Hey guys, how 'bout if a couple of Ferengi businessmen opened a Starship Interior Decoration business? You could buy new chairs, consoles, carpetry etc for Gold-Pressed Latinum, which is a sad, unused currency in the game. Give us a reason to use GPL that isn't lame consumables!
Hey guys, how 'bout if a couple of Ferengi businessmen opened a Starship Interior Decoration business? You could buy new chairs, consoles, carpetry etc for Gold-Pressed Latinum, which is a sad, unused currency in the game. Give us a reason to use GPL that isn't lame consumables!
I was originally thinking about having this be part of the C-Store... But I love this so much.
Interior maps are already in a "space map", or rather, a map with a regular starfield skybox. This can be seen in the /demorecord playback tool when moving the camera out of bounds from the normal playable area. I would suggest making the skybox change to match the last space map's skybox.
Uh. . . I don't think you quite grasp the idea of existing tech.
We have skyfiles, used to display skydomes, such as star fields, blue skies, clouds, etc.
That is existing tech.
Hypothetically, if we had tech to swap the view screen image, that could be used to simultaneously swap the skyfile to something else that matches.
This is NOT existing tech.
In addition, while feasible, that's more work, complicating the whole thing a good deal, and making it less likely.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
I don't know about the rest of the fleet, but the Intrepid-class starships had holographic viewscreens. You see Voyager's at one point damaged revealing the hologrid behind it.
I don't know about the rest of the fleet, but the Intrepid-class starships had holographic viewscreens. You see Voyager's at one point damaged revealing the hologrid behind it.
With JJ-Trek they are now 'Windows' with Holographic tendency's.
Must be "Windows 2409" software, by that time.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
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With weekly 'updates/patches' on 'Thursdays' to account for the programs initial inadequacy's.
:rolleyes:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
Well regardless of what kind of philosophy you hold, those viewscreens look awful.
Yes technically it would be good for realism and there is basis for it in canon,
But ultimately it is a work that has little to no avenue for monetization and thus will like many other good idea that have no real monetization angle never get done.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
Wrong, Taco. Viewscreens are 3D images.
It just looks like 2D because of how they were added with special effects or with TV monitors.
As early as 2364, Federation vessels including Galaxy-class starships employed holographic viewscreens.
While not projecting solid holographic images, the viewscreen installed on the main bridge of such vessels as the USS Enterprise-D displayed three-dimensional images, as though observing the image with the naked eye.
And I know you guys could easily bring that feature to STO with some clever trickery. Like having the viewscreen being a glass window and you have either enlarged character models for person-to-person or smaller ship models at a certain distance from rear of the viewscreen.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
Another example of one of Cryptics Devs badly missing the mark. Here's a thought, how about the people who make Star Trek games actually watch a few episodes so they know what it's supposed to be like.
Like having the viewscreen being a glass window and you have either enlarged character models for person-to-person or smaller ship models at a certain distance from rear of the viewscreen.
I believe this was done in "State of Q", with an enlarged Q Junior floating outside the window of the Saratoga.
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
Uh. . . I don't think you quite grasp the idea of existing tech.
We have skyfiles, used to display skydomes, such as star fields, blue skies, clouds, etc.
That is existing tech.
Hypothetically, if we had tech to swap the view screen image, that could be used to simultaneously swap the skyfile to something else that matches.
This is NOT existing tech.
In addition, while feasible, that's more work, complicating the whole thing a good deal, and making it less likely.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
You could make the viewscreen clear and have it looking out to various star maps. You could have ones for Spacedock, Qo'nos, DS9, K-7, and a moving starfield for sector space, and it just loads the skybox based upon where you were last. I think that's what was meant by existing tech.
Even then, we have the ability for "screens" to cycle through various images. Screens on Spacedock, Starbases, and Bajor do this. No reason to think Veiwscreens couldn't be altered based upon location, even if it was swapping out static images.
The Holographic idea is out, bar none. Not only would it be really hard to implement, it never looked that way in the series, so even if you went to all that work, it would still look wrong. So I'm with the Taco on this one.
EDIT: That being said, dialog boxes in this game always display the character speaking. If there were some way that tech could be adapted into a "view screen" then I could see that happening.
So the Holographic viewscreen is a futuristic version of the Nintendo 3DS? Yeah, I just don't see how Cryptic could do something like that. Having an image on a screen is one thing, but having the viewscreen be a complex 3D model would be too much effort. Besides Voyager as far as most players are concerned, viewscreens were always 2D screens. Although, when I think of a holographic viewscreen, I picture it similar to the controls on Odyssey and Tholian bridge.
This is what I currently have in the proposal document:
Similar to ESD, suspend the ship interior in a space map with 3D planets, stars, nebulae or warp effects that reflects the last space or ground map the player was in - this can then be seen through the bridge viewscreen and other viewports throughout the ship.
Is this okay, or does it need revising?
Laws of thermodynamics as applied to life: 0 - You must play the game. 1 - You can't win. 2 - You can't break even. 3 - You can't quit.
Even then, we have the ability for "screens" to cycle through various images. Screens on Spacedock, Starbases, and Bajor do this. No reason to think Veiwscreens couldn't be altered based upon location, even if it was swapping out static images.
I actually did this with my Foundry mission (that's still in progress, for the past year. :P) Wish Cryptic didn't put so much grind so I can get back to working on it.
Maybe there are canonical sources for 3 dimensional holographic viewscreens, but I never saw it in any of the shows/movies I watched. (and I HAVE watched pretty much everything but Ent and TAS). My take on it is that they would likely use the same "holographic" technology if they wanted to project a 2 dimensional image onto a screen like we have seen on tv and in the movies. In addition, just cutting a hole in the wall and letting you see through to space feels very odd/awkward, and does NOT feel like Star Trek to me. I think what JJ did was actually fairly interesting, and has potential for ships designed with that in mind, but I, personally, feel that for the vast majority of star trek, a 2D screen feels more correct.
In addition, swapping sky files is not as easy/facile as swapping textures on geometry. Skyfiles are much larger concepts, with broader reaching implications. There is no instant swap with them, we have to fade between them, and that will likely look weird. We can try and make that go fast, but it often feels odd.
Either way, we DO NOT currently have the tech to detect what your last map was AND pass that into something I can use to swap geometry OR skyfiles. This is NOT existing technology.
Another example of one of Cryptics Devs badly missing the mark. Here's a thought, how about the people who make Star Trek games actually watch a few episodes so they know what it's supposed to be like.
I've seen every episode and movie and never realized that the view screen from TNG on was holographic. They just never made a really big deal about it in any of the shows and would be easy to overlook.
So a thought for you, try treating people with respect instead of being the typical internet poster with a chip on their shoulder. Just because they aren't in your monkeysphere doesn't make them any less real people.
Maybe there are canonical sources for 3 dimensional holographic viewscreens, but I never saw it in any of the shows/movies I watched. (and I HAVE watched pretty much everything but Ent and TAS). My take on it is that they would likely use the same "holographic" technology if they wanted to project a 2 dimensional image onto a screen like we have seen on tv and in the movies. In addition, just cutting a hole in the wall and letting you see through to space feels very odd/awkward, and does NOT feel like Star Trek to me. I think what JJ did was actually fairly interesting, and has potential for ships designed with that in mind, but I, personally, feel that for the vast majority of star trek, a 2D screen feels more correct.
Like I said before, you are seeing a 2D image on a 2D image. Almost no different than seeing 3D objects in a computer game, you see it as 2D when they are really 3D. So you can't really tell unless you are there. But while they never bothered with Trek, you guys could bring this ability to life. (Well you sort of already do with the Mission popups, right?)
As for JJ, it's just fresh because it was never done in Star Trek. The viewscreen supposed to have always done that, just they never bothered to do it because of it was too complex. The viewscreen supposed to be like a window that you could turn off. And the HUD information, it's as old as TOS, but was best known in Wrath of Khan with the Kobayashi Maru and the Regulus Tactical Displays.
In addition, swapping sky files is not as easy/facile as swapping textures on geometry. Skyfiles are much larger concepts, with broader reaching implications. There is no instant swap with them, we have to fade between them, and that will likely look weird. We can try and make that go fast, but it often feels odd.
Either way, we DO NOT currently have the tech to detect what your last map was AND pass that into something I can use to swap geometry OR skyfiles. This is NOT existing technology.
Never said you had to swap sky files. You can easily make pictures of the backgrounds and add simple and smaller objects and have them go according to the script. For instance having a D7 model turn on the viewscreen after you completed negotiations and then it warps out (disappearing).
Could you imagine this on a 2409 bridge like the Odyssey with seeing space outside, but on the viewscreen all this is happening? People would be impressed.
Maybe there are canonical sources for 3 dimensional holographic viewscreens, but I never saw it in any of the shows/movies I watched. (and I HAVE watched pretty much everything but Ent and TAS). My take on it is that they would likely use the same "holographic" technology if they wanted to project a 2 dimensional image onto a screen like we have seen on tv and in the movies. In addition, just cutting a hole in the wall and letting you see through to space feels very odd/awkward, and does NOT feel like Star Trek to me. I think what JJ did was actually fairly interesting, and has potential for ships designed with that in mind, but I, personally, feel that for the vast majority of star trek, a 2D screen feels more correct.
The problem is that the viewscreen behaves like a window- I mean, yes, it's a two dimensional object, but just like your computer screen can display apparent depth, so too does the classic trek viewscreen- particularly when viewing a moving starfield.
The problem that STO runs into is that it's too obviously a flat texture- it doesn't look like you're seeing space.... it looks like a giant black piece of wallpaper- and a particularly low res one at that (this is especially noticeable on the galaxy bridges, although less of an issue on smaller bridges).
Now, all that stuff about skyboxes and space features? Forget about it. It's not the solution to the issue. There's a much easier solution, and one that trek has a long history of:
Matte. Paintings.
Make or acquire (either original or classic trek) matte paintings, edit or crop to be 'from the perspective of a ship's bridge', and then stick them on the viewscreen. Make it like a slideshow or something, or just pick a couple really cool ones, and have it load one randomly whenever someone enters their bridge.
Now, a couple things, some suggestions, and one point of contention.
"We don't have the tech to know what map you came from when you entered the bridge" is uh... not exactly accurate. Because remember: The doff system knows where you are. If you go to the Eridan Belt, and enter your bridge, the doff system accessed from there *knows* that you're in the Eridan Belt.
How does it do that? If it can figure that you're there, then you should be able to tell [the system] to spit out that information. of course you'd still need to code a handler to hook into that, read the information and then do something about that, but that's easy peasy stuff.
Now a suggestion, particularly with an eye to the interior customization players, and the RPers and those guys in general: Make your view screen matte paintings like your ready room's trophies.
Get a collection of say, ten, and have the starfield be the default. You can go to the conn station on your bridge and activate a dialogue to select which 'screen' you want, then it hangs the texture on top of the default, just like how trophies work. Moreover, it can remmeber that choice- so someone who selects 'Earth Orbit' as their choice will always enter their bridge to the view of Earth Orbit, unless they change it later.
Then, and here's the part that PWE'll like: You can sell picture packs- either as 'a selection' of several for a fixed price, or do some sort of 'booster pack' where a guy pays you 500 cryptic points and gets a box that can be opened for 'three of fifteen possible screens'. Make these screen trophies tradeable and you have another EC sink, particularly for the more 'cool' or valuable viewscreens.
See? Existing tech, easy to implement, and only requiring new material in the form of art assets.
Make or acquire (either original or classic trek) matte paintings, edit or crop to be 'from the perspective of a ship's bridge', and then stick them on the viewscreen. Make it like a slideshow or something, or just pick a couple really cool ones, and have it load one randomly whenever someone enters their bridge.
If you remember when the Belfast bridge/interior came out, they're already near or at some sort of limit with the textures they can apply to surfaces. That's why the Belfast's animated LCARS are lo-rez. All the switchable textures are just different regions of the same texture map, and that has a limited size. The more animated or different screens the item can display, the lower the rez will be. I'm not sure why they don't just make multiple texture maps, but they didn't with the various LCARS displays so I don't see why they would with a viewscreen either.
Like I said before, you are seeing a 2D image on a 2D image. Almost no different than seeing 3D objects in a computer game, you see it as 2D when they are really 3D. So you can't really tell unless you are there. But while they never bothered with Trek, you guys could bring this ability to life. (Well you sort of already do with the Mission popups, right?)
I would agree, except that they often show the same shot on the viewscreen from multiple angles of the bridge, and the viewscreen's image is always the same. If the angle of the shot on the bridge changed, and the viewscreen was 3 dimensional, then the apparent angle of viewing of the image would also have changed. Could be budgets. Either way, it wasn't important enough to showcase, ever.
As for JJ, it's just fresh because it was never done in Star Trek. The viewscreen supposed to have always done that, just they never bothered to do it because of it was too complex. The viewscreen supposed to be like a window that you could turn off. And the HUD information, it's as old as TOS, but was best known in Wrath of Khan with the Kobayashi Maru and the Regulus Tactical Displays.
When the Ent D crashed, the viewscreen shattered, and you could clearly not see outside from there. Same with the above posting of the damaged Voyager viewscreen.
Never said you had to swap sky files. You can easily make pictures of the backgrounds and add simple and smaller objects and have them go according to the script. For instance having a D7 model turn on the viewscreen after you completed negotiations and then it warps out (disappearing).
Could you imagine this on a 2409 bridge like the Odyssey with seeing space outside, but on the viewscreen all this is happening? People would be impressed.
Either A) The viewscreen is a 2D image, and we have to swap both the skyfile around your ship (if you look out a window), AND the viewscreen, OR we cut a hole in the front of each bridge that just sees out into space, and we still have to swap the skyfile. There is no option where skyfiles don't get swapped.
Secondly, up until now we've been talking about just swapping this stuff to where ever your ship was last located. Now we're adding in other ships? This was already a very unlikely scenario to happen, and it's quickly becoming a 'not gonna happen.'
The problem is that the viewscreen behaves like a window- I mean, yes, it's a two dimensional object, but just like your computer screen can display apparent depth, so too does the classic trek viewscreen- particularly when viewing a moving starfield.
I'm not sure I follow? It's a Window, but it behaves like my computer screen? One of them lets me see in true, 3 dimensions. The other might fake it by tricking my eyes through stereo-imagery, but usually is just a 2D image.
The problem that STO runs into is that it's too obviously a flat texture- it doesn't look like you're seeing space.... it looks like a giant black piece of wallpaper- and a particularly low res one at that (this is especially noticeable on the galaxy bridges, although less of an issue on smaller bridges).
*I don't disagree that it may be too low res. I think the reason that it FEELS like a flat texture is because there is no movement in it. If we had a better way of doing small frame to frame animations, this could relieve some of that feeling without having to go whole hog into the 3d window territory.
Now, all that stuff about skyboxes and space features? Forget about it. It's not the solution to the issue. There's a much easier solution, and one that trek has a long history of:
Matte. Paintings.
Make or acquire (either original or classic trek) matte paintings, edit or crop to be 'from the perspective of a ship's bridge', and then stick them on the viewscreen. Make it like a slideshow or something, or just pick a couple really cool ones, and have it load one randomly whenever someone enters their bridge.
Uh. . . Wha? Your argument above* is that our current, flat, 2d texture viewscreens lack depth and interest, and your saying that they should be replaced with other, 2d texture viewscreens? Sure, there's nothing saying we couldn't make more INTERESTING 2d images, but I'm not sure what you're arguing for at this point?
"We don't have the tech to know what map you came from when you entered the bridge" is uh... not exactly accurate. Because remember: The doff system knows where you are. If you go to the Eridan Belt, and enter your bridge, the doff system accessed from there *knows* that you're in the Eridan Belt.
How does it do that? If it can figure that you're there, then you should be able to tell [the system] to spit out that information. of course you'd still need to code a handler to hook into that, read the information and then do something about that, but that's easy peasy stuff.
Yes, somewhere in code, it keeps track of the last map you were on (this is also how you can go back to where you were after you leave your bridge). However, you conveniently left off the part of my quote where I said that I have no way to hook into that with the object/texture swap system. The backend tech may exist, but there is no where for me to plug into that. You say "easy peasy," I say, convince a programmer who's already swamped with work to do it, and it's yours. (trust me, it's not easy peasy)
Now a suggestion, particularly with an eye to the interior customization players, and the RPers and those guys in general: Make your view screen matte paintings like your ready room's trophies.
Get a collection of say, ten, and have the starfield be the default. You can go to the conn station on your bridge and activate a dialogue to select which 'screen' you want, then it hangs the texture on top of the default, just like how trophies work. Moreover, it can remmeber that choice- so someone who selects 'Earth Orbit' as their choice will always enter their bridge to the view of Earth Orbit, unless they change it later.
Then, and here's the part that PWE'll like: You can sell picture packs- either as 'a selection' of several for a fixed price, or do some sort of 'booster pack' where a guy pays you 500 cryptic points and gets a box that can be opened for 'three of fifteen possible screens'. Make these screen trophies tradeable and you have another EC sink, particularly for the more 'cool' or valuable viewscreens.
I disagree. I'd rather see these (as this thread has been discussing until now) where it autoswaps to where your ship is currently. I said this before, but I don't think there is a way to have it autoswap and ALSO give players an override if all they ever want to see is ESD, but who knows. It's all hypothetical tech we don't have.
If you remember when the Belfast bridge/interior came out, they're already near or at some sort of limit with the textures they can apply to surfaces. That's why the Belfast's animated LCARS are lo-rez. All the switchable textures are just different regions of the same texture map, and that has a limited size. The more animated or different screens the item can display, the lower the rez will be. I'm not sure why they don't just make multiple texture maps, but they didn't with the various LCARS displays so I don't see why they would with a viewscreen either.
If each frame was a separate texture, you'd have to load each of those in sequence. It would take more memory, and would not play right the first time or two. As it is, once the (single) texture is loaded, it will play right forever, and saves on memory.
But yes, that also means that the more frames we add, the smaller those frames have to be.
When the Ent D crashed, the viewscreen shattered, and you could clearly not see outside from there. Same with the above posting of the damaged Voyager viewscreen.
I remember the "dome" above the bridge shattering in Star Trek: Generations. I don't recall seeing a shattered viewscreen. The Enterprise-E clearly had a holographic viewscreen (as shown when Picard orders Data, "On Screen", and the image shifts from a solid wall, to showing the battlefield).
And as for Voyager, you could CLEARLY see straight into open space. One of the Mawasi/Nihydron ships collided with Voyager, and ripped open the forward end of the bridge. What remained in place of a viewscreen, was a forcefield keeping the oxygen from being sucked out (and killing Janeway instantly). There was no "shattered" or "damaged" viewscreen on Voyager. The viewscreen quite literally WAS GONE!!
I remember the "dome" above the bridge shattering in Star Trek: Generations. I don't recall seeing a shattered viewscreen. The Enterprise-E clearly had a holographic viewscreen (as shown when Picard orders Data, "On Screen", and the image shifts from a solid wall, to showing the battlefield).
And as for Voyager, you could CLEARLY see straight into open space. One of the Mawasi/Nihydron ships collided with Voyager, and ripped open the forward end of the bridge. What remained in place of a viewscreen, was a forcefield keeping the oxygen from being sucked out (and killing Janeway instantly). There was no "shattered" or "damaged" viewscreen on Voyager. The viewscreen quite literally WAS GONE!!
The bridge of most ships is on the top of the saucer section (stupidly, but that's another discussion), and the view screen is on a wall. The other side of that wall IS open to space. However, the viewscreen itself, is NOT a window looking into space. I can put a TV on an outside wall of my house, and hook that up to a camera just on the other side of that wall. If a car crashes through it, sure I'm looking outside. But that doesn't stop the TV from being a screen, not a window.
I remember the "dome" above the bridge shattering in Star Trek: Generations. I don't recall seeing a shattered viewscreen. The Enterprise-E clearly had a holographic viewscreen (as shown when Picard orders Data, "On Screen", and the image shifts from a solid wall, to showing the battlefield).
And as for Voyager, you could CLEARLY see straight into open space. One of the Mawasi/Nihydron ships collided with Voyager, and ripped open the forward end of the bridge. What remained in place of a viewscreen, was a forcefield keeping the oxygen from being sucked out (and killing Janeway instantly). There was no "shattered" or "damaged" viewscreen on Voyager. The viewscreen quite literally WAS GONE!!
In VOY year of hell part 2 at the start of that episode when the viewscreen was broken you could see a holodeck (voyager style) grid you could only see out into space when the hull was breached
Comments
I was originally thinking about having this be part of the C-Store... But I love this so much.
Uh. . . I don't think you quite grasp the idea of existing tech.
We have skyfiles, used to display skydomes, such as star fields, blue skies, clouds, etc.
That is existing tech.
Hypothetically, if we had tech to swap the view screen image, that could be used to simultaneously swap the skyfile to something else that matches.
This is NOT existing tech.
In addition, while feasible, that's more work, complicating the whole thing a good deal, and making it less likely.
Also, I really don't ascribe to the "holographic" viewscreen concept. Viewscreens are big TVs. They are 2D images projected onto a wall. There is no parallax.
I don't know about the rest of the fleet, but the Intrepid-class starships had holographic viewscreens. You see Voyager's at one point damaged revealing the hologrid behind it.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
With JJ-Trek they are now 'Windows' with Holographic tendency's.
Must be "Windows 2409" software, by that time.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Seems about right.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
With weekly 'updates/patches' on 'Thursdays' to account for the programs initial inadequacy's.
:rolleyes:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Well regardless of what kind of philosophy you hold, those viewscreens look awful.
But ultimately it is a work that has little to no avenue for monetization and thus will like many other good idea that have no real monetization angle never get done.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
Wrong, Taco. Viewscreens are 3D images.
It just looks like 2D because of how they were added with special effects or with TV monitors.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Viewscreen
And I know you guys could easily bring that feature to STO with some clever trickery. Like having the viewscreen being a glass window and you have either enlarged character models for person-to-person or smaller ship models at a certain distance from rear of the viewscreen.
Another example of one of Cryptics Devs badly missing the mark. Here's a thought, how about the people who make Star Trek games actually watch a few episodes so they know what it's supposed to be like.
I believe this was done in "State of Q", with an enlarged Q Junior floating outside the window of the Saratoga.
You could make the viewscreen clear and have it looking out to various star maps. You could have ones for Spacedock, Qo'nos, DS9, K-7, and a moving starfield for sector space, and it just loads the skybox based upon where you were last. I think that's what was meant by existing tech.
Even then, we have the ability for "screens" to cycle through various images. Screens on Spacedock, Starbases, and Bajor do this. No reason to think Veiwscreens couldn't be altered based upon location, even if it was swapping out static images.
The Holographic idea is out, bar none. Not only would it be really hard to implement, it never looked that way in the series, so even if you went to all that work, it would still look wrong. So I'm with the Taco on this one.
EDIT: That being said, dialog boxes in this game always display the character speaking. If there were some way that tech could be adapted into a "view screen" then I could see that happening.
Is this okay, or does it need revising?
Depends on if the tech actually can remember the last space map you are in. Generic one would be easier to do.
A good example.
Just change the window to a viewscreen and presto, 3D viewscreen.
I actually did this with my Foundry mission (that's still in progress, for the past year. :P) Wish Cryptic didn't put so much grind so I can get back to working on it.
In addition, swapping sky files is not as easy/facile as swapping textures on geometry. Skyfiles are much larger concepts, with broader reaching implications. There is no instant swap with them, we have to fade between them, and that will likely look weird. We can try and make that go fast, but it often feels odd.
Either way, we DO NOT currently have the tech to detect what your last map was AND pass that into something I can use to swap geometry OR skyfiles. This is NOT existing technology.
I've seen every episode and movie and never realized that the view screen from TNG on was holographic. They just never made a really big deal about it in any of the shows and would be easy to overlook.
So a thought for you, try treating people with respect instead of being the typical internet poster with a chip on their shoulder. Just because they aren't in your monkeysphere doesn't make them any less real people.
Like I said before, you are seeing a 2D image on a 2D image. Almost no different than seeing 3D objects in a computer game, you see it as 2D when they are really 3D. So you can't really tell unless you are there. But while they never bothered with Trek, you guys could bring this ability to life. (Well you sort of already do with the Mission popups, right?)
As for JJ, it's just fresh because it was never done in Star Trek. The viewscreen supposed to have always done that, just they never bothered to do it because of it was too complex. The viewscreen supposed to be like a window that you could turn off. And the HUD information, it's as old as TOS, but was best known in Wrath of Khan with the Kobayashi Maru and the Regulus Tactical Displays.
Never said you had to swap sky files. You can easily make pictures of the backgrounds and add simple and smaller objects and have them go according to the script. For instance having a D7 model turn on the viewscreen after you completed negotiations and then it warps out (disappearing).
Could you imagine this on a 2409 bridge like the Odyssey with seeing space outside, but on the viewscreen all this is happening? People would be impressed.
The problem is that the viewscreen behaves like a window- I mean, yes, it's a two dimensional object, but just like your computer screen can display apparent depth, so too does the classic trek viewscreen- particularly when viewing a moving starfield.
The problem that STO runs into is that it's too obviously a flat texture- it doesn't look like you're seeing space.... it looks like a giant black piece of wallpaper- and a particularly low res one at that (this is especially noticeable on the galaxy bridges, although less of an issue on smaller bridges).
Now, all that stuff about skyboxes and space features? Forget about it. It's not the solution to the issue. There's a much easier solution, and one that trek has a long history of:
Matte. Paintings.
Make or acquire (either original or classic trek) matte paintings, edit or crop to be 'from the perspective of a ship's bridge', and then stick them on the viewscreen. Make it like a slideshow or something, or just pick a couple really cool ones, and have it load one randomly whenever someone enters their bridge.
Now, a couple things, some suggestions, and one point of contention.
"We don't have the tech to know what map you came from when you entered the bridge" is uh... not exactly accurate. Because remember: The doff system knows where you are. If you go to the Eridan Belt, and enter your bridge, the doff system accessed from there *knows* that you're in the Eridan Belt.
How does it do that? If it can figure that you're there, then you should be able to tell [the system] to spit out that information. of course you'd still need to code a handler to hook into that, read the information and then do something about that, but that's easy peasy stuff.
Now a suggestion, particularly with an eye to the interior customization players, and the RPers and those guys in general: Make your view screen matte paintings like your ready room's trophies.
Get a collection of say, ten, and have the starfield be the default. You can go to the conn station on your bridge and activate a dialogue to select which 'screen' you want, then it hangs the texture on top of the default, just like how trophies work. Moreover, it can remmeber that choice- so someone who selects 'Earth Orbit' as their choice will always enter their bridge to the view of Earth Orbit, unless they change it later.
Then, and here's the part that PWE'll like: You can sell picture packs- either as 'a selection' of several for a fixed price, or do some sort of 'booster pack' where a guy pays you 500 cryptic points and gets a box that can be opened for 'three of fifteen possible screens'. Make these screen trophies tradeable and you have another EC sink, particularly for the more 'cool' or valuable viewscreens.
See? Existing tech, easy to implement, and only requiring new material in the form of art assets.
Problem. Solved.
If you remember when the Belfast bridge/interior came out, they're already near or at some sort of limit with the textures they can apply to surfaces. That's why the Belfast's animated LCARS are lo-rez. All the switchable textures are just different regions of the same texture map, and that has a limited size. The more animated or different screens the item can display, the lower the rez will be. I'm not sure why they don't just make multiple texture maps, but they didn't with the various LCARS displays so I don't see why they would with a viewscreen either.
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I would agree, except that they often show the same shot on the viewscreen from multiple angles of the bridge, and the viewscreen's image is always the same. If the angle of the shot on the bridge changed, and the viewscreen was 3 dimensional, then the apparent angle of viewing of the image would also have changed. Could be budgets. Either way, it wasn't important enough to showcase, ever.
When the Ent D crashed, the viewscreen shattered, and you could clearly not see outside from there. Same with the above posting of the damaged Voyager viewscreen.
Either A) The viewscreen is a 2D image, and we have to swap both the skyfile around your ship (if you look out a window), AND the viewscreen, OR
Secondly, up until now we've been talking about just swapping this stuff to where ever your ship was last located. Now we're adding in other ships? This was already a very unlikely scenario to happen, and it's quickly becoming a 'not gonna happen.'
I'm not sure I follow? It's a Window, but it behaves like my computer screen? One of them lets me see in true, 3 dimensions. The other might fake it by tricking my eyes through stereo-imagery, but usually is just a 2D image.
*I don't disagree that it may be too low res. I think the reason that it FEELS like a flat texture is because there is no movement in it. If we had a better way of doing small frame to frame animations, this could relieve some of that feeling without having to go whole hog into the 3d window territory.
Uh. . . Wha? Your argument above* is that our current, flat, 2d texture viewscreens lack depth and interest, and your saying that they should be replaced with other, 2d texture viewscreens? Sure, there's nothing saying we couldn't make more INTERESTING 2d images, but I'm not sure what you're arguing for at this point?
Yes, somewhere in code, it keeps track of the last map you were on (this is also how you can go back to where you were after you leave your bridge). However, you conveniently left off the part of my quote where I said that I have no way to hook into that with the object/texture swap system. The backend tech may exist, but there is no where for me to plug into that. You say "easy peasy," I say, convince a programmer who's already swamped with work to do it, and it's yours. (trust me, it's not easy peasy)
I disagree. I'd rather see these (as this thread has been discussing until now) where it autoswaps to where your ship is currently. I said this before, but I don't think there is a way to have it autoswap and ALSO give players an override if all they ever want to see is ESD, but who knows. It's all hypothetical tech we don't have.
Ya. . . no.
If each frame was a separate texture, you'd have to load each of those in sequence. It would take more memory, and would not play right the first time or two. As it is, once the (single) texture is loaded, it will play right forever, and saves on memory.
But yes, that also means that the more frames we add, the smaller those frames have to be.
But Cryptic's policy is if they have the ability in the future, there's always a possibility it'll show up
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I remember the "dome" above the bridge shattering in Star Trek: Generations. I don't recall seeing a shattered viewscreen. The Enterprise-E clearly had a holographic viewscreen (as shown when Picard orders Data, "On Screen", and the image shifts from a solid wall, to showing the battlefield).
And as for Voyager, you could CLEARLY see straight into open space. One of the Mawasi/Nihydron ships collided with Voyager, and ripped open the forward end of the bridge. What remained in place of a viewscreen, was a forcefield keeping the oxygen from being sucked out (and killing Janeway instantly). There was no "shattered" or "damaged" viewscreen on Voyager. The viewscreen quite literally WAS GONE!!
There's also a possibility that you'll win the lottery. Doesn't mean it will actually happen though.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
This is the link I was referring to: http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x09/yearofhellPT2_012.jpg
(you have to copy and paste the link)
The bridge of most ships is on the top of the saucer section (stupidly, but that's another discussion), and the view screen is on a wall. The other side of that wall IS open to space. However, the viewscreen itself, is NOT a window looking into space. I can put a TV on an outside wall of my house, and hook that up to a camera just on the other side of that wall. If a car crashes through it, sure I'm looking outside. But that doesn't stop the TV from being a screen, not a window.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=FpgyrIlhoyw#t=124s
(at 2:06, everyone flies forward, and you can see the viewscreen is destroyed, but you aren't seeing outside)
In VOY year of hell part 2 at the start of that episode when the viewscreen was broken you could see a holodeck (voyager style) grid you could only see out into space when the hull was breached
edit: i was taco ninjaed