This has more than likely been requested before, however, I think that there might be an easy way to implement this as an optional way of travel
HOW?
why not, allow us to go to our bridge Instance while in automated movement? So, how would this work?
Have our Toon ship fly in auto mode to whatever destination we pick from the navigation list already in game, while we are in our Bridge instance. Then slap a repeating image on the view screen of stars whizzing by and people will be happy for it. If you want to get really fancy, you can allow us to pull up the area map of the sector block we are in, and slap that on the view screen upon request.
So...
Would it really be that difficult to allow our ship to fly in autopilot while we sit in our captains chair appreciating our Bridge layout and all the artwork we put into our Bridge officers?
I am not asking for you to literally allow us to pilot our ship from the Bridge Just give us the illusion that we are. So in essence, give us navigation of our Toons autopilot feature, which is already in the game, only put it in our bridge instance.
If you are asking about still having your ship in sector space traveling on auto pilot so people can see it whilst you are on the bridge.
Near impossible.
As for being on the bridge while some very fancy math has started a timer for lets say from Sol to DS9. 12 minute travel time. (example obviously)
There is however no ship in sector space during this time.
Timer starts when you punch whatever console needed on the bridge. And then you idle there for 12 minutes. Before getting a message saying you have arrived. In a sense it would be transwarp with actual travel time added to it.
More realistic.
The problem is how the system sees you. From what I've read
Let's say you are in orbiting Vulcan, and you go to your bridge.
The game takes "you" as represented by the ship and all your data and transforms it into your player character on the bridge. At that point you are technical no longer orbiting Vulcan. A place holder has been entered into memory for when you leave the bridge but you are now on the bridge map. The bridge is technically nowhere.
When you leave the bridge you return to that place that was saved and "you" are turned back into the ship.
Under the software, the only way it COULD feasible work is if the "place holder" was moveable from another location. If your are on the bridge and the system says it will take 10 minutes to got to Risa. Either you will have to stay in ship for ten minutes or the game will have to estimate location if you leave early. Either way there will be no ship in sector space representing you.
Any one else is free to chime in, but based on what I've read from Cryptic off and on for the last 2 years that sounds like the "Great Barrier" to that option.
The problem with flying from your bridge, is that both your Captain, and your Ship, are YOU.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
The only way I see it working is if there is some sort of dummy-like spawn that would effect another map. The only option would to be stuck in the bridge the entire voyage until you reach your destination. Which would need the ability of one map to effect another map.
The problem with flying from your bridge, is that both your Captain, and your Ship, are YOU.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
ETA: Double Beaten!
Is there a way to be beam onto a bridge and then beam back in another location? If this is so then it may be possible to al least go to your bridge to wait out a timer that would eventually allow you to Leave your bridge and find you at a new location.
I am sure it would still require a programmer to work out the details but then the rest is simply cosmetic. Show moving stars on the view screen and some sort of distant calculation based on the time that has elapsed. It would be like warping somewhere but in the time it takes you to fly naturally. That would eliminate the warping from zone to zone and more reason to be on your bridge.
I dont know about your guys but I dont mind pretending that I am flying through space but it would be cool to not always do a round trip ;_)
The only way I see it working is if there is some sort of dummy-like spawn that would effect another map. The only option would to be stuck in the bridge the entire voyage until you reach your destination. Which would need the ability of one map to effect another map.
Alternatively, a very very close-in zoom level that essentially removes local display of your ship player model and gives you the inside appearance of your bridge complete with animated bridge officers and captain avatar, albeit one basically stuck to the chair. Depending on your chasecam settings (follow/rotate) you could toggle a fixed forward view or a focused-on-target view, but you'd still control your ship with your usual space controls.
Problem here is that it would require an absurd amount of scripting and debugging to be even remotely playable in combat, and for it to be useful, they'd have to include some sort of MSD-like interface somewhere on the screen to let you see your ship status from a glance. Like, perhaps, a small holographic display in front of the Captain's chair.
Fun to dream about for immersion's sake, perhaps, but they'd likely have to set aside the time it takes to develop a whole season just for that feature.
The problem with flying from your bridge, is that both your Captain, and your Ship, are YOU.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
ETA: Double Beaten!
Why can't it be? You can "Tranwarp to....". Why can't you do that from your bridge. You just change the location you are about to "beam back to" when the costume changes.
I',m all for sitting on my bridge waiting out a timmer, Later, we can gain access to do the same stuff we usually do while in autopilot, check my research progress, check my bank, assign missions to duty officers, just let me do that stuff from my bridge so I have a real use for it other than social hour with Ahora:rolleyes:
The problem with flying from your bridge, is that both your Captain, and your Ship, are YOU.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
ETA: Double Beaten!
Well, while I am not a programmer, I have an idea how this could work. Instead of having your ship, fly through sector space, while you sit in the bridge, you could set it up, like this... You enter your bridge, go to the conn station and set where you wanna go. Instead of the sector space flight, say a ETA timer starts, your ship never enters sector space, and goes anywhere, it's just like basically a delayed transwarp. You sit on the bridge until the destination is reached, then when you exit the bridge, your ship materializes in the new location. You wouldn't have to have the ship model itself do anything.
Why can't it be? You can "Tranwarp to....". Why can't you do that from your bridge. You just change the location you are about to "beam back to" when the costume changes.
Because all that stuff you're bypassing is a social area. This is a MMORPG, not a PCRPG.
Well, while I am not a programmer, I have an idea how this could work. Instead of having your ship, fly through sector space, while you sit in the bridge, you could set it up, like this... You enter your bridge, go to the conn station and set where you wanna go. Instead of the sector space flight, say a ETA timer starts, your ship never enters sector space, and goes anywhere, it's just like basically a delayed transwarp. You sit on the bridge until the destination is reached, then when you exit the bridge, your ship materializes in the new location. You wouldn't have to have the ship model itself do anything.
The problem with this idea is design, not programming.
They could do this tomorrow but MMOs need some degree of forced socialization.
I have an idea or three to get around this but I'm also shopping my resume to some game studios so I'll sit on this one.
The problem with flying from your bridge, is that both your Captain, and your Ship, are YOU.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
ETA: Double Beaten!
They'd have to put a map in your map so you could fly through space while you fly through space. :eek:
The argument about bypassing social areas when you travel from the bridge has pretty much become moot.
PvE Queues allow you to play content from any location. You no longer have to travel through space and hang around the Sibiran system to do Infected for example.
Transwarp buttons on every mission that work from any location. Transwarp buttons on the Event Calendar that work from any location. None of this has murdered social interaction in sector space. Sirius Sector and Omega Leonis Sector Zone Chats are proof.
An option to use the bridge to "simulate" travel won't hurt any more than what's already working in game.
And simulated bridge travel is doable with the game's engine as well. Nothing more than a star map to choose your destination, a warp button, some warp field animation on the main view screen, and after a set period of time you "arrive" and can enter tactical view at your destination.
Exactly. All I want is for them to calculate my travel to a system with some math and a fake view screen warp image. I dont need to be a 3D model flying through space or controlling my ship other than being able to choose the destination.
Exactly. All I want is for them to calculate my travel to a system with some math and a fake view screen warp image. I dont need to be a 3D model flying through space or controlling my ship other than being able to choose the destination.
Exactly. We still have a little bit of an imagination. make each planet warp take like 7min and then come up with a pop-up that says we are now at our sestination, do we want tExactly. We still have a little bit of an imagination. make each planet warp take like 7min and then come up with a pop-up that says "we are now at our destination, do we want to enter standard orbit or continue to skrew around on your bridge"o enter standard orbit or continue
Exactly. All I want is for them to calculate my travel to a system with some math and a fake view screen warp image. I dont need to be a 3D model flying through space or controlling my ship other than being able to choose the destination.
What many people don't realize (And has been stated in this type of thread before) is that STO is basically "Champions Online with Spaceships"
This is two different game engines shoehorned together into the same concept. This is why ships disappear from orbit when the player "docks" at a spacestation or "Beams Down" to the planet.
STO, however, cannot grow or evolve much further than it already has without a serious remake. One thing that would ensure the longevity of STO as a cash cow for Cryptic AND PWE would be a major rewrite of the base code. In essence, taking the best portions of what they already have and building a much better game engine around those key concepts.
It is this kind of programming (developing a game engine that can be upgraded easily and effectively) that slows MMO development. It has been stated before that there was a contract date of 24 months for STO to reach Live status. That means 2 years from concept, through Alpha and Beta testing, to release day.
I'm still in courses for my BA in CIS (Computer Information Systems), but even I can tell you that this is still a glorified Beta testing game. The Devs want to find what everyone wants and really likes and improve upon it for a future release. Think Runescape when it went from Classic to Runescape 2. STO in 5 years may be a much different game.
The problem is how the system sees you. From what I've read
Let's say you are in orbiting Vulcan, and you go to your bridge.
The game takes "you" as represented by the ship and all your data and transforms it into your player character on the bridge. At that point you are technical no longer orbiting Vulcan. A place holder has been entered into memory for when you leave the bridge but you are now on the bridge map. The bridge is technically nowhere.
When you leave the bridge you return to that place that was saved and "you" are turned back into the ship.
Under the software, the only way it COULD feasible work is if the "place holder" was moveable from another location. If your are on the bridge and the system says it will take 10 minutes to got to Risa. Either you will have to stay in ship for ten minutes or the game will have to estimate location if you leave early. Either way there will be no ship in sector space representing you.
Any one else is free to chime in, but based on what I've read from Cryptic off and on for the last 2 years that sounds like the "Great Barrier" to that option.
The game knows where you are, and knows in what direction you are traveling. So, with that, it just takes basic math (Velocity divided by distance) to determine how much time it would take to travel there. So, just leave a placeholder "image" that other players see, if the ship traveling like this. In this mode, it would be unaffected by other ships (no bumping).
I'm not a code expert, but that seems possible to me.
What many people don't realize (And has been stated in this type of thread before) is that STO is basically "Champions Online with Spaceships"
This is two different game engines shoehorned together into the same concept. This is why ships disappear from orbit when the player "docks" at a spacestation or "Beams Down" to the planet.
STO, however, cannot grow or evolve much further than it already has without a serious remake. One thing that would ensure the longevity of STO as a cash cow for Cryptic AND PWE would be a major rewrite of the base code. In essence, taking the best portions of what they already have and building a much better game engine around those key concepts.
It is this kind of programming (developing a game engine that can be upgraded easily and effectively) that slows MMO development. It has been stated before that there was a contract date of 24 months for STO to reach Live status. That means 2 years from concept, through Alpha and Beta testing, to release day.
I'm still in courses for my BA in CIS (Computer Information Systems), but even I can tell you that this is still a glorified Beta testing game. The Devs want to find what everyone wants and really likes and improve upon it for a future release. Think Runescape when it went from Classic to Runescape 2. STO in 5 years may be a much different game.
I just hope it's a better game for it.
You are so far off base I don't even know where to start. . . .
First, game engines are engines. You can put them into different chassis/bodies, and get different looking games out of them. Yes, some engines specialize in some things over other things, but those splits are no where NEAR content genre. If anything, the split is between game types, FPS, MMO, RTS, etc. And our engine, is actually quite good at making MMOs.
"They're using a superhero engine, and putting spce ships in it."
I've heard this a few times over here, and I really can't comprehend this kind of ignorance. Do you guys know about the Unreal Engine? It's made by Epic. Epic made Unreal (the game) in 1998, and built the engine for that game. They have been using that engine for the last 14 years. They have updated, and adapted it along the way, including releasing 2 new 'versions' which probably had a bunch of changes, and today it is probably the most widely used engine in the industry.
Now, admittedly, they're a heavy hitter in the engine world, and while games that use their engine tend to lean toward shooters, their is a startling bredth of genres in there. And I don't think I've ever heard someone playing DCUO or Mass Effect complain about how the engine was meant for a FPS Alien shooter.
Our engine is much, much, much younger (we're at maybe 4 years old now), and we don't have the cash on hand that they do, so it may not be as advanced in some respects, but that doesn't mean that our engine sucks at all. In fact, regularly, new hires are surprised at the versatility and accessibility of our engine.
As for the need of a major rewrite. . . we did that. When I'm saying our engine is 4 years old, that's the rewritten one. The engine we use now is based off of the original COH engine. It was rewritten when we started marvel, not a small process by any stretch of the imagination. Marvel, and CO probably suffered some because of it. But what came out of that process was a good deal better, and a lot more expandable than the COH engine was.
That said, we are NOT going to be doing that again anytime soon. Rewriting the engine is a pain in the butt, and breaks a ton of stuff in the process. That doesn't mean that we are not improving our engine. The Engine has progressed probably just as far since it was "rewritten" as it did during that initial process. New things are always being added to the engine, to accommodate new requests from artists and designers.
I stand by our engine as one of the better ones in the industry (particularly for Online Multiplayer), and I didn't even write the damn thing.
I know diddly squat about how game engines work. All I know is what's presented to me, and so far, STO does a respectable job. I do remember Dsthal saying that the basic game mechanics we enjoy today were conceived from the beginning -- as in, bridge navigation/combat was never on the table from the outset. So I guess if it was, they'd have worked to get it done. I think...
...All that said, I do know what I want from a Star Trek game. And I want to be able to influence my ship in some way from my ship interior. I don't need bridge combat. I like the way space combat is handled now. But traveling from system to system, I'd love to be able to have that automatically handled from my ship interior, with activities to do inside my ship as it warps to my desired location. Whether that's crafting, managing my crew, chilling in the lounge, running drills, whatever... I mean, I already "pretend" that I do stuff on the bridge by going to my ready room to handle crew management duties and reports. But to do that, my ship can't be doing anything else. I imagine STO one day being kind of like the show, where the captain can be productive while the ship is en route to wherever.
You are so far off base I don't even know where to start. . . .
First, game engines are engines. You can put them into different chassis/bodies, and get different looking games out of them. Yes, some engines specialize in some things over other things, but those splits are no where NEAR content genre. If anything, the split is between game types, FPS, MMO, RTS, etc. And our engine, is actually quite good at making MMOs.
"They're using a superhero engine, and putting spce ships in it."
I've heard this a few times over here, and I really can't comprehend this kind of ignorance. Do you guys know about the Unreal Engine? It's made by Epic. Epic made Unreal (the game) in 1998, and built the engine for that game. They have been using that engine for the last 14 years. They have updated, and adapted it along the way, including releasing 2 new 'versions' which probably had a bunch of changes, and today it is probably the most widely used engine in the industry.
Now, admittedly, they're a heavy hitter in the engine world, and while games that use their engine tend to lean toward shooters, their is a startling bredth of genres in there. And I don't think I've ever heard someone playing DCUO or Mass Effect complain about how the engine was meant for a FPS Alien shooter.
Our engine is much, much, much younger (we're at maybe 4 years old now), and we don't have the cash on hand that they do, so it may not be as advanced in some respects, but that doesn't mean that our engine sucks at all. In fact, regularly, new hires are surprised at the versatility and accessibility of our engine.
As for the need of a major rewrite. . . we did that. When I'm saying our engine is 4 years old, that's the rewritten one. The engine we use now is based off of the original COH engine. It was rewritten when we started marvel, not a small process by any stretch of the imagination. Marvel, and CO probably suffered some because of it. But what came out of that process was a good deal better, and a lot more expandable than the COH engine was.
That said, we are NOT going to be doing that again anytime soon. Rewriting the engine is a pain in the butt, and breaks a ton of stuff in the process. That doesn't mean that we are not improving our engine. The Engine has progressed probably just as far since it was "rewritten" as it did during that initial process. New things are always being added to the engine, to accommodate new requests from artists and designers.
I stand by our engine as one of the better ones in the industry (particularly for Online Multiplayer), and I didn't even write the damn thing.
Thanks for taking the time to writer this - it was informative and helpful.
PS - I also agree with the above poster - if possible - of wanting to be able to influence my ship from the interior - i.e. the Bridge (i.e. similar to Bridge Commander)... or - what should be much easier I'd think - healing in Sickbay and Crafting in the lab at least.
Im glad you posted that defense, I find people are too critical of the engine and they usually lack appropriate knowledge to back up that criticism.
Now back on topic, why isnt it possible with your engine to have a fake view screen warp image, and a background calculation to get to a destination. Example, I chose to go from SOL to DS9 while on my bridge, the game calculates the time it would take at my ships max warp, and when that timer ends it gives me a message saying I have arrived. I then exit the bridge in sector space.
Comments
Near impossible.
As for being on the bridge while some very fancy math has started a timer for lets say from Sol to DS9. 12 minute travel time. (example obviously)
There is however no ship in sector space during this time.
Timer starts when you punch whatever console needed on the bridge. And then you idle there for 12 minutes. Before getting a message saying you have arrived. In a sense it would be transwarp with actual travel time added to it.
More realistic.
Let's say you are in orbiting Vulcan, and you go to your bridge.
The game takes "you" as represented by the ship and all your data and transforms it into your player character on the bridge. At that point you are technical no longer orbiting Vulcan. A place holder has been entered into memory for when you leave the bridge but you are now on the bridge map. The bridge is technically nowhere.
When you leave the bridge you return to that place that was saved and "you" are turned back into the ship.
Under the software, the only way it COULD feasible work is if the "place holder" was moveable from another location. If your are on the bridge and the system says it will take 10 minutes to got to Risa. Either you will have to stay in ship for ten minutes or the game will have to estimate location if you leave early. Either way there will be no ship in sector space representing you.
Any one else is free to chime in, but based on what I've read from Cryptic off and on for the last 2 years that sounds like the "Great Barrier" to that option.
The character you play, basically has it's costume swapped out as you move from space to ground. As such, when you go from sector space to your bridge, your ship is no longer IN sector space anymore. When you go from your bridge to sector space, your bridge no longer exists, and your captain isn't there.
While I like the idea of being able to control your ship from your bridge, the way our game is set up, those things are entirely separate maps, and as such there is no way currently to occupy both simultaneously.
This would require (I'm guessing a lot of) programmer time, and system design time to get anything remotely like this working. It's not a simple fix.
ETA: Double Beaten!
I still remember early on when we had some very hilarious bugs...
Mirandas and other ships running and jumping around inside ESD. Good times.
Which I'm not sure is easy based on the system.
Now, why can't Q do that? Turn us into our ship in ESD! That'd be the fun!
Is there a way to be beam onto a bridge and then beam back in another location? If this is so then it may be possible to al least go to your bridge to wait out a timer that would eventually allow you to Leave your bridge and find you at a new location.
I am sure it would still require a programmer to work out the details but then the rest is simply cosmetic. Show moving stars on the view screen and some sort of distant calculation based on the time that has elapsed. It would be like warping somewhere but in the time it takes you to fly naturally. That would eliminate the warping from zone to zone and more reason to be on your bridge.
I dont know about your guys but I dont mind pretending that I am flying through space but it would be cool to not always do a round trip ;_)
Alternatively, a very very close-in zoom level that essentially removes local display of your ship player model and gives you the inside appearance of your bridge complete with animated bridge officers and captain avatar, albeit one basically stuck to the chair. Depending on your chasecam settings (follow/rotate) you could toggle a fixed forward view or a focused-on-target view, but you'd still control your ship with your usual space controls.
Problem here is that it would require an absurd amount of scripting and debugging to be even remotely playable in combat, and for it to be useful, they'd have to include some sort of MSD-like interface somewhere on the screen to let you see your ship status from a glance. Like, perhaps, a small holographic display in front of the Captain's chair.
Fun to dream about for immersion's sake, perhaps, but they'd likely have to set aside the time it takes to develop a whole season just for that feature.
Why can't it be? You can "Tranwarp to....". Why can't you do that from your bridge. You just change the location you are about to "beam back to" when the costume changes.
Well, while I am not a programmer, I have an idea how this could work. Instead of having your ship, fly through sector space, while you sit in the bridge, you could set it up, like this... You enter your bridge, go to the conn station and set where you wanna go. Instead of the sector space flight, say a ETA timer starts, your ship never enters sector space, and goes anywhere, it's just like basically a delayed transwarp. You sit on the bridge until the destination is reached, then when you exit the bridge, your ship materializes in the new location. You wouldn't have to have the ship model itself do anything.
Because all that stuff you're bypassing is a social area. This is a MMORPG, not a PCRPG.
If you want to do that, you can. But I want to avoid the friday night "I'm young and drunk" sector space talk.
LoL I can agree on that one
Would be very cool to fly from the bridge even cooler if your teamates could hitch a ride
i really don't know what the big thing about seeing everyone in an MMO, is.
"why not have everyone in the same map and not have shards??!?!?"
That just brings out the worst in people. I would rather be alone.
The problem with this idea is design, not programming.
They could do this tomorrow but MMOs need some degree of forced socialization.
I have an idea or three to get around this but I'm also shopping my resume to some game studios so I'll sit on this one.
PvE Queues allow you to play content from any location. You no longer have to travel through space and hang around the Sibiran system to do Infected for example.
Transwarp buttons on every mission that work from any location. Transwarp buttons on the Event Calendar that work from any location. None of this has murdered social interaction in sector space. Sirius Sector and Omega Leonis Sector Zone Chats are proof.
An option to use the bridge to "simulate" travel won't hurt any more than what's already working in game.
And simulated bridge travel is doable with the game's engine as well. Nothing more than a star map to choose your destination, a warp button, some warp field animation on the main view screen, and after a set period of time you "arrive" and can enter tactical view at your destination.
Exactly!
This is two different game engines shoehorned together into the same concept. This is why ships disappear from orbit when the player "docks" at a spacestation or "Beams Down" to the planet.
STO, however, cannot grow or evolve much further than it already has without a serious remake. One thing that would ensure the longevity of STO as a cash cow for Cryptic AND PWE would be a major rewrite of the base code. In essence, taking the best portions of what they already have and building a much better game engine around those key concepts.
It is this kind of programming (developing a game engine that can be upgraded easily and effectively) that slows MMO development. It has been stated before that there was a contract date of 24 months for STO to reach Live status. That means 2 years from concept, through Alpha and Beta testing, to release day.
I'm still in courses for my BA in CIS (Computer Information Systems), but even I can tell you that this is still a glorified Beta testing game. The Devs want to find what everyone wants and really likes and improve upon it for a future release. Think Runescape when it went from Classic to Runescape 2. STO in 5 years may be a much different game.
I just hope it's a better game for it.
The game knows where you are, and knows in what direction you are traveling. So, with that, it just takes basic math (Velocity divided by distance) to determine how much time it would take to travel there. So, just leave a placeholder "image" that other players see, if the ship traveling like this. In this mode, it would be unaffected by other ships (no bumping).
I'm not a code expert, but that seems possible to me.
It really is simple math to calculate our destination.
You are so far off base I don't even know where to start. . . .
First, game engines are engines. You can put them into different chassis/bodies, and get different looking games out of them. Yes, some engines specialize in some things over other things, but those splits are no where NEAR content genre. If anything, the split is between game types, FPS, MMO, RTS, etc. And our engine, is actually quite good at making MMOs.
"They're using a superhero engine, and putting spce ships in it."
I've heard this a few times over here, and I really can't comprehend this kind of ignorance. Do you guys know about the Unreal Engine? It's made by Epic. Epic made Unreal (the game) in 1998, and built the engine for that game. They have been using that engine for the last 14 years. They have updated, and adapted it along the way, including releasing 2 new 'versions' which probably had a bunch of changes, and today it is probably the most widely used engine in the industry.
Here is a small sampling of games that all use the same engine (or some iteration of it):
Deus Ex
Rune
TNN Outdoors Pro Hunter
Bioshock
Lineage II
Spiderman 2
SWAT 4
Unreal Tournament(s) (obviously)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (and City)
DC Universe Online
Gears of War
Mass Effect
TNA iMPACT!
Now, admittedly, they're a heavy hitter in the engine world, and while games that use their engine tend to lean toward shooters, their is a startling bredth of genres in there. And I don't think I've ever heard someone playing DCUO or Mass Effect complain about how the engine was meant for a FPS Alien shooter.
Our engine is much, much, much younger (we're at maybe 4 years old now), and we don't have the cash on hand that they do, so it may not be as advanced in some respects, but that doesn't mean that our engine sucks at all. In fact, regularly, new hires are surprised at the versatility and accessibility of our engine.
As for the need of a major rewrite. . . we did that. When I'm saying our engine is 4 years old, that's the rewritten one. The engine we use now is based off of the original COH engine. It was rewritten when we started marvel, not a small process by any stretch of the imagination. Marvel, and CO probably suffered some because of it. But what came out of that process was a good deal better, and a lot more expandable than the COH engine was.
That said, we are NOT going to be doing that again anytime soon. Rewriting the engine is a pain in the butt, and breaks a ton of stuff in the process. That doesn't mean that we are not improving our engine. The Engine has progressed probably just as far since it was "rewritten" as it did during that initial process. New things are always being added to the engine, to accommodate new requests from artists and designers.
I stand by our engine as one of the better ones in the industry (particularly for Online Multiplayer), and I didn't even write the damn thing.
...All that said, I do know what I want from a Star Trek game. And I want to be able to influence my ship in some way from my ship interior. I don't need bridge combat. I like the way space combat is handled now. But traveling from system to system, I'd love to be able to have that automatically handled from my ship interior, with activities to do inside my ship as it warps to my desired location. Whether that's crafting, managing my crew, chilling in the lounge, running drills, whatever... I mean, I already "pretend" that I do stuff on the bridge by going to my ready room to handle crew management duties and reports. But to do that, my ship can't be doing anything else. I imagine STO one day being kind of like the show, where the captain can be productive while the ship is en route to wherever.
Buuuuuuut that's just me...
Thanks for taking the time to writer this - it was informative and helpful.
PS - I also agree with the above poster - if possible - of wanting to be able to influence my ship from the interior - i.e. the Bridge (i.e. similar to Bridge Commander)... or - what should be much easier I'd think - healing in Sickbay and Crafting in the lab at least.
Im glad you posted that defense, I find people are too critical of the engine and they usually lack appropriate knowledge to back up that criticism.
Now back on topic, why isnt it possible with your engine to have a fake view screen warp image, and a background calculation to get to a destination. Example, I chose to go from SOL to DS9 while on my bridge, the game calculates the time it would take at my ships max warp, and when that timer ends it gives me a message saying I have arrived. I then exit the bridge in sector space.