140 replies to this topic

[dh crow]

Erhardt, on 01 November 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

I wouldn't hold my breath for that kind of damage model if I were you. Hit detection will be paramount, but burning cycles of code on computing mass and velocity of a Gauss round round vs. angle of attack and density of armor then computing damage applied from there probably isn't in the cards when we're already not getting simple straightforward physical attacks or AI opponents. I'm sure it'll be more along the lines of the traditional "did it hit? yep. apply 15 pts of damage. done"

Calculating angle of attack vs armour density is one dot product operation, it might cost you a couple nanoseconds.

[Erhardt]

dh crow, on 02 November 2011 - 12:01 AM, said:

Calculating angle of attack vs armour density is one dot product operation, it might cost you a couple nanoseconds.

You're asking for a level of real-world physics that's a bit overblown for a game about walking tanks with big zap guns and such. I don't at all disagree it's do-able, I'm just saying it probably won't be done as the idea is more complicated than the game demands. Like I said earlier, we're already not getting physical attacks; if they aren't making the effort for something as long-ignored and stupidly simple as that, the odds of seeing a physics-based damage model like what you're wanting are only slightly better than the odds of my pounding a 10-penny nail through my sack at lunchtime today. And lemme tell ya, the odds of that happening are pretty much nil.

[Morglum]

cavadus, on 01 November 2011 - 06:50 PM, said:

They'll doom this game if they go with a lame *** translation of the TT rules. Piranha needs to take a page out of World of Tanks and implement something more robust and in-line with what can be accomplished in 2011/12.

I don't think a rip-off of MPBT: 3025 (beta) is going to make them any money. It would behoove them to actually, like, y'know... make a good PC game first and worry about some board game rules meant to be calculated by hand written thirty years ago later. They'll doom the game and the IP if they don't put some work into weapon and ballistics models.

There have been so many people waiting for SO long for a mechwarrior game that the standard to hit/location damage is all they really need to do. There are going to be die hards that want more accurate damage modeling but I dont see it happening. The location damage for a mech is far more complex than that of World of Tanks so you cant really compare the two.

[RIFT]

Erhardt, on 01 November 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

I wouldn't hold my breath for that kind of damage model if I were you. Hit detection will be paramount, but burning cycles of code on computing mass and velocity of a Gauss round round vs. angle of attack and density of armor then computing damage applied from there probably isn't in the cards when we're already not getting simple straightforward physical attacks or AI opponents. I'm sure it'll be more along the lines of the traditional "did it hit? yep. apply 15 pts of damage. done"

World of Tanks dose this now, I dont see why it cant be done in this game.

[Erhardt]

RIFT, on 02 November 2011 - 07:26 AM, said:

World of Tanks dose this now, I dont see why it cant be done in this game.

It could be done. What I'm saying is it most likely won't be. Of all the features that need to be ready for launch, phenomenal hit fidelity realism like this for a sci-fi game already based in fantastical improbability won't be high on the priority list. You're asking for Filet Mignon in a Burger King wrapper.

I wouldn't turn it down, mind you. It's just not going to happen, at least not at first. Maybe down the road if the game is a success and they can grow it.

But we BETTER get physical attacks first!

[Colaessus]

Rather have the game released and playable then talk about math.

As its a On-line game they can just have patches and then watch players bitched that they ruined the game.

[MookieRah]

I don't see why there is so much hate for good physics in game. How does this interfere with the game or having anything to do with melee again?

I do think that the compromise approach is best, due to all the flat squared surfaces that most mechs have would cause balance issues. Perhaps the physics doesn't take into the account the curvature of the surface, but it still takes into account the angle of the shot and the density of the armor? That really doesn't take *that* much computing power, or time, to implement these days. Perhaps give a bonus to deflection for something like the Hatchetman (if ever implemented), seeing as it was mentioned that the lore takes it's design into account for that.

[Erhardt]

MookieRah, on 02 November 2011 - 08:02 AM, said:

I don't see why there is so much hate for good physics in game. How does this interfere with the game or having anything to do with melee again?

I don't see anybody hating on good physics for the game or claiming it would interfere...? As for Melee... I daresay if we're thinking physics modelling for weapon hits are pertinent, then it would be even MORE so if Physical attacks were in the mix.

That said, my point is physical attacks are a staple of the game and to date have never once been implemented in any iteration of the video game franchise (outside of the simple Ram and DFA, and the efficacy of those were pretty dodgy). Of the two items, I'd VASTLY prefer we finally got to punch and kick and club in the game versus knowing "if I hit that guy's leg at a 30-degree angle with this gauss, my damage will be (insert physics formula here)" as opposed to a simple and still entirely effective "if I hit that guy's leg with this gauss, he's gonna be feeling it in the morning".

If we can get both, great, but we already know we're not getting physical attacks and the smart money'll tell you all that fancy physics hit detection noise ain't on the design spec either.

[Mister Blastman]

Erhardt, on 01 November 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

I wouldn't hold my breath for that kind of damage model if I were you. Hit detection will be paramount, but burning cycles of code on computing mass and velocity of a Gauss round round vs. angle of attack and density of armor then computing damage applied from there probably isn't in the cards when we're already not getting simple straightforward physical attacks or AI opponents. I'm sure it'll be more along the lines of the traditional "did it hit? yep. apply 15 pts of damage. done"

-1 to this. Give us complete physics calculations to every shot and hit. Calculate things such as reduced damage (or a complete bounceoff) from oblique angles. Calculate in the surface that was hit versus its individual reflectivity, porosity and density. I want details here. I'd much prefer stuff like this than pretty graphics.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Glacing blows, sloped armor? *** no. This will make balancing the game an outright nightmare and a huge departure from canon. No thank you. Go write another mech game from scratch.

[CaveMan]

Mr_Blastman, on 02 November 2011 - 09:23 AM, said:

-1 to this. Give us complete physics calculations to every shot and hit. Calculate things such as reduced damage (or a complete bounceoff) from oblique angles. Calculate in the surface that was hit versus its individual reflectivity, porosity and density. I want details here. I'd much prefer stuff like this than pretty graphics.

You do that, and you massively break game balance. The 'Mechs in BT were not designed with physical damage modeling in mind, they were designed to look cool. By random chance some of them are going to fare much better under a physical damage model than others, and then people will only play with those 'Mechs. A mecha sim with that kind of damage detail would be cool, but it would not be BattleTech.

[TheRulesLawyer]

MookieRah, on 02 November 2011 - 08:02 AM, said:

I don't see why there is so much hate for good physics in game. How does this interfere with the game or having anything to do with melee again?

Because mech models were designed with complete disregard to deflection and physics in general. Armor value will be way way off from published values just depending on what the illustrator wanted to do back in the way. Sloped armor etc works in WOT, arma etc because you are talking real world vehicles that were designed with this in mind. It was never in the design for battletech and never should be.

[Erhardt]

Mr_Blastman, on 02 November 2011 - 09:23 AM, said:

-1 to this. Give us complete physics calculations to every shot and hit. Calculate things such as reduced damage (or a complete bounceoff) from oblique angles. Calculate in the surface that was hit versus its individual reflectivity, porosity and density. I want details here. I'd much prefer stuff like this than pretty graphics.

Skip this and go to ARMA II then, I guess.

Even if this was still going to be the full-blown release it was initially intended to be, I seriously doubt you'd get that kind of fidelity out of a Sci-Fi game. Piranha seem to want to give us a simulation-quality feel but at more of an operational level than real-world physics level. And that was before they had to take a hatchet to the scope of the game and reduce it to a F2P offering. Sci-fi games just don't tend to be great targets for this kind of fidelity. We're talking about giant walking combat robots, after all. If you want hardcore hit detection physics over pretty looks, you're just not looking in the right genre.

[UncleKulikov]

there is another significant problem with real world physics. Because the mechs weren't built with this in mind, the accurate physics would create significant unpredictability when being fired at different targets, which is bad for balance.

[MookieRah]

Quote

Because mech models were designed with complete disregard to deflection and physics in general

Read my actual post, not the first sentence please. If you did you will see that I added a caveat that due to mech designs being blocky that the physics shouldn't take into account surface curvature, but rather the depth of armor and the angle of the shot.

Quote

If we can get both, great, but we already know we're not getting physical attacks and the smart money'll tell you all that fancy physics hit detection noise ain't on the design spec either.

Melee is much harder to do and requires a lot more work than simply making ballistic weapons have ballistic like physics. I can understand why they would hold off on melee, at least for now, cause they don't have anything to draw from in regards to previous games and it would be hard to balance. Ballistic physics... not so much.

[Havoc2]

Skoll-, on 02 November 2011 - 12:01 AM, said:

I'd be happy as long as a cockpit hit registers as a cockpit hit and NOT as a midsection hit.

I've used 5 AC 10s on MW 4 before, going for the head, only for it to register as shoulders or torso. It gets annoying.

I think my all-time favorite was scoring a hit with an 8 ER LLaser alpha strike and having the head flash red with 1 point of damage remaining and not die. The head shot bug in MW4 was my reasoning behind taking all but 1 point of armour out of the head and putting it elsewhere.

That being said, I'd be quite happy if they used the hit detection of MW4 or MPBT:3025. If I'm a good enough shot to nail the cockpit 2-5 times (depending on how many shots it takes) it should be a much easier kill than going through the torso.

Hell, MPBT:3025 I used to get 3-4 shot kills all the time due to being able to find the head. In a LB (pretty sure it was a LB with the 4 AC2s) I could generally kill 2 or 3 heavies before they could get in range if they were too stupid to get out of view/range (and heard a lot of crying about that too lol).
Or my Cent JJ Large laser, med laser, AC10 combo for a kill while JJing over their head. *** I miss that game the more I think about it.


About the only thing I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to see is a difference between splash damage and focused damage.
Missiles and energy weapons should be dispersed over an area, while ballistic weapons should be focused more on a point.

Edited by }{avoc, 02 November 2011 - 10:13 AM.

[Erhardt]

MookieRah, on 02 November 2011 - 09:48 AM, said:

Melee is much harder to do and requires a lot more work than simply making ballistic weapons have ballistic like physics. I can understand why they would hold off on melee, at least for now, cause they don't have anything to draw from in regards to previous games and it would be hard to balance. Ballistic physics... not so much.

With the damage model we'll doubtlessly be getting for this, it would be easy. Run attack animation. Check for melee range. Check for hit. Punch does so many points per ton. Kick does so many points per ton. Apply damage to location on target that was hit. Done. They aren't planning on making that much happen, so I seriously doubt they're going to make an effort to model the physics of ballistics and sloped armor and angles and velocity vectors and who knows what else Einstein would figure we'd need for maximum reality. You're way over-thinking this.

We're simply not going to be getting a high-end military simulation combat engine the likes of ARMA or IL-2 with this game. I'm not trying to soil anybody's corn-flakes here, I'm just sayin'... it is what it is. A straight-up videogame of mech combat in the 31st Century. If you insist on hyper-realism, prepare yourselves for a colossal disappointment come summertime.

Edit: Really? G O D and C R A P got censored? Touchy-touchy.

Edited by Erhardt, 02 November 2011 - 10:10 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Erhardt, on 02 November 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

Skip this and go to ARMA II then, I guess.

Even if this was still going to be the full-blown release it was initially intended to be, I seriously doubt you'd get that kind of fidelity out of a Sci-Fi game. Piranha seem to want to give us a simulation-quality feel but at more of an operational level than real-world physics level. And that was before they had to take a hatchet to the scope of the game and reduce it to a F2P offering. Sci-fi games just don't tend to be great targets for this kind of fidelity. We're talking about giant walking combat robots, after all. If you want hardcore hit detection physics over pretty looks, you're just not looking in the right genre.

Yeah but you are forgetting there are many sub-Genre's of Science Fiction, most notably being hard science fiction aka Asimov. Sci Fi is well noted for being rich in details and depth with everything having some form of scientific backing rather than fantasy.

[Grax]

Erhardt, on 01 November 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

I wouldn't hold my breath for that kind of damage model if I were you. Hit detection will be paramount, but burning cycles of code on computing mass and velocity of a Gauss round round vs. angle of attack and density of armor then computing damage applied from there probably isn't in the cards when we're already not getting simple straightforward physical attacks or AI opponents. I'm sure it'll be more along the lines of the traditional "did it hit? yep. apply 15 pts of damage. done"

It's going to be a 3D lobby based shooter similar to World of Tanks or Huxley. So the developers CAN actually get this done since they won't have to manage 1000s of players shooting each other on ONE server. I know this because there would be no other reason as to why they chose the "F2P" route. I've been around the market for a very long time, and time & experience have shown this to be the case every single time. Servers cost money, and EVE online could NEVER have gotten to where it is now with F2P.

[Erhardt]

Mr_Blastman, on 02 November 2011 - 10:10 AM, said:

Sci Fi is well noted for being rich in details and depth with everything having some form of scientific backing rather than fantasy.

It most certainly is!
Other Sci-Fi media, especially video games, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter.