That's a good point and a good concern, I had the same thought. The beauty of the already existing score is that if you exploit the weight of the map by burning your afterburner intentionally to give the map more weight, then your score will be terrible compared to someone who tries to race the map more efficiently to get highest on the leaderboard. The runs with the highest scores on the leaderboard provide the context for the map, not the runs where players did weird things like delay a win by 5 minutes, or burn afterburner in fuel zone. So basically the desire to be the top in the standings nullifies exploitative attempts to increase map weight. All it takes is one honest good racer to make the exploitative runs useless, because the highest scoring run on the map provides the most context.
I'll also factor in delta-v, such that, if a map takes longer, and on average players use more delta-v, then that's clearly a map that requires more maneuvering in order to complete it, such that it should have more weight. Where with the raw score, you get a higher score when you use less delta-v, but with the weight a map has in the ranking system, it should give the map more weight if racing it takes more maneuvering (more delta-v).
Those are legit concerns and I appreciate you mentioning them, I'll definitely keep them in mind moving forward. Making the competitive weights viewable and understandable per map makes a lot of sense, I'll figure out how to best represent that so it's clearly which maps are worth more to spend extra time on. And yes, you're right there should still be like an "Easy" tab for beginners aside from everything else.
In the map making system, given the fact that you already have to successfully complete the map to publish it, I could give a "predicted weight" calculation based on time and the maneuvers you do (delta-v), given that the server has all that data. This would mean the more time you spend, and the more delta-v you use (maneuvering), the higher the weight prediction. But it would just be a prediction, given that you can't know how many players would try it, the fact that more runs would then increase the weight further.
The sorting idea I have for the maps is something like "Hot", "New", "Top" basically the maps that are newest with the most runs/weight in a short amount of time get on "Hot", and "Top" are for the maps that have the most runs/weight with the biggest impact on ranking. And "New" is for anyone looking to try out new challenges. So the maps get sorted by total runs and the weight of the map in terms of score and time.
It's a deep bug that I'm going to have to really hyper focus on in the near future. It has something to do with a race condition in the rendering layer system I think. Happens specifically like you said, during times of quick refresh, and FPS drops. The Kicked (flood) issue happens because of ping spikes occurring during key moments like win or connect, thankfully doesn't seem to stop a win from being properly logged though if it happens at the point of win.
Awesome work I just saw that and it makes so much sense, even after I've done so many runs on the Trefoil I never thought to take that path as more efficient, really cool to see. Alien emoji at the end for style! And massive run on the Apollo map, great job, awesome to see you found a way to get around the moon with minimal fuel usage.
I wanted to ask. I just had a massive idea and want to ensure it's brought up before continuing. The community map making system, I am planning to unify the system, so that there are no "official" or "community" maps, so there are just "maps", all of which impact the standings, meaning the runs on your Daytona and Orbital Transfer maps would impact the standings.
What this means is that there will be a system that makes it so the more other players play on it, the more valuable it becomes for rank, increasing the competition. This would impact current standings, but moving forward would put the maps more in the hands of everyone playing.
It really doesn't make sense moving forward for me to be creating all the maps, then porting them to be "official" maps. The ranking system will become dynamic, and as new maps are created by players (and played on by different signed-in users), the field shifts and stays competitive. This way by creating maps you take part in the creation of the weight in the standings.
These are core fundamentals of the shift:
By playing a map created by another player you basically give it value to improve your rank. You have the incentive to publish a map you created that you're really good at, so that other players want to compete because it's a fun map.
If someone creates a map that takes 1 second to win on (they waste 400 pax), and it has very little value compared to one that takes 10 seconds to win on. So all it takes is one player to invalidate the map by winning rapidly (time is the fundamental value). The time the fastest run takes has a huge impact on the weight of it on the standings.
Simply:
A rapid 1 second map has low weight because low time, and a boring 10 minute map has no value because no one wants to spend time to win on it. Neither really impact standings too much, and this helps ensure that most difficult maps you enjoy playing (like Apollo) have the most weight in the standings. (because they take time and other players don't get close to your score)
I'll be removing all the difficulty tags as well, given that it's manual and subjective. The real difficulty is decided by players looking at the "VIEW" mode, the time it takes, and the score earned. Like for instance, the Apollo map is clearly much more difficult than the Leap map, you don't need a label to tell you that.
Thoughts? If no opposition, then I'm going to be shifting this starting tomorrow for the v0.2.3. 👽
The whole "four-day workweek" thing, just say "higher pay" because what you're really asking for is that people get paid more per hour worked, such that they get paid the same, and only work four days instead of five. Why do you have to make it so complicated? PAY PEOPLE THEIR FAIR SHARE.
It is still a good first map for sure. Indeed MX's calm skill showed how getting the best score was more about keeping a chill vibe keeping momentum rather than any crazy constant maneuvering. They still had to maneuver at key moments, although not many. Still great to see, thanks for posting about it. I look forward to seeing what other maps you create! And remember, whenever someone logged in plays on your map for the first time you get 20 pax as a reward.
Thanks again Derg. Yes unfortunately Trefoil and Daytona had to be wiped because of the checkpoint sequence issue you mentioned, it changed the map state and thus made the previous scores inequitable. Confirmed that both Trio and Planet & Moon win circles don't activate, both share a win circle around an n-body so I'll be fixing that as soon as possible.
No, if you spend 5 minutes looking shit up instead of believing bullshit, you'd find out that OnlyFans has banned AI generated content entirely and requires strict identity validation.
It required adjusting at several points, not terrible, couldn't just point in a direction and let it fly. It is definitely a good first map although a bit slow.
Thanks I bet you'll come up with some pretty interesting stuff given your skill, I look forward to it. If you have any issues let me know, it's still definitely got some stuff that needs work.
Awesome yea I really think this is the direction to go in, which is why I had to be really adamant about no time controls. I think having it extremely smooth, a bit on the slower side, but highly technical simple tracks like this and Apollo are the goal.
That's what makes them fun. I noticed critical bug on scoring, being fixed now so it properly uses delta v, not fuel. Lowest time and lowest delta v should always win.
I can actually navigate using the gravity and velocity arrows without the trajectory line, it's a pretty weird experience. You have the ability to toggle them off, and key bind. It's 4 and 5, and it should save your choice so you don't have to keep doing it.
Yea the Rocinante is a cool attempt to design a hard physics combat ship, a part of the inspiration for the game was the slingshotter Belters not the MCR. Manéo is remembered.
Thank you, that's good to know about the initial scaling, I'll set it to 100% instead of 50%, also knowing you have to exit to adjust is good to know, I'll make a proper dedicated exit button on the settings page. As stated previously this is what I'll do regarding ship rotation and size:
The ship size I will be scaling up by about 20% on screen, along with adding a white arrow that points in the direction it’s facing, similar to the yellow force arrows which can be toggled on and off, and I’ll add a feature to separate the toggle so you can turn off force arrows while keeping the direction arrow.
I won't be making ships a certain shape to make them easier to know which way they're pointed. Because space has no air, no need for aerodynamics.
There's an entire replay system where you can see all other player's runs, easily by clicking the leaderboard runs, or going to a user's profile history. If you're playing the easy map and it's too easy, and you're sitting waiting for 2-3 minutes, check out the fastest run which are around 25 seconds on both Prime and Reach. I'm glad you found the more difficult maps more enjoyable. The easy maps are genuinely meant to be for people who have no concept of orbital mechanics at all. Where as a map like Apollo is for someone skilled in capturing a moon's orbit manually. So if you want a challenge then do the Apollo map, you'll be burning and rotating in all directions.
That's a good point and a good concern, I had the same thought. The beauty of the already existing score is that if you exploit the weight of the map by burning your afterburner intentionally to give the map more weight, then your score will be terrible compared to someone who tries to race the map more efficiently to get highest on the leaderboard. The runs with the highest scores on the leaderboard provide the context for the map, not the runs where players did weird things like delay a win by 5 minutes, or burn afterburner in fuel zone. So basically the desire to be the top in the standings nullifies exploitative attempts to increase map weight. All it takes is one honest good racer to make the exploitative runs useless, because the highest scoring run on the map provides the most context.
I'll also factor in delta-v, such that, if a map takes longer, and on average players use more delta-v, then that's clearly a map that requires more maneuvering in order to complete it, such that it should have more weight. Where with the raw score, you get a higher score when you use less delta-v, but with the weight a map has in the ranking system, it should give the map more weight if racing it takes more maneuvering (more delta-v).
Those are legit concerns and I appreciate you mentioning them, I'll definitely keep them in mind moving forward. Making the competitive weights viewable and understandable per map makes a lot of sense, I'll figure out how to best represent that so it's clearly which maps are worth more to spend extra time on. And yes, you're right there should still be like an "Easy" tab for beginners aside from everything else.
In the map making system, given the fact that you already have to successfully complete the map to publish it, I could give a "predicted weight" calculation based on time and the maneuvers you do (delta-v), given that the server has all that data. This would mean the more time you spend, and the more delta-v you use (maneuvering), the higher the weight prediction. But it would just be a prediction, given that you can't know how many players would try it, the fact that more runs would then increase the weight further.
The sorting idea I have for the maps is something like "Hot", "New", "Top" basically the maps that are newest with the most runs/weight in a short amount of time get on "Hot", and "Top" are for the maps that have the most runs/weight with the biggest impact on ranking. And "New" is for anyone looking to try out new challenges. So the maps get sorted by total runs and the weight of the map in terms of score and time.
It's a deep bug that I'm going to have to really hyper focus on in the near future. It has something to do with a race condition in the rendering layer system I think. Happens specifically like you said, during times of quick refresh, and FPS drops. The Kicked (flood) issue happens because of ping spikes occurring during key moments like win or connect, thankfully doesn't seem to stop a win from being properly logged though if it happens at the point of win.
Awesome work I just saw that and it makes so much sense, even after I've done so many runs on the Trefoil I never thought to take that path as more efficient, really cool to see. Alien emoji at the end for style! And massive run on the Apollo map, great job, awesome to see you found a way to get around the moon with minimal fuel usage.
I wanted to ask. I just had a massive idea and want to ensure it's brought up before continuing. The community map making system, I am planning to unify the system, so that there are no "official" or "community" maps, so there are just "maps", all of which impact the standings, meaning the runs on your Daytona and Orbital Transfer maps would impact the standings.
What this means is that there will be a system that makes it so the more other players play on it, the more valuable it becomes for rank, increasing the competition. This would impact current standings, but moving forward would put the maps more in the hands of everyone playing.
It really doesn't make sense moving forward for me to be creating all the maps, then porting them to be "official" maps. The ranking system will become dynamic, and as new maps are created by players (and played on by different signed-in users), the field shifts and stays competitive. This way by creating maps you take part in the creation of the weight in the standings.
These are core fundamentals of the shift:
By playing a map created by another player you basically give it value to improve your rank. You have the incentive to publish a map you created that you're really good at, so that other players want to compete because it's a fun map.
If someone creates a map that takes 1 second to win on (they waste 400 pax), and it has very little value compared to one that takes 10 seconds to win on. So all it takes is one player to invalidate the map by winning rapidly (time is the fundamental value). The time the fastest run takes has a huge impact on the weight of it on the standings.
Simply:
A rapid 1 second map has low weight because low time, and a boring 10 minute map has no value because no one wants to spend time to win on it. Neither really impact standings too much, and this helps ensure that most difficult maps you enjoy playing (like Apollo) have the most weight in the standings. (because they take time and other players don't get close to your score)
I'll be removing all the difficulty tags as well, given that it's manual and subjective. The real difficulty is decided by players looking at the "VIEW" mode, the time it takes, and the score earned. Like for instance, the Apollo map is clearly much more difficult than the Leap map, you don't need a label to tell you that.
Thoughts? If no opposition, then I'm going to be shifting this starting tomorrow for the v0.2.3. 👽
The whole "four-day workweek" thing, just say "higher pay" because what you're really asking for is that people get paid more per hour worked, such that they get paid the same, and only work four days instead of five. Why do you have to make it so complicated? PAY PEOPLE THEIR FAIR SHARE.
It is still a good first map for sure. Indeed MX's calm skill showed how getting the best score was more about keeping a chill vibe keeping momentum rather than any crazy constant maneuvering. They still had to maneuver at key moments, although not many. Still great to see, thanks for posting about it. I look forward to seeing what other maps you create! And remember, whenever someone logged in plays on your map for the first time you get 20 pax as a reward.
Great runs Derg, I saw you went big last night, awesome to see the replays. The competition increases, onwards and upwards!
Thanks again Derg. Yes unfortunately Trefoil and Daytona had to be wiped because of the checkpoint sequence issue you mentioned, it changed the map state and thus made the previous scores inequitable. Confirmed that both Trio and Planet & Moon win circles don't activate, both share a win circle around an n-body so I'll be fixing that as soon as possible.
No, if you spend 5 minutes looking shit up instead of believing bullshit, you'd find out that OnlyFans has banned AI generated content entirely and requires strict identity validation.
It required adjusting at several points, not terrible, couldn't just point in a direction and let it fly. It is definitely a good first map although a bit slow.
😇 I figured it out.
🥴 I burned so much fuel thinking I was going faster. Good stuff, this is the first ever map not created by me!
Thanks I bet you'll come up with some pretty interesting stuff given your skill, I look forward to it. If you have any issues let me know, it's still definitely got some stuff that needs work.
Awesome yea I really think this is the direction to go in, which is why I had to be really adamant about no time controls. I think having it extremely smooth, a bit on the slower side, but highly technical simple tracks like this and Apollo are the goal.
Fixed. I also beat your run properly. 😇
That's what makes them fun. I noticed critical bug on scoring, being fixed now so it properly uses delta v, not fuel. Lowest time and lowest delta v should always win.
I can actually navigate using the gravity and velocity arrows without the trajectory line, it's a pretty weird experience. You have the ability to toggle them off, and key bind. It's 4 and 5, and it should save your choice so you don't have to keep doing it.
Yea the Rocinante is a cool attempt to design a hard physics combat ship, a part of the inspiration for the game was the slingshotter Belters not the MCR. Manéo is remembered.
Check out the Y Que. https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Y_Que
I'll be working on a very short rapid tutorial explaining as much as I can and put a tutorial button on the main home screen.
Thank you, that's good to know about the initial scaling, I'll set it to 100% instead of 50%, also knowing you have to exit to adjust is good to know, I'll make a proper dedicated exit button on the settings page. As stated previously this is what I'll do regarding ship rotation and size:
I won't be making ships a certain shape to make them easier to know which way they're pointed. Because space has no air, no need for aerodynamics.
There's an entire replay system where you can see all other player's runs, easily by clicking the leaderboard runs, or going to a user's profile history. If you're playing the easy map and it's too easy, and you're sitting waiting for 2-3 minutes, check out the fastest run which are around 25 seconds on both Prime and Reach. I'm glad you found the more difficult maps more enjoyable. The easy maps are genuinely meant to be for people who have no concept of orbital mechanics at all. Where as a map like Apollo is for someone skilled in capturing a moon's orbit manually. So if you want a challenge then do the Apollo map, you'll be burning and rotating in all directions.
You can also make your own maps with the map making system! https://slingshotspeeders.com/m/vnocbt8g