48 replies to this topic

[Tarogato]

Paigan, on 29 November 2017 - 01:15 AM, said:

One guy says "I want to swim in a pool on the moon."
Another guy says "That would cost an INSANE amount of money for a questionable use."
And somehow, it is assumed that both sides are equally valid. Out of some conflict-avoiding social principle.
Sorry, but they are not.

It's more like "I want to swim in a pool on Mars"

That would require an IMMENSE amount of effort and money... for questionable use.

But we need to get this whole living on Mars thing done with eventually if we wanted to ensure our indefinite survival as a species.

Same as PGI needs to rewrite a lot of their spaghetti code. So much of their development is held back by how much of a mess their backend is, with layers of unnecessary redundancy and magic numbers. Gotta fix it eventually, or this game is never going to get out of the slump it's been in for the past three years.

[The Basilisk]

Xavori, on 28 November 2017 - 03:22 PM, said:

PGI make it happen!

Give us the Scorpion.

Use the 1TB, 10M, 12C as regular package and the 12K and 12S and reinforcements. The Hero is obviously the Wednall.

This is a 55 ton IS mech that would be awesome in faction scouting. As is well known, faction scouting is often all about tearing the legs off your enemy. Well, jokes on you! If you tear a Scorpion's legs off, it's still got 3 more!

So make this happen NOW!

In fact, I'm not spending another dime on MWO until that dime can go towards Scorpions. Of which I'll buy the Ultimate package. So there!

An other "I want a quad" thread....well ....here I go.

The TLDR is: Quads need inverse kinematics aka Mech inclination aka terrain/mech interaction to function properly wich has been deemed impossible to implement in MWO due to certain early design decissions that have been made during development of the game.
--> Quads are impossible in MWO

If you want to know the details why IK can not be implemented feel free to google it.

Edited by The Basilisk, 29 November 2017 - 01:31 AM.

[Tarogato]

The Basilisk, on 29 November 2017 - 01:30 AM, said:

An other "I want a quad" thread....well ....here I go.

The TLDR is: Quads need inverse kinematics aka Mech inclination aka terrain/mech interaction to function properly wich has been deemed impossible to implement in MWO due to certain early design decissions that have been made during development of the game.
--> Quads are impossible in MWO

Quads with zero IK are acceptable.

Four-wheeled vehicles and hovertanks don't need IK. Neither, technically, do quadrupeds.

[The Basilisk]

Tarogato, on 29 November 2017 - 01:33 AM, said:

Quads with zero IK are acceptable.

Four-wheeled vehicles and hovertanks don't need IK. Neither, technically, do quadrupeds.

No Hovertanks and 4wV do not need IK due to no walking animation and considerably smaler bodys.--> less clipping issues on slopes. For smal objects like tanks and personal vehicles simple collision mechanics will suffice.
A Quad without IK would cause either parts of the mechs boddy to clip into hillslopes, ramps or other inklines or cause massive floating issues with two or more leggs of the quad.

[xVLFBERHxT]

To say it in the words of a great man: "Circus mechs..."





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[Tarogato]

The Basilisk, on 29 November 2017 - 01:39 AM, said:

A Quad without IK would cause either parts of the mechs boddy to clip into hillslopes, ramps or other inklines or cause massive floating issues with two or more leggs of the quad.

Maybe if you give it the simplest possible bounding box.





But if you do something vaguely like this, it can straddle terrain without IK. Sure, you'll get more leg clipping than a biped, because quads have one extra leg (compared to a tripod, which even stiff as a board can still pretty much always have all legs contacting the ground), but I don't think it will be that bad. I think it would be passable.

[Xavori]

Paigan, on 29 November 2017 - 12:20 AM, said:

Inb4 Juodas .

But seriously:
Having a Mech figure that significantly differs from bipedal would mean a MASSIVE development effort (logic, geometry stuff, even Mechlab etc.) for a relatively tiny gain (and IMHO pretty ugly Mechs, too). This is the definition of a bad deal.
Even a seriously big developer like Bioware said they won't even do four-legged enemies for Mass Effect 3 MP when we asked them for them, because it would have been unviably high effort even for them.

You have to understand that at least vaguely on a technical level:
Quads would not just another Mech announcement with another concept art turned into a model, it would be like rewriting like 10% of the whole game. Just to get a couple of damn ugly Mechs in.
Even I can tell that that is completely out of the question.

I'm well aware of the technical difficulties. Just because its hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

In fact, I'd argue at this point that until those technical difficulties start getting dealt with, there isn't much point to adding anything more to the game. I'm really not interested in yet another laser vomit mech, nor another boat this or boat that mech. I want different. I want more map modes. I want more maps.

What I don't want is more of the same which is all that's on the horizon for new mechs, and as the Thanatos and a few other recent releases have shown, if PGI releases a mech that doesn't do anything better than existing mechs, they might as well have not released it.

[Rick T Dangerous]

Quads would be cool if they could raise a rear leg to mark their territory. Would at least add a new dimension to scouting. And it would teach those ankle biting lights a lesson.

[Vellron2005]

To be honest, I don't really understand why quad mechs are such an issue..

OK, so they are a bit harder to animate as one would have to study animal motion patterns.. but still.. should not be THAT difficult..

And as far as legging mechanics goes, just add an extra hitbox, and make the mech legged as normal, when 1 leg is lost..
(even a three-legged dog has issues walking)

I know I'm a layman, but it really does not sound so complicated..

[Xavori]

Vellron2005, on 30 November 2017 - 04:34 AM, said:

To be honest, I don't really understand why quad mechs are such an issue..

OK, so they are a bit harder to animate as one would have to study animal motion patterns.. but still.. should not be THAT difficult..

And as far as legging mechanics goes, just add an extra hitbox, and make the mech legged as normal, when 1 leg is lost..
(even a three-legged dog has issues walking)

I know I'm a layman, but it really does not sound so complicated..

The challenge is on sloped terrain. Bipedal mechs just pretend it doesn't exist. They are always standing straight up. You don't really notice because only a bit of the toe is clipped and the back of the foot floats (or vice versa).

But with a quad, the front legs would obviously be buried in the hill while the back legs floated or perhaps the front legs are on the ground with the back legs floating very high off the ground because the game engine doesn't rotate mechs.

To fix, you rotate the mechs torso to match incline...when you can. Because hills also aren't not always long enough for the whole mech to need to be angled. In that case, you have to angle the mech some while having the front and rear (and sometimes side to side) legs at different heights to correspond to the ground height where that leg's foot is at. And that's where it gets tricksy.

You then also have to deal with having the walking animation dynamically alter itself so that the feet are always hitting the ground even when the ground is at 4 different heights for each foot.

So I get that it's harder than the current engine's mech animation, BUT I STILL WANT QUADS!

[Pariah Devalis]

I mean, bipeds float off terrain, as it is. It might look a little ugly, but I'd be fine with no IK on quads. At least they offer an alternative movement style to the bipeds.

Being able to strafe, turn in place, and survive the loss of two legs, at the cost of torso twist and crit space, would be unique. They'd almost assuredly be small for their tonnage, as more legs = more volume, leading to visually smaller mechs for their tonnage. High mounts are practically mandatory due to the body plan, but even lower mounts would be near cockpit height.

They would absolutely need to exploit small numbers of large guns, or one large gun backed by a handful of small ones, instead of boating oodles of anything. Just due to crit limitations. That, in and of itself, would be yet another source of differentiation from most of the mechs we have in the game right now.

I am all for quads. I know it would require PGI actually go back and look at their questionable code, clean things up a bit, and get their stuff in line first, but that isn't a bad thing, either. The game's code could use a spring cleaning, anyways.

There is also quite a few options at this time point. Something like, what, 10 or 11 of them up to our point in the timeline? At least one of each weight class for both Clan and IS.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 30 November 2017 - 08:24 AM.

[Athom83]

stealthraccoon, on 28 November 2017 - 07:53 PM, said:

Just do a multi pack: Tarantula, Scorpion and Goliath.

I posted somewhere before a 4 pack which would give both the IS and Clan 2 quads each. IS would get the Scorpion and Xanthos, but i forget what I found for clan.

[Pariah Devalis]

Athom83, on 30 November 2017 - 08:44 AM, said:

I posted somewhere before a 4 pack which would give both the IS and Clan 2 quads each. IS would get the Scorpion and Xanthos, but i forget what I found for clan.

Xanthos is still technically extinct. But you have several options for them:

Tarantula, Scorpion, Barghest, Goliath would be a good starting point for the IS.

Snow Fox, Stalking Spider, Fire Scorpion, and Thunder Stallion for Clan.

[Tarogato]

Pariah Devalis, on 30 November 2017 - 08:19 AM, said:

Being able to strafe, turn in place... at the cost of torso twist

This is the problem with quads that bothers me the most. How do you resolve the control scheme?

Personally, I don't think the quads would be viable without torso twist. Aiming via leg control is virtually impossible in MWO (and it's clunky in every other game as well), so I think torso twisting is a 100% necessity, otherwise they'll all be DoA. I guess you could just have zero torso twist but mount all torso weapons on turrets, but that doesn't make sense to me at all, and would be ugly and ruin the aesthetic of a lot of chasses.

So how do you reconcile strafe vs rotate controls? Do you have separate bindings for them? Is strafe a double-tap of your A/D key? If so, is it a throttle control, or a boolean throttle decay? Does it toggle along with your W/S throttle? What if you want to rotate and strafe at the same time? Surely it needs to be a on a separate binding. Even if there is no torso twisting, and you assign either strafe or rotate to the mouse... how do you strafe or rotate with a mouse? You're going to run out of desktop space if you circle-strafe anything, and even rudimentary navigation itself will probably run your mouse off your desk.

I guess I would bind strafe to Q/E, but then I would have rebind the function I already have on Q/E to something else... and the reason I have them there is because I want them nearby...

[Pariah Devalis]

Tarogato, on 30 November 2017 - 08:51 AM, said:

This is the problem with quads that bothers me the most. How do you resolve the control scheme?

Personally, I don't think the quads would be viable without torso twist. Aiming via leg control is virtually impossible in MWO (and it's clunky in every other game as well), so I think torso twisting is a 100% necessity, otherwise they'll all be DoA. I guess you could just have zero torso twist but mount all torso weapons on turrets, but that doesn't make sense to me at all, and would be ugly and ruin the aesthetic of a lot of chasses.

So how do you reconcile strafe vs rotate controls? Do you have separate bindings for them? Is strafe a double-tap of your A/D key? If so, is it a throttle control, or a boolean throttle decay? Does it toggle along with your W/S throttle? What if you want to rotate and strafe at the same time? Surely it needs to be a on a separate binding. Even if there is no torso twisting, and you assign either strafe or rotate to the mouse... how do you strafe or rotate with a mouse? You're going to run out of desktop space if you circle-strafe anything, and even rudimentary navigation itself will probably run your mouse off your desk.

I guess I would bind strafe to Q/E, but then I would have rebind the function I already have on Q/E to something else... and the reason I have them there is because I want them nearby...

Worked fine in Hawken. No torso twist, but you basically had standard FPS controls. A and D would change to 100% throttle with autodecay left and right. Mouse control changes pitch and heading of body.

[Tarogato]

Pariah Devalis, on 30 November 2017 - 08:53 AM, said:

Worked fine in Hawken. No torso twist, but you basically had standard FPS controls. A and D would change to 100% throttle with autodecay left and right. Mouse control changes pitch and heading of body.

That's the thing though. Hawken had standard FPS movement - you could do 180° turn about as fast as you could possibly move your mouse, like it was Counterstrike. I'm not even sure if your panning speed was limited at all, I haven't played the game.

But Battletech mechs can't do that. They rotate slowwwly. And like I said, you'll run out of desk space trying to turn a mech with your mouse.

[Juodas Varnas]

Tarogato, on 30 November 2017 - 09:02 AM, said:

That's the thing though. Hawken had standard FPS movement - you could do 180° turn about as fast as you could possibly move your mouse, like it was Counterstrike. I'm not even sure if your panning speed was limited at all, I haven't played the game.

But Battletech mechs can't do that. They rotate slowwwly. And like I said, you'll run out of desk space trying to turn a mech with your mouse.

Actually i'm pretty sure Hawken had limited turning speed, but it also had dashing sideways and a 180 turn by double-tapping backwards.

Also, in MWO, mechs don't turn THAT slowly.

Edited by Juodas Varnas, 30 November 2017 - 09:18 AM.

[Mole]

I have nothing against Quads but after reading the Sarna page on the Scorpion, it looks like they would either have to massively hardpoint inflate the thing or else it would be a 55 tonner stuck with about 1 energy hardpoint and one missile hardpoint.

[Weeny Machine]

Xavori, on 28 November 2017 - 03:22 PM, said:

PGI make it happen!

Give us the Scorpion.

Use the 1TB, 10M, 12C as regular package and the 12K and 12S and reinforcements. The Hero is obviously the Wednall.

This is a 55 ton IS mech that would be awesome in faction scouting. As is well known, faction scouting is often all about tearing the legs off your enemy. Well, jokes on you! If you tear a Scorpion's legs off, it's still got 3 more!

So make this happen NOW!

In fact, I'm not spending another dime on MWO until that dime can go towards Scorpions. Of which I'll buy the Ultimate package. So there!

Do you know Juodas Varnas by chance?

[Tarogato]

Juodas Varnas, on 30 November 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

Actually i'm pretty sure Hawken had limited turning speed, but it also had dashing sideways and a 180 turn by double-tapping backwards.

Yeah, it might be limited *slightly*, but my point is...

Quote

Also, in MWO, mechs don't turn THAT slowly.

MWO mechs don't turn THIS quickly.