What sort of navigation can we expect for planets? Maps? GPS? Beacons?asked by ArmoredCitizen

I'd imagine probably all of the above, right?

Yeah, we're going to need all of the above. Like, I consider maps and GPS to be kind of the same things. GPS is just a function within a map... Right, so it's just telling where you are within these maps. Beacons, absolutely. So, you guys get an idea, we are working on all the gameplay related to this. The first step of that gameplay, it's something I showed in the procedural planet tech demo. Is the approach. I mean, if landing is going to take you thirty, thirty-five minutes. We looked up how long an actual transition for earth landings... How long atmosphere to ground really takes. It takes a long time. If we make it take that exact same amount of time. You're going to land one time, and you'll never do it again.

You're gonna be over it.

You're gonna need a half-hour of gameplay just to get to down to the planet's surface.

So that won't really work out. So one of the things we're working on is the Quantum Travel Beacons. Where you end up close to the planet enough that you can land within a reasonable amount of time. How many beacons we put on, whether that's automatic... Whether you manually do this all yourself, since it's all completely seamless, of course we want it to be manual. We also don't want it to take so long to do that you'll never want to do it.

Right, then it becomes a hinderance to your gameplay.

Exactly! So then once you get on the planet right. We need some level of...

Where are you?

A Global Map.

Isn't that the hardest thing? It's huge.

Totally, it's huge.

Even when you're working on it. You get lost sometimes. Like "Where am I right now"?

Yeah, and I put my own beacons in there sometimes.

Just so you can navigate around.

Right, so we're gonna need all these.We've talked a lot about this. Really, what it's going to come down to, is our first gameplay implementation of all of it.

Yeah.

Which is happening as we speak. Right.

This is something that we're working on internally. I don't know when you're going to see it. We're basically solving all these problems right now. As simple as, you're in zero G in your ship and you transition into gravity. Where the planet has local gravity. You've got physics and everything. So how does the ship flight change? How does it feel? Is it fun? That's really what matters. Once we get there, then you will be getting your maps, GPS, beacons. Things like this. I expect that you'll have that...

Your map changes too. You go from space, where there is no ground.

Yeah and it's all 3D. A 3D map...

...Now you do have a horizon...

ST:: ...Versus a 2D representation of where I am. Yeah exactly...