12-08-2023, 12:40 PM
(12-08-2023, 08:25 AM)Celarious Wrote: While I do fully agree with these ideas, I'm gonna be honest, I have doubts about them working because... have you seen the AI pathfinding in ships? They're extremely stupid
Also more than 1 or 2 total empires is gonna result in the game becoming even less stable than it already is, I have only colonized 3 systems but it already takes 5+ minutes to load the universe off an SSD, and my savefiles are already over 1GB in size
I just don't see this kinda "active universe" working with the game as it currently is, it's technically... not suited for it, I guess
Yeah SSD speeds are slow for load. NVME it loads super quick but that should not be a requirement to enjoy the game.
Ivan, your thoughts on the AI empire are excellent. I love every idea posted.
There might be ways to implement this without turning the game into a lag fest. There are plenty of tricks you can do. One of them being not actually rendering or acting out all of their decisions. The X series for example does this. Thousands of ships in the game being simulated but not actually rendered. Granted that example is not a prefect due to the size and scale of Hazeron vs the X series.
Anyways, perhaps decisions these empires are making could just be "done" or executed without the player actually seeing it in the background. When the player is in the same star system only then render the actions visible. Example, if one of the AI empires was going to colonies a system you were already in, have them arrive normally in the system. Depending on their behavior code, they could flee, communicate their intentions, attack, or ignore you and carry out their directive.
Another example, you arrive in one of the AI controlled systems. Traffic could be spawned in at that time. Traffic that makes sense such as cargo ships and military patrols etc...Again there would need to be some kind of system in place that is tracking the decisions that are happening so the appropriate spawning could happen. From this example, a military strength meter or level set for this system by the AI could determine what you find or spawn. Say 1 though 5 for example. 1 being a basic patrol would be present. So you spawn in a nice patrol. 5 being a fleet, orbital defenses and the works. This helps simplify background tasks.
Using the same example, it would be easy to spawn in cargo ships that travel between the cities between the planets. What ships, the models, and locations could be stored and called on easily.
The point is there are methods in game design that allow for background tasks to the simulated and only rendering when it's time with some tricks.
That is a big feat to pull off code wise but it's not impossible.
As for the pathfinding, yeah that is a problem. I've had a lot of thoughts on how to optimize this. Travel could be adjusted where flights take place in phases. A maneuvering phase and a cruse phase and an approach phase. Meaning have the AI at certain ranges to planets fly at capped speeds. Once "clear" of a planet, hit the gas and go. Once you get near your destination, slow to the capped speed. The cap could be scalable based on your ship acceleration. Slow ships would obviously have a slower cap with different approach trigger distances. (Making the approach trigger distance larger for slower ships would allow for uncapped cruse speeds which is a must).
Those are just my thoughts on the pathfinding.