74 replies to this topic

[Dimento Graven]

Psydotek, on 14 August 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

I've said it before, the sooner they get started, the sooner we get properly scaled 'mechs.

I still believe 'mech volume makes for a pretty good average for determining size regardless of which parts of a 'mech are supposed to be less/more dense.

I believe most 'mechs are "full" of empty space myself. A lot of the components of a 'mech would require maintenance, without service spaces, you'd need to denude the 'mech of its armor just to work on the items 'near the surface of its skin', let alone all the crap that would be 'deeper' in its guts.

[MuKen]

AgroAntirrhopus, on 14 August 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

It would be a colossal pain in the ***. You're talking about rescaling, re-rigging, possibly reanimating, re coding weapon positions for swappable geometry (gotta rescale those too), as well as re-coding where weapons originate from as well as rescaling hitboxes and collision. That said... I do believe that it needs to be done.

If a large amount of this can't be done programmatically, then something somewhere was designed poorly. And fixing THAT is most certainly worthwhile if they're going to continue introducing new mechs over time.

[AC]

I am not sure what they are using for a modeling system, but as a designer I can tell you that rescaling a model is simple. All 3D modeling systems have a function to rescale the model by a certain percent. I have used this function on a number of occasions and a few moments later your model is larger or smaller. I don't understand how this would be difficult for PGI to do. They could rescale the visual model. There shouldn't be anything required from an animation standpoint as animations are completed via skeletons and those skeletons are pretty universal as long as the model has the same number of 'bones' as the skeleton.

[Daekar]

They need to implement UI2.0 and CW first, and then do a scaling pass over EVERY SINGLE MECH before they do anything for the Clans. I don't care what the TRO says about how tall they are, make them right for MWO gameplay. That way, the Clan mechs will all be the right size the first time, and none of this whining or the rework effort need be expended.

[FupDup]

Daekar, on 08 October 2013 - 03:57 PM, said:

They need to implement UI2.0 and CW first, and then do a scaling pass over EVERY SINGLE MECH before they do anything for the Clans. I don't care what the TRO says about how tall they are, make them right for MWO gameplay. That way, the Clan mechs will all be the right size the first time, and none of this whining or the rework effort need be expended.

Speaking of Clan mech scaling...



By the TT scale, many of their lights and mediums are giants, while the Warhawk and Dire Wolf are short like the Stalker. We don't need a 100 ton Stalker armed to the teeth with Clan tech...

Edited by FupDup, 08 October 2013 - 04:01 PM.

[Lyoto Machida]

GingerBang, on 12 August 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

Definitely not all the mechs. Obviously some are worse than others, and most have at least one flaw, but come on just about the entire medium class is just ruined. Centurions are HUGE and super bulky, Trebuchets are taller than a lot of heavies without having any of the "empty space" PGI claims to use to balance sizes. Cicadas at times don't even register cockpit damage, and have a CT the size of Miami. I know I don't even have to go into what a failure the Golden Boy's size is. That one is just pathetic. I refuse to call that mech a Kintaro, because it is not. This is more than just the size for the GB though, i mean my god it bears zero resemblance to an actual kintaro. Zero, none, zilch, nada. The only medium without any problems with design is the blackjack. It's like this game is a high school project, and everyone was in such a rush to get their part done nobody ever even looked at the rest of the game to see if it scales until it was too late. A serious amateur mistake not planning ahead like this.

"Cicadas at times don't even register cockpit damage, and have a CT the size of Miami."

Is a CT the size of Miami big or small???

[keith]

i have a word to lol about in this thread. its all about density..... what ever weird way they figure that out.

[Kilobyte]

Light mechs are way out of control...

[Roland]

One of the disappointing things about the devs comments on resizing mechs was that in order to resize them, they would have to go through and redo all the little do-dads on the mechs, like ladders and stuff, so that it was appropriately scaled for human size.

I mean, while on one hand I admire the attention to detail (and the mechs really do generally look awesome), I just can't understand anyone giving one single {Scrap} about such a thing. I mean, you can't sacrifice gameplay balance because some tiny ladder rung on a mech, that is generally never gonna be noticed anyway, is 4 pixels bigger than it should be.

[Khobai]

IMO resizing mechs is a complete waste of time/effort. I would much rather see clan mechs sooner. The devs should just leave all the current mechs how they are and make sure any new mechs created are properly scaled. Mechs with bad scaling like the Trebuchet and Kintaro can be balanced out somewhat by giving them positive quirks (like the Trebuchet could get a bonus to using LRMs).

Edited by Khobai, 08 October 2013 - 06:30 PM.

[MuKen]

Khobai, on 08 October 2013 - 06:27 PM, said:

Mechs with bad scaling like the Trebuchet and Kintaro can be balanced out somewhat by giving them positive quirks (like the Trebuchet could get a bonus to using LRMs).

Seeing as we don't currently have a system implemented for doing 'quirks' like that, that'd probably be more work than the resizing.

[Khobai]

Quote

Seeing as we don't currently have a system implemented for doing 'quirks' like that, that'd probably be more work than the resizing.

Definitely not. Resizing a mech is a huge amount of work. because they not only have to resize the model but they have to redo all the hitboxes and weapon boxes as well. And maybe even redo the animation to make sure it still looks smooth.

Adding quirks would be much easier and there is a system implemented for it. The current skill system already allows for certain mechs to get bonuses that other mechs dont. It's just that all the bonuses are currently the same, but they dont have to be.

[MuKen]

Khobai, on 08 October 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

Definitely not. Resizing a mech is a huge amount of work. because they not only have to resize the model but they have to redo all the hitboxes and weapon boxes as well. And maybe even redo the animation to make sure it still looks smooth.

If the system is designed well, that can all be done algorithmically. If it is not designed well, it is worth fixing that design now, given that there are many many more mechs coming down the line.

[Billygoat]

MuKen, on 08 October 2013 - 07:04 PM, said:

If the system is designed well, that can all be done algorithmically. If it is not designed well, it is worth fixing that design now, given that there are many many more mechs coming down the line.

The above cannot be overstated.

Resizing the mechs should not be difficult. Everything from the 3D model to the hitboxes to the animations should be able to be rescaled procedurally with only minimal manual intervention.

If this is not the case, then that is a huge flaw in the way they manage their asset pipeline and will become more and more problematic as the amount of stuff in game that needs management increases over time and their art people are really going to regret it later on.

The time to fix this issue is now, while it's merely "waaah hard and tedious" rather than when it becomes nearly impossible.

[Vassago Rain]

Yes.

Buckets and quickdraws shouldn't be he size of assault mechs, It was bad enough when itt was only the cent.