The Mysterious Starship (something very odd I noticed)

[RowanThursday]

So... this is not new. Now that I think about it, I remember noticing this way back in 2012, and feeling then, as now, that it's odd, and in a way, if you think about it, actually, somewhat creepy.

I assume some other people have noticed this over the years, although I've not seen a thread on it here, and I dare say many others never have spotted it.

Next time you happen to be logged in as a Sith Inquisitor, go to the bridge of your starship. Get as far forward as you can, standing, for preference, just to the left of the central console at the *very* front of the bridge, in front of the galaxy map, and look out, slightly to your left, and as far *up* as you can manage to look. 

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ (gyazo.com)

There's another Fury up there. It's not part of the 'space scene' for fleet or any planet you visit- if you look out there whilst your ship's in flight, it moves *with* you, always staying just the same distance away, silently watching you from afar, no matter where your ship travels, anywhere in space.

Interestingly, I've looked at the exact same spot from the *Warrior*'s identical ship bridge, and that Fury isn't there.

Now, I've played right through the Inquisitor storyline several times, so I know it's not there for plot reasons. 

The only logical reason I can think of is that it's the 'flight model' of your ship for space combat scenes- I wonder if the space missions actually play out up there, but that doesn't explain why, so far as I'm aware, it's *only* visible on the Inquisitor's ship, and not only don't you see a ship exterior of corresponding model from the window of any of the other starships, you also can't see it from the window of the identical ship build used by the Warrior.

So... that's odd. And somehow deeply sinister.

[GeneralGyro]

probably one of the countless bugs from launch. could be another instance of the ship for other players

[RowanThursday]

See, that was close to my first thought, which was, "Oh, is that the Warrior's instance of the Fury, up there?"

 Now, that would make logical sense; after all, we know from a couple of places where it's possible to wiggle out of an instanced area by climbing or jumping the wrong way, rather than going out through the green curtain (the area outside Reiki's "back door" in Mannett Point, on Ord Mantell, springs to mind; there's an invisible wall to stop you climbing back into the uninstanced area of the town, despite some conveniently arranged rocks and a lowered, damaged section of wall that appears set up just to encourage you to try it, but a) nothing at all stops you doing a short and survivable dive out of the instance, over the cliff and into the sea outside, wading round and back in again, and b) if you stand on that damaged bit of city wall and wiggle around against the invisible barrier a bit, you'll notice from the top bar that you do actually move momentarily (in the English sense of the word) out of instanced state and back), and also, from an old, particularly unsettling bug, back shortly before KotFE, where other players of your class started sometimes being visible on your spaceship.

 Therefore, to the game engine, the instanced areas and zones appear to all be the same place,  and part of the same contiguous game maps, it's just that players, mobs, and visual effects etc are phased invisibly from each other in them. 

This squares up with the odd occasional conversation bug, where other random player meatbags occasionally show up standing near to you or running up/away, as if the game's failed to mask them, or how occasionally, when you're a guest in another player's instance, during their conversations, you'll sometimes see just their floating weapon, but not them.

 

The point of that lengthy digression is that yes, it looks like there probably is a "place", in game, where all our ships exist. 

I wonder if that's the purpose to the "Escape Pod" door, marked "cannot be used at this time" that provides a second exit from your starship. Whether as an abandoned feature that could have allowed you to shuttle across to group-mates ships (probably abandoned on realising it would create mayhem if you were grouped with someone else of your class, since the existing guest teleport to a friend's starship is already buggy as hell if you're in the same class) or simply as a back door to let engineering devs wander about between ships. 

So far, so good, and actually quite intriguing, but, for it to work, if would depend on the unlikely possibility that our ship's "skybox" interior actually has the model ship exterior built around it. This would be cool, but probably unlikely.

Although... there are those scenes at the start of the Smuggler story, where we see Skavak, on our ship, at such an angle that the outside world can be seen through the viewports, so... maybe.

Edited February 27, 2023 by RowanThursday

[recalcitrantIre]

On 2/28/2023 at 3:11 AM, RowanThursday said:

See, that was close to my first thought, which was, "Oh, is that the Warrior's instance of the Fury, up there?"

that's probably the most likely reason and the simple explanation for not seeing a Fury in that spot in the Warrior's version is that the other Fury is below and behind
you'd have to be looking through the floor rather than through the cockpit window to get the equivalent angle

[denavin]

Ok, since we're on the topic of "Weard" things to see in SWToR....

Go too fleet. Empire or Republic...

Look for any reflective surface in the station and go Close and look at what you see....

Then try to identify where that is because it sure isn't anything on the station.

[Mercielaga]

9 minutes ago, denavin said:

Ok, since we're on the topic of "Weard" things to see in SWToR....

Go too fleet. Empire or Republic...

Look for any reflective surface in the station and go Close and look at what you see....

Then try to identify where that is because it sure isn't anything on the station.

That's not a reflection, it's a reflection map, similar to most model textures but applied a little differently. And probably the same reflection map applied to all reflective objects, to save on memory.

The amount of memory the game would have used to produce actual reflections at the time the game was released would have made it unplayable.