64 replies to this topic

[MCVs]

gets me to think about all the buzz about the mech-rescale program that the Devs have been pushing since last year?

was there any result? Or has all those buzz all went down the drain? for nothing?

If I am not mistaken THE NOVA was the overall winner for a re-scale... but I dont see any progress or announcement from the Devs that they are actually doing something about it?

Come on DEVs... do something or is there no money in it that you dont wanna bother?

[levitas]

In the last town hall they said rescales are happening for cat and nova, that it would take time because they have to do a full remodel process, and that a new cat hero is coming.

Just because it didn't get done for the next patch doesn't mean anyone forgot, and they've always had to take a few months to get new models in the game in the past.

Edited by solar levitas, 22 February 2016 - 05:33 AM.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

does CryEngine not have a parameter for object scaling?

you never need to redo the entire model, you have to rescale it and fix clipping and detailing - that does not take an entire year

[MCVs]

good to hear that but.....

the last activity from that post was july 2015... does it take that long to redesign the said mechs... its been more than half a year already... should we wait 1 year? 2 years for a change?

more new mechs seems to be popping out here and there and yet what matters most are being left out... hmmmm... how long should it be? year 2020?

[ScarecrowES]

If you rescale more than a few percent, the entire model has to be re-rigged, reset for animation, all the variable geometry for weapons redone. Might as well create a new model from scratch at that point. Catapult has to be brought down 12%... 18%... I forget. But too much for a simple rescale.

Edited by ScarecrowES, 22 February 2016 - 05:55 AM.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

guess Russ decided to reprioritize - there really is no other reasonable explanation

edit: you can rescale models with animation hookups and rescale for run speeds, that takes a couple of days

in fact, you can just take the entire thing even with weapons on it, and hook it up so it resizes all attached "modules" on it by the same multiplier - and then touch up the animations separately so run speed matches with actual travelled distance

but even all that, or ENTIRELY redoing a model from scratch, does not take a year - more like 2 months

so, it had to have been reprioritized

Edited by Thunderbird Anthares, 22 February 2016 - 05:58 AM.

[ScarecrowES]

Thunderbird Anthares, on 22 February 2016 - 05:55 AM, said:

guess Russ decided to reprioritize - there really is no other reasonable explanation

It was all explained in the recent town hall. Some mechs can be done with simple rescale, some have to be totally redone. It's a lot to do.

[Appogee]

They have to redo all the camos for each chassis, too, so there's a fair bit of work in each one.

Given PGI is mostly comprised of graphic artists, you'd think it could have been done a bit quicker.

But I guess they have been working on new Mech Packs.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

ScarecrowES, on 22 February 2016 - 05:58 AM, said:

It was all explained in the recent town hall. Some mechs can be done with simple rescale, some have to be totally redone. It's a lot to do.

doing an entire model of this complexity does not take nearly this long

[MCVs]

that I have to agree...

there is just no money in remodeling the poor ol NOVA.... lets just agree that its an OLD MECH... with no Dollar sign in its redesign and it will be left out in the junk... dollar runs the MWO world after all

[SpiralFace]

Thunderbird Anthares, on 22 February 2016 - 05:51 AM, said:

does CryEngine not have a parameter for object scaling?

you never need to redo the entire model, you have to rescale it and fix clipping and detailing - that does not take an entire year

Yes, cry engine can scale STATIC objects in-engine very easily. But these are static mesh actors with adjoining hitboxes. Once you start getting into animatable meshes, ESPECIALLY player character meshes, Its a whole lot more to consider.

Even if you took model adjustments, texture corrections, and any kind of Normal map re-baking off of the table, your still left with:

- Need to make corrections to the dynamic weapons (as they are seperate meshes compared to the mech and will need to fit on the new model without issues.
- Need to touch up any texture work.
- Need to re-bind a fresh rig to the model (as scale deformers on top of animated rigs is a sure fire way to tank your FPS.)
- Need to transfer animations to the model.
- Need to cleanup animations after the transfer (as you NEVER get a scaled translation one for one.
- Need to adjust colision parameters
- Need to adjust the player cockpit mesh (as its a different model then the player mech.
- All the animation adjustments you needed to do to the mech needs to be applied to the cockpit.
- Need to QA and test all of this stuff, because it WILL break just like any new model would.

Now none of this is obviously out of reach, but Russ has said two things. Catapult is going to be getting a new model, so process is taking much longer. And this is going to be a FULL game wide audit of scales across ALL mechs. With the simplest mechs taking about a full man day's worth of work to do, and more troublesome ones taking longer. So with 60 chassis, 1 man assigned to them, and only 20 work day's in a typical month, its going to take a bit to get to all of them, but the process has started.

March was always teased, but its not a guaranteed thing. Since the Catapult itself is getting a new model to go along with the re-scale.

[ScarecrowES]

First, as stated in the townhall, they had to come up with a way to determine exactly how big a mech was relative to tonnage to see if there really were size discrepancies. They said the front and side view pixel comparisons the community was using wasnt accurate.

Beyond that, they had to determine what COULD be done to rescale... answer here was not much for the more out of size models. They also had to determine how a mech was oversized? Too tall? Too fat? Too much torso? Too much legs?

It's never been as simple as just moving a slider up and down.

For the catapult, for instance, it was determined the model would have to be scrapped and redone. They're going so far as to create a new hero mech on the new model to justify the time and cost to redo the model. Nova? New model.

Some mechs won't take as long as others, but PGI is looking to redo the whole list at some point. They're coming up with methods that will let them rescale faster for models that don't otherwise need adjustment. But yeah, its going to take time.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Thunderbird Anthares, on 22 February 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

doing an entire model of this complexity does not take nearly this long

I'm sure if it was the ONLY thing on their plate, it wouldn't take that long. However, they have the reseens they were doing (just finishing the Archer now), they have weapon geometry they are working on (Stalker just finished), and that's not including new mechs after the reseens.

Even with the Catapult, the rework takes serious retooling. The launchers were borked and need a complete overhaul, there is still scaling and hitbox woes that need addressing, and to help pay for all of that (5 existing variants to repair), they are designing a new variant too).

There is a lot of crap for PGI to do, so be patient.

[MCVs]

in regards of the NOVA rescale... why not make the mech to a 75 tonner or 90 tonner mech so that its uber size and hitboxes are just about the same as an assault mech as it is. that way they dont need to change anything but just the weight class.. hihihihi....
not to mention it is as slow as a heavy mech and turns like an assault

Edited by MCVs, 22 February 2016 - 07:01 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

MCVs, on 22 February 2016 - 06:59 AM, said:

in regards of the NOVA rescale... why not make the mech to a 75 tonner or 90 tonner mech so that its uber size and hitboxes are just about the same as an assault mech as it is. that way they dont need to change anything but just the weight class.. hihihihi....
not to mention it is as slow as a heavy mech and turns like an assault

lol.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 22 February 2016 - 07:19 AM.

[STEF_]

Soon <sup>tm

(mind, tm is not T.rade M.ark...but T.oo M.ean)</sup>

[Zolaz]

You just have to take what Russ and Paul say with a bag of salt. Past performance is the surest indicator of future performance.

[Gas Guzzler]

MCVs, on 22 February 2016 - 05:53 AM, said:

good to hear that but.....

the last activity from that post was july 2015... does it take that long to redesign the said mechs... its been more than half a year already... should we wait 1 year? 2 years for a change?

more new mechs seems to be popping out here and there and yet what matters most are being left out... hmmmm... how long should it be? year 2020?

"What matters most" is subjective.

In any case, they didn't have the resources to focus on rescales until January of this year, and I think we are expecting to see some of the first few to roll out April-May time frame but I could be wrong.

They have always said that it takes a while and is a fair amount of work, and the Catapult is actually getting its whole model reworked which is pretty cool in my opinion.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 22 February 2016 - 07:36 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

MeiSooHaityu, on 22 February 2016 - 07:18 AM, said:

lol.

Well he has a point.. Call it 90 tons and you have a Supernova

[Bud Crue]

I thought that at the last townhall, or maybe it was one of the roadmaps, it was mentioned that the re-size project was being worked on and the first ones were due in April. No? Anyone else remember this? Maybe I am confusing this with the Catapult re-make.