It will look just like this

[Iv121]

I would suggest going for something more classic in this thing. Making just a hole like in portal won't work - in portal the portals are placed on walls so you don't have to worry about the other side, but in space you don't have that wall. How will your portal look like from behind and more importantly from the side ?

[fr0stbyte124]

Well just think about how wormholes look in movies. They're usually either a hole or a funnel shape and just sort of fade off. If we wanted, we could even make it a 2-sided portal where you can pass through in either direction. That could be fun. And we can always add effects to the edge of the portal to make it look nicer.

Ooh! You know what would be really cool? A gravity lensing effect around the portal, like what you see in black hole simulations. I'd have to look at the math, but I think we could implement it as a post-processing effect without a whole lot of fuss.

But again, that's just portals. We could also do hyperspace (which could make for some interesting gameplay mechanics) or warp speed or pretty much any crazy sci fi mechanic you like. As long as I have some forewarning, I can probably make it work.

[Avenger_7]

We need the Infinite Improbability Drive.

[fr0stbyte124]

Crap, I didn't even think of that one. Time to research yarn simulation...

[Iv121]

Well you have quite a lot of possibilities, but you can narrow the choices a bit down. I'll try to give examples. First of your ship can disappear with a bank in the time-matter thingy (whatever it is) like we see in strcraft:

Spoiler:

And many other franchises, or you might enter gracefully the hole you want like they do in Freespace or in wing commander.

Spoiler:

They solve the problems I gave above by adding a white glow in the middle of a portal which is a long tunnel like you wanted. The shine allows to place the same thing from both sides of the portal and also give shape to it from the side. Those two are the main way franchises use to enter hyperspace. As for what you see inside there are quite a lot of possibilities. You can see the classic lines of blurred stars around , you can see bluish tunnel around you (or any color you want). Mostly people use tunnels of some sort but there are some weird exceptions like what we see in Star control 2 Ur-Quan masters which was brought up not long ago and you can see it on the yogscast channel. In my opinion the choice doesn't really matter here as long is it is executed well. The way of entry might effect gameplay mechanics (acceleration after leaving the portal and what do you do to enter it).

[fr0stbyte124]

I can't look it up right now. What is the Ur-Quan method?

[Iv121]

Here in the beginning of this video, as if you're on a trip

Spoiler:

[Keon]

Sorry, Star Control's sucks.


I say remove the transparancy of the ship while jumping, make the wormhole at the start bigger and stronger, make more particles on the side, and have the exit be more dramatic, like a bright flash of white when entering and exiting.Also, you know how if you fell into a black hole, your FOV would expand until the whole 360 degrees could be seen behind you? I think that would be cool. Also on exiting, same deal. If not that, the Starcraft version.

[҉]

Also, you know how if you fell into a black hole, your FOV would expand until the whole 360 degrees could be seen behind you? I think that would be cool.

How would you go about simulating that on a two-dimensional computer screen?

[fr0stbyte124]

You draw the 360 vew onto a cube map, and use that as reference.
But the simpler solution would be to work entirely in screen-space and only warp stuff which is already rendered. That can be done in a single pass.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

I imagine it matters more on the method you use for FTL, seeing as how conventional physics has no model for how matter traveling faster than light would work. If it's a wormhole, you would be moving at non-relativistic speeds, so you would see everything. If you were increasing the speed limit of light, you may not even experience redshift.

If solar systems are supposed to be to scale, we'll need to use FTL just to get between planets in reasonable time. The better choice is probably to reduce the scale of solar systems to cartoony scales so that players can freely move about the system, rather than hop from one point of interest to the next like EVE.

*edit*
How about this:
There are various highways that let you get around the system faster than normal, but you also have the option of going off-road at a much slower rate, which will be the norm for backwater areas. So a trip which may take a minute or two on the highway could take tens of times longer off-road, but you'll also encounter things you wouldn't otherwise.

I apologize in advance, I'm probably going to double or triple post as I reply to posts I find useful, and I can't be bothered to string them together.


I don't think we will need to go FTL for intra-system travel, not on the scale of the inner Solar System. The Earth is only 8 light minutes from the Sun, and if we assume our ships can travel at even 1/4 of the speed of light, we can still be anywhere within the scope of our inner Solar System within an hour.

However, there was once a game I played, called "Freespace" (perhaps some of you have herd of it), that had "highways" like this. They made inter-planetary travel easy, and fast. Essentially, what they put in place were a series of rings that boosted ships from one ring to the next (the rings became a target for pirates, as they could trap traffic). Something like this could easily (or not-so-easily) be done in Futurecraft, to reduce travel time to mere seconds.

However, I think that all-in-all, it's easier to use "cartoon-like" distances for planets, or just let people suck it up.

[Tunnelthunder]

So, no alien-dysentery death by three month travel time?

[Dr. Mackeroth]

So, no alien-dysentery death by three month travel time?

Nope.

I've noticed some discussion on what FTL will look like, and would like to offer my thoughts:

In Science Fiction, there are two main types of (explained) FTL-drives: those that bend space to reduce distances (a warp drive), and those that use another dimension or subspace region (hyperdrive). While it seems that a warp drive is more scientifically viable, I'd prefer a hyperdrive in Futurecraft, as it means we don't have to worry about inter-stellar space, or collisions between ships. The effects could be simple, in fact having the ship in total darkness might even be an option.

Someone asked somewhere if our "stargates" are going to be like the ones in Stargate. To avoid legal issues; no, they're not. There will be some sort of projector (possible multiple in a ring), that project the wormhole into the center. If it's viable, the center of wormhole will give a view of the other side, like in the video. The see-through effect will become distorted towards the edges, becoming a jumbled and shattered mess at the edges. I this is not possible, and in the earlier stages of Futurecraft, a swirling vortex is fine.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NF_KV7Z0JGQ[/youtube]

[cats]

Gates are an old idea for FTL, we could just use those like the highway system in Freespace.

If not, I vote "suck it up."

[fr0stbyte124]

It might be kind of funny if travel between stars was faster than traveling between two planets in the same solar system.