My experience when I fist played the game;
"Wow! is that power armour? do they have elementals?
WTF! that's a commando?
Argh! it's behind my trial highlander killing me!
Can't.......Seem to turn.......quick enough....to hit -.-
I know! Death from above, Highlaaaaaand Burial! And beginners luck, miracle of miracles I land on the damn thing.
Utterly dissoriented after teleporting to a nearby location facing a random direction - neglegible damage done to commando.
seconds later "destroyed by <commando pilots name>"
Initially I was really thrown off by the scale of mechs - and there were a lot more threads about like this one pointing out the disgrepancies in mech scale.
Pjwned, on 05 December 2014 - 03:03 AM, said:
It's been a problem for a long time and PGI is relentless in how stupid they are in handling it, which is to say that not only are they not handling it, they are actually making it worse as time goes on by releasing new mechs that are affected by the same problem and continuing to not fix it.
Not fixing this since a LONG time ago is just one of many piss poor decisions.
That is a fair point but most medium mechs (and arguably some heavy mechs) are still too big, probably the only one that's about appropriate size is the Shadowhawk and even then it could probably use to be a little smaller.
Whilst I think you're probably being a little over cynical Pjwned, there have been countless threads - some with elaborate graphics, models, lore referances and math - others just complaining - about the scale of mechs. As far as I'm aware PGI have NEVER rescaled a mech regardless of the outcry or even weighed in to a discussion explaining their rational behind choosing the scale of various mechs. Closest we've had are hitbox modifications and fixed weapon geomerty passes.
As an amatuer 3d artist with some game moding experience, I don't believe it's as impossible as some in this thread claim nor is it as simple as some others claim. Whilst a 3d transorm to scale a mesh is easy, additional considerations quickly pile up such as animation changes, hooks for cameras and effects, getting changes in engine, perfomance of texture and geometry density on screen and even mundane administration of game assests, patching testing and feedback.
Strum Wealh, on 16 October 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:
In general, the heights of most of the generally-upright (as opposed to "hunched over", like the Catapult, Mad Cat, and Stalker) Medium, Heavy, and Assault 'Mechs are quite close to where they should be with regard to a constant-density volume vs scale relationship.
The Light 'Mechs, on the other hand, are mostly out-of-whack (e.g. the MWO Commando is 12% too short, which is far more egregious than the MWO Centurion being 5% too tall... or like the overall size difference between the 35-ton MWO Jenner and the 40-ton MWO Cicada), and the Light 'Mechs generally need to be scaled up (that is, made bigger) in order to bring them into line with the other three weight classes.
Strum, you're gone out of your way to point out square and cube relations behind 3d scaling, surface area and volume then downplayed scale issues with meduims and most upright mechs as only a small percentage height difference. Surley these square and cube out to much larger surface area and volume discrepancies. 5% too tall is approx. 10% more surface area from any given viewing angle and 15.7625% more volume. But still that's just going via height. Many mechs are overly wide or bulky due to their geometry even if they are a reasonable height. It's their volume that seems way off.
I agree the lights are obviously far more compact in terms of weight/volume density than any other weight class. So much so I think it MUST be a concious decision on behalf of PGI.
Kiblams, on 04 December 2014 - 02:27 PM, said:
I have been reading loads of posts like this after thinking myself that the medium mechs were too big in the game, so today I decided to make my own little webpage to compare them:
http://ecogamer.co.uk/MechComparison/
I think that once you see them side by side, they do look a fair bit smaller than the assaults, though now much smaller than the heavies really so maybe the scale is screwed.
Nice little tool Kiblams, Cheers!
One of the first things I did when I first started playing and considered mech scale was take a front and side picture of each mech in mechlab to compare. Given it's a fairly straight shot of the mechs you can get a rough and ready approximate of how compact a mechs is by just 2d scaling the images to normalise the tonnage
I took the cube root of ( 100 tons devided by the mechs tonnage ) as a percentage and just scaled the front and side images by that ammount to normalise them as if they all weighed 100 tons.
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.
Great work Koniving! looks really sweet.
At times I wonder if mech scale is actually driven by the art direction - or a chinese whispers approach of concept art, to 3d artists interpretation of the concept art and so on. I do like your scale interpretation of the concept art more than what we have in game (even if the gun barrel is now an oval - classic example of those "extra intangibles" when trying to make changes).
If we really wanted a good mech scale comparison - we'd need someone to go through and either normalise each mesh by tonnage and scale for a visual comparison, or if they're nice meshes without holes or overlaping geometry and play ball, simply give us the volume measurements as is. 3dmax has a measurements rollout with volume - I'm sure Maya / blender / other packages have similar tools.
TL:DR I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any mech scales to change.
Edited by MuzMuzMuz, 05 December 2014 - 06:58 PM.
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