38 replies to this topic

[Ra-ul]

MaddMaxx, on 15 December 2011 - 10:26 AM, said:

By gummer that is it. You is sir are a genius or just have a good memory. Your pick for sure.

It even had tree skins rendered. Ahhh! the good old days. Blue balls and all.

A good memory and too many hours spent in a Mech cockpit back then

[VYCanis]

just FYI, but mechs only need harjel to help against breaches when under liquids. They don't need anything in particular for nasty atmosphere or lack thereof. Though their heatsinks will operate at different levels of efficiency, and a functional life support could be the only think keeping you from choking on fumes that turn lungs into mush. Though to be fair i would imagine any pilot with an ounce of self preservation might wear some haz environment gear if fighting in such an environment. might be uncomfortable to wear in a cramped hot cockpit, but it beats having a sulfur rich atmosphere giving ou a horrible death if you eject.

Edited by VYCanis, 15 December 2011 - 12:24 PM.

[KingCobra]

Here we go again with (maps) I dont want maps im tired of maps with borders in all the mechwarrior games and i have easy 500+ maps for all the games MW2-Mektekfreemercs.Some are very detailed with animations of weather but no gravity effects,ect.So i would like to see a 3D persistant worlds with no border limitations. I always felt when i hit the border of the map (crap there goes my realism factor).lets take a example from Fallout3,World Of Warcraft and have sector maps that dont end you just go from one sector of the planet to another.Then place all the animations you want per sector and the whole planet is a map.Then when your in your mech you could pull up sector maps of the planet your on or when you are in your Captains lounge you can pull up sectors in the known battletech universe then the planets then sectors on planets for knowlege and study.You could also use it for wargame simulations and tactics on contract drops.

Edited by KingCobra, 15 December 2011 - 12:44 PM.

[verybad]

Sorry, but you're going to have maps with borders. The game isn't tactically persistent (ie it's not an MMO like WoW) Additionally, it's using the Crisis 3 Engine, which at this time doesn't support that type of mapping AFAIK.

That type of mapping, especially when the game has no Bot enemies, is not a good fit. As it's a Free To Play, and consistent sector mapping would require a very large server support, I just don't see that happening.

[Dlardrageth]

Yeah, a "whole" persistent world/battlefield sounds nice on paper, but 'I seriously doubt PGI wants to spend the same kind of money on servers that Blizzard does right away. Easy to say you want a limitless map, when you don't need to consider how to actually pay for that one.

[KingCobra]

Well your bolth wrong check out this link on the crysis3 eng
http://crytek.com/cr...ngine3/overview

Plus I & my cousin were the 2 devs on a World Of Warcraft Private Server for almost 4 years we worked for 2 years rebuilding a new WOW world thats over 100 persistant 3d maps from meshes,terrains,buildings,trees,grass,ect every world type you can imagine even alien worlds so please if only 2 of us can make a whole new WOW in 2 years im sure PGI with all its staff could do it much faster.And this included characters,weapons,armors,ect.

P.S and yes the donations more than paid for the server and upkeep

[MaddMaxx]

Drool I could only imagine driving and fighting in a Mech, via First-Person mode, through Instances running Maps at that level of detail.

Drool!

Drool!

Drool!

[verybad]

KingCobra, on 15 December 2011 - 02:31 PM, said:

Well your bolth wrong check out this link on the crysis3 eng
http://crytek.com/cr...ngine3/overview

Since it's not an MMO, but a game where players drop into matches (expected to be about 20 minute games by the developers), the "Realistic Infinite Worlds" feature is a bit of a misnomaly.

Ultra large maps tend to get boring after a while. If your'e spendign most of your time getting to the battlearea (and with no Bots in the game the battles aren't going to be all that large).

I'd rather have reasonable sized maps that are well designed with chokepoints, strategic points and overall fun then massive, randomly generated maps where people may not even find each other over the course of an entire game.

I could see campaign style series of games where winning a match for one team resulted in dropping into different maps next than if the other team won.

Maxxed out map sizes don't help gameplay in a non MMO style game.

Edited by verybad, 16 December 2011 - 12:07 AM.

[KingCobra]

Well VeryBad i hope the game is not how you describe it we have just had 7+years of that with the Mektek mods and i find it has not been a great experiance overall and the community deserves more.Even though they tried to make it a better game overall they were unwilling to go all the way and make there mod into a standalone game that could have changed the way the communitys direction might have gone.So unless it (MWO)is somthing new & fresh i think the community would play it for a year then most would leave.To be the best game and hold your players for 10 years it has to start out with a hook line and sinker and your idea of how MWO will be leaves me with a empty fish basket.

[verybad]

There's a difference between "unwilling", and not having any resources to speak of.

How are you supposed to turn a mod in to a "standalone game that could have changed the way the communitys direction might have gone."

It was DirectX 7, it was an engine not designed for modification, Jeho (who is a PhD that also worked at NASA (I kid you not.)) Was the only one working on modifying the engine, he figured it out in his free time while also working 60 hour weeks at his day job running a part of a company and while raising kids. Me and a few other guys are just artists. I can make a decent looking mech, but couldn't code my way out of a bottle. In addition, just because Microsoft let us release Mercs for free doesn't mean they were about to let us release a standalone game that we would be alowed to charge even a penny for.

You've got rather high expectations for .a mod. We're just a bunch of guys with a few talents here and there that got together to make a mod, We put in years of our own free time to do what we could. We got some support from the community, we also got people complaining, often bitterly or rudely, to us because we didn't make Mercs the game that THEY wanted. We had people complaining because we didn't release our "Tools" I'll give you a hint, there were never any "tools" it was all a big nasty PITA to work on. There's no SDK, no import tools. Jeho simply busted his butt.
(I would say he did the most work by far, I probably made the most mechs for that engine, with Matt making the next most. We got some others doing stuff here and there, but me, Jeho, and Matt were the only three that worked on all of our major MechPacks.

Unwilling to make the game you wanted? Maybe, we made the mod we wanted and or could make in the timeframe we had. Jeho hasn't been doing anywork on it since his house burnt down AFAIK, and i can't really blame him.

The community may or may not "deserve more" but we for sure did what we could with nothing. I personally put over 500 hours work into that series of mods. I got back...well I improved my skills an an artist over the course of making the mods.

We as a group of guys didn't owe the community anything, and we put a hell of a lot of our own time into helping a game we loved, and got back some truly ungrateful responces from people that did nothing.

This is work that I personally did for that mod


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Others did additional work.

Now making a standalone game takes more, no arguments there. However saying we were somehow "unwilling" to make something in false. We worked hard. MP4 has a lot more sensore types (eg seismic, sattelite, IR (hot mechs are easier to detect) and more. Don't know if it be released however as Jeho's simply got a lot of more important stuff on his plate.


******************************************************************************************************************************************

As for what the developers for MWO are planning: Here are some quotes.
I assume that game play will be in the form of some type of match system. If so, how long would you estimate a typical match would last?


[PAUL] Right now we’re thinking a normal match with objectives would take approximately 20 minutes. But please keep in mind, this number might change through gameplay testing.

Is this game going to have lots of servers like a WoW or are you hoping for a single persistent server world like EVE Online?


[MATT C] Each game spawns its own dedicated server, these are not persistent like WoW, as mentioned that would take us into MMO territory. There is persistent game world information, i.e. match results are communicated to affect the balance of power in the Inner Sphere, who owns what planet etc. but there is no true persistent world, more of a persistent meta-game.

[MATT N] Lots of Servers Lots and Lots of servers

Will you have PvE elements on MechWarrior Online?

[PAUL] I may or may not pass out depending on Bryan’s answer to this.
[BRYAN] Not at launch. We're looking at ways to incorporate PVE post launch and withing the framwork of the MWO concept.

Personally, I don't see any of this as a bad thing. I don't have the time to play a game more than perhaps a few hours during the weekend, and as I am epileptic (have siezures) from using a computer for too long, I don't ever play for more than an hour or so at such times. For me personally, matchs are a good thing. I don't pretend to speak for others. If they want an MMORPG, that's fine. However, that's not what the developers for MWO have said the game is going to be.

Edited by verybad, 16 December 2011 - 01:39 PM.

[KingCobra]

Well verybad sence we agree and disagree on mekteks role in mechwarrior lets just let it go and get back on topic the old maps small med or large were for there day very good but i think PGI could and would take it a step farther by a no boundry system and the amazing framerates and animation details that can be used it would be a waste in my opinion to just drop on premade old maps like mercs had.A more ever changing enviroment would up the realism and excitement factor for the players in MWO.

P.S I never critisized mektek or there staff for what they did or the commitment or desires to make the game better heck i even contributed to them on a regular basis and still promote there mod on gameranger .Only the way they controled Mechwarriors future and implemented it to the fans and players based on what they thought would be best for all of us disturbed alot of players.Me included.

[Damocles]

KingCobra, on 16 December 2011 - 03:17 PM, said:

Only the way they controled Mechwarriors future and implemented it to the fans and players based on what they thought would be best for all of us disturbed alot of players.Me included.

Wow.
It sounds to me like they did what the could to provide SOMETHING to the community. Whereas there would have been NOTHING. I don't see how any fan of the game could be disturbed by that.

But I guess that is a bit OT.

[verybad]

KingCobra, on 16 December 2011 - 03:17 PM, said:

Well verybad sence we agree and disagree on mekteks role in mechwarrior lets just let it go and get back on topic the old maps small med or large were for there day very good but i think PGI could and would take it a step farther by a no boundry system and the amazing framerates and animation details that can be used it would be a waste in my opinion to just drop on premade old maps like mercs had.A more ever changing enviroment would up the realism and excitement factor for the players in MWO.

Boundaryless maps lead to boring matches. People just get lost if they go wandering exploring. In addition, if the map has objectives, then obviously an "infinite" map is just a waste of resources, both developmental and for the hardware to generate. Bigger doesn't mean better in terms of map design. I used to believe that, but making maps for a variety of games over the years has brought me to believe that a well concieved map, even if it's small, is far better than a procedural "infinite" map.

Quote

P.S I never critisized mektek or there staff for what they did or the commitment or desires to make the game better heck i even contributed to them on a regular basis and still promote there mod on gameranger .Only the way they controled Mechwarriors future and implemented it to the fans and players based on what they thought would be best for all of us disturbed alot of players.Me included.

We never "controlled" Mechwarrior, we just did what we could for the game in our vision, in some cases our execution wasn't perfect even in our own vision either, it's a lot of work, and spending a few weeks finding a bug can get ...tedious. Naturally that vision can't match with other people's vision, but it's not like we prevented people from doing their own stuff.
I'll drop discussion of our (MekTek's work) from this point on in this thread however as I don't want to be off topic or disruptive.

The game looks to be match based, with @ 20 minute matches for objective based matches. This isn't really suitable for borderless maps. Either you're fighting for the objective, or you're losign the match. Large maps might work ok, say it's 32-64 players per game, then I could see a 5kx5k map being alriight. Very high frame rates don't fit in well with borderless maps with a lot of scenery however...

I like the idea of campaign linked maps.

[Breeze]

Just last night, I was thinking about how varied the new maps could be, in terms of terrain types and environmental factors. I started to think about how cool it'd be for a Mech engagement inside a hugely forested areas. Moving amongst giant redwoods that would actually tower way above the mechs would be amazing (given than giant redwoods can grow up to 85 metres, and mechs are typically around 7-17 metres).

But that's already been raised earlier in this thread. Another point that's been raised earlier is the wide variety of terrain types that are seen just on Earth. I think that variety should serve as an inspiration for map designs. Just visually, a forested mountain region in China is vastly different from a forested mountain region in Northern Europe. A coastline in the tropics is vastly different from a coastline in Scotland.

I just thought that this thread is worth bumping up again, and hopefully the devs will take some of these comments to mind when designing their maps.

[Conjure]

Andar89, on 14 December 2011 - 10:15 AM, said:

Hmm well i think most planates habitaed by Humans are terraformed by former starleague.
But I think supplydepos and tech vaults can be found at unhabited worlds, as well as recharge stations for drop and jump ships.
So I can think of Zero Gravity barren planetoids and moons to fight on, or poisonous amoniak athmosphere deserts.
So this could affect the actual mechcombat (heatsinks, ballistics, jumpjets) or when cockpit glass get a hit from an LBX/AC.
Mechs have preasurized cockpit with livesupport, but well if it gets damaged in combat, you should be screwed.

I am new and haven't goen through much of the forums so forgive me if this has been brought up. Enviromental effec

[Conjure]

Andar89, on 14 December 2011 - 10:15 AM, said:

Hmm well i think most planates habitaed by Humans are terraformed by former starleague.
But I think supplydepos and tech vaults can be found at unhabited worlds, as well as recharge stations for drop and jump ships.
So I can think of Zero Gravity barren planetoids and moons to fight on, or poisonous amoniak athmosphere deserts.
So this could affect the actual mechcombat (heatsinks, ballistics, jumpjets) or when cockpit glass get a hit from an LBX/AC.
Mechs have preasurized cockpit with livesupport, but well if it gets damaged in combat, you should be screwed.

I am new and haven't goen through much of the forums so forgive me if this has been brought up. Enviromental effects would to me be an amazing mechanic. If it is hot outside you over heat at a faster rate, If you are in rain or jump into cool water you cool down. Mud could cause falls running at high speeds (this would leave room for certain mechs that can handle particular conditions better)

[crazy jake]

GraySho, on 14 December 2011 - 05:29 AM, said:

Gravity would influence the size of vegetation. Low gravity planets would have bigger growing trees and vegetation, while planets with higher gravity would most likely only have shrubbery.

The variety is endless and I invite everyone to bring in their ideas.

Does that mean on a planet with half the amount of gravity as Earth, my Atlas would only weigh in at 50 Tons? And on a world that has 2x the gravity it would weigh 200 Tons?

I hate math!

I'm all for everything, just don't take those new gravity tonnage numbers into account when limiting the tonnage for missions....

=)

[Outlaw Wolf]

I'm all for having different map styles that vary from the generic 4 we are so used to seeing (urban / forest / tundra / desert) afterall, fighting near an HPG or other kind of station on a moon, or an underwater battlefield like MW2:GBL. Even in MW3, although it was still the same planet, fighting near pools of lava that greatly effected your heat generation (or killed you if you stepped somewhere you shouldn't) would force players to be vary diverse in their playstyles, and really cant rely on just expecting to run the same things over and over, and would also help balance those so called "staple" variants. Example of this would be, a space battle where heat is pretty much non-existent in reality and the fact that there is no atmosphere, then energy weapons and some ballistic weapons would be your only usable weapons since a place with no atmosphere wont allow your missiles to follow a locked target.

On the opposite side, you would have the "fire" style planet or whatever, where there is lots of lava or steam, where ballistic weapons are going to be favored due to their low heat generation.

[Ra-ul]

crazy jake, on 09 February 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:

Does that mean on a planet with half the amount of gravity as Earth, my Atlas would only weigh in at 50 Tons? And on a world that has 2x the gravity it would weigh 200 Tons?

I hate math!

I'm all for everything, just don't take those new gravity tonnage numbers into account when limiting the tonnage for missions....

=)

Mathematically correct, but practically hard to imagine. The internal structure would most likely not sustain such high (x2) gravity during combat for a long time. I think it should rather be limited to something around .7 to 1.3, as greater deviations would be too difficult for man and machine (not to talk about habitable environment).

But it would be interesting to see how higher gravity would affect maneuverability of different Mech classes, thus shifting efficiency in their role they would occupy under normal gravity conditions.