[Xpilot-hacks] xpilot playability

[<kso...@ma...>]

Hi.
=09Now that XPilot NG 4.7 has been released, there's a chance to
think about what can be done next. One important issue which so far has
not gotten much attention by xpilot ng developers is game playability.
(for a definition of playability check here:
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/main.cgi?function=3Ddisplay_term&ter=
m_id=3D657)

=09The playability issues mainly arises from the "high FPS" game.
In the high FPS game, basically the same code is run as in the legacy
(classic xpilot) "low FPS" game. The main change is that for many of the
things updated, a multiplier is used, so that the update rate is
proportional to the amount of game time that has passed. The initial
assumption was that the playability would not change when running the
code at high FPS. Early on (a few years ago) it was discovered that this
is not the case. There was some changes that tried to fix certain issues,
e.g. the "wall glue" problem where the ship appears to stick to the wall
easily and the constantSpeed option which gives the ship a bit of extra
speed when ship thrust is activated. However these changes don't raise the
quality of gameplay to the level it used to be. The symptoms of this is
that the ship is more clumsy, aiming is more difficult, dodging shots is
more difficult, apparent lag is increased, etc.

=09What I think should be done next for xpilot ng is to fix the
gameplay. The current idea is that the game is run just like in low fps,
but then the server calculates extra frames in between the "real frames",
showing more continuous motion for e.g. the shots. Coppanos (Peter
Majorin) has tried to implement a prototype of such code in his version
1.2.0ix, however it certainly doesn't yet work good enough and the code is
not written for xpilot ng.

=09If you have other ideas, please write.

Kristian S=F6derblom / kps