LR Unleashed Design Document (with community input enabled!)

by **Conundrumer** Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:00 am

Link to design document

A very important step in creating software is writing up a design document, which describes the scope of the project, specifies everything, and explains concepts involved. Mhenr and I are sharing it with you guys so you can learn how Unleashed works and know what features to anticipate (and have a say in it too!). With Google Docs magic, we can continuously add to and revise the document. We're still doing that actually, so there may be incomplete sections.

Google Docs also allows you, as readers, to make comments. To make a new comment, you highlight a piece of text (be judicious about it!), right click, and select "Comment". This allows you to help us make design decisions, since we actively have to consider what's best for the community, and it makes sense to just ask the community itself. However, for the sake of keeping the comment section tidy, I suggest moving in-depth/meta discussion to this thread, or a new thread if necessary.

by mhenr18 Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:16 am

We did this because we realised that in order to add the things that we've always wanted to add, a totally new engine was needed (don't worry we're keeping the old one as well, read the doc). Because we were going to the trouble of doing this we realised that it was going to be far cleaner to just design this properly with a document and spec it out before we embarked on it all.

Also, it's because "Unleashed" has been different things over time and I just want to get it absolutely settled about what the featureset is so that we can work to a fixed target.

by **gaoyubao** Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:51 am

the words are too big

by **Conundrumer** Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:05 pm

gaoyubao wrote:the words are too big

LR Unleashed Design Document (with community input enabled!) Deal_with_it_dog_gif

by Fauxfyre Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:35 pm

I don't know what to think of this stuff because I don't have any idea of how this stuff plays. Dynamic lines especially are iffy because they are so alien, along with double-sided lines.

Are you planning on removing the black side from the lines and just having the single color on them, or am I mistaken?

by **Conundrumer** Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:02 pm

Shotoku wrote:I don't know what to think of this stuff because I don't have any idea of how this stuff plays. Dynamic lines especially are iffy because they are so alien, along with double-sided lines.

We mentioned how legacy mode will be separate from modern mode in the "Legacy support" section. You've also already seen a demonstration of double-sided lines with my python version. With dynamic lines, Bosh can be solid so that lines don't penetrate him, preventing the awkward grinding Kramword did a while ago. However, one-sided lines allows for more reasonable grinding, as mentioned in the Line attributes bullet point in the "Unresolved" section.

Are you planning on removing the black side from the lines and just having the single color on them, or am I mistaken?

The picture is an example. You can suggest a different way to render line types.

by Fauxfyre Thu Aug 01, 2013 4:14 pm

Okay, so here's something I was talking with a couple guys in the chatbox a few days ago...

From what I understand, you guys are planning on making LRU cost a little to gain some profit (~$5 iirc). If I misunderstood., disregard this post.

This worries me because it makes LR a lot less accessible than it would be free. I know when I started playing, I would never have payed for the game, because honestly, it doesn't look that impressive until you actually get into it (I'm not talking about the tracks, because I know even people who don't play can appreciate a good scenery track. I'm talking about how the gameplay doesn't look impressive). We'd really need to advertise this to get it off the ground, unless we make a free demo for people to test. The thought behind the demo is to provide people a chance to see if they like the game before they pay for this seemingly simple game. In the demo, let's say it is just as close to beta 2 as possible, meaning no scrubbing, dynamic lines, video exporting, etc. There can still be the two different modes, legacy and dynamic, but taking away all the cool new toys would be enough incentive to get people to buy it just for those, once they see what it is really about.

2 cents

by TheRevTastic Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:48 am

So, hows it going?

by hypothet Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:09 pm

Shotoku wrote:Okay, so here's something I was talking with a couple guys in the chatbox a few days ago...

From what I understand, you guys are planning on making LRU cost a little to gain some profit (~$5 iirc). If I misunderstood., disregard this post.

This worries me because it makes LR a lot less accessible than it would be free. I know when I started playing, I would never have payed for the game, because honestly, it doesn't look that impressive until you actually get into it (I'm not talking about the tracks, because I know even people who don't play can appreciate a good scenery track. I'm talking about how the gameplay doesn't look impressive). We'd really need to advertise this to get it off the ground, unless we make a free demo for people to test. The thought behind the demo is to provide people a chance to see if they like the game before they pay for this seemingly simple game. In the demo, let's say it is just as close to beta 2 as possible, meaning no scrubbing, dynamic lines, video exporting, etc. There can still be the two different modes, legacy and dynamic, but taking away all the cool new toys would be enough incentive to get people to buy it just for those, once they see what it is really about.

I think reasonable profit would be around the three-dollar range, if you're using it to: A, find job opportunities. B, you're one person.
Five dollars is a bit much to ask at first, but is pretty reasonable for a small team.
I'd say discount of 20% from $5.00 for launch and raise it up after the first week or two.

by mhenr18 Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:43 pm

TheRevTastic wrote:So, hows it going?

Right now I'm really focusing hard on Beta 2 compatibility. My recent postings of stuff like the sol tools (tracklist, solfix and my unreleased soljoin) and the track renderer that renders massive existing tracks at thousands of frames per second are evidence of that.

I'm porting the Beta 2 engine into C++ and working on making existing tracks work. I really, really want to make that happen. If it requires me to add in a hack that allows Unleashed to talk to a minimized flash player just to run the simulation then that's what I'll do.

by hypothet Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:25 pm

Just some questions to be added here (I don't know where I would include them on the GDD)

Advanced rendering settings (eg slow motion for track analysis if the renderer chooses to make it easily accessible in video format)?
Is interpolation toggle for editing/playback useful (turning off interpolation if you so choose), or can you edit just as easily without (for legacy features like gwells, but can also extend to the dynamic mode)? I'm asking because often I slow down my playback to 2 or 5 fps to get better wells and more uniform flings, and I don't know if that process would be interrupted with interpolation enabled.
Will there be the possibility of adding/creating mods similar to the way other popular programs and games have done so (Minecraft, Skyrim, GTA IV, etc.)? This could help with building a larger user base and drawing people in.

by **aspi33** Wed Apr 02, 2014 12:30 pm

thoughts on making a git for it?

by Darkness Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:08 pm

HG42 wrote:Just some questions to be added here (I don't know where I would include them on the GDD)

Advanced rendering settings (eg slow motion for track analysis if the renderer chooses to make it easily accessible in video format)?
Is interpolation toggle for editing/playback useful (turning off interpolation if you so choose), or can you edit just as easily without (for legacy features like gwells, but can also extend to the dynamic mode)? I'm asking because often I slow down my playback to 2 or 5 fps to get better wells and more uniform flings, and I don't know if that process would be interrupted with interpolation enabled.
Will there be the possibility of adding/creating mods similar to the way other popular programs and games have done so (Minecraft, Skyrim, GTA IV, etc.)? This could help with building a larger user base and drawing people in.

I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I think as far as mods go, the only thing that can be done is sled/bosh remodeling. With GTA/Skyrim there is enough content there to alter story aspects of the game I don't think that is the best of ideas though. Look what happened with beta 1. Was modded into several different versions and distributed all over the internet(Zada). If we want to keep the main focus on gaining a community, we should keep it pretty straightforward. Bosh as the rider. That's pretty much it. Change too much and people will end up hating it. Unbound for example. The fact that there is a legacy mode makes this far superior than what unbound ever was or tried to be.

by [senpai] kevans Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:23 pm

Mhenr isn't working on this anymore (as far as I'm aware). His current project is here https://iridethelines.forumotion.com/t8967-revision-10

by Darkness Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:26 pm

kevansevans wrote:Mhenr isn't working on this anymore (as far as I'm aware). His current project is here https://iridethelines.forumotion.com/t8967-revision-10

Was just about to link to that once I found it

.

Edit: I forgot he covered modding it as well. Guess if you know JS, you can mod this new version.

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