The Honourable Guild of Test Pilots

[Commander McLane]

Wanna play Asteroids? IN SPACE?

I had to spend a couple of hours in a train today, and nothing better to do (well, actually I had, but that's another issue...).

Some technical details: The game is available from the equipment department. It does cost money, but it also gives you the opportunity to earn some money, so I think it's okay. You can choose between three levels of difficulty. In the easy game each asteroid splits into two boulders and each boulder into two splinters. In the following difficulties it's three and four, respectively. The frequency with which Thargoids appear also depends on the difficulty level. As soon as you choose you're launched and transferred to deep space, eight asteroids around you. Set your scanner magnification to 3:1. That's your playing field. As soon as you have shot or scooped everything, you return to the main station and can either play another game or quit.

The game doesn't use the whole scanner range, because I found that too big. One third of it (well, actually it's one twentyseventh, because it's volume) seems to fit much better.

The mission screens are the bare minimum. Adding some more blurb is certainly possible.

I'm interested in feedback and suggestions. Also, have fun reliving the 80's! In 3D!

[Cody]

Arrgh!! It's horribly addictive! What's with the ones that flash on and off, as if cloaked? And Thargoid warships shooting them up before starting on me only adds to the mayhem - a scanner full of splinters, some of them curiously elusive! Nice one, McLane!

[Commander McLane]

Arrgh!! It's horribly addictive!

What's with the ones that flash on and off, as if cloaked?

Everything is centered around the player. Any object that leaves scanner range on one side is automatically 'teleported' to the opposite site, but continues to fly in the same direction as before, so that objects that flew away from the player to one side return from the other side. The distance check happens via a timer that fires ten times per second. Therefore it's possible, if an object passes the threshold, gets removed and respawned, and if the player moves in the same direction, that on the next check it's still beyond the threshold (but in the opposite direction), therefore it gets removed and respawned again, and so on. This results in the blinking effect. Usually this can be resolved by flying against its direction of movement at a high speed until it's firmly within the player's sphere again. But I'll look into fixing it. It looks indeed weird.

And Thargoid warships shooting them up before starting on me only adds to the mayhem

Yes, a problem of the AI scanning methods. Thargoids are supposed to prefer targeting the player. However, when scanning for the next target, only 16 of the potential targets within range are processed at all. So the player may not be among them. That's unsatisfactory and could only be overcome by script. I'll try to force the player on the warship as its target immediately after spawning it. Perhaps that'll help.

Nice one, McLane!

Thanks!

[Cody]

What's with the ones that flash on and off, as if cloaked?

... It looks indeed weird.

Yeah, that's a fact. I was tracking one at fairly close range, and it was blinking on and off like crazy. Well worth the fee!

[CommonSenseOTB]

Thanks Commander McLane and good job. It's not such a silly idea, is it? Makes for good target practice. I now have somewhere to test new weapons.

[Commander McLane]

What's with the ones that flash on and off, as if cloaked?

... It looks indeed weird.

Yeah, that's a fact. I was tracking one at fairly close range, and it was blinking on and off like crazy.

Can you try a fixed version? Just change line 56 of asteroids3D-object.js from

Code: Select all

        this.ship.position = player.ship.position.add(this.relativePosition);

to

Code: Select all

        this.ship.position = player.ship.position.add(this.relativePosition.multiply(0.95));

This moves the asteroids to the opposite side of the player, but only to 95% of their previous distance. That should add them well inside the allowed range. I haven't got any flickering since I made the change.

Next thing I'm going to do is adding some safety measures, like stopping the game when the player decides to return to the station before finishing all asteroids.

[Cody]

Can you try a fixed version?

Yep! That seems to have fixed it - no more flickering 'roids!
Tested in 1.76.1!

[Switeck]

And Thargoid warships shooting them up before starting on me only adds to the mayhem

Yes, a problem of the AI scanning methods. Thargoids are supposed to prefer targeting the player. However, when scanning for the next target, only 16 of the potential targets within range are processed at all. So the player may not be among them. That's unsatisfactory and could only be overcome by script. I'll try to force the player on the warship as its target immediately after spawning it.

You could make a pirate-ship-in-funny-clothes that just happens to look like a Thargoid. ...Either by .js script changing what AI.plist the Thargoid uses or by shipdata.plist.

[Commander McLane]

You could make a pirate-ship-in-funny-clothes that just happens to look like a Thargoid. ...Either by .js script changing what AI.plist the Thargoid uses or by shipdata.plist.

That wouldn't change the fundamental problem of having to find the player amongst more than 16 entities, though.

On another note: those of you testing the OXP with NPC_shields.oxp installed have perhaps already noticed that it takes a silly amount of hits to shoot a splinter. That's because the script-spawned splinters are not automatically excluded from getting shields. This is already fixed on my machine.

[Switeck]

You could make a pirate-ship-in-funny-clothes that just happens to look like a Thargoid. ...Either by .js script changing what AI.plist the Thargoid uses or by shipdata.plist.

That wouldn't change the fundamental problem of having to find the player amongst more than 16 entities, though.

On another note: those of you testing the OXP with NPC_shields.oxp installed have perhaps already noticed that it takes a silly amount of hits to shoot a splinter. That's because the script-spawned splinters are not automatically excluded from getting shields. This is already fixed on my machine.

Finding the player, yes...it's still a problem. But pirate types don't (normally!) shoot asteroids/boulders while bored. One hit by the player and pirate/thargoid/whatever will wake up.

Splinters can also be hard to hit the same way Thargons are -- laser shots pass through them sometimes.

[Commander Xvyto]

I'd like to volunteer to do some testing.
Specs:
4gb of ram
processor: 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 duo
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
I run Mac OSX 10.6.8

[Cody]

Splinters can also be hard to hit the same way Thargons are

Yeah, you gotta sneak-up on those splinters and zap 'em when they're not looking!

[Switeck]

Splinters can also be hard to hit the same way Thargons are

Yeah, you gotta sneak-up on those splinters and zap 'em when they're not looking!

I guess you haven't seen multiple laser shots clearly pass through the target. You not only have to catch them when they're not looking -- you have to make sure you've got a facing on them where you can get a solid hit in on them.

[Smivs]

Don't forget parallax! If you're targeting a small object you are probably quite close, and while it looks like the laser is passing through the object, in fact you're missing

[Solonar]

I played a few rounds of this Asteroid 3D came. Clever concept. I definately had 80's flashbacks of playing arcade Asteroids.