109 replies to this topic

[Torgun]

Dock Steward, on 15 October 2014 - 01:03 PM, said:

Agree to disagree then.

For sure, more balanced mechs in general sure as heck beats a whole weightclass being balanced better between them, but overall made to be bad compared to other weightclasses.

[Glaive-]

Koniving, on 15 October 2014 - 01:00 PM, said:

Indeed.

On your left is the original Centurion in MWO.
On the right is one rescaled so that each major limb matched the art (arms, legs, torso, head).

This took me about 15 minutes to get the measurements and about 20 seconds to actually do it. Of course there's a bit more to it than that for MWO, so realistically it may take several days at the most for a single chassis.

This is exactly how the Centurion should have been done.
It even looks slim like that in PGI's concept art:



A very similar thing happened to the poor Quickdraw. If you compare the ingame model to the concept art, you will find that it was originally drawn to be much slimmer.

[Koniving]

armyunit, on 15 October 2014 - 01:34 PM, said:

This is exactly how the Centurion should have been done.
It even looks slim like that in PGI's concept art:



A very similar thing happened to the poor Quickdraw. If you compare the ingame model to the concept art, you will find that it was originally drawn to be much slimmer.

That's what I scaled the Centurion to.

[Burktross]

Felio, on 15 October 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

Unfortunately to resize a 'mech, they would have to recreate it from scratch -- modeling, texturing, hitboxing, placing the cockpit camera, all of it.

What they need to do is develop some kind of software that would make it easier. Imagine the benefits to balance and role warfare if they could use size as a factor.

No.... I don't think that's how it works at all...
I'm no modeller.... but I'm fairly certain.

[HlynkaCG]

LordKnightFandragon, on 15 October 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

Which mechs in this game are actually scaled properly? Probably none? Why is it so hard to scale them right? Its not like there isnt TT TROs that tell the devs....

Would it be so OP and unbalanced if all the mechs were the right sizes?

There was a thread in the Fan-Art section a while back where someone was importing various mech's meshes in blender to see if their cockpit meshes would actually "fit".

As I recall the Spider, Commando, and Cicada, were all scaled "properly" with the cockpit mesh closely matching the external mesh. The raven and Catapult were actually over-sized and the Atlas significantly under-sized with the cockpit taking up the entire head not just the left eye.

Koniving, on 15 October 2014 - 12:13 PM, said:

I can agree there... until finding out the actual meters of each.



Now, consider this...

Granted but you have to remember that the BTU is infamously inconsistent when it comes to information on distances and scaling. I'm more worried about internal consistency within MWO itself than matching against some arbitrarily selected value.

Edited by HlynkaCG, 15 October 2014 - 02:03 PM.

[MoonUnitBeta]

The mech sizes are never going to change.
The amount of work, like somoene mentioned, basically is like creating a whole new mech. Everything needs to be re-rigged. Hitboxes resized and even potentially rebalanced, and very likely several other behind the scenes things that we wouldn't normally think about, like where the weapon specific models appear.

I think PGI has been quite clear with their sizing philosophy. A bigger mech =/= a heavier mech. They might look a little goofy when you see a 50 ton mech beside a 100ton mech and think "Why isn't it double the size?", but interms of density vs volume it starts to make more sense.
The old battletech drawings have cockpits that wouldn't even be able to fit a life sized human. MWO has this problem with mechs even with being bigger than lore, and the mech cockpits are still too small for the modeled human character.
There comes a point where we realize this game is a fantasy game and not everything is going to add up, and we do our best to try and make it work.

Not saying MWO is perfect either... the larger sizes in the real time world has it's obvious side effects, In the same breath though, I think the quirks system will be able to express the idea that even though medium mechs are tall mechs that doesn't have to mean they are heavy mechs. And because of this, I feel that medium mechs are going to become a lot more interesting to play, and play a larger role in combat.

[oldradagast]

Pendraco, on 15 October 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

Centurion, Griffin and Shadow Hawk are consider to be great mediums by many - all three of those can tank damage and zombie like no other. Personally, I think mediums are in a pretty good spot....I just think most people prefer Heavies and assualts.

<Flame suit activate>

And that is purely by dumb luck - Centurions have large arms to absorb damage when destroyed (which is not surprising given the HUGE size of the mech, arms in particular) and Shadowhawks, despite being too tall, have a narrow profile, which makes it difficult to focus fire on a torso section. Griffins are good only because they LRM and thus keep away from the fight... and they have great torso twist, but that also has nothing to do with mech scaling.

Few oversized mechs see any serious play, and the ones that do only see play because of other oddities about their geometry that balances out their bad scaling.

For a list of other crud mechs that are too large and rarely see play:

Trebuchet
Quickdraw
Dragon
Awesome
Warhawk (arguably)
Thunderbolt (arguably)
Wolverine

[Alek Ituin]

oldradagast, on 15 October 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

And that is purely by dumb luck - Centurions have large arms to absorb damage when destroyed (which is not surprising given the HUGE size of the mech, arms in particular) and Shadowhawks, despite being too tall, have a narrow profile, which makes it difficult to focus fire on a torso section. Griffins are good only because they LRM and thus keep away from the fight... and they have great torso twist, but that also has nothing to do with mech scaling.

Few oversized mechs see any serious play, and the ones that do only see play because of other oddities about their geometry that balances out their bad scaling.

For a list of other crud mechs that are too large and rarely see play:

Trebuchet
Quickdraw
Dragon
Awesome
Warhawk (arguably)
Thunderbolt (arguably)
Wolverine

I wholeheartedly disagree with the Warhawk being on that list.

In fact, I am of the opinion that the Daishi is inferior to the Warhawk in every way bar available tonnage. Every match in my Warhawk, I take unholy amounts of damage and just keep rolling, whereas the Daishi's all get insta-gibbed.


Warhawk's are harder, better, faster, stronger.

[Xarian]

Felio, on 15 October 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

Unfortunately to resize a 'mech, they would have to recreate it from scratch -- modeling, texturing, hitboxing, placing the cockpit camera, all of it.

What they need to do is develop some kind of software that would make it easier. Imagine the benefits to balance and role warfare if they could use size as a factor.

No, they don't. Not even in the slightest.

Dimensional scaling is something that's been built into every modeling software since the invention of modeling software. A single programmer could rescale every mech in literally one day.

[Xarian]

Alek Ituin, on 15 October 2014 - 03:30 PM, said:

I wholeheartedly disagree with the Warhawk being on that list.

In fact, I am of the opinion that the Daishi is inferior to the Warhawk in every way bar available tonnage. Every match in my Warhawk, I take unholy amounts of damage and just keep rolling, whereas the Daishi's all get insta-gibbed.

Warhawks are harder, better, faster, stronger.

All this really proves is that you're decent in a Warhawk and terrible with a Direwolf. It's the same size and is worse all-around in terms of tonnage, critical slots, hardpoints, and armor. The only advantages that the Warhawk has are that it runs 18 kph faster and has higher twist range/speed.

Those are significant advantages and may play very well toward your abilities as a pilot - but the Warhawk is a big fat mech.

I agree with you that the Warhawk should not be on that list. It's supposed to be a fat mech - and it's a good deal smaller than the Atlas already, just like the Direwolf (which is scaled perfectly - short and fat).

[Xarian]

MoonUnitBeta, on 15 October 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

The mech sizes are never going to change.
The amount of work, like somoene mentioned, basically is like creating a whole new mech. Everything needs to be re-rigged. Hitboxes resized and even potentially rebalanced, and very likely several other behind the scenes things that we wouldn't normally think about, like where the weapon specific models appear.

No, it's not. It's one of the most trivial things that you can do in modeling.

Please stop spreading misinformation about how difficult these tasks are.

The difficulty comes in three places: making the original mesh, texturing, and animating. Once the mesh is made, scaling that mesh to make it taller, skinnier, or just all-around bigger is trivial. Making individual parts skinnier (say, Timberwolf legs) is also relatively easy, but significantly more difficult than simply taking an entire mesh and making it skinnier.

Consider a very simple program:
- Take every X coordinate in a mesh and associated meshes (such as hit boxes, camera locations, etc)
- Multiply every X coordinate by 0.85

Voila, you just made your mech 15% skinnier using a program that requires 5 lines of code.

Edited by Xarian, 15 October 2014 - 03:52 PM.

[kuangmk11]

As has been said, rescaling is easy. Nothing needs to be re-rigged (the rig scales with the model). Textures don't care at all what size the model is. The truth is that it is just a can of worms they do NOT want to open because it becomes a variable to tweak instead of being set in stone.

[Scratx]

kuangmk11, on 15 October 2014 - 05:06 PM, said:

As has been said, rescaling is easy. Nothing needs to be re-rigged (the rig scales with the model). Textures don't care at all what size the model is. The truth is that it is just a can of worms they do NOT want to open because it becomes a variable to tweak instead of being set in stone.

Actually, they would have to tweak the walking animations as well, at least, because otherwise the mech's gait would not match the speed it's moving.

[kuangmk11]

Scratx, on 15 October 2014 - 05:15 PM, said:

Actually, they would have to tweak the walking animations as well, at least, because otherwise the mech's gait would not match the speed it's moving.

Yes, that is true but they already don't sync very well, some might even get better.

[HlynkaCG]

Xarian, on 15 October 2014 - 03:50 PM, said:

No, it's not. It's one of the most trivial things that you can do in modeling.

Please stop spreading misinformation about how difficult these tasks are.

...


Consider a very simple program:
- Take every X coordinate in a mesh and associated meshes (such as hit boxes, camera locations, etc)
- Multiply every X coordinate by 0.85

Voila, you just made your mech 15% skinnier using a program that requires 5 lines of code.

I've done a bit of amateur game-development and (inclyding mods for Cryengine games) and its a bit more involved than that.

That said, you're right it is still no where near as bad as re-making a mech from scratch.

[KingDavid]

Agree with the OP, the Mechs scaling in MWO does not make any sense and logic. How on earth a 55 tons mech could have the same size and height as a 100 tons mech ??

[MoonUnitBeta]

Xarian, on 15 October 2014 - 03:50 PM, said:

No, it's not. It's one of the most trivial things that you can do in modeling.

Please stop spreading misinformation about how difficult these tasks are.

The difficulty comes in three places: making the original mesh, texturing, and animating. Once the mesh is made, scaling that mesh to make it taller, skinnier, or just all-around bigger is trivial. Making individual parts skinnier (say, Timberwolf legs) is also relatively easy, but significantly more difficult than simply taking an entire mesh and making it skinnier.

Consider a very simple program:
- Take every X coordinate in a mesh and associated meshes (such as hit boxes, camera locations, etc)
- Multiply every X coordinate by 0.85

Voila, you just made your mech 15% skinnier using a program that requires 5 lines of code.

Actually I'm not spreading misinformation as I'm basically repeating what PGI says. It was hella long ago so I'm not going to go out digging for a quote for you, but what I have said is basically a paraphase of what they said. Hitboxes, rigging, cockpit placement, and much more are all things that need to be considered and fixed when altering the scale of a mech on any axis.

It's not as simple as the Transform tool in photoshop. So it's you who should stop spreading the misinformation. Thank you.

[Pendraco]

oldradagast, on 15 October 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

And that is purely by dumb luck - Centurions have large arms to absorb damage when destroyed (which is not surprising given the HUGE size of the mech, arms in particular) and Shadowhawks, despite being too tall, have a narrow profile, which makes it difficult to focus fire on a torso section. Griffins are good only because they LRM and thus keep away from the fight... and they have great torso twist, but that also has nothing to do with mech scaling.

Few oversized mechs see any serious play, and the ones that do only see play because of other oddities about their geometry that balances out their bad scaling.

For a list of other crud mechs that are too large and rarely see play:

Trebuchet
Quickdraw
Dragon
Awesome
Warhawk (arguably)
Thunderbolt (arguably)
Wolverine

All these Mechs could be argued. There are people (myself included) that use and do just fine in all these Mechs. You guys don't get it! Shrinking Mediums a pixel or two isn't going to change anything! They will never be small enough to be hard to hit like lights!.....Period!

The only problem mediums have is they find themselves on a battlefield full of heavies and assaults.....that's it. I think most agree that Blackjacks, Cicada's and Hunchie's are scaled fine.....and guess what? They are still easy to hit.

Edited by Pendraco, 16 October 2014 - 07:53 AM.

[Torgun]

MoonUnitBeta, on 16 October 2014 - 06:52 AM, said:

Actually I'm not spreading misinformation as I'm basically repeating what PGI says. It was hella long ago so I'm not going to go out digging for a quote for you, but what I have said is basically a paraphase of what they said. Hitboxes, rigging, cockpit placement, and much more are all things that need to be considered and fixed when altering the scale of a mech on any axis.

It's not as simple as the Transform tool in photoshop. So it's you who should stop spreading the misinformation. Thank you.

Well PGi have said lots of things, some are just batcrap crazy like 250K for a single map. So just paraphrasing what they said isn't always a good source of info.

[Squarebasher]

I have never really noticed this before, but the OP is right shadowhawk and griffin are bigger than the jager which does seem a bit odd.