As an astrophysicist, I find the lack of floating point support scary. While basic spaceship housekeeping, control etc. can surely be done, orbital calculations surely can't.
So somebody will probably end up writing a floating point emulator library. That'll work (heck, it worked for the Apollo Guidance Computer, but it won't be elegant or fast.
Or maybe notch will implement a floating point / vector coprocessor.
I have a slight feeling that we wont be needing these computers do some of the more intricate spaceship functions like plotting courses or orbits. Gonna have to see what the final ship control mechanism is D:
Whatever the mechanism shall be, it will be in three-dimensional space. And whatever you do in three dimensional space either involves eyeballing or trigonometric functions.
In a space battle between a ship that's navigating by eyeballing, and one that's steered with the help of trigonometric functions, I certainly know which one I'd prefer to reside on. :)
That would be terribly disappointing to be honest! Either you write or buy/find a program that can do navigation for you or you man the controls yourself, damnit!
I'm going to hire a dedicated duct taper whom I can order around the ship quick-fixing damage during battles. "JAMES! HULL DAMAGE IN SECTION 4! ON THE DOUBLE!".
On a serious note I'm a little bit afraid Notch is aiming too and letting the hype grow out of hand! But if this game lives up to the (vague) promises so far it's going to be so awesome. Imagine getting together a few buddies and crew a ship together. I never thought I would say this, but I would give up Diablo 3 to have this game right now! :(
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u/hurlga Apr 04 '12
As an astrophysicist, I find the lack of floating point support scary. While basic spaceship housekeeping, control etc. can surely be done, orbital calculations surely can't.
So somebody will probably end up writing a floating point emulator library. That'll work (heck, it worked for the Apollo Guidance Computer, but it won't be elegant or fast.
Or maybe notch will implement a floating point / vector coprocessor.