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Flux venting should stop

4 (1.3%)

Animations on hulls

35 (11%)

More hull hit effects

42 (13.2%)

Damage effects with depth

33 (10.3%)

Escape pods

25 (7.8%)

Visible hullmods

35 (11%)

Bullet casings

5 (1.6%)

Better shield effects

41 (12.9%)

Nebula effects

20 (6.3%)

Graphic options

8 (2.5%)

Better explosions

33 (10.3%)

Foreground layer

9 (2.8%)

Animated backgrounds

14 (4.4%)

A world-embedded UI

14 (4.4%)

A physical UI

1 (0.3%)

Total Members Voted: 79

Voting closed: April 14, 2013, 05:11:04 PM

[Gothars]

Any specifics you'd like to point out? I'm pretty far from being able to look at the graphics with a fresh eye - and honestly, if the combat in the final release looked the way it does now, I'd be fine with that - but I'd still love to know what stands out to you as needing more work. Since I do end up tweaking things here and there.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to collect some opinions about what Starsector's visuals are missing most. I made a list of previously proposed and my own ideas below. Please post if you have a idea of your own that should be added, but try to keep it realistic - fancy lighting effects are just not possible in a 2D engine.

Once some ideas have accumulated I will add a poll to this thread and you can vote what you'd like to see improved most. Of course there's no guarantee that will happen, it's just a little hint for Alex what players want most.


From simple to difficult implementation:  (source for that order: my well-rounded buttocks)


Flux venting should stop if a ship is disabled. It can sometimes go one for half a minute after the ship was disabled and give it a false appearance of activity.


Animations on hulls in form of blinking lights, moving sensors and hull segments (utilize "decorative weapons")


More hull hit effects: Plasma leaks, smoke, atmospheric decompression,  more particle effects.
is the example here.

Damage effects with depth: The current damage layer does not follow the ship hull on the vertical axis, sometimes making a ship appear flatter after it's damaged and hiding details. One idea to change that was the introduction of different damage zones, there may also be other techniques to improve on it.


Escape pods: A purely (or mostly) visual effect, escape pods leave ships during/after their destruction.


Visible hullmods: At least some of the hullmods could have a visible impact on the hull, for example hardened shields, auxiliary thrusters or unstable injector. Most are unsuited since they are in the ships interior, though.


Bullet casings could be ejected from (some) ballistic weapons and proceed to float in space.


Better shield effects: Shield textures? Maybe ripples on the shield if hit? Fluctuations during high flux state?


Nebula effects: Nebulas react with motion on a ship that is passing through. You know, like here.


Graphic options: The ability to turn some of the more demanding effects off or switch to some versions of them. One the one hand important for old computers, but also niece if there are some atmospheric effects that some players might find distracting. Options like this are a lot of extra work without adding substantial benefit to the game, though.


Better explosions: Sub-explosions, hulls breaking apart like in so many sci-fi movies.

Spoiler

Example: Enemy Starfighter
http://imgur.com/bsM80Zx http://imgur.com/0WiZRtO
Or just look at Gratuitous Space Battles again.

[close]

Foreground layer(s): Asteroids and scrap passing directly in front of the camera, best in relation to what is happening at the moment (so a exploding ship may cause hull parts briefly crossing your view to make you feel closer to the action, if you are viewing an asteroid field some rocks may cross your sight etc.).

Animated backgrounds which do not feature open space prominently: EG screen filling planets with weather, stars with surface activity, asteroid fields, comet tails...

An example of a 2D game that does fore- and backgrounds very well: The Banner Saga


The UI is quite functional but abstract, it might be possible to implement one that makes you feel more as if you a really looking at a screen on board a ship. Two ways to get there:

A world-embedded UI with imperfections, generated by negative status effects (hull hits, EMP, high flux). Static noise, scanline-effects, color distortions, flickering UI elements, a shaking screen (if close to ship explosions).
Maybe a differentiation between high- and low-tech: optical distortions on the neural interfaces of high tech ship, actual fissures running through the physical screen of low tech ships.
Non plus ultra: Dust or rubble falls on the screen and you see a glove swiping it hastily away (does this go to far?).

A physical UI: Real looking buttons and borders, the edge of a console visible, that kind of stuff. Basically no pure HUD UI. Example:

Spoiler

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[DelicateTask]

Thank you, Gothars, you keep such good track of everything on the forums that you're the perfect person to condense them into a useful post. You covered everything I mentioned and some of the other ideas I've seen floating around.

[theSONY]

i would like to see a REAL "flameout", a red clouded bursting flame that comes out from the ship (something like engine smoke cloud)
& most importantly i would like to see an graphic option so it can be disabled all that "fancy" graphic effects

[K-64]

A world-embedded UI: The UI is quite functional but abstract, it might be possible to implement one that makes you feel more as if you a really looking at a screen on board a ship. I have no good idea what that should look like, though.

Things like a slight static-like or scanline effect on the screen (possibly toggleable in options for those who don't want it), or some sort of electrical feedback-based distortion when there's a hit that does hull damage?

[FlashFrozen]

A world-embedded UI: The UI is quite functional but abstract, it might be possible to implement one that makes you feel more as if you a really looking at a screen on board a ship. I have no good idea what that should look like, though.

I know it might be a bit early, but I personally would love to see how the gui is affected by actions in the battle,
http://youtu.be/y7KWXvLrSg0?t=3m41s
Note the hexagons and noise that are generated by the abnormal conditions the cameras ( which I assume we are looking through with the top down view ) are subjected to,
Seen again here in the explosion (cough hint ship death explosion? maybe the Hexagons would help filter the extreme brightness?
http://youtu.be/y7KWXvLrSg0?t=3m59s

Another example, maybe getting hit by emp weaponry, flameouts, overloads etc could give a noisy / cluttered interface look.

and finally here,

Open cockpit = free of noise and artifacts

Spoiler

[close]

Closed hatch = back into the VR / camera feed  = exceptional parameters the cameras weren't meant to handle = noise

Spoiler

[close]

I wish we could implement something along the lines to bury the feel of being in the fight but watching from afar, kinda like how in the new trailer the bass/rumble effect reaching your ship when the enemy just exploded.

This is all for a bit more immersion, that the battle going on (1st person)?does affect your view of things (3rd person)

2 cents

[Jonlissla]

A world-embedded UI: The UI is quite functional but abstract, it might be possible to implement one that makes you feel more as if you a really looking at a screen on board a ship. I have no good idea what that should look like, though.

I definately support this. The current UI is functional but it's also pretty boring in terms of aesthetics.

[Flare]

I really like how part of the hull glows red when damaged, and I think there might be some merit into making it glow even brighter if hit by enough force.  Kinda like the extremely bright glow when a ship is destroyed, I think a part of the hull if hit hard enough would glow in such a way as well particularly by anti-matter weapons and whatever the explosives they're using. It wouldn't be very big, but the representation that that part of the hull has effectively turned into a state of molten metal so hot that it shines white would be pretty neat.

Broken tubes with live fires going off on the end of them are always fun, as are atmospheric decompression mixed with flame.
They probably look like this, except without the atmosphere pushing onto it like a bubble.

Left one is in gravity, the one on the right is in orbit

Spoiler

http://www.compadre.org/informal/features/featuresummary.cfm?FID=1459


http://ciencia.hsw.uol.com.br/estacoes-espaciais5.htm

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Spoiler

http://www.cnes.fr/imagezoom.php?file=p1064_ed77069b38b89947b9f6e5678e9af2adflamme.jpg&label=Candle+flame+in+microgravity.+Credits%3A+NASA

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In general though, I find real life (or theoretical real life) often provides the some of the best inspiration:

Spoiler

"First off, the weapon itself. A nuclear explosion in space, will look pretty much like a Very Very Bright flashbulb going off. The effects are instantaneous or nearly so. There is no fireball. The gaseous remains of the weapon may be incandescent, but they are also expanding at about a thousand kilometers per second, so one frame after detonation they will have dissipated to the point of invisibility. Just a flash.

The effects on the ship itself, those are a bit more visible. If you're getting impulsive shock damage, you will by definition see hot gas boiling off from the surface. Again, the effect is instantaneous, but this time the vapor will expand at maybe one kilometer per second, so depending on the scale you might be able to see some of this action. But don't blink; it will be quick.

Next is spallation - shocks will bounce back and forth through the skin of the target, probably tearing chunks off both sides. Some of these may come off at mere hundreds of meters per second. And they will be hot, red- or maybe even white-hot depending on the material.

To envision the appearance of this part, a thought experiment. Or, heck, go ahead and actually perform it. Start with a big piece of sheet metal, covered in a fine layer of flour and glitter. Shine a spotlight on it, in an otherwise-dark room. Then whack the thing with a sledgehammer, hard enough for the recoil to knock the flour and glitter into the air.

The haze of brightly-lit flour is your vaporized hull material, and the bits of glitter are the spallation. Scale up the velocities as needed, and ignore the bit where air resistance and gravity brings everything to a halt.

Next, the exposed hull is going to be quite hot, probably close to the melting point. So, dull red even for aluminum, brilliant white for steel or titanium or most ceramics or composites. The seriously hot layer will only be a millimeter or so thick, so it can cool fairly quickly - a second or two for a thick metallic hull that can cool by internal conduction, possibly as long as a minute for something thin and/or insulating that has to cool by radiation.

After this, if the shock is strong enough, the hull is going to be materially deformed. For this, take the sledgehammer from your last thought experiment and give a whack to some tin cans. Depending on how hard you hit them, and whether they are full or empty, you can get effects ranging from mild denting at weak points, crushing and tearing, all the way to complete obliteration with bits of tin-can remnant and tin-can contents splattered across the landscape.

Again, this will be much faster in reality than in the thought experiment. And note that a spacecraft will have many weak points to be dented, fragile bits to be torn off, and they all get hit at once. If the hull is of isogrid construction, which is pretty common, you might see an intact triangular lattice with shallow dents in between. Bits of antenna and whatnot, tumbling away.

Finally, secondary effects. Part of your ship is likely to be pressurized, either habitat space or propellant tank. Coolant and drinking water and whatnot, as well. With serious damage, that stuff is going to vent to space. You can probably see this happening (air and water and some propellants will freeze into snow as they escape, BTW). You'll also see the reaction force try to tumble the spacecraft, and if the spacecraft's attitude control systems are working you'll see them try to fight back.

You might see fires, if reactive materials are escaping. But not convection flames, of course. Diffuse jets of flame, or possibly surface reactions. Maybe secondary explosions if concentrations of reactive gasses are building up in enclosed (more or less) spaces."

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

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[PCCL]

Flux venting should stop if a ship is disabled. That's self explanatory, right?

don't know if I agree with this, I kinda like the idea of some systems on the ship still functional after the ship is disabled, breaks the whole critical existence failure thing by showing that zero hull isn't a magical threshold where everything just stops working. In fact, if possible, I'd prefer having ships still operational for a few seconds after zero-hull with rapidly declining capability (speed, firerate, etc) until all systems grind to a halt.

More hull hit effects: Plasma leaks, smoke, more particle effects.
Gratuitous space battles is the example here.

agreed here, as is the damaged ships really look quite ugly, and not in the good battle-scarred kind of way. Perhaps each ship should have custom damage overlays (again like gsb) that will take into account things like hull platings, windows, that kind of stuff.

[Sproginator]

A great list, Agreed for all

[Gothars]

Flux venting should stop if a ship is disabled. That's self explanatory, right?

don't know if I agree with this, I kinda like the idea of some systems on the ship still functional after the ship is disabled,

Some winding down effect would be optimal. I just don't think it's very convincing if a disabled ships keeps venting flux in a perfect circle for 30 seconds.

agreed here, as is the damaged ships really look quite ugly, and not in the good battle-scarred kind of way.

You think so? I actually like Sector's molten damage system much better than GSB's smoking holes. I'd not mind some of the hit effects as addition, but absolutely not as a replacement.

A great list, Agreed for all

Ha, I'd hope so, that is not the point though In the end I want people to vote only on those few improvements they want the very most so the results are somewhat meaningful.

[Sonlirain]

Nah. Venting after the ship was destroyed is ok in my book.
The vents open and the flux begins to escape into space.

Now the accumulated flux does NOT care what happened to the ship and destroying the ship won't magically seal the vents (something you can't do even on a active ship).

[dogboy123]

I agree with it all except for world embedded UI, I don't want anything obstructing my view

[DelicateTask]

Okay, when I said "World Embedded UI" I didn't mean so much having things blocking your view in battle. Rather, I meant t that menus should have more interesting borders and buttons. For example, look at the Fractal Softworks website design. The area around the buttons looks like metal. Look at the buttons for downloading the game, they're awesome looking, and way better than the boring blue buttons we have now.

I suppose it's a battle between simplicity and complexity, but even simplicity could be better handled. The current blue borders could have a shimmering effect overlaid onto them or some kind of unobtrusive animation added for because cool.

[Sproginator]

I like the idea of a holographic look for the command interface

[Gothars]

I agree with it all except for world embedded UI, I don't want anything obstructing my view

Almost anything proposed here improves immersion but has a slight negative impact on your ability to keep the overview over what's going on, be it via obstructing or diverting your view. I don't think a bit of noise or color distortion will obstruct your view much more than the other stuff (animated backgrounds are probably worse in that regard).

Okay, when I said "World Embedded UI" I didn't mean so much having things blocking your view in battle.

Alright, I split it. Although such a physical UI takes probably more of your view than some situational effects.

I like the idea of a holographic look for the command interface

I don't quite know what that means, can you explain or give an example?