Physics anyone?

[Jaybee]

This is a fun poll (really), just to get a feel about what you Ooliters think about playability and physics.

[aegidian]

i think you'd be surprised how much real physics is actually in there now.

The flight model isn't evrything y'know!

[jonnycuba]

Please no! Frontier etc were lame ducks because of the dreaded *N* word...

[Jaybee]

i think you'd be surprised how much real physics is actually in there now.

The flight model isn't evrything y'know!

Er, I think I should have been a little more specific. I was referring to planetary orbits and other astrophysical stuff.

I remember from earlier discussions that physics was already implemented.

[winston]

Please no! Frontier etc were lame ducks because of the dreaded *N* word...

No they weren't. Frontier and FFE's problem was nothing to do with using proper laws of motion, but everything to do with limited AI, bugs, more bugs and a very poor implementation of ship control. FFE ship control is about as advanced as those old Tandy "forward and reverse turn only" radio controlled cars.

Using the laws of motion had absolutely nothing to do with FE:2 and FFE's shortcomings. But even with the lousy controls (and with the help of JJFFE where you can control all of the thrusters, even if it's only off or full on) with practise you can have a lot of fun dogfighting.

The advantages of proper laws of motion and more realistic star systems is you can have a lot of fun. You can actually do the orbital calculations on paper and try them out in FFE - and you get a stable orbit. It is impossible to orbit a planet in any verison of classic Elite (including oolite) due to the games lacking the proper laws of motion. FFE allowed some great flights of fancy, like visiting a superdense white dwarf and trying to set up an orbit by hand that lasted more than a few revolutions!

The other broken-ness about FE:2 and FFE was the appaling frame of reference changes, which have largely been rectified by the most recent versions of JJFFE.

A version of Oolite with its superior graphics would be AWESOME with the proper laws of motion plus a decent method of ship control. The trouble with all the 'classic' Elites (including Oolite) is that they seem so small. The stars are only a few hundred km from the planets - the reality is Earth vs Sol is 150 million km - about five orders of magnitude greater than in the classic Elite universe! Despite the shortcomings of FFE, it did at least capture the enormity of space.

The trouble is making a game with the real laws of motion and properly scaled solar systems and a decent combat system will be an incredibly tough nut to crack. It would take a very large number of round tuits to do well. The beauty of classic Elite is that it's much simpler to implement, and more time can be put into game play - so it'll be a tradeoff (especially with what is essentially a one-man project). So on the whole I'd prefer a game with the richness in the game play rather than the physics model, so I think Giles picked the right tradeoff. (Note that all the other attempts at a better FFE have failed dismally - but all the serious attempts at new classic Elites have succeeeded).

[Darkbee]

I still disagree... yes the control system sucked but what about speed.. it took you a couple of days to slow down (which may or may not be realistic) but by the time you had slowed down enough, you'd bypassed the ship/planet/station by a few trillion light years. Is velocity not part of physics?

Anyway, its a bit of a moot point, since we are all agreed that we do not want to replicate the short-comings of other Elite incarnations.

[winston]

Again, missing the station (and the kludge so the autopilot wouldn't) came down to a bad control system. You either used the autopilot (that used a kludge to instantly take away your velocity and get to the station) or you had to eyeball it with absolutely no assistance from the computer.

In any case, there's no reason why instead of large velocities/Stardreamer you couldn't use a short-range in-system jump drive - like classic Elite - so you wouldn't need to use enormous velocities. Using the correct laws of motion and an Elite-style jump drive in the game are not mutually exclusive.

[Mad Dan Eccles]

I can read the words but they mean nothing to me.