1911 replies to this topic

[Not Bob]

Dennis de Koning, on 01 May 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

This may give you a little insight:
http://penny-arcade....am-creates-worl
An article I compiled for Penny Arcade about a half year ago or so.

Fantastic, Thank you! I didn't know said article exists, thanks for pointing me to it!


Edit: Grammar...I must have been drunk(or tired) when I wrote my response.

Edited by Not Bob, 01 May 2014 - 07:27 PM.

[Dennis de Koning]

Not Bob, on 01 May 2014 - 01:10 PM, said:

Fantastic, Thank you! I didn't know said article exists, thanks for pointing me to it!


Edit: Grammar...I must have been drunk(or tired) when I wrote my response.

If you are interested, there is also this article regarding the creation of the 'Mechs:
http://penny-arcade....ricate-birth-of
(Although, we have made modifications to the process in the name of efficiency and consistency; but the overall pipeline is pretty much the same as outlined in the article.)

[Heffay]

Would it be possible to release some of the files associated with that? I know there is a Catapult and Dragon orthograph available, but I'd love to have a complete set.

Maybe create limited edition signed copies for sale, or as rewards to your most loyal of followers. Like cel prints Disney sells!

Edited by Heffay, 02 May 2014 - 09:00 AM.

[Cimarb]

Dennis de Koning, on 02 May 2014 - 08:05 AM, said:

If you are interested, there is also this article regarding the creation of the 'Mechs:
http://penny-arcade....ricate-birth-of
(Although, we have made modifications to the process in the name of efficiency and consistency; but the overall pipeline is pretty much the same as outlined in the article.)

Dennis, that is an AMAZING write-up about the process, and makes me wish I had put more effort into my 3ds class and Poser program I bought and really didn't do much with!

You guys should be advertising this on the website somewhere, as it puts a lot of things in perspective...

Also, is there any chance you could discuss the situation with the Catapult and dynamically-sized weapons? I want my AC20 Locust to LOOK like an AC20 Locust, not the same as a MG Locust! (Extreme example, but I'm sure you get the point.)

Lastly, and this is actually really close to my heart, but can someone please seriously consider allowing us to change the camo of Hero mechs? I bought the Firebrand before I realized what was plastered all over the mech, and even when I realized, I figured I could just paint it all-black and it would be fine, but the darn glossy symbols on it are visible regardless of what color I try to use to cover them up. I love the mech, and want to get my bonuses from it instead of using my DD every day, but I can't because there are satanic symbols all over it pwease?... With sugar and waffles on top?

[Heffay]

We should get a series of these posts in this forum. Karl has this one, maybe one for PGI Fox (web stuff), Dennis & Alex Inglesas (Art team), and Paul (Balance/gameplay).

Star Citizen has something similar, where the appropriate owner or designated rep can answer questions in a heavily modded thread.

[DEN_Ninja]

Karl Berg, on 01 May 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

At the most basic level, ping * speed represents an error bubble between anything you see on your screen, what the server thinks world state is, and what all the other clients think the world state is. Increasing speed increases the size of that bubble, which can impact error.

Going way back, we had problems with high speeds and rubberbanding in our movement code. Even today, there are still theoretical speed caps for smooth movement under our supported latency levels. I'm reasonably certain that those caps are well over what would be required for masc, but this would require specific testing under a large variety of network conditions. So, as it stands, my highest concerns would be with weapon accuracy. I would want solid numbers on the new theoretical accelerations and top speeds of the affected mechs. I would want QA to run extensive tests under varying levels of packet loss, constant latency, varying latency, etc..

Thank you. Quite a few people are curious as to why it exists and I can communicate why. Hopefully I can lead people to this post to help explain it.

[Coralld]

Dear Karl.

Thanks for all the great info and in site as well as communicating with us in general. But I too have a question.
Is there any plans on revamping the mech skill tree? Diversifying the skill tree by a per chassie basses would breath new life into some mechs and give them more character. Example: An Awesome gets a new Master perk where instead of getting an extra module slot, it instead gets an ability to fire 3x PPCs/LL/LPL safely in an Alpha with out ghost heat. However firing say 4x PPCs in an Alpha would get you the normal ghost heat penalty for firing 4x PPCs in such a manner. And only the Awesome gets this perk.

[Cimarb]

Coralld, on 03 May 2014 - 12:51 PM, said:

Dear Karl.

Thanks for all the great info and in site as well as communicating with us in general. But I too have a question.
Is there any plans on revamping the mech skill tree? Diversifying the skill tree by a per chassie basses would breath new life into some mechs and give them more character. Example: An Awesome gets a new Master perk where instead of getting an extra module slot, it instead gets an ability to fire 3x PPCs/LL/LPL safely in an Alpha with out ghost heat. However firing say 4x PPCs in an Alpha would get you the normal ghost heat penalty for firing 4x PPCs in such a manner. And only the Awesome gets this perk.

How about the perk just reduce ghost heat for energy weapons by one 'notch'. For example, 3 PPCs are treated as two, four are treated as three, etc.

[Coralld]

Cimarb, on 03 May 2014 - 12:54 PM, said:

How about the perk just reduce ghost heat for energy weapons by one 'notch'. For example, 3 PPCs are treated as two, four are treated as three, etc.

Like I said, it was just an example.

But I would like to see a more diverse skill tree system and if there is anything floating around the PGI offices.

Edited by Coralld, 03 May 2014 - 01:09 PM.

[Modo44]

Threads like this keep showing up in patch feedback. Essentially, weapons appear to have a mind of their own as far as their place in a given location, which results in semi-random reordering after saving a loadout, and then again after launching in a mech. However, you can usually force MWO to do what you want by using an elaborate (and costly) workaround. Is the random reordering deliberate, or a bug? Are there plans to give players direct control over that? The reordering is often illogical, often putting big missile launchers in low-tube hardpoints, and forcing heavy energy weapons into low locations.

Edited by Modo44, 04 May 2014 - 12:47 AM.

[Cimarb]

Modo44, on 03 May 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

Threads like this keep showing up in patch feedback. Essentially, weapons appear to have a mind of their own as far as their place in a given location, which results in semi-random reordering after saving a loadout, and then again after launching in a mech. However, you can usually force MWO to do what you want by using an elaborate (and costly) workaround. Is the random reordering deliberate, or a bug? Are there plans to give players direct control over that? The reordering is often illogical, often putting big missile launchers in low-tube hardpoints, and forcing heavy energy weapons into low locations.

I thought this was on purpose, to limit the number of high-mounted energy weapons, but one of my Banshees doesn't seem to cooperate. I run 2xERLL and 2xLPL, but for some reason one side lets me high-mount the ERLL and the other side doesn't... Seems random or broken to me

[Wintersdark]

Cimarb, on 04 May 2014 - 06:02 AM, said:

I thought this was on purpose, to limit the number of high-mounted energy weapons, but one of my Banshees doesn't seem to cooperate. I run 2xERLL and 2xLPL, but for some reason one side lets me high-mount the ERLL and the other side doesn't... Seems random or broken to me

yup.

I wouldn't mind the effect if it was in any way consistent, but its not. Its particularly problematic when you get a mech, say a griffon, with two missile hard points, one 10 and one 20.... Then no matter what you do, the LRM10 goes into the 20 tube slot and the LRM20 goes into the 10 tube slot.

I wouldn't care so much if there was any particular logic to it, but its very inconsistent.

[Iqfish]

Dennis de Koning, on 02 May 2014 - 08:05 AM, said:

If you are interested, there is also this article regarding the creation of the 'Mechs:
http://penny-arcade....ricate-birth-of
(Although, we have made modifications to the process in the name of efficiency and consistency; but the overall pipeline is pretty much the same as outlined in the article.)

So this article says you have multiple guys purely working on maps and environments.

What are these people doing right now? I mean HPG manifold was some time ago, are they working on like a giant set of maps or did they got fired?

[Goose]

Remember when they were moving cap points around, as an anti-blobbing tactic in Conquest? I should think they are doubling-down on that.

[Rebas Kradd]

Karl, I understand the development story of MWO a lot better than I did a month ago. Thanks a million for all this dialogue.

After reading a couple of your Reddit posts, I've got a couple more questions. Can you say more about the "Cryengine layer" that you often reference? It sounds like it accounts for a good 50% of the development delays. When did you guys start building it? Is it finished, or does it require integration for pretty much any in-game feature you build? Does it factor into CW? Where does it play its biggest role - stability, performance, front end, HSR?

Also, you implied that MWO has some kind of "no-crunch" policy, in that you run a very fluid feature pipeline rather than set a deadline in stone and then rush the dev team to meet it. This avoids the personnel burnout so common to dev houses, but I imagine it also leaves the community rather frustrated in that features get moved around a ton and people rarely know what's coming next and when, and where their favorite features vanished to (collisions, MASC, etc.). Is that a fair statement? Rather broadly asking, how often does stuff get moved around? What stuff ARE you willing to crunch on (F&F build? CW?) What decides the pecking order on the pipeline?

[Rebas Kradd]

Dennis de Koning, on 01 May 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

This may give you a little insight:
http://penny-arcade....am-creates-worl
An article I compiled for Penny Arcade about a half year ago or so.

Dennis, thanks for that.

I have a question...how feasible would it be to come up with a very simple, quick-and-dirty map to tide some of the malcontents over during the Clans crunch? Something like a Solaris arena, with fairly small combat area and simplistic terrain to minimize polygon count/FPS holes/mech snag? Might be a good PR treat. Not that I'm dissatisfied with the game, but a surprise never hurts.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 04 May 2014 - 04:34 PM.

[Heffay]

Dear Mr Berg,

Has Crytek been in any discussion with PGI about taking some of the netcode and merging it back into their basic engine? By default it's all client side, and I figure they would probably like a nice juicy server side netcode base to work from.

Have you had any chats with CIG (the guys making Star Citizen)? They seem to be running into a lot of issues with Cryengine as well.

Love,
Heffay

Edited by Heffay, 04 May 2014 - 03:23 PM.

[Mawai]

Karl Berg, on 19 April 2014 - 12:49 PM, said:

------------
"Hi Karl,

I would like to offer a big thanks to the wonderful answers you have put in this thread ... from my perspective it is truly a breath of fresh air and most appreciated.

Earlier in the thread I asked the question quoted below on clarifying the statistics that Paul published in his Command center post. If you don't have the answer or for some reason aren't allowed to clarify the situation that's fine ... but I thought I would ask "
-------------------

Hi Mawai, I did push this one up and ask for clarification, as I wasn't involved in mining these stats. If I get a response back I will let you know.

Hi Karl,

Since it has been about 3 weeks, I was wondering if you'd received a response or clarification on whether "Launches" were solo or if a group counted as one launch in Paul's command chair statistics. If you aren't allowed to answer ... that's fine ... please just say so and we can drop it. There are very few statistics available about the game but it would be nice if the data that was available was at least unambiguous

Thanks again

Mawai

[Karl Berg]

Coralld, on 03 May 2014 - 12:51 PM, said:

Dear Karl.

Thanks for all the great info and in site as well as communicating with us in general. But I too have a question.
Is there any plans on revamping the mech skill tree? Diversifying the skill tree by a per chassie basses would breath new life into some mechs and give them more character. Example: An Awesome gets a new Master perk where instead of getting an extra module slot, it instead gets an ability to fire 3x PPCs/LL/LPL safely in an Alpha with out ghost heat. However firing say 4x PPCs in an Alpha would get you the normal ghost heat penalty for firing 4x PPCs in such a manner. And only the Awesome gets this perk.

There are definitely plans to alter behaviours on a per-chassy basis, but not via the skill trees. The first of the variants to take advantage of the new mechanics will be released with the Clan mechs. I am unaware of plans to alter the existing skill trees at this time.

[Karl Berg]

Modo44, on 03 May 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

Threads like this keep showing up in patch feedback. Essentially, weapons appear to have a mind of their own as far as their place in a given location, which results in semi-random reordering after saving a loadout, and then again after launching in a mech. However, you can usually force MWO to do what you want by using an elaborate (and costly) workaround. Is the random reordering deliberate, or a bug? Are there plans to give players direct control over that? The reordering is often illogical, often putting big missile launchers in low-tube hardpoints, and forcing heavy energy weapons into low locations.

This is a bug. Essentially, at this time, the order in which you equip weapons determines the visual outcome, but that order is not persisted right now. This means, in-game, the order the game falls back on is the sort order the game retrieved equipped inventory in, which is sorted by primary key. That primary key for player inventory is a specially constructed hash with a few special properties. One of those properties is that it monotonically increases for given single player. This effectively makes the equip ordering fall back to inventory purchase order once you leave the mechlab.

The gameplay team has the bug, and is investigating options for resolving this. We've provided them some space for saving extra metadata about equipped inventory.