Star Trek Online: Learn the sekrets of 3D mapping!

[UnSub]

http://www.startrekonline.com/devlog/

Devlog 1: it's map-tastic!

It's been so long since I signed up to this, I'd forgotten I had. I seriously hope STO is further along than this.

[Miasma]

I promise there are currently thousands of angry nerds viciously emailing, blogging, IRCing and podcasting about how he got the stardate wrong.  THE DEVS DON'T CARE OR RESEARCH THE LORE THIS GAME WILL BE A TRAVESTY!!!

[Furiously]

So they are using Zbrush to design land?

[Mrbloodworth]

So they are using Zbrush to design land?

Not a bad choice.

[SnakeCharmer]

Ugh.
That is one game I know I definately will not play.

[Furiously]

So they are using Zbrush to design land?

Not a bad choice.

No it isn't. I'm just not sure what is supposed to be so innovative about their whole process...

[Mrbloodworth]

So they are using Zbrush to design land?

Not a bad choice.

No it isn't. I'm just not sure what is supposed to be so innovative about their whole process...

Nothing, i think its just a glimpse of there process.

[CharlieMopps]

ok, wait... so a planet is simple 1 SQUARE zone? Talk about suck.

Have they ever made a decent Star-Trek game?

[Oban]

Maybe there will be thousands of planets since the point of Star Trek is space exploration/combat.

Also, the completed example did not look bad at all.

[Venkman]

ok, wait... so a planet is simple 1 SQUARE zone? Talk about suck.

Have they ever made a decent Star-Trek game?

The original SWG planets were a one square zone (20km x 20km) too, unless I misunderstand.

Otherwise, I'm disappointed they didn't go a bit further with the motif of a Captain's Log. Sure, gamers don't care about tone so much as info, but like LoTRO, Star Trek is mostly going to appeal right now to fans of the various series (where they played fast and loose with Stardates anyway, so nobody cares there ;) ). Only if these fans start announcing some whizbang stuff never seen before in an MMO will others really begin to care in my opinion. Sorta like AoC for Conan fans only until some of the UI started emerging.

Until then, they should make an effort to talk like Picard would, high water mark for the IP in my opinion.

[Yegolev]

Maybe they will make a Blood Gulch level as well.

[LK]

These are planets.  Couldn't they make it so that if you reach one end of the planet you go to the other end?

[Murgos]

I promise there are currently thousands of angry nerds viciously emailing, blogging, IRCing and podcasting about how he got the stardate wrong.  THE DEVS DON'T CARE OR RESEARCH THE LORE THIS GAME WILL BE A TRAVESTY!!!

Should we be scared that you know what today's proper stardate is?

[Nebu]

I love Sam and thought this was suitable for this thread as well.

[Miasma]

I promise there are currently thousands of angry nerds viciously emailing, blogging, IRCing and podcasting about how he got the stardate wrong.  THE DEVS DON'T CARE OR RESEARCH THE LORE THIS GAME WILL BE A TRAVESTY!!!

Should we be scared that you know what today's proper stardate is?

I didn't know, I swear.  I was genuinely curious to know if the number he used actually translated to the date, if he was that hardcore, so I googled "stardate converter" and sure enough a page full of hits appeared.

Apparently we can only be represented using negative star dates for some reason, I wasn't interested enough to find out why.  Perhaps the second coming occurred and we had to reset all the damn clocks again.

[Merusk]

Apparently we can only be represented using negative star dates for some reason, I wasn't interested enough to find out why.  Perhaps the second coming occurred and we had to reset all the damn clocks again.

If i had to hazzard a guess, then like any good Empire the Federation began it's calendar on some date most relevant to it.  Perhaps the first vulcan-human meeting or  the actual founding of the Fed.

Damn big-government types! Get outta my space!

[Kitsune]

Stardates are meaningless; writers pulled the numbers out of their asses at random, at least for the original series.  They made more of an effort to not have them be completely random in the later series, but they never came up with any system to provide a correlation between real calendars and their phoney-baloney made-up stuff.  Various nerds have proposed numbering systems that would be based off of our calendar, but the shows and movies use none of those systems, so anyone claiming to have the correct stardate for a real date is full of shit.

[Venkman]

Exactly.

The concept of a Stardate is to decouple Earth movements from a galactic calendar so you don't end up with that wierd affect in the Asimovian universe where everyone knows a year is 365 days but nobody remembers why.

Someone jump over the geek line further. I dare ya!

[Yegolev]

What about how time slows greatly when you get close to the speed or light?

[Lantyssa]

Pray that a bad episode doesn't come on as you near c.

[Venkman]

What about how time slows greatly when you get close to the speed or light?

Please. That's when you kick on the inducer and burst into warp space.

That at least skips the commercials.

[tmp]

For years, the process of constructing believable landscapes (alien or otherwise) has been a grueling, painful endeavor.

Someone should bring these guys to speed about Terragen and such. Reinventing the wheel is all cool, but bit of a time waste.

[bhodi]

Actually, it's dealt with in the trek universe by a galactic version of the NTP protocol. Because even extended use of the impulse engines can skew the onboard time clocks, there are beacon satellites scattered throughout the known universe that communicate with time+date+location pings. When a ship comes out of warp, or at specific intervals, these beacons are queried and the time is synced from them. They can also be used for astronavigation triangulation, confirming one's point in space a lot faster than local star scanning.

[Venkman]

I thought those beacons were merely backup for star scanning though, how they were able to have stardates at all when flung all over the galaxy by Q/wormhole/sadistic-entity.

[bhodi]

I thought those beacons were merely backup for star scanning though, how they were able to have stardates at all when flung all over the galaxy by Q/wormhole/sadistic-entity.

I'd imagine the majority of starfleet is a quiet place.

[Yegolev]

You can reset your clock all you want but you'll still be thirty years younger than your twin.  That could, however, explain why everybody makes up their stardates.

[Xanthippe]

I want to belong to the faction that Q belongs to.

[Yoshimaru]

I want to belong to the faction that Q belongs to.

You mean the Q?  :-D

[schild]

Stardate 9er073.01

We've learned this is the worst possible license to turn into an MMORPG as it's a character driven drama. Investors dropped out. Slashing wrists at 0300.

[naum]

Will it meet with the same fate as this title?

[CharlieMopps]

You can reset your clock all you want but you'll still be thirty years younger than your twin.  That could, however, explain why everybody makes up their stardates.

But that's only if your Twin turns arround and comes back to meet you. While you are both traveling away from each other, both of you are younger than each other (as paradoxical as it sounds) so it would therefor be impossible to sync clocks without using some sort of quantum entanglement. But having a clock that was not based on a local frame of refference would be silly because it would just randomly speed up and slow down all the time with the movement of the ship.

[Endie]

Picture 8 looked cool, and the concept art (for what that counts) also looks pretty hawt.  I played SWG so square planets, if large, are conceptually acceptable to me.

[TripleDES]

For years, the process of constructing believable landscapes (alien or otherwise) has been a grueling, painful endeavor.

Someone should bring these guys to speed about Terragen and such. Reinventing the wheel is all cool, but bit of a time waste.

Terragen isn't suitable for generating terrain models for real time visualization.

[bhodi]

But that's only if your Twin turns arround and comes back to meet you. While you are both traveling away from each other, both of you are younger than each other (as paradoxical as it sounds) so it would therefor be impossible to sync clocks without using some sort of quantum entanglement. But having a clock that was not based on a local frame of refference would be silly because it would just randomly speed up and slow down all the time with the movement of the ship.

You obviously don't remember the trek universe. All communication, and therefore all syncing, is done through subspace, which is many orders of magnitude beyond lightspeed. Furthermore, the ship doesn't actually have any time dilation effects while in warp. The syncs are intended to compensate for traveling around at impulse speeds while in-system where the skew, while minor, can build up over time.

[CharlieMopps]

But that's only if your Twin turns arround and comes back to meet you. While you are both traveling away from each other, both of you are younger than each other (as paradoxical as it sounds) so it would therefor be impossible to sync clocks without using some sort of quantum entanglement. But having a clock that was not based on a local frame of refference would be silly because it would just randomly speed up and slow down all the time with the movement of the ship.

You obviously don't remember the trek universe. All communication, and therefore all syncing, is done through subspace, which is many orders of magnitude beyond lightspeed. Furthermore, the ship doesn't actually have any time dilation effects while in warp. The syncs are intended to compensate for traveling around at impulse speeds while in-system where the skew, while minor, can build up over time.

Yes, but how do they explain the causality violation then? Basically FTL travel is impossible. If you were to send a message to someone FTL it would arive before you sent it. Even if you sent it via the mythical subspace.

Now who's the super-geek?

btw, I still think this game will suck.