51 replies to this topic

[Listless Nomad]

Now if this could be done reasonably - and without appreciable system slowdowns - would you guys prefer that downed mechs stay around for the length of the battle? Or disappear? If battles do not feature respawn (as some of us suspect), should the wreckage stay? I can see having it disappear if there is respawning otherwise it would get ridiculous. Second, if wreckage does stay on the field - should it impede progress - or should you be able to walk through it? Finally - if it stays around - should it be destructible so that if its blocking you, you can blow it up to continue at the cost of munitions and time?

Of course this is all predicated on the devs knowing how to do this efficiently without slowing the game to a crawl. I understand this so please don't say its impossible to do. This is just theoretical and a question based on how gameplay would work.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT - most people seem to have gotten the gist of what I was describing above. Just to clarify however, I'm talking about wrecks staying only for the current battle instance. I'm not suggesting the wrecks remain on a world for battle after battle. While cool that would get ridiculous.

Edited by Listless Nomad, 13 February 2012 - 09:01 AM.

[Revya21]

maybe should be post launch feature, i'd rather they polish to near perfection what they all ready announced.

[Tatius Pryde]

Now thats an interesting thought. Ill say yes to all mentioned above in regards to the mechs staying during the battle and add "PERSISTANCE"

Assuming the maps are pre-determine set "piece names" AKA: glacier map, hell springs, mount awesmo etc then multiple fights on the maps on planets that have seen heavy fighting would have more and more wrecks as time went on.

if they were random generated maps, then i guess it could work too.

But I would assume that wrecks stay during battle then get wiped for the next round/match/battle.

[Listless Nomad]

Tatius Pryde, on 12 February 2012 - 09:09 PM, said:

But I would assume that wrecks stay during battle then get wiped for the next round/match/battle.

That's what I was figuring. It would get nuts if all downed mechs stayed even after the match ended. My proposal would be just for the match being played - not long term over tens of matches.

[VeiledMalice]

Here's the problem - it would lead to system slow down. The game engine is still modeling downed mechs, it's what is does. And those things are the most expensive in terms of system resources. So even if you couldn't shoot the things, (the hit boxes and clipping is gone) your computer still has to devote memory to them.

Now, those of us with beefy systems can handle that, but depending on how many mechs get downed during the match, you could start seeing slow down. Anyone who's played Crysis 2 on max settings knows how much CryEngine 3 demands from even a good computer.

[Vernius Ix]

Yes, yes and finally yes

[The Cheese]

VeiledMalice, on 12 February 2012 - 09:22 PM, said:

Here's the problem - it would lead to system slow down. The game engine is still modeling downed mechs, it's what is does. And those things are the most expensive in terms of system resources. So even if you couldn't shoot the things, (the hit boxes and clipping is gone) your computer still has to devote memory to them.

This is true, but remember that most games that have persistent environmental change will generally give you a dumbed down model for the wreckage. Instead of a fully rendered smouldering Jenner carcass, you might get a "generic light mech wreckage 4", which would be far less detailed in it's design and texture, and have a simpler hitbox. It could be argued that a wrecked mech might bear little resemblance to it's fully functional form.

It still leads to slowdown, but the performance hit can be mitigated.

Edited by The Cheese, 12 February 2012 - 09:38 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

Yes on all accounts. It makes the terrain dynamic and adds tactics.

[VeiledMalice]

The Cheese, on 12 February 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

This is true, but remember that most games that have persistent environmental change will generally give you a dumbed down model for the wreckage. Instead of a fully rendered smouldering Jenner carcass, you might get a "generic light mech wreckage 4", which would be far less detailed in it's design and texture, and have a simpler hitbox. It could be argued that a wrecked mech might bear little resemblance to it's fully functional form.

It still leads to slowdown, but the performance hit can be mitigated.

Yeah, but they're simply not going to do this. With consoles, you know the system settings and can program accordingly. With PCs, devs have to remember they want to make a game the with the lowest barrier to entry. Persistent modeling of inconsequential assets sets that bar higher, even if only incrementally.

[Tora Kuo]

While I agree, and voted yes to all of the above, and see everyone's point, consider that Cry-engine is rendering entire cities. Further consider, that games such as BF3, which have a significant demand on system resources, still do so efficiently enough to allow for vehicles to remain 'exploded' in game till the next respawn. Well, for a while, even if not till the next respawn.

My idea on this is that there would be a limited number of 'wrecks' allowed to remain persistent with the longest laying wreckage the first to get eliminated. This allows a persistence of sorts. I'm not sure the size of the battles for this, but it should be at least 32 player map sizes... Unless people really like down and dirty fast regenerating battles of squad size. But it would be cool to see entire mercenary corps or house divisions slugging it out. If not their entirety, at least, a majority of a unit. Given that, if the city environment isn't too model rich, a downed mech would still be nothing more than 'small building/large house' asset render.

If it's further destroyable/manglable, whatever, as it gets kicked around, shot-up, stepped on, whatever, the system can systematically derender aspects of the asset which are no longer required.

Further, if it's 32 players (16 on 16) or larger, I'd say no amount of mechs on the field allowed larger than half of each team's size, even if one team is taking the heavier losses. So no more than 16 downed mechs on the field at any one time.

Just my thoughts.

[The Cheese]

Fair call VeiledMalice. Something to remember though, is that graphical settings will not be identical across all computers. Mine will be maxed because I know my PC can handle it. On a lower end PC, I imagine many settings will be turned down.

They really do have to have "wreckage for the whole match" or "wreckage for a short time" across all graphics settings though, lest it be abused by just turning down your graphics to reduce visual obstructions.

It'll be a shame if the lowest common denominator determines that there's no wreckage or a short timeout though. There seems to be a pretty strong desire for immersion here, and persistent wreckage would add to that immensely.

[UncleKulikov]

The wreckage doesn't have to be fancy on the lower settings; it could even be a generic simple polygon with an interesting texture. All that needs to be represented is that it's solid, and absorbs fire.

[VeiledMalice]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to be a reality too, but I'm just trying to be realistic. Some of the ideas I see floated through the forums are so crazy I can only shake my head. Maybe, *maybe* with a team the size of one of Bioware's studios we could see all these ideas brought to glorious life, but until then, the devs have to face harsh truths about the time/maximum availibilty of resources to throw at a given idea.

Now admittedly, my meager programming knowledge does not extend to the realm of games, but I think the devs can help out the immersive atmosphere more my focusing on level design (placement of buildings/obstacles makes sense and contributes to gameplay) rather than cluttering the field with dead assets. More to the point, I think the type of immersion I think most gamers want will come more from things off the field than on - repairing mechs, handling contracts, deciding on strike targets, etc. These are the tactical and gritty ideas which will propel MW:O beyond a shooter and give it an important strategy aspect as well.

But again, I would like to see this, I simply don't think they can justify the tradeoff in performance that it might entail.

[Tora Kuo]

I agree fully, but I still think it should be a bit more than a simple polygon with an interesting texture. If you do that, you end up with a sphere with lines across it vaguely resembling an exploded Urbie instead of a demolished, leg thrashed and cored [insert any mech here]. I think that the debris should be solidly (even if of much lower quality) representative of the actual mech destroyed, fitting within the size constraints of that model, and the damage it took. The main difference is that it would simply be stripped of any coding to make it functional and hit boxes would be dumbed down to more system friendly manageable sizes.

My thought is that if your system can't run the game with the player at the controls, it's not going to be running it with debris. The converse must also logically be true. If you can run the game solidly with all players in the match, then you can run it with the dumbed down debris modeling. So long as the debris modeling doesn't get out of hand. No ten story walls of Atlas remains. hence limiting amount of dead models at any given time.

[tacobellkiller]

I voted all yes but it really depends on if there is respawning or not. My speculation is that respawn will not be in the standard game modes so persistence would make sense. It should have no appreciable system impact since it is replacing rendering a animated, probably weapon firing mech with a blasted hulk that could use a lower detail model. In World of Tanks the hulls remain on the battlefield and can have interesting tactical implications at times, you can make use of dead friends or foes as improvised cover. Honestly WoT does a lot of things right, not everything, and before MW:O was announced I thought a World of Mechs would have been awesome but nothing beats actually Mechwarrior.

If there are modes that include respawning such a Solaris Deathmatch arena or something of the sort should probably omit wreckage persistance.

[Fresh Meat]

yes on all 3,

[Ravn]

Yes to all AND should pose a tripping hazard if you circle strafe into one of them at top speed.

[Anvil Dragon]

Yes to all. I don't see this as requiring greater resources since now what was a functioning mech is now parked and has reduced the overall load on the system during this battle.

Initially, it can be assumed mechs, most parts, and pilots will be ransomed back to the loosing faction.

In the future I can only hope that downed mechs are noted and downloaded with the next maps so that a multi-day campaign could take place. For those it would be neat if a cockpit feed was mirrored with a battlemap so others in that faction not in the battle could cheer from the sidelines. Hard to organize but I'm thinking 50 per side fighting 8 vs 8 until one side runs out of mech/pilots. Drop in 4 replacements when one side was reduced to 4. Maybe put a 10 hour upper limit on any one pilot and a 48 hour limit on the overall match.

[CobraFive]

If there's no respawn (And from what they've talked about, I think its safe to assume there isn't) I really don't see any reason not to have wreckage stay on the map (And block you, too). Certainly even in a cramped urban arena, wreckage wouldn't be able to fully prevent you from entering an area, there's always ways around.

If there is respawn... well of course that would require consideration, and wreckage probably shouldn't stay.

[MaddMaxx]

Given proper FPP rules along with LOS/D being enforced, only Wrecks you can see would render and as such, given some amount of movement around a Map in any one Match, you would rarely have a BUNCH of Wrecks inside your FFP view to be rendered, so if they wish to do a reduce carcass render, sure, why not.