Limit Theory

Eagleguey (11)

Posted 12 years ago.

Heyo!
I don't know how many of you know about it, but recently I came upon a game called Limit Theory, it's still in developement, but the dev blog and dev videos (check youtube) are showing some phenomenal stuff.
So, how about a small introduction? The game is a space RPG/RTS/FPS hybrid. What does this mean? Well, basically you can fly a fighter (or corvette, or ...whatever you get into space) in first person mode, flying around exploring/trading/fighting, you can also play in 3rd person (especially useful for bigger ships

), but there is more, you can own any number of ships, fleets stations AND EVEN PLANETS!.
So that was the quick introduction, now here are the main features:

* Intelligent AI design - The game is built in such a way that the AI can do anything the player can, or vice-versa, whatever you preffer. What this means is that the AI will try to board ships, pirate traders, build empires, open trade lanes, protect it's assets, mine asteroids, and as far as I can see, it will be able to do even more. The AI featured is of the newest tech's, and it's a real AI, not following some predefined commands, but actually "thinking" how it will get what it wants. This includes long and short-term planning, handling of resources, buying of ships and stations and even attacking their competitors (directly or by posting job ads).
* Real economy - Everything that is built, requires wares. This goes for the AI as much as the player. Every destroyed cargo hauler puts a dent in the economy. Even more, the AI (and by extension the player) can post job offerings to handle stuff, and the AI (not just the player this time) will TAKE those jobs. So now you suddenly ain't alone in the universe anymore...should be a lot of fun Big grin

* Procedurally Generated Infinite Universe - There are no limits, the universe will expand as much as you explore, and all of it will be different cause it's procedurally generated.
* Procedurally Generated Ships and Stations - Ships and stations are built using blocks, and both are created procedurally in the universe. The player can even design his own ships/stations and use those designs.
* Hardpoints on ships/stations - Ships and stations have hard-points where weapons/shields/other modules (like repairing, minig or even PRODUCTION modules)
* Build, Own, Destroy anything - The game is not limited in any way, anything you see can be built, destroyed or owned (boarded). This also goes for Planets, which cannot be built, but can be owned/captured.
* Planetary landing - While not a seamless transitions through the atmosphere, being able to land on planets is a great addition. It will work in the way that you will "dock" with a planet, then given a choice of locations you can visit. Seamless transitions would be preffered, but heck, I don't know of more then maybe 3 games that have planetary landing at all. Oh yeah, and the planetary outposts/cities/hubs will be procedurally generated as well (and can be owned).
* Tactical Mode - The game features a great Tactical mode for managing your fleets in battle. This is done via a 3D map and it looks gorgeous.
* Ateroids, asteroid mining and asteroid bases - nuff said I think.
* Random cosmological events - not 100% sure what this will consist of, but there will be cosmological events that will shape the universe (sun flares taking out production modules on a station, a distant supernova creating a black hole somewhere, etc.)

I probably left some features out, well I'm sure I have (you'll be able to trade in information, steal, hack etc. (and by extension, so will the AI), but it should be enough to give an overview and water your mouths a little Big grin

If you wanna know more, check out www.ltheory.com and don't forget to check over their forums forums.ltheory.com and youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LimitTheory

My verdict:
This will be the shizzle! Just from the dev videos you can see that the game is in a much better state then most AAA games. The depth of the universe is unbelievable (did I mention that the game will "simulate" a couple hundred years of existance to create a backstory in order to explain why things are the way they are ?) and the gameplay possibilites are genious. The mechanics of having a trully alive universe (e.g. the AI being able to do all the player can) combined with being able to own (or build/capture) anything you want and a real economy is a BIG step forward in gaming, and will surelly bring hundreds of hours of fun. Furthermore, the developer is a nutcase (in the good sense) and will definetely bring out one of the best titles ... probably of all time. you don't believe me? well head over to the forum, click on "development" and read through the "development posts", you'll understand afterwards

Well that's it, thanks for reading, and hope you guys like what I dragged in Smile

Burn rubber, not your soul!

Roguey

Rebelguey (24)

Posted 12 years ago.

thanks for bringing this game to my attention. It indeed looks rather interesting, and looks like something I might start following. Although at first (looking at their website) the graphics didnt appear all that amazing (maybe we been spoiled abit?).. or are the pictures there just early versions? I guess its another kickstarter project?

NetHawk

Eagleguey (11)

Posted 12 years ago.

Glad you like it Big grin

It definetelly looks like the space sim I've been waiting for Smile

It was a kickstarter project, got funded and all already Big grin

Now the images might be old, as Josh (the dev) is constantly updating everything (and he's doing a LOAD of work on graphics). Check out his development videos (youtube link in my previous post), there you can see what the game currently looks like (for saving you some time, the newest video as of the time of this writing is dev update 10 -> it has some serious graphics goodies...check it out...I promise it will make you droll).

And as a fun update, read this posts: http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1783
or just this sample:

"On the AI front...I decided to get into the belly of the beast today with...parallel reasoning! Parallel reasoning is the ability for the AI to reason about doing multiple things at once. Multi-tasking. For example, waiting on a sell order to come through while simultaneously going about business as usual. Or using a production / research unit while en route to some location."

I'll probably make some update posts to give some heads-up on it's development (gonna post the updates here). But in t he meanwhile I'd very much like to hear what you think about it.

Burn rubber, not your soul!

Roguey

Rebelguey (24)

Posted 12 years ago.

is the project being done by just one guy or something? aka Josh? if so, he done some amazing work for one guy.

I did watch a dev video earlier, where Josh was talking about the tree-like editor in-game instead of looking at 'boring' text files.

I notice that Josh was kind-of hinting at planet landing? maybe I was reading too much into it?

ps. nice to see you around NetHawk! Beer

NetHawk

Eagleguey (11)

Posted 12 years ago.

Hell, it's nice being back here, gotta join you on steam (what's the group called?...or a link maybe...I suck at finding stuff in GUI's).

Planet landing is actually a confirmed feature Smile

It's not gonna be a seamless transition to the planets surface, but rather a "dock with planet" mechanic that will give you a list of possible landing places on the planet, you choose, then a cutscene comes in, and you are released in the atmosphere (but can't fly around the planet fully, just in the "box" you selected to land in). Even more, you'll be able to own and colonize planets...how cool is that? Big grin

planet interaction video:

And yep, the guy is a genious, I think another is helping him, but as far as I understood the other guy is making the art-assets while Josh is coding.

Burn rubber, not your soul!

SpiritOfDeath

SpiritOfDeath avatar

Skillguey (7)

Posted 12 years ago.

Looks good! Probably will pick it up as it comes out, also do you know to what extent we can exploit planets? Will it be that you can plant forests, harvest them, go mining, or will it just be a place to put your ships?

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! *falls over*

don't look at me D:

Roguey

Rebelguey (24)

Posted 12 years ago.

Hell, it's nice being back here, gotta join you on steam (what's the group called?...or a link maybe...I suck at finding stuff in GUI's).
- NetHawk

Here's a link to the group,

HPlanet landing is actually a confirmed feature, It's not gonna be a seamless transition to the planets surface, but rather a "dock with planet" mechanic that will give you a list of possible landing places on the planet, you choose, then a cutscene comes in,
- NetHawk

Well that doesnt soung too bad.. Its still incredible one guy to do all that. As Spirit said, do you know any more about the actual planet landing?

NetHawk

Eagleguey (11)

Posted 12 years ago.

Thanks for the link Smile

Yeah, I'm a dev myself so I have a good idea how complex this must be, and yeah, he IS (as far as I'm concindered) a genious.
As for planet landings, the video I posted shows "roughly" how it will work (e.g. cutscene from orbit to atmosphere and then you gain control back). he also says there will be "locations" on the planet, so you won't be able to just fly around and "find" towns/cities, this will be predefined "landing" locations (mind you, everything will be procedurally generated, so it's not really predefined. Also all buildings will be procedurally generated giving every planetary landing zone more depth.).
It will be possible to own planets, but I don't know about terraforming or vegetation planting, I think this won't be implemented, although it just might. There is a lot of talk going on on the Limit Theory forums, and some of it is related to he question, but I don't think I saw anything official, just suggestions and thoughts. Those features aren't developed yet, so there is still time to head over and suggets/debate the idea, sadly that's all the info I got so far, but you can take a look for youself, maybe I missed something (http://forums.ltheory.com/index.php).

And he posted another update: dev video #11, check it out:

Not much shown in this one, but I've been reading through the forums a lot (and all the dev posts), so here's my little synopsis of this month. He's been working mostly on AI and UI. Let's start with the UI:
Since he tried the node-based interface in dev video #10, it just grew on him (and on most folks on the forums), so this was the focus of UI development this month. The idea is to make the whole UI use the node-based graphs to visualize data, e.g. radial menus (well...much better then that, but this is the closest you'll find in other games), universe map, main menu etc.
It looks very beautiful and I urge you to check out the dev video to really see what I'm talking about.

The rest (and majority) of development went into AI. Now the AI in most games is following scripts and predefined paths. Well, limit theory will have a somewhat smarter AI. Heh, actually he's going ALL OUT on this one. The AI will have personalities (unknown exatly which kinds, but I expect something along the lines of aggresivnes, easy-of-aggrevation, business feeling, fleet management etc.), and it will have it's OWN PLANS. Yes that's right, every AI has his/her own plans, some want to be pirates, other want to be entrepuenors, still others want to serve justice and peace. This is the so-called Long Term plan. But we all know that plans in the real world change, adapt or fail misserably, this is why the AI has mid and short-term plans too. E.g. a short term plan is: "I'll go happyily mining that unobtanium and sell it", the mid-term is: "I'll get enough money from mining that I can buy another ship to help me with mining" and the longterm would be: "I'll become the mining mogul of this universe!".
For this to work, the AI has to be really smart. We're talking actual AI here, not scripted events. It must be able to understand it's surroundings, analyze them and synthesize plans. It has to be able to "simulate" events to see how they'd affect a certain situation (pirates are killing a trader with the exact same wares as the AI...maybe there is money to be made if the station is requiring those materials.), it has to be able to synthesize what consequences HIS/HER action will have (if I kill this trader, I could sell my loot at a higher price, but I'd probably get banned from core-sectors).
Another aspect that's very important is delegative reasoning, this is the idea of AI's giving out jobs. This means the AI has to analyze the mission (what's required, how long would I need, how much would it cost me, how much can I make in the meantime (more on this later)) and evaluate if the required applicants are close by (chance-of-someone-picking up that mission), and then adjust the price (still making a profit, but want someone to actually take the mission). This is very complex behaviour and sure will bring a lot more life into the universe.
The last part (atleast for today) is parallel reasoning. This is the act of doing something while doing something else (e.g. parallel execution). How does this work? Let's say the AI is mining, and has a full cargohold, now, while flying to a station to sell the stock, the trader has a lot of time on his hands, and could do something inbetween, from asteroid scanning, to processing (mobile processing module on ship) the ore and sell the product (for a heftier price). This is not easy, as the parallel actions must be sensible to each other (no interruptions) and not to speak of the a-synchronous completition (got to the station before the ore-processing is done). So he might add tasks (scan asteroids) to complete other tasks (ore-processing, which is happening in parallel), while he manages his other ships (fleet management) and is closing in on the station where he'll sell the goods (e.g. scanning and processing are done in the direction of the station, so that when he arrives the processing finishes). This will allow the AI to really make use of his time and possibilites all the while adding depth and color to the universe.

Oh yes, and ALL OF THIS needs to take into account the current situation (screw scanning if pirates are closing in), changing plans as we go (why buy another ship when I can sell mine and buy a much larger one that works 500% better for mining/whatever-I-do? Or even sell my wares at a station that just opened a huge reward cause they are dangerously low on some wares) and even the long-term plan can change (e.g. frak being a police officer if pirates pay better

) etc.

Another thins is, no action is pre-defined, there is no "sell" command, no "mine" or "mine until" command. The AI figures this out on it's own, it's all a thought process e.g.: INIT -> STATUS (in space, sector xyz, credits=100, ship=arachno, equipment=mining-laser,...) -> POSSIBILITIES (what can I do? What does the equipment on board allow me to do? Mine, shoot things (inneffective), trade...) -> LOCATION DATA (any asteroids around? what about stations? planetary installations? Job-boards?) -> DECISION (based on what it has, where it is, the current situation and the market-price for ice, the AI can decide that mining and selling ICE is the best investment of his time). Here also the personality and mid-long term plans play a role, someone who can't sit still won't be pursued to mine if he can do something else (even if it pays a little less, it's still "his/her" domain) etc.

Ok, this was a long post, but I hope I managed to outline atleast roughly what kind of AI we'll be seeing in this universe, and honestly said, I'm hooked...can't wait to see this in action Big grin

Burn rubber, not your soul!

Roguey

Rebelguey (24)

Posted 12 years ago.

hmm.. im not sure I like the node idea for single items - mean its great for a universe map, but from a gaming point of view it seems node based data could be a bit slow (somewhat like adding extra menus). Myself when selecting a ship, id rather just have its stats listed out on a page, rather than selecting each single attribute. Radial menus also scream console ports too.

as for AI, well ive seen quotes like that before. Sometimes the AI can get too smart, as it does some really dumb things. For example, over calculating something and rather avoiding say an asteroid, it smashes into something else (ie. a station). AI is very hard to judge without actually playing the game with all the elements in-place. How does it fair when placed in a universe with millions of other objects to react too? as you seen, X's AI gets worse with the more objects in the game ie. X3 (hardly crashed into anything) -> X3TC (odd crashes) ->X3AP (crashing into things quite often).

Although I do agree that Josh is doing a really great job! Its dif. worth keeping an eye on what's he is doing!

NetHawk

Eagleguey (11)

Posted 12 years ago.

You have some very valid points there, the 3D interface might be in some aspects inadequate. This sparked quite a conversation on the forums actually, and Josh reassured that the 3D aspect will be used only for when it makes sense, in other places a 2D GUI will be used. I'm actually quite confident he'll get it done right (he even started work on the 2D GUI). As for console ports, it has been stated by Josh (a few times actually), that the game is first and foremost PC oriented. There will be no dumbing down and there probably never will be a console port. BUT that doesn't mean not to think of alternative I/O devices. He actually got an Oculus Rift and support for it will be available, also gamepads and joysticks are quite common in the PC world (atleast for gaming) so it makes sense to give these control interfaces some thought/planning. Apart from that the keyboard is and always will be the best interface Smile

(and I think Josh agrees here Smile

).

As for AI, I think we need to distinguish between the AI's behavior and the actual AI. Behavior are things like path-finding, docking procedures, dog-fighting and collision detection, while AI is the ability for the AI to think, e.g. it isn't doing statically writen cargo runs (like X3 where all ships have a set route). AI is the part that understands that it has some wares that are needed in sector Gama9 and then decides that it would be best to sell them there (max profit in time). The AI part here is mostly done, now behavior kicks in and finds the best path to the station, then going again with behavior it moves there, docks, and then the AI decides how much to sell (if it hasn't thought that out beforehand).
The AI is only the "thinking" part, where the behaviors are the "physical" part.
Another thing to note is that X3 has quite an outdated collision detection system which means ships need loads of room. Another thing to note here is that X3-Reunion had different (smaller, not so branched-out) space station designs, which were a LOT easier to navigate then the branched-out monstrosities from X3-AP (yes terran moon-sized stations, I'm looking at you!). Cobbled together with the outdated collision detection this naturally lead to loads of mistakes, BUT count in the SETA factor (if time goes faster calculations should go up in count too...which...would kill your PC...so you have to downsize the calculations) and you can see why they have such problems.
LT is different here, first and foremost there will (high-probability as it's already implemented) be a cruise drive instead of TA. This will make collision avoidance much easier by itself. Another important thing is that stations in LT won't be (well...maybe "I'll" make one) as big as Terran stations in X3-AP, so collision avoidance should be a lot better by default, but I'm pretty sure he implemented some more modern collision detection system, which together with the rest should make the ships more then able to avoid collisions (if they so desire!

).

So with this out of the way, having an intelligent AI means no scripted missions, no scripted trade runs, no scripted battles, no scripted territory etc. This means the universe is actually alive and behaves as one would expect from a living universe. It means that you'll actually have to think for your trade runs, check your competition, and it also means the AI will see you as competition (if you become one). furthermore you'll be able to come across the same AI multiple times, and you'll see his progress/demise and it even makes diplomacy more real as the AI will remember you. All in all I think having a very well designed AI in a single-player game is extremely important, as the AI is what makes the universe come alive in the end.

PS: I don't think ANY game console (currently) is able to even simulate the AI needed for LT.

Burn rubber, not your soul!

Roguey

Rebelguey (24)

Posted 12 years ago.

Sounds interesting if the AI is able to think about short and long term goals, although if its too cleaver then may make the player feel a bit dumb?... if its out-smarting you all the time. The AI will know the game better than any player for a long time.

However the idea sounds interesting - moving away from static jobs (which was only sort-of like a quick-fix). I still stand by my comment (before) that AI can only be tested when playing the game, as developers have made some pretty big claims in the past with AI.

Umbru

Fightguey (6)

Posted 12 years ago.

Wanted to bump this because he working on the "job" system and AI mining and the last few dev updates have some really good info in them about how the AI will make decisions.

You need to log-in to post here.