The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

For a little thing I'm developing, I'm curious as to what you think about the transitions into and from hyperspace.

It would seem that Star Control 2 uses some kind of 'invisible wall' that is bounced into when you reach a certain distance from the star. This allows the hyperdrive to be activated and you're taken into hyperspace.
I'm wondering what this transition would look like if it happened in real time. Because SC2 doesn't really provide this info, you get a different screen and then you're suddenly in hyperspace ;).

Things I can think of are:
- The portal to hyperspace is projected in front of the ship, or projected by a 'jumpgate'. (Babylon 5)
- The portal is formed around the ship and the ship gradually disappears in it. (Homeworld)
- The ship starts spinning rapidly, eventually turns into a bright light and disappears. (Dr. Who ;) )
- The ship is simply accellerated, in the meantime causing various visual effects like stars getting heavy motion blurred/striped and the ship is 'catapulted' into hyperspace. (Star Trek)

Also, from the way SC2 works I think we can conclude that where there's gravity exerted by a mass, hyperspace doesn't exist or can't be formed around the ship.

The same goes for exiting hyperspace. In SC2 it appears that the whole hyperspace is some kind of pool table, where star systems and ships act as pockets which the ship can 'fall' into.

For the transition to truespacee, I can imagine there being some kind of 'whirlpool effect' where the ship gets sucked into the gravity well that is excerted by the solar system.

Other ideas:
- A 'gate to truespace solar system' appears which the ship simply enters. (Babylon 5)
- A portal appears which 'forms' the ship in truespace. (Homeworld reversed)
- The ship simply slows down and hyperspace gradually disappears around the ship, after which it'll find itself in truespace. (Star trek, but reversed)
- A bright light appears, spinning rapidly then slower and slower until you can make out the structure of the ship, which appears. (Dr. Who reversed).

And then there's another issue for which I'd like your opinion:
Ships that enter or exit hyperspace, are they visible to other ships?  I guess this all depends on whether we consider hyperspace to be another dimension or simply a faster way of traveling. I imagine that it'd be really cool if you could see huge fleets 'warping in' really fast from  hyperspace and entering the solar system that the player is in.

Anyhow, hopefully you guys have some cool ideas about this :).
PS: I'm not really interested in the science behind this all, but ofcourse try to make it a bit canon. But remember, in all cases, Gameplay > Canon.

The intro for SC2 (especially the 3DO movie, but even the slideshow intro for the PC) seems to imply the B5 method, though without jumpgates.

Hyperspace, according to Commander Hayes, the Arilou, the Orz, and the Androsynth, is another dimension. Of course, the Arilou, Orz, and Androsynth are talking more about general Interdimensional Fatigue (IDF) and the ability to open portals to other (creepier) dimensions, but they all start off by saying, "It's like hyperspace, except we're opening a portal to a different dimension." So hyperspace works on the principles of IDF.

Definitely the Bab-5 method, just without a physical structure for jumpgates. The ships seem to project them ahead of themselves using onboard equipment instead. This is supported both by the SC2 intro as stated above, as well as the background info on the Androsynth leaving Earth. It's not so much a case of an "invisible wall" as the ship needing to be a certain distance from a star system in order to make the jump.

Making a comparison between Hyperspace and a pool table seems to be perfectly accurate, and is a great way to describe it. It seems that you need to be a certain distance from even relatively small sources of gravity (apparently ship-scale is enough to disrupt Hyperspace travel) in order to successfully leave Truespace (the pockets). Considering the in-game behavior of the flagship exiting Hyperspace, I'd say the whirlpool descriptor fits perfectly as well.

I would think that a fleet warping into a system from Hyperspace would manifest as a whole lot of red holes being torn in space, and the ships emerging from them in small groups.

I dunno, I kinda like the idea of one hole opening, then thousands of ships pouring out and expanding into a wall of firepower.

well, as far as reality goes...

the pool table analogy fits it best. Imagine a blanket stretched out tight so that it did not droop anywhere. the star systems would be like pool table pockets in the blanket. the pool balls would be your ship. As it rolls, there would be a constant falloff near the object: as your ship nears a system it would be "pulled' near it as the blanket fell away into the hole.

I think it would be more of a hybrid of SC2 and star wars. The front of the ship would start to pull away, stretching out the ship inch by inch until the whole ship was gone.  Unfortunately, the sheer amount of energy it would require to generate a gravity well strong enough to form a wormhole is ridiculously massive.

But to jump DIMENSIONS, would speed even be an issue or a contributing factor? It's not like you would be dealing with space-time anymore, you'd be moving in the 4th dimension at that point.

Okay, thanks for all the tips guys :). Here's what I've come up with.
I will indeed use the babylon 5 method, generating red portals into hyperspace.

For the portal generator, I fitted the ship with a thingy that draws lines in a circular motion.. this will eventually form the portal. See the example below.
(http://i36.tinypic.com/b85wdx.jpg)

Now is my question.. should the portal in question be elliptical (so it looks a bit better on this top down view when the ship moves through it) or keep it circular like it is trying to generate now?

I would say it depends on the angle. Like a flashlight, if you point it straight down it's circular. but as you move the focal point of the flashlight, it becomes elliptical.

The game is entirely 2D and doesn't use a 3D engine, so the angle or 'illusion of an angle' is entirely dependant on where the portal is generated.. on the 'floor' below or on the 'wall'.

I think horizontally positioned  ellipce 1:3 will look best in this case

In the SC2 intro, the portal to HyperSpace opens just in front of the ship, and isn't much larger than the ship itself. It doesn't have a defined shape, it looks like a red stain (vaguely circular).

Also, I'm not sure about the "pool table" thing. It's possible that the ship can get out anywhere, and the restriction in the game is only there because other points simply lead to useless empty space.

Considering that combat appears to occur in truespace, I'd say that's near-certain. The question is, where did they get those planets from, and why can't we mine them?

That's why I think it'd be best if hyperspace dropped into truespace combat occured without planets, but perhaps there are deep-space objects that exert gravity aswell, making up for the lack of a true gravity well..
Also, when for example combat happens near earth, you could have the moon make a cameo in the combat aswell ;).

Don't forget that when the Androsynths were escaping from Earth, they assumingly jumped into Hyperspace before reaching the Asteroid Belt.

When moving in Hyperspace, the gravity waves of the ship create a "true space bubble" inside Hyperspace. When getting too near any gravity well, a ship is pulled from Hyperspace into true space.

When in battle, the emergency warp is actually a warp into Hyperspace.

The fact that in SC2 you have to cruise to the edge of the solar system is probably just a gameplay thing. If it is not, then it would mean that to jump properly into Hyperspace, a ship has to be far enough from the gravity well.

Maybe it is possible to jump into Hyperspace from pretty much anywhere, but shifting back into true space could only be done onto the edge of the gravity well.

I think it is also just a gameplay thing that there is a planet nearby when encountering an enemy in Hyperspace.

semi-on-topic: I think the ship uses some kind of a device to create a Hyperspace-hole in front of it. Just like the portal spawner does with Quasispace. Let's also remember the testimony of the ore freighter pilot who saw the Androsynths escaping from Earth. "A great read hole appeared in front of the space stations."

It could also be the case that jumping into HyperSpace close to a solar system would be technically possible, but that it would destabilize the orbits of the planets and moons.

You should talk to Spinsane, he loves this stuff (http://www.star-control.com/forum/index.php/topic,1841.0.html).

That'd be some ultimate weapon, wouldn't it ;).

Given what we know about making the jump (can be done in combat, can be done from Sol's asteroid belt ratehr than the edge of the system), perhaps it's more along the lines of the additional gravity screwing up the jump into Hyperspace, and forcing a huge expenditure of energy (when compared to the edge of the system) in order to generate the portal and escape the nearby gravity wells. That's why it takes so much fuel to use the escape drive. Presumably the Androsynth used this method because they feared pursuit and just wanted to get out of Sol as quickly as possible, so the additional expenditure of fuel was an acceptable tradeoff.

There is also the idea that this could be unreliable: When the flagship uses its escape drive to leave combat while in a system, it stays in system instead of jumping back out to Hyperspace. Perhaps it's trying to make a complete jump, but can only overcome the relatively small pull of the ships and is dragged back into Truespace by the much larger gravity of planetary bodies and stars, since it can't overcome the combined gravity of both. Or something.

Yeah, I'd presumed that the emergency escape was only strong enough for you to get away a little bit before your hyperspace collapses.

I've had some theories over the nature of the various drives used - whether combat occurs in truespace or something between truespace and hyperspace, etc.

Well, first of all, the Androsynths have smaller ships, and I can imagine that for smaller ships it's easier to overcome the gravity of Sol, though I haven't seen evidence in SC2 that either proves or disproves this theory.
Secondly, the Androsynth are tremendously advanced in IDF technology, so it could very well be that the Androsynth ships are indeed capable of jumping into hyperspace from anywhere they want.

Oh dear, that's the walls of text topic I tried to forget :D.

The Androsynths didn't have their Guardian ships when they jumped into Hyperspace from within Sol. They were flying with large space stations at that time.

Agh.. how could I have forgotten!
Very well then, I guess we'll have to settle for the Androsynth simply being tremendously advanced in IDF tech.

This jumping into hyperspace from anywhere could be interesting gameplay-wise if the androsynth somehow return :).

Farscape already used that option - Starbursting in the middle of the peacekeeper ship qualifies for that I believe (with catastrophic results for both parties).

Of the other ways of entering hyperspace all I can remember right now are "Galaxy Quest" type jump (something like strange star trek) and "Battlestar Galactica" ("pure" hyperspace jump) form of travel. But I personally prefer the Farscape way...as everything else Farscapeish^^

Another thing: Suppose I own 10 freighters, and send one of them each day with cargo to Sirius I.
Wouldn't that totally disrupt hyperspace between Sol and Sirius, because of those ships each having a hyperspace bubble that disables hyperspace along the entire path?

It would, unless you made it so that a ship could 'choose' to apply a Hyperspace disruptor bubble or not.
Furthermore, allied ships might broadcast their co-ordinates when in Hyperspace over an encrypted channel to let each other know where they are to avoid Hyperspace bubble collisions.

If you're willing to stay away from Star Control, though, might I suggest something more along the lines of the Alderson Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alderson_Drive)? Those things are interesting, especially what they mean to Hyperspace travel and expansion of a civilization...

Yes, I would say so, but the implications of that probably aren't as significant as they might sound. For mutually friendly hyperspace travelers, it's easy enough to avoid each other at the cost of a few fuel points. A well-regulated hyperspace route could even work in a similar way to how cars on the road do: separate ingoing/outgoing 'lanes' and rules to help avoid collisions.

In the case unfriendly hyperspace travelers ... well, this large-area hyperspace-disabling possibility sounds extremely tactically useful (like to blockade a star from hyperspace, for example), but would actually probably be difficult to make use of.  Assuming the 2D nature of hyperspace in the game is simply an abstraction of a 3D space (admittedly debatable), like the game does for with truespace, blocking a single path through hyperspace still allows intruders to evade that 'wall' by passing over or under it. Moreover, creating sufficiently dense 3D formations (in the case of the blockaded star, a sphere) might require inordinate numbers of ships.

You are getting too tangled to the in-game graphics again.

Remember that the objects pictured in the game are not  in 1:1 scale - for gameplay reasons. Also in hyperspace one day is only 5 game seconds. So in reality they would have s huge space to cover and lots of time to do any kinds of manouvers.

To be honest, I don't know about the size scaling in hyperspace. Different laws of physics may, and will probably apply there. I do know that 1 day passes in 5 game seconds, but still, these things are something that needs looking into if you want to make a game that's true to star control yet allows multiple players to do their stuff in the same universe at the same time :).

I disagree with you. I think you only need to obey the universe to make the game true to Star Control. Obeying 20 year old gameplay solutions is not required in my opinion.

Also, once the hyperspace portal is created (probably just like creating the Quasispace portal), the ship appears to bend as is crosses from Truespace into Hyperspace. (from the intro sequence)

This Precursor Warp Nullifier, would this be the thing that generates those bubbles?

Then again, if you actually fight ZEX's fleet, you'll eventually discover that he's bluffing, and no such device exists (or at least, it doesn't work the way he expected).

It raises an interesting point, though: How would something like that actually work, given what we know about Hyperspace? Localized gravity field around the combat sphere, maybe, that's powerful enough to draw ships that attempt to escpae back inside?

I have got the understanding , that he just didn't engauge the device before you bring him the beast .

For actual workings - I'd think more in the lines of EM emmiter that resonates with hyperspace drives , preventing it's function - seems somewhat more energy efficient .