Joseph Mallan, on 22 July 2013 - 02:05 PM, said:
Drop a few more posts. I may have missed your normal 'tude an delivery
lol...
Well, I'm actually working on learning how to edit ARMA II well enough that I can use it as a FRAPS-able test-bed for different ideas and mechanics that I have.
It may not really work too well for simulating game-play in terms of mechs shooting each other (unless I could pull a decent art team together for the mod) - but I could still simulate weapon and launcher behavior as well as how those would interact with the UI.
One of the first ideas I am going to be looking at is actually going to be re-teething my programming skills to show a dynamic heat system that would allow for TT-like penalties to be added. It would also show why you couldn't simply implement TT penalties over the top of the current heat system (as an Atlas that fired a round of missiles and a couple large lasers would run the risk of ammunition explosions, and light mechs would constantly have their speed getting cut to ribbons after firing just a couple lasers).
After doing that with a couple videos with voice-overs outlining that sort of stuff - I believe I might actually make a name for myself.
Actually... a full-blown battletech mod for ARMA 3 would be pretty awesome.
I'd like to incorporate a system similar to bitcoin's - at the completion of each match, the data involving the player tags is encoded into them which allows for distributed tracking of player stats (just like bitcoin nodes track bitcoin transfers) and a completely de-centralized game server architecture with no necessity for a company to host dedicated servers.
But, to be honest, the mathematics of that system go a bit beyond my experience and I'd need a few days of studying it to really get a solid understanding of it. Even then - there's a number of mathematical principles that I'd need to revisit or explore for the first time.
But I'm sure that would be a relatively volatile endeavor until PGI completes their task of running the future of this game into the ground.
... Honestly - I think they should drop the Cry Engine. I know that's insane talk this late in production - but the CryEngine was never meant to handle this kind of game. They should contact Bohemia about licensing the Real Virtuality 4 engine:
http://en.wikipedia....tuality_(engine)
Simulating hundreds of square kilometers of terrain. Integrated ballistic simulation, missile simulation, powerful script parsing, partial destruction of vehicles and damage simulation is worked in (though it could be expanded upon)....
You could mod the game; no source-code access necessary; to run MWO.
I would imagine, with PGI's resources, after a month or two to learn the scripting of the engine and setting their art team to re-rig the assets for use in RV4, an additional two months' of work could have them right back to where they are at, now, and with a much more seamless integration of new assets and gameplay objectives.
Many long-standing issues would be inherently resolved by the game. Ballistic simulations include boresight (which ties in to model animations if desired), and various artifacts of ballistics can be simulated. Missile guidance and kinematics are natively supported (though a number of community projects have given ideas on how to greatly improve those).
A number of mods have dialed-up and dialed-back the simulation aspect of the game. Some have made it more arcade-like while others have made it even more hard-core sim-mode.
I could rant for hours about how PGI should have thought much more carefully about what engine to use for their game... but... Ugh...
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