37 replies to this topic

[Naduk]

SI The Joker, on 25 February 2012 - 01:00 PM, said:

24 player x 2 legs per mech = 48 footprints

How many steps would a mech take in a 20 minute game? 500? 1,000? Let's use 750.. an in the middle value

48 x 750 = 36,000 footprints to be laid and tracked by the game.

That's alot 'O footprints!

thats some nice solid scary numbers you have there
however, programers realized how scary things like this get alot time ago so they made a fix for us
its called instancing

it works like this

1 mech = 2 feet
2 feet = identical foot print = 1 texture
texture is loaded into memory 1 time and referenced for each step

so a mech can make 10,000 foot prints and we only need to know where they are and we can load the same foot print each time
this info already being tracked and passed thru the game/network so we can just use that, no need to generate new data (mechs locations are constantly tracked by the server/clients/physics checks ect)

now lets assume many mechs have similar feet and can share foot prints(ie timber wolf and catapult)
say half our mechs have unique foot prints (thats quite generous), our numbers change drastically

24 mechs = 12 feet (unique pairs)
12 unique textures @ 200k each = 1.8mb
+ coordinates data for print locations = 3.5mb
round it up to worst case and your still only looking at about 15mb of memory used

but suddenly tracking 24 mechs permanent foot prints isnt so hard
back in the days of 12mb of ram, you would of been shot for suggesting using 3.5mb on foot prints
but these days we carry ram in the Gigabytes not Megabytes

[Exilyth]

+1 for mentioning instancing.

The only problem would be sending footprints... if a client would know about all footprints, they could find the mech by tracking down the latest footprints. If the client only knows about the footprints it has to draw, the server would have to do visibility checks against [some large number] footprints for each client.

Edit: footprints more than X seconds old could be considered persistent and would only have to be send once. Still, new footprints should only be send when they or the unit making them is in view. Mhh... once discovered by a client, that client knows about that footprint forever (until the end of the round). Which means each footprint has to be send only once anyway. Still, for each footprint, as long as there is a client that hasn't seen that footprint, the server would have to check visibility (unless that footprint is older than X, which means the footprint gets send to everyone anyway).

This might actually work out, for certain values of X.

Edited by Exilyth, 26 February 2012 - 01:29 PM.

[Naduk]

the server has nothing to do with tracking foot prints
the server tracks the location of items with in the game, Mechs, projectiles, physics objects,objectives
it constantly transmits this data to every client as do clients transmit their location constantly
as your already receiving the location of every mech and where they have been
it falls to the engine to place the foot prints along the traveled path

look none of this is even an issue, mech 4 had foot prints, that game was built in 2000
thats 12 years ago
all is needed is use similar code and remove the delete foot prints over time part
hell they are using the crytek 3 engine, this feature is possible a Tick box by now

[Bruigaar]

You have to actually consider this though. If footprints did not fade to some degree after a little while tracking by footprint would be useless. A moderate duration of footprint before they fade would be good and lend to actual tracking by them. I do not know how large the maps are going to actually be as I have not read anything on that, but as someone stated before there are many other environmental effect that can also be used to track mechs. Like the side of a building was clipped or a car/truck was crushed by a passing mech.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Footprints should fade depending on what terrain they're on. If you're in an urban setting, most likely debris and dust will be blowing about obscuring them over time. Dirt or mud would be a bit more permanent and if not for the whole match, they should at least stay longer than others. Sand, these would barely stay I think due to sand shifting and moving about all the time...but realistically, have fun piloting that sucker in sand. ;>.>

[Silent]

Just make the footprints parallax decals that fade over time.

[MaddMaxx]

Bruigaar, on 26 February 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

You have to actually consider this though. If footprints did not fade to some degree after a little while tracking by footprint would be useless. A moderate duration of footprint before they fade would be good and lend to actual tracking by them. I do not know how large the maps are going to actually be as I have not read anything on that, but as someone stated before there are many other environmental effect that can also be used to track mechs. Like the side of a building was clipped or a car/truck was crushed by a passing mech.

Mech Tracker, the Series. Sort of like Man Tracker, but he tracks Mechs. I like it...

P.S. Gonna need a couple horses though. FD?

Edited by MaddMaxx, 27 February 2012 - 08:03 AM.

[SI The Joker]

Naduk, on 26 February 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

the server has nothing to do with tracking foot prints
the server tracks the location of items with in the game, Mechs, projectiles, physics objects,objectives
it constantly transmits this data to every client as do clients transmit their location constantly
as your already receiving the location of every mech and where they have been
it falls to the engine to place the foot prints along the traveled path

look none of this is even an issue, mech 4 had foot prints, that game was built in 2000
thats 12 years ago
all is needed is use similar code and remove the delete foot prints over time part
hell they are using the crytek 3 engine, this feature is possible a Tick box by now

Hahah ya, Naduk is right... the point is moot really. It's not like we re-drop a day later on a planet and expect persistent tracks... we're talking the span of what will more than likely be a 10-15 minute match... and at that point how much of a factor will it really be?


@MaddMaxx -- Don't forget the sweet cowboy hat!

Edited by SI The Joker, 27 February 2012 - 08:31 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

SI The Joker, on 27 February 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Hahah ya, Naduk is right... the point is moot really. It's not like we re-drop a day later on a planet and expect persistent tracks... we're talking the span of what will more than likely be a 10-15 minute match... and at that point how much of a factor will it really be?


@MaddMaxx -- Don't forget the sweet cowboy hat!

Good catch sir.

[TimberJon]

Game balance again must be considered. Your argument of "why cant I" cuts both ways. The system requirements, and any combat or game play benefits must be equally available to all players, regardless of rig size, scale, cost, energy infrastructure, internet quality, etc.. etc.. and personal beliefs as to what they believe they should be provided.

And you can draw out a game, which might be integral to later developments of the storyline. The devs said crap on maps with wide open spaces, but they didn't say only tiny urban maps would be chosen. They also said they think games might last in a small time frame, but nothing is in concrete at this point and that can change as development moves forward.

Murphy's law persists in all things.

Not everyone will have a vid card capable of geometry instancing. The footprint should be a 3D geometry, not just a 2D texture on the plane of grade.

I'm done here because I just woke up and realized this isn't a new idea that would need to be suggested to the Dev team who has already made a 'Mech scaled game.

Edited by TimberJon, 27 February 2012 - 12:13 PM.

[verybad]

No. It's a minor feature, and it has to be tracked over the network. Absolutely not. Those persistent footprints grow from jsut a few to thousands over the course of a game. (50 steps, eachj for 24 mechs isn't exactly unbelievable)

Dissapear like previous games.

[Exilyth]

Naduk, on 26 February 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

the server has nothing to do with tracking foot prints

I beg to differ...

Naduk, on 26 February 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

the server tracks the location of items with in the game, Mechs, projectiles, physics objects,objectives
it constantly transmits this data to every client as do clients transmit their location constantly
as your already receiving the location of every mech and where they have been
it falls to the engine to place the foot prints along the traveled path

Footprints are objects too.

Ideally, the server informs the client of the initial state of the world (e.g. which map, what players in which mechs, e.t.c.) before the start of a round and after that, the client and server only exchange information about state changes, e.g. Objective 1 was completed, Player 4 gained a point, mech 3 moved to position (x,y), e.t.c. ...

if the client would know all the positions of all mechs all the time, the client could be made to, e.g. show the locations of enemies through buildings. (The same information could be used as targeting information for an aimbot.)
The same goes for footprints, if the client had all footprints available, that info could be abused similarly.

You can not be sure the game on the client is unmodified. You cannot just run a routine that compares each file against a checksum because that routine could also be modified. (That's also the reason so called 'hack shields' are easily bypassed.)

Since the client can not be trusted, the only way to prevent abuse of that data is to perform visibillity checks on the server and only send to the client what it can really see. (of course, static data, like the terrain or indestructible buildings, doesn't have to be transmitted.)

[Anvil Dragon]

My vote would be for persistance based on environmental conditions. It would be an additional load on computing but just as I mentioned scouts using passive radar to their advantage I wouldn't add magic disappearing tracks to their bag of tricks.

As far as 10 minute games... I have hopes for games that run many hours on special occasions. Still within the limits of mechs on the field but as a drawn out tag-team affair.

[TimberJon]

Don't several of the mmo's currently out there pretty much void any hacking or client side data alteration? I'm very casually burning my money on SWTOR atm and it appears to be built on several best practices concerning security. I also am friends with a designer at Blizzard who was instrumental in evolving Battle.net into what it is and I recall him mentioning that they really had to pull out all the stops when they created that system. But his challenge might have been with their authentication system also allowing offline play...

[Felicitatem Parco]

Persistant footprints would fit very well into Information Warfare...

Not deformed terrain, but just laying a small 2-D image on the ground where a foot-impact event took place, and leave it there for two minutes. 2 minutes should be long enough for tracking parties to find their prey; beyond two minutes, you can just chalk-it-up to "information decay"

[MaddMaxx]

I can see it now.

"Boss I have founds some tracks. Heading out."

"Roger Lead. We are right behind you"

"Sir, this is 2nd! I have found 2 sets of tracks, be heads up."

"Sir, this is 3rd! I have found 3 sets of tracks, be really heads up, possible enemy Lance ahead."

"Ummm. OK geniouses. If your following each other, then those are the tracks of the guy in front of you! FOOLS!"

"Command! This is 1st. It is gonna be a long day out here! Over!"

LOL

Edited by MaddMaxx, 28 February 2012 - 11:00 AM.

[Insidious Johnson]

it should be done! I want to buy a "tail rake" for my mech to hide prints as an option!

[Major Payne]

They should only be persistant for the match. They should obviously not do terrain deformation, and consist only of decals. Think: the bullet marks on walls from many games. If the recent Battlefield installment can do it, and Crysis can do it, then it should be no trouble.