 | Message # 4 |
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Observer
Group: Users
Germany
Messages: 18
Status: Offline
| I've been following the image dump thread since the beginning of it, and this is partly why i made this suggestion. in this thread the artistic skills of the photographers are the main source of diversity there, not the landscapes. I don't think that this will be the case in the final game, where it will be up to the locations only to amaze the people.
don't get me wrong: i really love flying around too and taking pictures. but what i really love more is exploring the unknown, not the known. Space Engine needs to have unexpected things in the final game.
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 16:34 | Message # 5 |
 Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Also, things like 3D clouds, water effects, maybe even procedural vegetation and such will be added, and the space ships will be fully developed with cockpits, full flight models, aerodynamics, thrust, fuel usage, animations, effects, docking, etc. It will be like having an evolved version of the current SE combined with Orbiter and even to an extent dedicated terrestrial flight sims like FSX, and that doesn't even touch on gameplay elements that will be added when a game is developed. A lot more things will be added to make the universe a much more compelling place to explore and enjoy, and enough wonderfulness will be added to the game compared to the Planetarium that it will be well worth buying. In any case, we should all pay money for it anyway for having gotten to use these wonderful fruits of Vladimir's labor for all this time and for having a fantastic and eternally free universe simulator planetarium program to use.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
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| Salvo | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 20:19 | Message # 6 |
 Star Engineer
Group: Local Moderators
Italy
Messages: 1400
Status: Offline
| I agree partially with what you said
But i think in future Space Engineer want to make a "game" mode (because you can see "new game", "load game" into the image of menu's texts), what does it mean?
You have to search with your wonderful spaceship (:Q__) and it will take time and patience, but you will always see something new, and then, there is lot of things that are rarer and you couldn't find in a little time, if (i think yes) planetarium mode will always exist i don't like the idea of a "restricted" area because it wouldn't be funny, and Quote (CyberItalian) people would find a game full of bugs and all kind of glitches. wacko
So i think you are right, because like all the games when you see everything you can see the game becomes boring, but, the universe is so big and enjoyable and i think you can always see something new
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770 GPU: ASUS Radeon R9 270 RAM: 8 GBs
(still don't know why everyone is doing this...)
Edited by Salvo - Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 20:20 |
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| Kviki | Date: Tuesday, 18.09.2012, 23:09 | Message # 7 |
 Explorer
Group: SE team
Croatia
Messages: 289
Status: Offline
| I think that what spaceengine needs is more anomalies, random events that aren't going to be available until the final release.
If a player has a mindset that there is something in the enormous universe that is yet to be seen, and the player himself could possibly be the first one to witness a certain event, it will probably encourage him/her to keep playing.
 
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