Project::OSiRiON

Add an improved options menu with video, audio, controls and game settings.

TODO
- video settings
- menu to configure game settings
- merge settings menus into a single, tabbed window

DONE
- menu to configure controls
- menu to configure player settings (name, colors, ..)
- menu to configure graphics settings
- menu to configure audio settings

Improved map menu, implement a 'galactic overview'. Provide galactic coordinates for each zone.
DONE
- add Info record type for zone info
- add Zone location
- add galactic overview to map
- add Zone::info() to network message
- add Zone::flags()
- add Zone::flags() to network message
- add Zone::location() to network message
- add Zone::color() and use it on the galactic map
- add Zone::color() to network message

TODO
- mechanism to request zone map content in multiplayer games
- do not delete client-side ShowOnMap entities in multiplayer games
- show jumpgate links on the galactic map (this requires engine infrastructure)
- mechanism to show only visited places
- map zoom

Windows is extremely slow to load compared to other platforms.

$time ./src/osirion +connect +quit

Linux: 3.3 seconds
Windows: 23.7 seconds

This may be related to the binaries being produced via mingw:

http://osdir.com/ml/gnu.mingw.msys/2006-03/msg00024.html

The best solution is to probably use a Visual C++ toolchain for windows binaries.

Right now the client keyboard input code is hardwired
to a US-QWERTY layout. It should use the native keyboard
layout of the user.

At the same time, the code should be tested for UTF8.

http://thoronir.net/osirion/flac_patch.patch

Adds flac support to osirion.

I propose a key bind(toggle) to allow the ship to be steered via the mouse in the same method as the joystick: directly steering based on relative mouse position(locking the cursor in the center of the screen).

The corrent ui code has default fonts and font size in ui::root().
They have to bo moved to the ui::Palette class and handled like
colors and related settings.

The initial default fonts should be set in the ui::Pallette class.

It might be better to merge ui-style related settings
into a single ui::Stylesheet class and read settings from a .css
file.

The current inventory menu is too confusing.

TODO
- tabs for cargo/weapon/equipment
- show weapon slots
- show mounted weapons inside their slots,
mounting/unmounting a weapon moves it back and forth
between slot and inventory

The camera handling is rather confusing. It would be best to retire the third-person "Turret" view and have a cockpit view and an external, third-person view.

Freelook should still work on both modes, but the camera angle should not be reset when leaving freelook.

TODO

• remove Turret view
• use shift+mousewheel to zoom in/out
• remember freelook angle
• remove 360-degree rotation limitation
• remove control lock (spacebar)
• do not pass ship control events when in a menu

At random, if you use 'give ship' while your ship is moving, you can be trapped in a state where you cannot turn or move in any direction. You are still given the new ship, however, and if you use 'give ship' a few more times, you can recover from the problem.

Leaving this as low-priority since 'give ship' is technically a cheat. Setting this as category 'src' because the cause is unknown.

Since the 'say' chat command is now used to chat in the current zone,
it become useless on dedicated servers because the console does
not have a current system.

There are several ways to solve this:
- Have say behave like shout
- Add an extra parameter to say to indicate the zone to chat in
- Provide a way for the console to set the current zone

Implement a system where players can send arbitrary signals to each other
(arbitrary, from the point of view of the network protocol). This would be used
to send trade and docking requests, and to replace the silly 'hail' command
with a 'request for private chat'.

In the future this could also be used for other signals, like players declaring
their hostile intent.

It might also be possible to use the signals mechanism
to exchange targetting info.

Models for cannons and turrets to be used in the trade menu.
The colors used on the model should reflect the projectile color.

Laser: red (civilian)
Blaster: yellow (military)
Ion: light blue (lindblade)
Neutron: green
Metrion: pink

TODO
- Proximity mine
- Smart mine

- Laser turret
- Improved laser turret

- Blaster cannon
- Improved blaster cannon
- Blaster turret

- Ion cannon
- Ion turret

- Neutron cannon
- Improved neutron cannon
- Neutron turret
- Improved neutron turret

- Metrion accelerator

- Singularity projector (fires missiles)

DONE
- Dumb mine
- Laser cannon
- Improved laser cannon
- Advanced laser cannon

Requires elaborate trade routes, balanced ships and ship hardware, adequate difficulty curve

TODO

- implement all starsystems on the starsystem roadmap

Pirate base models, to serve as NPC headquarters.
Several generic models are required.

Use: The unfinished jumpgates between Finnmark and Kronenbaden.

Gate Parts commodity model.

Iron commodity model.

Tsu-Khan needs a set of textures.

Osirion needs some better fonts besides the ugly monospaced font it uses right now. Perhaps the current font should just be used for the console?

I recommend this font as it's licensed under the CC and doesn't look half bad:
http://openfontlibrary.org/font/jura

House Dagon needs a set of textures.

If you box-select a number of entities, and you want to move them, you have to drag the active selected entity.
CLicking any other selected (highlighted) entity will deselect the other members in the selection.

Dragging any member of the selection should work.

Support for factions and player reputation.

Reputation influences prices, docking rights and NPC hostility.

TODO
- trade reputation
- player faction membership

DONE
- factions.ini
- faction colors
- faction reputation
- player reputation
- entity faction
- game:: player reputation savegame
- client:: reputation window window: stats refresh + reputation bars
- player reputation network transfer
- entity faction network transfer
- 'give reputation' function
- game:: deny dock on hostile stations
- game:: change reputation if player kills an NPC
- refresh reputation window if player reputation changes

Support for computer-controlled allies and opponents.

- Better AI control
- Dynamic patrols

Add player-to-player trading.
Implementation:

* Docking player ships should require owner permission
* Player shops
* Player must be able to decide what items to sell, at what prices.
*'tradeable' flag
*shop allows multiple buyers, player-to-player only one.
*Player factory ships, base factories, per-item adjustable conversion rate and ratio.
e.g. 2 units of niobum to 1 superconductor per 30 seconds

The purchase and selling of ship equipment such as weapons.

Fuel System.

Pseudo-dynamic economy support.

Ideas:
- Stations and planets are supplied by NPC convoys
- Prices fluctuate according to availability

Implement seeker mines and tracking mines.

Improved particle systems: weapon effects, engine effects, explosions, smoke...

An improved framework for particle systems unifying all of the above.

DONE
- Particle system code needs to support multiple ejectors per system,
at the moment a particle system is created for each ejector
- Add fine-grained control parameters (alpha start mid end) (radius start mid end) ..
See tremulous particles
- Streak style particles (aka 'trail sprites')
- replace [ejector] with [sprites] [flares] [trail] etc
- ejector thrust trigger
- ejector impulse trigger
- ejector explosion trigger

TODO
- Flame style particles -> needs thinking, how to do it exactly

Shaders need a way to enable different OpenGL blending modes, like Quake 3's "blendFunc". This will allow special effects like light beams and 3d exhaust effects.

DONE
- blenfunc none
- blendunc add
- blendfunc blend

TODO
- blendfuncGL_SOMETHING GL_SOMETHING
- blendfunc filter?

To ease the transition to a multitexturing rendering environment, I propose that we fully adopt Quake 3 shader scripting. Currently, we support a simpler version with a single texture stage in mind.

DONE

- Support for material with multiple layers

TODO

- OpenGL multitexture support
- Improve syntax

Exmaple of current implementation:

shader/path/name
{
qer_editorimage path/to/texture
{
map path/to/texture
entity
}
{
map path/to/glow_texture
fullbright
blendfunc blend
}
}

---------------------------------
Quake 3:

shader/path/name
{
qer_editorimage path/to/texture
other_keywords
{
map path/to/texture
}
{
map path/to/texture2
blendfunc ...
}

If multiple patch mesh points are in the same place(like on many windows), certain polygons are lit incorrectly on Intel hardware.

Shot taken from netbook with Intel 945G chipset.

If a real-time shadowing method is to be used, sharp stencil shadows would be more in-line with the game's visual style. It apparently can be done with very little code.

Symptom: When rotating the ship, cubemap reflections are not rotated in effect, and stay in the default rotation axis.

Having light flares occlude behind objects would allow more detailed flares to be used. The following is a screenshot from Mass Effect, and is the back of the Normandy:
http://www.bioware.com/_commonext/images/me/screenshots/dlc/masseffect_01_1280x760.jpg

If this were tried in Osirion with a regular light entity and a similar flare texture, it would be partially visible from behind surfaces, which is not the desired effect as the light shouldn't be making a flare if it's seen from behind a wall. This is also the reason why most of the flares in Osirion are circular, because a horizontal flare(also known as the 'film-style' flare) is too difficult to get right when it can move in all angles.

In the end, this might actually lower performance a tiny bit because each flare has to be checked if it's behind a surface, but if a flare is completely blocked, it shouldn't render at all which would make up for the loss.

Q3 has several methods of doing this, including a timed fade, real fade, and instant.

Timed fade: when a flare becomes visible, begin rendering the quad and slowly increase its size and alpha from 0 until it reaches the size indicated by the entity. The rate of size increase is based on a simple timer.
Real fade: like timed fade, begin rendering the quad once visible but instead of using a fixed timer, only increase the size and alpha depending on how much of the flare is in view. I believe this is done via the size indicated in the entity, and is based on how much of it at its full size is visible(I'm guessing an invisible quad at max size is used to test this). This method is best because it can be tweaked to allow the flare to overlap the surfaces in front of it by a small amount, making it look very realistic.
Instant: the flare is instantly visible at max size and alpha as soon as the light entity's origin is visible by the camera.

Extend the current Material system to support GLSL shader programs. Normal map, specular map and glow map support.

The engine needs a way to be able to use a LOD system for performance reasons. I propose a method for this: all brush entities(except worldspawn and misc_model) will have a 'lod' key. The existence of this key in the entity(as in, if it's actually set) tells the engine to enable LOD on the entity. The value for the LOD key would be an integer of 0 through 3. A value of 3 tells the engine to only render the brushes at 75% and above of the detail LOD distance. A value of 2 renders at 50-75%. A value of 1 renders at 25-50%. 0 renders at 0-25% distance. If the key is not set, the brushes will render at all distances(unless set to detail).

This allows two things: Patch meshes get LOD, and LOD gradually degrades with distance.

An alternative would be in patch loading. At model load, bake 4 levels of LOD for the patch meshes into the model, and apply the same rules as above. This may not be desirable because some patch meshes may be required to stay at full LOD for specific reasons.

The only downside to this is that it requires more memory to store the LOD models, but it would cut down on polygon count at render time significantly.

If the testmodel window is opened, the current scene is still drawn.

Fixing this would provide quite an optimization.

Fade-out of strobe lights should occur by default, with an optional float fade time and boolean fade spawnflag.

For an example of this, take a look at the Talon's main guns.

We need this in order to clean up the material drawing(specifically the environment mapping section). This could also possibly enable us to use the skybox cubemap for nice reflection effects.

Weapons, shields, armour...

TODO

- Shields & armor
- Mining equipment ?
- Misc equipment

DONE

- Weapons

Implement beam particles for tractoring cargo.

The tracktor beam is currently completely server-side,
this will require additional engine infrastructure or a hack.

Instead of 'beams' a general 'effect' could be created.
It is possible to create an entity holding a model with
a particle system (like projectiles) representing the 'beam-in'
effect (think star trek transporters).

On the other hand, implementing beam style would open the door
for beam weapons.

Attaching the model/weapon to its associated 'slot' on the ship, and handling the position of said slot.

Master server and multiplayer server list.

Add client support for playing background music.It should be possible to define a number of audio tracks per zone,
for the intro, and make provisions for 'battle music'. Investigate support for FLAC, OGG and MP3 audio formats.

For finer control of the ship, thrust points should be defined. Instead of the ship being pushed from its origin point, thrust entities would define where the force against the ship is coming from. This would allow for more realistic control.

If more than one entity is used, the thrust power is split between them, or defined by percentage specifically with entity keys.

port osi to raspberry pi