183 replies to this topic

[One Medic Army]

Tennex, on 21 June 2013 - 08:42 AM, said:

a 60 ton atlas would be 60% the size of a 100ton atlas.

not sure how you are getting that math.

60% volume.
Linear dimensions would be cube root 0.6 since volume is height*width*depth

[DaZur]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 08:17 AM, said:

I think the problem here is people have a misconstrued impression of how much of a size difference weight makes.

Large differences of mass make for relatively small differences in dimensions.

This was the basis of my forwarded premise regarding scale not necessarily being as big a deal in mech survivability... That said, I have to begrudgingly admit... dropping that Cat by 10%, bringing it roughly in line with extrapolated surface area for a 65 ton mech... the size differential is pretty glaring relative to the original scale and the stalker.

Edited by DaZur, 21 June 2013 - 08:49 AM.

[Tennex]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

Look up the square cube law

If you double something's dimensions, you increase its mass by 8x

but you are using tonnage. tonnage is not 1:1 relation with a object's dimensions.

[Tennex]

using the stalker's density of 0.22228 (since we have both the volume and mass now)

at 100 tons the atlas has 449 volume. At 60 tons it has 269 volume.

which is a 60% decrease.

Edited by Tennex, 21 June 2013 - 08:54 AM.

[Tennex]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 08:55 AM, said:

I'm not using tonnage as a 1:1 relation with dimensions, I'm not sure where you got that idea

I am using tonnage as a 1:1 relation with volume though, which is fine because mass and volume are directly related.

okay my bad i got volume and dimensions mixed up. but why would you use dimensions when its so tough to calculate the size of a mech that way.

Edited by Tennex, 21 June 2013 - 09:22 AM.

[Tennex]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

And it's flat out wrong. Math tells us that it's dimensions would still be 97.4% at 60 tons.

i'm not sure what you are using for a reference then.


using the stalker as a reference at 85 tons.. the catapult is the size of a 58 tonner instead of a 78 tonner like it used to be.

either way this is what a 90% dimension shrunk catapult looks like (~25% volume shrink 332.83 -> 245.73)
you say its not a big difference by numbers. clearly there is a very noticeable difference in height.

using the square cube law
246=333 (%change)^3
its a 10% change.

Edited by Tennex, 21 June 2013 - 10:18 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

DaZur, on 21 June 2013 - 06:46 AM, said:

[/size]
In fairness this is essentially a seamless shrink-wrap of the actual in-game model (think molded wax statue) so in no way is relevant to a ground-up mech development.

In regards to "Just scaling the model and dropping it back into the game"...

It's a little more than that.
- Scale model
- Re-scale swap-objects (different weapon objects bits)
- Recreate / resize hit-boxes.
- Re-locate particle origins (where the lasers and missiles emit from)
- Lastly, depending upon how they animate and or rig bones for IK, Kinematics... that might also have to be re-done from scratch.

Wondering out loud... I wonder if the relative scale of our mech models might not have something to do with our mechs sharing weapon model assets?

First, Fair enough. I have just always thought a month was an awfully long time to get a single mech into the game. This is based on a friend of mine who does 3Ds like these and did some amazing animated Gundam type mechs as a school project in his final year. Whole project took him like 3 weeks total and included several fully modeled and animated Gundams.

As to your last statement, you might very well be on to something. If they are just designing one weapon model to extend across all mechs, then it is absolutely likely some of the scales would have to stretch a bit to accomodate. Still since they have already taken artistic liberties with the mech designs, it just seems it would be easy to use these weapon models and just build around them. I mean it isn't like an extra bulge here or there would be really noticed as out of the ordinary.

[General Taskeen]

Then why does a Blackjack PPC look like a pipsquick Light PPC cannon compared to an Awesome PPC or a Catapult-K2 humongo ppc edition. The weapon models on a Mech only pertain to that individual mech's meshes, or they expand/shrink dynamically.

[DaZur]

Viktor Drake, on 21 June 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

I have just always thought a month was an awfully long time to get a single mech into the game. This is based on a friend of mine who does 3Ds like these and did some amazing animated Gundam type mechs as a school project in his final year. Whole project took him like 3 weeks total and included several fully modeled and animated Gundams.

Keep in mind PGI is also baking texture details, rendering regressive LODs, doing specular and bump-map passes... Then importing into the game and actually making the silly things work.

General Taskeen, on 21 June 2013 - 09:09 AM, said:

Then why does a Blackjack PPC look like a pipsquick Light PPC cannon compared to an Awesome PPC or a Catapult-K2 humongo ppc edition. The weapon models on a Mech only pertain to that individual mech's meshes, or they expand/shrink dynamically.

I don't believe all mechs are sharing assets... Especially the early / original mechs. Clearly some have dedicated bits and widgets and the BJ is a clear case of this.

In the long run, I believe eventually all the earlier mechs will get an optimization pass to unify some of the modeling to allow all weapon swaps on all mechs. Keep in mind one of their proposed store functions will be to allow purchase of alternate parts and this kind'a goes hand & hand with this premise...

That said... the Awesome/Cat PPC mounts versus the BJ mounts is one of those "magic universe" things we are expected to simply accept / overlook...

Viktor Drake, on 21 June 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

I mean it isn't like an extra bulge here or there would be really noticed as out of the ordinary.

LOL! Quite the contrary... We have many persnickety members...

Hell, In fact Tennex had a flipping aneurysm when the BJs cannon mounts were not perfectly symmetrical in the pre-release images.

Edited by DaZur, 21 June 2013 - 09:37 AM.

[DaZur]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

I realize this helps your point...

but you, and a few others, seem to have forgotten that the Stalker is actually 85 tons, not 80

Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom: "110... 220... Whatever it takes".

[Tennex]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

I realize this helps your point...

but you, and a few others, seem to have forgotten that the Stalker is actually 85 tons, not 80

jesus what have i been doing with my life.

lol but you're right. and that does make the two mechs even closer in comparison than they should be

seriously though. mech sizes are wrong. no volume or dimension argument is going to say otherwise.


This confirms what I and many many others have been saying for a long time. this is more than adequate proof that PGI has been randomly sizing their mechs.

Edited by Tennex, 21 June 2013 - 10:07 AM.

[armyof1]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 10:30 AM, said:

I don't think its random, I'm sure they have a system of some kind

I think so too, they choose whatever option is the easiest and run with it. In the case with the Quickdraw, taking the Highlander frame and then change it up a bit was apparently the best option that required the least amount of work.

Edited by armyof1, 21 June 2013 - 10:39 AM.

[Tennex]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 10:30 AM, said:

I don't think its random, I'm sure they have a system of some kind

They do have a system. but since they have different artists. each artist sizes the mech however they like. and uses whatever reference he or she likes.

There is no step in the pipeline to correctly size the mechs, there is no overarchign system to evalueate how big a mech is relative to all other mechs. so in the end you have a scramble of mech sizes liek we do now..

They definately do not line them up in a row to decide size, like adridos has been doing. Or it wouldn't look so wrong when they are finally lined up.

Dennis de Koning, on 29 April 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

Also, the 'Mechs were (are) designed individually as opposed to all at once; the more we create, the more difficult it is to fit them into the scale chart without some discrepancy.

in light of all this evidence. you still believe that there is a system.

if a system creates a catapult that is sized 15 tons bigger than it should be, its not much of a system is it?

Edited by Tennex, 21 June 2013 - 10:46 AM.

[Tie Ma]

Tennex, on 21 June 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

They definately do not line them up in a row to decide size, like adridos has been doing. Or it wouldn't look so wrong when they are finally lined up.

honestly they probably don't bother lining all the mechs up and scaling that way. it would take too much time so they don't do it

they probably scale it next to 1 or 2 mechs. and if they happen to piick the centurion or trebbie to scale it nxt to... well then we are SOL.

Edited by Tie Ma, 21 June 2013 - 10:54 AM.

[DaZur]

Thontor, on 21 June 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

Any chance you could do this with all of the mechs

It would be awesome if you could do that, then use one mech as a baseline like the Atlas and then Adjust all of the others so that their volume was relative to the atlases volume equal to the proportion between their masses.

Make an Trebuchet's volume 50% of the Atlas, and a Jagermech 65%, for example.

Then do a side by side between those resized mechs and the original size.

I think we'd have to buy him lunch or something to reciprocate the effort. Strike that... you'd have to buy him lunch... I'm a tight-wad penny-pincher

Tennex, on 21 June 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

They do have a system. but since they have different artists. each artist sizes the mech however they like. and uses whatever reference he or she likes.

There is no step in the pipeline to correctly size the mechs, there is no overarchign system to evalueate how big a mech is relative to all other mechs. so in the end you have a scramble of mech sizes liek we do now..

They definately do not line them up in a row to decide size, like adridos has been doing. Or it wouldn't look so wrong when they are finally lined up.



in light of all this evidence. you still believe that there is a system.

if a system creates a catapult that is sized 15 tons bigger than it should be, its not much of a system is it?

He didn't say it was a good system...

[Rayah]

Yeah, I have noticed that I can look an Atlas straight in the eyes with one.

[SgtMagor]

guess if PGI designs the Thunderbolt for MWO peeps are gonna go nutz, because its a 65ton mech that's as big as an Atlas

[Tie Ma]

SgtMagor, on 21 June 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

guess if PGI designs the Thunderbolt for MWO peeps are gonna go nutz, because its a 65ton mech that's as big as an Atlas

i'd be okay with that. since at least then there are lore reasons.

but PGI designed Quickdraw too big, centurion too big, trebuceht too big, stalker too small.

none of those have any lore basis. they just felt like it

[Angel of Annihilation]

Well maybe we are in a situation where their priority is to just get the mechs out and working and will tweek the sizes at some point after their "offical" release.

However, the only issue with that is the simple fact that mech sizes are just as important as hardpoints, heat, weapon damage, etc when it comes to balance. Let's face even a relatively small increase or reduction in the size of a mech will have a tremendous impact on it survivability. For example, it would be much easier to concentrate fire on a Stalkers CT if it were properly scaled up to be the size of a Highlander. Same goes with the Centurion in the other direction. If it were the correct size, it would be even harder to knock out that zombie CT. Size and shape are huge when it comes to mech balance.

[Lonestar1771]

AAA quality went out the window a looooong time ago.