Distant Worlds 2 Christmas 2019 Sneak Peek!

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I'll mention one other thing as a bonus for you all. Most ship components now also have a fighter/bomber-sized version and in DW2, you not only can design your own ships and stations, but also your own fighters and bombers based on the technologies you have researched. Similar to ships, there are upgradable hulls and in some cases faction-unique hulls for fighters and bombers as well. [8D]

Drool...

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Performance is good so far. Can't talk more about all this yet, but I will when I can!

Hi Erik,

The Bacon Mod has added so many extra options and settings to Distant Worlds 1 that many felt were missing. Some examples I love are No Independents and No Random Game Breaking Super Ships placed on the map from start/events and war weariness dropping slowly over time instead of instantly, setting costs, etc... Will we see such options in DW2? Any other ideas you guys might use from this amazing mod that took DW to another level? So many great options and configurable settings!

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Tanaka,

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
The Bacon Mod has added so many extra options and settings to Distant Worlds 1 that many felt were missing. Some examples I love are No Independents and No Random Game Breaking Super Ships placed on the map from start/events and war weariness dropping slowly over time instead of instantly, setting costs, etc... Will we see such options in DW2? Any other ideas you guys might use from this amazing mod that took DW to another level? So many great options and configurable settings!

We're aware of the Bacon mod and have been impressed with the author's work and happy to have it continue for DW1. When we get to the point of adding testers, we'd love to have his participation on the test team and community feedback regarding features or tweaks that would be the most popular to add to DW2 that are not already in there. The best point to have this discussion I think is once testers have had a chance to play around with DW2.

Regards,

- Erik

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hi Tanaka,

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
The Bacon Mod has added so many extra options and settings to Distant Worlds 1 that many felt were missing. Some examples I love are No Independents and No Random Game Breaking Super Ships placed on the map from start/events and war weariness dropping slowly over time instead of instantly, setting costs, etc... Will we see such options in DW2? Any other ideas you guys might use from this amazing mod that took DW to another level? So many great options and configurable settings!

We're aware of the Bacon mod and have been impressed with the author's work and happy to have it continue for DW1. When we get to the point of adding testers, we'd love to have his participation on the test team and community feedback regarding features or tweaks that would be the most popular to add to DW2 that are not already in there. The best point to have this discussion I think is once testers have had a chance to play around with DW2.

Regards,

- Erik

Fair enough thanks for your responses Erik! [:)]

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Canute0]

I just saw the Spaceport picture and need to say, looks nice but wrong !
At DW1 spaceport's was only one allowed at a planet and i think you will keep that for DW2 too.
The unique part of a spaceport is the spacelift that connect to the planet. And this isn't reflected at the picture.
Not to speak that the central axis should point toward to planet to have a stable orbit.

IMO 3D is overrated, sure it is nice to see some model's at closeup. But honestly mosttime of your gameplay expierence you will see ships/station from the distance.
And when this 3D thing you want to have prevent the good shipdesign like we got at DW1 you maybe overthink that.
DW1 was real great with his shipdesign, that allow me to create battleships that are faster then destroyer, so i hight devote against "they also unlock particular hulls with somewhat different sizes and maximum component slot arrangements." and keep the freedom over components and hulls and the research just adjust the max. size like at DW1. Don't forget world destroyer are just shuttle's when you build ship with the size of gas giants !

The firing arc i read about is overrated too, it is space combat not naval combat.
At space the ship can fly with max. speed forward, while the front point backwards. Just switch a big weapon system to thruster.
So i think all weapons systems should stay at 360°topdown.
Except you want create a realtime battlesimulator, than the firing arc indeed would made sense, but not in a strategic game.

And i hope DW2 don't will be a Steam only release.

[Rising-Sun]

As long it is modable then I am happy with it.

[Erik Rutins]

DW2 will not be a Steam-only release. As far as the other comments, at this point you unfortunately have to rely on the theoretical and what we can tell you. Of course, in the end we can't please everyone but hopefully you will enjoy it more than you think.

[Drumline2]

Hey Erik, was just wondering if you guys are planning on a beta process and what the process will be like to apply for testing?

[Erik Rutins]

There will be a beta test and it will be announced here so that members of the community can sign up for a spot as soon as we are ready.

[R_TEAM]

Hi,
cant find an answer ...
Will DW2 multiplayer or again singleplayer only .... ?

Regards

[Roterakete]

Hello!

Great news!


I played your project from the first day of creation!

not a single worthy space strategy has come out in recent times, but you continue the work of classic games, reminding me of the first projects like "Space Commander" (like that) on sega.

[FlashXAron_slith]

ORIGINAL: R_TEAM

Hi,
cant find an answer ...
Will DW2 multiplayer or again singleplayer only .... ?

Regards

At least I hope for 1-4 players and also waiting for an answer !

[R_TEAM]

same here ....
can think it is hard to implement "right" an multiplayer part of an game that is "nice" in the full control of one player (pause the game self/on massages/on events ...)

One valid idea i can think is the "very old" game style of the C64 area game "Panzer Strike"(and his sucessors ..) from SSI
If i remember correct it was divided in phases where you give commands and the game is for all on hold - and an phase where your units try to complete the commands and the game is running - switching to the command phase was only in defined intervalls possible (to not hold the game every next day ..) and can be activated by any player - or if all player are satisfyed with the progress and no one press the key for command phase, the game run an additional "running" phase after there it can hold again, if needed ...
Maybe an option for an game, where round-based is not optimal - and realtime a problem too ....

[SirHoraceHarkness]

No way you could play this online multiplayer due to the sheer amount of ships in play on even a small map when you factor in the private sector. Transmitting the exact x/y coordinates in real time for every ship to every client would saturate the upload bandwidth of a typical home connection. Not even sure a higher end lan could do it though it would probably be possible. Supreme commander has thousands of units at a time in its online peer to peer matches and it can lag badly even with good rigs and connects and that's just a fraction of what a typical empire would have in the private sector alone. If this was a turned based game then yeah no problems but this is a real time grand strategy and the mechanics are very different.

[icon41gimp]

Hey Erik, very excited to hear about the next installment of DW!

My apologies if you already answered this - I didn't see anything on font and the UI text.

IMO one of the things Stellaris does really well is that you can play forever, deep into the night, without getting eye strain. It has a great combination of a soft easy font and good text vs. background color choices. When I look at the second screenshot you posted I think it screams that I'm going to have a massive headache an hour into playing this. It looks like you're using the same font as DWU, which has one of the worst fonts in the last 10-20 years of gaming I think. Then some of the color schemes: grey-on-yellow, blue-on-black, white-on-yellow don't look like they were designed for the actual lighting conditions that people often play games in.

Can you say whether additional passes will be made toward these elements of the UI or if they will be modifiable? I hope you think about how the game looks outside of fluorescently lit 10:00 am office conditions.

Thanks!

[R_TEAM]

So you "inofficel" say Multiplayer will not happen .....
sad - as then the game is not more in interest for me (maybe for 5€ i would buy it - not from the quality of the game - but from the fact i play nearly no singleplayer games, and i dont realy need an game i play 10hours in year ...)

On the other side i would not say it is impossible to get this running in multiplayer ... in SupremeCommander:ForgedAlliance (an game that i have massiv played with BlackOPs mod and other mods, even self modded) one player can have more than 40k units - with 4 player we get on 160k units ...
Cant imagine from the few DWU videos i have seen (self played only an version from an friend a couple of hours - as said, singleplayer games only very low interesting for me..) an empire have more than ~5000 private ships + 5000 millitary ships - so 10k for one empire - dont think an amount of around 100k units is "untrackable" in actual multiplayer games in realtime.
[on stellaris you have the problem with the non-fitting engine for this - the engine is nice for EU4 or HOI4 - with an much lower amount of individual units/pops that musst calculated ..)

But maybe you are right for DW2 and the engine it is used - this would explain the silent from the developers over this ...

[springel]

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

No way you could play this online multiplayer due to the sheer amount of ships in play on even a small map when you factor in the private sector. Transmitting the exact x/y coordinates in real time for every ship to every client would saturate the upload bandwidth of a typical home connection. Not even sure a higher end lan could do it though it would probably be possible. Supreme commander has thousands of units at a time in its online peer to peer matches and it can lag badly even with good rigs and connects and that's just a fraction of what a typical empire would have in the private sector alone. If this was a turned based game then yeah no problems but this is a real time grand strategy and the mechanics are very different.

There are ways to solve this problem.

If the game is deterministic, ie. random numbers use the same seed in all players instances, you only need to transmit user input, and games will remain in sync without transmitting loads of data. Europa Universalis does this, and it works rather good by now (after a lot of iterations to iron out bugs). And that game has a comparable number of units, and much more AI players.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

ORIGINAL: springel

There are ways to solve this problem.

If the game is deterministic, ie. random numbers use the same seed in all players instances, you only need to transmit user input, and games will remain in sync without transmitting loads of data. Europa Universalis does this, and it works rather good by now (after a lot of iterations to iron out bugs). And that game has a comparable number of units, and much more AI players.

Yes but that is a turn based game so all data is sent in a dump on turn end for the other players to see and act on. For you to be able to target and destroy private commerce you will have to have the ship locations updated in real time and that is simply too much info given how many ships are in play. I'm sure some level of predictive programming can be used to estimate a ships location or even a dedicated server where the server holds the game world and the clients are simply dumb terminals that display output and accept input. But both of those I feel are going to require a load more effort and especially balance than the tiny dev team we have here is willing to take on or better yet fund. Be happy we get a new distant worlds at all.

[R_TEAM]

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

Yes but that is a turn based game ...

No - both realtime (EU4 & HOI4) with variable Time speed and Pause option all time .... the same as DW 1
It is very simple (as springel have already wrote)
If 2 PCs have exact the same data start, and all numbers to calculate (variables and Random numbers) on both systems the same, then the result should be 100% the same on all PCs .... in theorie ...
In reality rounding errors, espacialy in floating point calculation get sometimes a slight different result - for this the host correct this as his numbers final ... so only little correction checksums and the user input musst send over network ...

The interesting question if, is the new engine cabable of this ... (as you have implied, this is not an AAA gaming studio ..)
But i would like to hear still the answer of multiplayer Yes or No .... even if it No, then i musst not more care over this game, where would be sad, as it is an spiritual sucessor of grande 4X Strategig games like Space Empire series.