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Docking/Undocking Animation

First post
Author
Calathorn Virpio
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#161 - 2013-05-10 02:19:33 UTC
CCP Sisyphus wrote:
/me prepares to take notes.



that's a first

BRING BACK THE JUKEBOX

I attended the School of Hard Nocks, the only place you will ever learn anything of value, sadly most Americans never meet the requirments to attend

Arne Aratur
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#162 - 2013-05-10 02:42:30 UTC
I liked the undocking in Galaxy quest. But i suppise grinding the ship against the station interior would be tedious in the long run.

What about removing the pop up infotext during undock. The animation should be plenty.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#163 - 2013-05-10 02:48:48 UTC  |  Edited by: James Amril-Kesh
BlackMan Jack wrote:
Messoroz wrote:
CCP would have to finally resize stations to be realistic for capitals. Most capitals undock from stations with entrances 10 times smaller.

I can see them bypassing this by simply making capitals dock on the outside of the stations.

Except that the number of capitals that dock at some stations would easily dwarf the station 10 times over.

There's just no way to make stations appear realistically large enough to accommodate all the ships within them without making them so large as to disrupt the game. Sometimes suspension of disbelief is required.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)

Caljiav Ocanon
The Holy Rollers
#164 - 2013-05-10 03:53:00 UTC
I imagine that in a perfect spaceship game I would have the option to pilot my ship out of the station. Barring that, I would like to at least see it animated. Make docking/undocking more meaningful rather than a chore/formality.

Would also like to see some stations where you dock to the outside.
Veniel Roden
Myrkvun
#165 - 2013-05-10 04:59:00 UTC
I would agree with the optional bit. It may get a bit tedious having to tack on time to navigate out, regardless of it being on a manual or automatic sequence, but this would in effect add to some more realism in the game. Something to potentially test out, I'd say. To tack on a personal suggestion, having different hangars altogether? I am aware of the amount of modelling and work that might have to go into additional station interiors, but hey, we used to have two/three Gallente station interiors. That was quite refreshing until Trinity took it down to one.

And speaking of effects: call it nitpicking if I remember from the Art (and UI) presentation there were multiple scan sweep effects present until they decided on one. Why not have four different looks for the four major factions and their respective sensor groups?
Ylariana
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#166 - 2013-05-10 10:25:25 UTC
My biggest issue with this is simply that all this animation and the new Jump Gate animation are, are ways to disguise the current Loading Bar, and by sticking a pretty picture over that Loading bar they INCREASE the duration of the process, which isnt what most people want. Yes there may be some people who LIKE watching the same animation over and over instead of doing the thing they undocked/gate jumped to do, but I am not one of them.

No one complains about the Warping animation because it is there to REPRESENT travel through space, not HIDE a loading bar because a DEV hates loading bars.

Like I said, if the total time taken to undock remains the same, stick in an animation if you feel its worth your effort over fixing Drone/POS/Cloud problems that have been complained about for god knows how long.

If you are increasing the time it takes to do the job by painting a pretty picture over a loading bar, it is "relatively speaking" a complete waste of effort and more than likely only being done to distract from other issues.

Eventually people will get used to it, and just take it as the norm, since I very much doubt CCP will take heed of any comments here that prompt them to trash or disable something they have invested time and money on already.

Wont stop people complaining about it in the short term though.
Caljiav Ocanon
The Holy Rollers
#167 - 2013-05-10 16:51:43 UTC
Ylariana wrote:


Like I said, if the total time taken to undock remains the same, stick in an animation if you feel its worth your effort over fixing Drone/POS/Cloud problems that have been complained about for god knows how long.



A) Not sure about you, but my drones seem to work fine. Sure the interface is a bit dated but it works well enough I think and most (all?) drone actions can be hot keyed.

B) The player owned stations are getting revamped

C) Cloud issues aren't an issue if you have enough GPU power. I know this because if I disable SLI I have problems with them myself but with SLI enabled the problem goes away.

Anything else you would like to add? I for one think any improvements to the game are worthwhile regardless and CCP has an art department for a reason. It's their job to make sure EVE looks nice.
Zen Dijun
Xoth Inc
The Monarchy
#168 - 2013-05-10 17:26:04 UTC
CCP Sisyphus wrote:
Whatever is done - I will say that our aim when killing all these loading progress bars is simple:

No Extra Time.

The client has to unload the scene, ask for new location, get information from server, load assets, confirm to server its all there. There are hard limits on this time which will happen no matter how fast your computer is. We want to use this time for something more immersive that "loading bar popup".


I agree with the thread post that suggested that some mundane things (like cap recharge/shield recharge be done in a "parking" area outside of the station. The process of docking should take time (as it would reasonably take to enter a station, find a bay, and come to a rest). It was my understanding that CCP was going to work to get rid of docking games and has already done so to some extent with the aggression timers. Why not move some features outside of station and allow docking to take it's full time with transitions?

My two cents!

-- Zen
Christopher Caldaris
Caldaris Enterprises LLC
#169 - 2013-05-11 22:29:25 UTC
I think they should do away with all loading screens.

When you jump through a gate your ship travels through a warp field similar to your personal ship warp and you appear where the gate spits you out ready to continue playing, with the loading happening during the warp animation.

When you warp to a station the auto pilot spits you out right in front of the docking bay and when you hit the dock button the auto pilot flies your ship into the bay and to the platform.

When you undock your ship moves off the platform and out of the bay where you are immediately ready to take control of the ship.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#170 - 2013-05-11 22:44:49 UTC
Christopher Caldaris wrote:
I think they should do away with all loading screens.

When you jump through a gate your ship travels through a warp field similar to your personal ship warp and you appear where the gate spits you out ready to continue playing, with the loading happening during the warp animation.

This is already implemented for Odyssey.

Christopher Caldaris wrote:
When you warp to a station the auto pilot spits you out right in front of the docking bay and when you hit the dock button the auto pilot flies your ship into the bay and to the platform.

This would be problematic for gameplay reasons.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)

Stan'din
Pandemic Alpha
#171 - 2013-05-12 04:42:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Stan'din
And yet carriers are too small to even consider holding a few cruisers and one or two battleships inside
Honestly down the line i do think CCP is going to look at scaling with the models.


Stations need to be bigger and carriers need to be bigger

Your about as much use as a condom dispenser in the Vatican.

DarthNefarius
Minmatar Heavy Industries
#172 - 2013-05-12 05:41:09 UTC
J3ssica Alba wrote:
manual docking like back in Elite I think it was where you had to match the rotation of the station first then fire engines and dock Pirate

or .. having to follow station traffic control orders and find your docking bay in a massive station interior

yes the instant gratification crowd would like that /sarcasm


Trouble with Elite manual docking is that you died more often then not. Even the autopilot dock you'd often get damage going in unless you time dilated
An' then Chicken@little.com, he come scramblin outta the    Terminal room screaming "The system's crashing! The system's    crashing!" -Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
Red Teufel
Calamitous-Intent
#173 - 2013-05-12 16:00:24 UTC
I'd rather have my corpses added to WIS then an undocking sequence.
Aracimia Wolfe
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#174 - 2013-05-12 16:16:39 UTC
DarthNefarius wrote:
J3ssica Alba wrote:
manual docking like back in Elite I think it was where you had to match the rotation of the station first then fire engines and dock Pirate

or .. having to follow station traffic control orders and find your docking bay in a massive station interior

yes the instant gratification crowd would like that /sarcasm


Trouble with Elite manual docking is that you died more often then not. Even the autopilot dock you'd often get damage going in unless you time dilated


Bite your tongue, I could park a Panther Clipper ANYWHERE

Kill it with Fire!

Bagrat Skalski
Koinuun Kotei
#175 - 2013-05-12 18:56:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Bagrat Skalski
Look how a real ships dock in ports. Or now in space, there are certain places in EVE where you can see Badgers docked outside structures. I am surprised, that stations are not capped at "parking space". Lets just pretent stations are like TARDIS. Blink

Now I don't see how they could make that animations "seamless" with current stations. Maybe with "next gen" stations, where we could see everyone parked somewhere, at 2000 capped Jita 4-4. And the undock and dock animation would look like a microjumpdrive operated by station stuff. Shocked

More and more i think about this, it is the only one option to make undock from anywhere in big, huge station in fast and efficient way.
Solhild
Doomheim
#176 - 2013-05-12 19:41:32 UTC
I've been mulling this over for a few days and have ended up here:

- stations need to be visibly busy hubs with lots going on around them, both inside and outside
- there definitely need to be external berths for fitting services, shield repair etc.
- stations probably need to have protection similar to a POS shield in order to protect war target ships while berthed
- animations around station activities should probably take longer than they currently do to increase immersion (taxiing to berth etc.)
- time lost in interacting with stations could be clawed back from warp times which can be shortened to compensate the player



- these external berth arrays can become a new variety of DUST map where players can negotiate a weightless environment (magnetic boots?) surrounded by the ships we all know and love. Even the odd super-cap could be there standing off stations in low sec etc.



In short, make it more immersive and take a few more seconds or more to get something special happening.
Make warp faster so that players don't lose out.

Dapperdrake
Malitia Vetus
#177 - 2013-05-12 19:44:32 UTC
okst666 wrote:


oh boy....dockinggames-people will puke blood....I would love it!

#1 make it so!


+1

I don't mind if the docking / undocking animation take longer than the current loading bar.
Just don't make my ship appear in space before the end of the sequence, and please, make it a little bit random, nobody can watch the same video 5000 time without turning insane.
Bagrat Skalski
Koinuun Kotei
#178 - 2013-05-12 20:33:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Bagrat Skalski
Microjumpdockdrive! Lol

It already feels like that. Shocked
Inokuma Yawara
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#179 - 2013-06-10 16:41:17 UTC
Domanique Altares wrote:


Nah, dawg.

We need moar immersion and reality.

Undocking a frig should be like stealing you parents' car for a joyride: give it a little push to get it started out of the driveway, then hop in and haul ass quick as you like.

On the other end of the spectrum should be capitals, which take ten or eleven hours of system checks and power up cycles to get moving after being docked. You could begin this process after dinner, and by the time your coffee is finishing up in the morning, you're headed out the undock and ready to do battle. Or you could skip sleep, and watch the excellently rendered, hollywood-trailer-style video of the pathetic ant subcreatures (normal humans) that crew a ship that size go about their prelaunch duties.



LOL

Watch this space.  New exciting signature in development.

Inokuma Yawara
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#180 - 2013-06-10 17:01:57 UTC
My two cents.

Cent one:

Your ship turns toward the exit and taxis towards the entrance at an appropriate speed for its size and weight. Scene fades out, and fades back in with your ship exiting the station. The navigation computer, or some other que, lets you know you can take over the ship and do - whatever. All that must be done within the normal time it takes to undock.

Cent two:

Your ship enters the docking sequence (animation takes over). Your ship enters the station. Scene fades out, and fades back in with your ship entering the docking platform and coming to a stop. The navigation computer, or some other que, lets you know you can exit the ship and enter your station quarters.

I'll add another cent:

While in your station quarters, you ship should be scaled so that a small frigate looks small in the distance, and not at the same size as larger ships, and visa versa.

O.K. Fourth cent:

While in your station quarters, you should see tiny little people floating about making repairs to your ship with welding torches and small support craft loading and unloading cargo / ore from freight / mining ships (even if you're not loading or unloading anything).

Watch this space.  New exciting signature in development.