DescentBB

Just sent a message to sdfgeoff to see if he is still interested in using my ship mod for this. Looks pretty good. Needs better sound effects and particles however. :\

Wasn't this made with Blender?

Actually, I have nothing to do with geocore! The project I was (and still am) working on is DEEP Space.
And yes, I am still keen and have replied to your PM

I can't see ★■◆●!

Sergeant Thorne wants to play

Thorne, I would love to have you test. You can always reach me at geocore.testing@gmail.com.

Messenjah, the sounds and weapon effects are a long way out from being done still but thank you for the feedback, it will be noted.

this looks fantastic I'm happy to help

I just got done with a test flight with Psion on his new game Geocore. All I can say is wow, it feels like the Descent 4 I imagined. It's early yet but this one is worth supporting, it's in good hands with Psion. Trichording, check! Real ship feel, check! Fussion, check!

Why not just factor the speed increase from trichording into the base movement of the craft? Seeing as trichording's the only way any of you guys are going to be flying anyway. There's no need to have a base movement speed if nobody's going to use it. It's an unnecessary game mechanic.
Lol, you could do the opposite! Make the game so that you can move only by trichording! It wouldn't change the game very much for most of you, would it? And that would teach me to hate trichording...

Alter-Fox wrote:Why not just factor the speed increase from trichording into the base movement of the craft? Seeing as trichording's the only way any of you guys are going to be flying anyway. There's no need to have a base movement speed if nobody's going to use it. It's an unnecessary game mechanic.
Lol, you could do the opposite! Make the game so that you can move only by trichording! It wouldn't change the game very much for most of you, would it? And that would teach me to hate trichording...

Stupid newbies...

You're still missing the point, AF...

"It's an unnecessary game mechanic."

It's actually an unplanned game mechanic that became so endearing to the pilots that it got left in and went on to become a unique and much loved aspect of the Pyro.

By way of friendly explaination:

There is either chording or no chording.

No chording means a single static flight speed for those who use keyboards or on/off (I'll call them "binary") inputs like any form of key or button. People who use analog axes will always be able to move in a variation of speeds, but not people who put movement on binary inputs. This means that the people who can vary speed will have an advantage over those who cannot. It happens when the pilot is effectively being harder to hit due to trickier speed shifts. It's all about footsies, prediction, and spacing, same as a fighting game.

Chording introduces the ability to shift your speed on the fly even if you don't have analog inputs. Its a way of adding some ability to have tricky movement event though you don't have super fine axis control. Also, when you hit the right angles, chord properly and get cooking along at a nice pace it feels like you've accomplished something, and the speed increase is very noticeable. It's a satisfying thing to master trichording, as well as it being a key element in adding subtle dimension to the game.

Proper 6DOF game design(Descent 1 being my role model for the 6DOF genre) at first glance seems like a very simple recipe but I can assure you it is not, a couple very delicate things affect the game balance and feel in a much heavier way than it might seem, and so I must work with very strict methods to ensure I encapsulate the magic that can be found in a title like Descent into Geocore.

Additionally, I hope this illuminates why I make some of the choices I do. A flood of suggestions is certainly not unwelcome, but please don't be mad when it doesn't fit into the game's very strict design rules. I am only adding this disclaimer on because I turn down a lot of stuff people say to me fairly bluntly and I want you to know in advance it's not personal... it's game design.

psionik wrote:"It's an unnecessary game mechanic."
It's actually an unplanned game mechanic that became so endearing to the pilots that it got left in and went on to become a unique and much loved aspect of the Pyro.

I didn't say that about trichording.
I said that about non-trichording movement. Because nobody here's going to use normal movement (except me, but I don't count as somebody ) if they can trichord. Read my post again. It was completely silly... yet possibly surprisingly wise? That would be a nice thing for it to be.

Psion, looking good.

question... with the advance of rendering technology and resources available to hardware, would a "Dynamic Environment" be a possible option?

when i say Dynamic, i mean Destroyable. seems that alot of games with the advances of technology and processing power, this is becoming as real as it gets.


i am just curious about that. if no, no foul no harm done.

Ace: Making a decision like that affects the whole style of game, as in everything I make has to be a regular object and a destroyed object. I simply haven't considered this as a possibility because its such an amazing workload. I agree that it would be very cool, and I really like the voxel asteroids in Miner Wars, but as of right now I don't see a way I can make everything destructable, it's just too major of a style to casually add.

I'm sorry Alter-Fox, but I can't really understand what you are trying to say. Sometimes it's surprisingly wise to just let things be as they are :]

It was silly and a little sarcastic.
If everyone who plays the game will move exclusively by trichording, then why should you allow non-trichording movement at all? Nobody's going to use non-trichording movement.
I'll say it another way: if you made the game so that the only way for the player to move was by trichording -- so that you could only move if you were moving in three directions at once, and if you tried to move in just one or two directions at once, you wouldn't move at all -- I doubt anybody here would notice.

Did I mention I'm a pine marten today?

Noone moves exclusively by trichording, its something you do when you need to get somewhere fast because it requires a wierd nose angle to do properly. I don't think its possible to dogfight and maintain a perfect trichord. I see mostly double chording in dogfights, with triple axes coming into play sporadically. I can have the code tell me when I am double chording vs triple and it flickers between the two as i'm flying, creating a contrast in the movement that gives the ship a lot of character. Thats about it on the book of trichording unless some old pilot wants to step up and add something.

I see in youtube videos by, from the odd angle of the ship, that some people here can trichord even in dogfights. I've noticed in NUMBERZero's vids that he just never stops trichording. Although the multiplayer vids I'm thinking of may have been by somebody else. But there certainly are people here who never stop trichording. Maybe fewer than I thought but they are here.

So I'll correct myself now say that those people won't notice.

Also keep in mind that chording involves only the thrust vectors, and not the rotational vectors. (a common mistake)

not a problem, psion, i thought that was a decent idea of creation.

Spidey wrote:Also keep in mind that chording involves only the thrust vectors, and not the rotational vectors. (a common mistake)

'xactly, that's why you could theoretically circle strafe and thus dogfight while trichording.

AF, no one trichords 100% of the time, because that would limit them to only eight thrust directions relative to the ship. The choice to use 0, 1, 2, or 3 chorded thrusts (and learning their benefits and drawbacks) is part of what makes Descent special. Frankly, whether your argument to remove it is serious or just for attention, it's not going to fly.

P.S. Circle-trichording is not "dogfighting". It works on robots, but not against good players.

Trichording isn't a thing that's up for discussion, either you get it or you don't but nothing is going to change regarding it. It's part of Descent, so it's part of Geocore. Theorize all you want, your theory doesn't translate to reality but you're going ahead and assuming it does and then arguing a point based on that assumption. PLEASE - refresh yourself on the scientific method if you are going to theorize. You seem to be assuming that trichording is irrelevant because you could "theoretically" do it all the time but the actual tested reality is NOONE does it 100% of the time. The original Descent game already established the validity of the mechanic, and it's simply not going anywhere. Also, this is Geocore, not Descent, and I have determined with code feedback that it's impossible to trichord permanently in my game. I hope this puts the whole thing to rest for you, Alter-Fox.


Additionally,
Because of the fact that I try to reply in a professional manner to most of the input I receive, try to keep the silly/sarcastic input to a minimum (read: none) unless you really want to just throw extra crap on my plate that I really don't need, and then yank it off when i go to address it. Do you really want me to take time out to address silliness/sarcasm just so I can be told "Oh i was just being sarcastic"? Please... have some respect and make the right choice. If someone has input I will always listen, but you need to govern yourself and ask if your issue is really important to bring to my attention, and don't continue to argue in favor of it after I shut it down because it is utterly a waste of both of our time. These replies take a long time to type because of the high level of diplomacy I try to instill into my posts. Usually the effort is wasted but sometimes not, so I continue to do it out of love for my peoples. Try hard not to abuse that love.

w3rd psi

Ace: I would love to have a fully destructable world for this game but it's just a crazy thing to attempt, it's a very different style of production. As awesome as it would be it really doesn't fit the theme of the game tightly enough for me to go that route, which would involve a major redesign. Most of your time will be spent underground and you wouldn't want to destroy that structure since you're in it trying to stay alive. It's not a bad idea, just a very very specific design decision that forces the game to be built a certain way that I don't want it to be.

oh i fully understand your position, i was just wondering if it was a viable option. seeing that you would have to do a lot, i wont push for it, unless someone wants to help you. i was just curious about that whole idea. being under ground would add a interesting thing about dynamic environments. while full scale destruction you definitely don't want, in fear of collapsing the tunnels..... what about projectile dynamics? or minimal damage? say, ( example) a rail gun device, punches a nice sized hole into a rock, or splitting it in half when i robot is hiding behind it? now that would be awesomeness. either way, i just wanted to present the idea to you.


props to ya for your current progress

I do plan to have projectiles affect the ships physics, but not to the annoying degree of the MD in D3. They wont really affect much of the environment except small objects that are moveable like barrels, etc. YES THERE WILL BE BARRELS AND CRATES. Lol.

I'm not suggesting you remove it! It's a part of the game, I wouldn't suggest that The Sol Contingency get rid of chording. And I'm not suggesting you do; I'm teasing you about it. Just like I've teased the whole DBB about it for years.

I didn't know Geocore was still worked on, it's great to see how far it has progressed, kudos Psion.

I realize there's bound to be a huge list of things still left to be programmed, so it's probably no time to ask about a new features, but I just have to.
Is there a chance of supporting the Oculus Rift head mounted display at some point?

Spidey wrote:Also keep in mind that chording involves only the thrust vectors, and not the rotational vectors. (a common mistake)

Actually, at least in D3, the rotational speed in horizontal and vertical direction also combine. Pitch speed is 3/4 of the horizontal turning speed, so you can gain 25% compared to horizontal turning (66% faster than vertical rotation). As a fun fact, this means turning your ship towards any object at the border of the screen takes the same time, regardless of whether it's in a corner or on a side (if you still use a 4:3 screen and don't bank).

I totally plan to support Rift.

Great, it's something I've been waiting for since I found out D2 supported some HMDs

If you get us in GeoCore with a Rift it's going to take the jaws of life to pry us off the computer.

if you need help testing... let. me. know.

I definately do, mail me at geocore.testing@gmail.com, its how I keep a list of my testers.

E-mail sent...

Have seen that Video at least 2 times... looks marvelous just as it is... sure that you have done a lot of improvements since then.

Bill G.
"SirWinner"