9 replies to this topic

[Seth]

So far each mech that has been announced has had its weapons loadout reflected in its concept art. You can see two LRM-15s and 4 medium lasers on the Catapult for example (infer 4 lasers from the 2 visible ones on the left side of the torso). I know MWLL was able to do this, but it looked pretty bad. I hope the dev team can find some novel way of depicting this short of making a separate model for each section of each mech for every possible weapon.

[CeeKay Boques]

Haha, maybe they won't be fully destroyed either!

"Commander this is Recon 1"
"Go ahead"
"He went North, we're on his trail"
"How do you know?"
"He broke his Medium laser array on something, it fell off and is lying in the snow."
"Proceed!"

[Pht]

Seth, on 28 December 2011 - 04:08 PM, said:

So far each mech that has been announced has had its weapons loadout reflected in its concept art. You can see two LRM-15s and 4 medium lasers on the Catapult for example (infer 4 lasers from the 2 visible ones on the left side of the torso). I know MWLL was able to do this, but it looked pretty bad. I hope the dev team can find some novel way of depicting this short of making a separate model for each section of each mech for every possible weapon.

This "problem" (it really on exists for those who value aesthetics over game play and function) has been well known in the MW community (Developers and players alike), and I recall hearing one of the devs on the (failed) MW5 project mentioning they had a fix for it already.

I would suspect it would be fixed by having the weapons types mounted in an area indicating to the game engine to put a certain type of weapons port on the visual model in the appropriately indicated area of a "base 3d chassis" for a 'mech.

Edited by Pht, 28 December 2011 - 04:45 PM.

[Xhaleon]

There really isn't any problem at all. MW4 was a very old game, and the games before it were even older. Any game made post-2005 would have had this feature easily. Its just that a lot of people don't seem to remember how long it has really been since we've had a Mechwarrior product. If MWO doesn't have models that change, then you can laugh and cry and jeer. Until then, it is almost certain we'll get it.

MWLL did it with more or less "standard" models for weapons, yes? If MWO goes with the MW4 hardpoint system, or some modified version of it, I think that the alternate weapons pods will look much better because they can be designed to fit with the chassis style in mind.

[Duke Pitt]

Pht, on 28 December 2011 - 04:32 PM, said:

This "problem" (it really on exists for those who value aesthetics over game play and function) has been well known in the MW community (Developers and players alike), and I recall hearing one of the devs on the (failed) MW5 project mentioning they had a fix for it already.

I would suspect it would be fixed by having the weapons types mounted in an area indicating to the game engine to put a certain type of weapons port on the visual model in the appropriately indicated area of a "base 3d chassis" for a 'mech.

I hope that is how they do it because that makes the most sense in terms of a compromise.

[Pht]

Duke Pitt, on 28 December 2011 - 06:56 PM, said:

I hope that is how they do it because that makes the most sense in terms of a compromise.

Something to the same effect would be cool, but not being a code monkey or game developer I have no idea if the idea is possible in CRY engine 3.

I just hope they don't ruin the game in pursuit of form over function.

[Duke Pitt]

I'm not a code monkey either but I know a few, from my understanding something like that is far from impossible.

[Flawless]

I noticed some of the different concept art ideas for the Dragon and it looked like there were many different load outs for the larger arm. I would think that they have already got some sort of physical change for each mech for different load outs.

[verybad]

The problem isn't coding for something like this, but getting all the art content to fit each different mech properly. Battletech has thousands of different mechs, and not everything on one mech would fit onto another without changes. This quickly becomes a huge issue if parts are interchangeable. The physical interface between weapon and mech needs to look good, but the complexity of the problem increases very quickly as the number of placeable parts increase. If the mechs are designed to be modular from the begining it's one thing (see Clan Omnimechs, TRO 3050) however the earlier designs, and most mechs in most TROs aren't designed that way (visually)

To get them to work modularly you have to make changes to different mechs at access points and or limit the types of weapons that can be placed there.

The dificulty is again due to the vast difference between various mechs making the parts fit together isn't an easy task. For a sandbox mechlab, it's a huge task.

[Pht]

verybad, on 28 December 2011 - 08:55 PM, said:

The problem isn't coding for something like this, but getting all the art content to fit each different mech properly. Battletech has thousands of different mechs, and not everything on one mech would fit onto another without changes. This quickly becomes a huge issue if parts are interchangeable. The physical interface between weapon and mech needs to look good, but the complexity of the problem increases very quickly as the number of placeable parts increase. If the mechs are designed to be modular from the begining it's one thing (see Clan Omnimechs, TRO 3050) however the earlier designs, and most mechs in most TROs aren't designed that way (visually)

To get them to work modularly you have to make changes to different mechs at access points and or limit the types of weapons that can be placed there.

The dificulty is again due to the vast difference between various mechs making the parts fit together isn't an easy task. For a sandbox mechlab, it's a huge task.

Yeap. I suspected there was something hard about the idea, but I couldn't lay my finger onto it.

Still, what other even remotely viable options are there that won't mess up game function in pursuit of aesthetics?