Okay, so I'm going to comment based on my post in the physicsand movement thread. What will the core values of the new setup be, and how will they relate to each other?
We will need
Heat: <-- For ballistic/energy type mainly if anyone was wondering
Energy: <-- For energy type
Mass:
Speed:
Distance:
Time:
I can't remember what else.
This is mainly aimed at you Nite.
If you recall my comment. 1 mass equals 1 speed per 1 time... or something like that.
What are the core values by which the game will be measured?
For example: What is the basic distance value, and how many common pixel values is it in? What is the speed of that in seconds? And how many frames is that?
Right now again, I have not touched the physics/movement, or looked at what I will be changing it to yet. So I don't have a set value for what the game will be measured in yet, most likely something easy to understand vs what it is now. But missing Volume from what I see, otherwise those are the basic core values I will work up when I get to that point.
I'd have to see about scaling. But there are always issues with scaling with graphics and not models. For example, the dreadnought could have a different zoom main point as a scout, but then it might get TOO small, and TOO annoying for a game like this. I have not thought about it much yet. Though planets etc can be scaled a bit 'larger', I wouldn't go 'too far large', I think
But do we really need more then one measurement and heat value? If anything the game can just adjust it via figuring out the current value and adjusting it. Having 10 different ways it should be in the CODING might again be messy, and very annoying to do. However, on client side, I could see some adjustment, if you get me. For example:
The DEFAULT for modding/etc lets say is meters/s, I want centimeters/s, the client could get these values, before outputting them, and performe a calculation on them, aka *100 o get centimeters from the default value. Rather, the engine should use ONLY one specific value, but have the client be able to adjust this. That is how most games work I believe and I fully agree with changing output values on the client side rather then the actual engine coding, which will be a waste of FPS/CPU to check/convert etc to the proper values on the server side...
You can base movement distance and such I believe but not the actual scaling of ships in this game, else the games going to look.. extemely odd.
Right now? The game bases everything in pixels/s I believe as a base, then some things like distance may be times by sub_scale (1000), sub_scale2 (10000).. Others are like planets:
orbitalRadius = nlong(rad * au_to_pixel);
Rad I believe is the value YOU give..
const long pc_long_max = 2147483647;
const long au_to_pixel = pc_long_max / 200;
const long mo_to_pixel = au_to_pixel / 150000 * moon_orbit_scale; <-- for moons I suppose, reason why you need such a high moon value number compared to the low rad you select for the sun orbiting.
Overall its a mess at the moment *shrug*
