79 replies to this topic

[Alan Grant]

ScrewCityChris, on 02 March 2012 - 01:46 AM, said:

I was around and old enough to play when these came out and Im only in my early 30's.. are you calling people my age old? sniff sniff

I'm only 23, and I've been playing since MW2 came out in 1995.

I'm not calling anyone old, just using a term referenced in the 'original mechwarrior '09 reveal' interview.

[ScrewCityChris]

Just giving you a hard time

I will be cureous to see how this works in game. I think someone already hit the nail on the head that the arms or torso will lock/auto target to the primary and you can use your mouse/joystick etc to then twist/arm move to the secondary.

I wonder if this mode has an option to "lock" the 2 rets. together for either a beginner mode or for an easier alpha strike mode. Would be a handy addition if it did.

[Black Mamba]

Just from this single feature, MWO is set apart from the pool of PC games out there in terms of gameplay. I just cannot wait for next week!

[Alan Grant]

ScrewCityChris, on 02 March 2012 - 01:51 AM, said:

Just giving you a hard time

I know, just wanted to make it clear, before someone REALLY misunderstood.

From the fluff in the books if I recall, there are usually [Stackpole's anyway] two reticles which define the arc of each arm. They can be locked, or used independently. The torso weapons are usually pointed in the general direction of the middle of the viewfinder. [Or maybe that's only some mechs.] Either way, it's nice to get something that brings the experience closer to what's in the books.

I'm interested as to how they'll be using two seperate reticles. Something to look forward too.

Edit: Ahhhh grammar, Y U NO B E Z!

Edited by Alan Grant, 02 March 2012 - 02:00 AM.

[Spooky]

ScrewCityChris, on 01 March 2012 - 11:34 PM, said:

Exactly. I keep trying to think of how they are doing this without making the controls feel cumbersome.

Yeah, I am also curious about that .

[Ramrod]

Gents, if you go watch the 2009 trailer for the scrapped 3015 singleplayer reboot, I believe there were two reticles in that as well. Two concentric circles, with the smaller one veering wildly off centre when the Whammy was hit. I think we were all just dumb and didn't realise.

[Hans Landa]

It's not that hard, try using the keys like these and problem solved. Recently I played MW4 this way, using the numbers 1-4 for weap groups, so I have everything clustered in my left hand

A-D: Turn Left/Right
Q-E: Twist Torso Left/Right
S: Stop Moving
W: Center Torso
R: Target Enemy (E is used in twist torso)
Mouse Wheel: Regulate Speed
Mouse Axis: Move arms

If we need to move Up/Down the torso, we can change W/S, use A/D for torso twist and Q/E for turn right/left (ASDW for torso twist, QE for turning)

[Krubarax]

Assault Tech 1: Battletech
Look it up, if you are unfamiliar with it.

This has already been done (and works wonders IMO)

[nano]

Ramrod, on 02 March 2012 - 03:16 AM, said:

Gents, if you go watch the 2009 trailer for the scrapped 3015 singleplayer reboot, I believe there were two reticles in that as well. Two concentric circles, with the smaller one veering wildly off centre when the Whammy was hit. I think we were all just dumb and didn't realise.

Yeah, your right. Not to mention they have already talked about convergence so two reticules would be a given.

[Alexander Becker]

GB_Krubarax, on 02 March 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

Assault Tech 1: Battletech
Look it up, if you are unfamiliar with it.

This has already been done (and works wonders IMO)

I agree, people should check it out just to see how nice such a feature for mechwarrior/battletech can be.

[The Cheese]

I'm curious about how multiple target reticules will be controlled. The hat on a joystick for one, and the normal joystick controls for the other, perhaps? How does that translate to keyboard/mouse users?

In any case, I can't see anyone but the most skilful players using both reticles to great effect. It will take some serious coordination to pull off the kinds of moves that would make this worthwhile.

[Spooky]

Hm, well to those who have played AT1:BT. Could you enlighten us what the advantages are? I mean being able to shoot in two different directions at the same time sounds neat, but what's its practical use?

Edited by Spooky, 02 March 2012 - 05:12 AM.

[Krubarax]

Basicly it is quite hard to actually turn it into an advantage.
It is more of a feature.

And it is both "realistic" and it eliminates kind of an "exploit" that was appearant in both MW3 and MW4, where there was really no point in putting weapons in your arms. Your arms were less armored than your side-torsos, and you risked losing your arm-weapons when the side-torso were blown off - so in general, people prefered putting as much weaponry in the torso-sections as possible - wile leaving the arms un-armed, and basicly act like shields.

Now in AT1:BT, there were two reticles.
The first one, was for arm mounted weapons. It acted just like the reticle does in all previous MW games.
Free floating and easy to aim.

The second one though, for torso-weapons, were kind of "glued" to the HUD.
You could not move this reticle, but it pointed straight forward from your torso.
This not only ment that you had to point your entire mech to line up shots - but also, this reticle was very "bumpy" when you traveled at greater speed. (as in the TT game)

Which makes sence, I guess, Since the arms can be stabelized, much like the turret-gun on a modern tank, while torso-mounted weapons are kind of "fixed" in position.

So while arm-mounted weapons were easier to fire on the move, and allowed for easier and faster target-aquisition - they were voulnerable, because arms can easily be picked off, they are less armored and they go offline if you destroy the side-torso

Torso-mounted weapons on the other hand, were better protected, but harder to fire on the move, and had slower target-aqusition time.

I liked it

Edited by GB_Krubarax, 02 March 2012 - 07:35 AM.

[Ramrod]

Krubarax, that does sound entirely excellent, and I hope the devs will implement the system similarly to what you have described.

[Spooky]

Ah yes, that sounds good. Hopefully it will be like that in MWO as well .

[Dihm]

So...

How the hell do you play this game with a HOTAS again?

Paul? Any help here? Cause I'm having trouble and this seems like it will make mouse and keyboard much more preferable.

[Corsair114]

Another couple things about AT1:

When you walked, your torso reticule would bob up and down, so if you were moving it was fairly hard to get all your weapons to converge.

If you had a Targeting Computer installed on your 'mech, your reticule didn't move and all your weapons would free-aim (made a retrofit WHM-9D with just 4 regular IS PPC's that was quite nasty because of that, place crosshair on Thor, LOL as Thor lost one weapon with each trigger pull).

[Valdor Constantine]

Dual joysticks one for torso weapons movement and one for arms Foot peddles for torso twist Oh this is gonna be amazing can't wait to get my taxes back to start building my desk setup and comp components I'm giddy with anticipation !!!!

[Hartsblade]

Did a little digging and thought it would be nice to have a few Source quotes...(spoiler tags have been removed from the quotes)

Bryan Ekman, on 01 March 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

1 - Is Heading and a secondary torso twitst indicator (triangle). Objectives, enemies, and friendlies slide across here as well.
2 - weapon group status (1-6)
7 - is the mini-map.

Since spoilers are very abused thanks to Paul. Warning this is a real spoiler.
There are two reticules - arms and torso.

Bryan Ekman, on 01 March 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

There are two cursors. One for arms and one for torso. Players are not able to customize which weapons go on which cursor, as this is a function of BattleMech design. No arm weapons, no arm cursor.

As for temperatures - this is your traditional MechWarrior heat gauge. Over heat = shutdown or worse.

and lastly a interesting comment about HUD functionality

Bryan Ekman, on 01 March 2012 - 09:50 AM, said:

We're planning on testing ammo explosions. If we can tune them reasonably, they'll make it in.

Someone asked this earlier. Yes the HUD is projected and follows the player's head tracking.

Speculation to follow...

Looking at the Trailer you will notice that the targeting reticule(s) are projected on the HUD.

So if the HUD (and crosshairs) track the players/pilots head that hints that both the torso and arm reticules will be free to aim where the pilot is looking (not "locked" forward torso weapon reticule unless it is an option). It also opens up a ton of aiming options hardwarewise. For instance the Logitec G940 joystick not only has the usual 'hat' control but it has a thumb stick that works as a 2nd joystick allowing the torso and HUD movements to be done with one hand (Stick for torso movement, thumb stick for head movement). If the team decides to support IR tracking hardware then it is going to be outragous. IR tracking to control the HUD, stick for torso movement, and thumb for second reticule movement, throttle for speed and peddles for steering as an example.

Edited by Hartsblade, 02 March 2012 - 06:33 AM.

[EDMW CSN]

Basically if you mount all your guns in the torso, you have to spin the entire torso to aim on the target. Weapons on arms offer greater free aim but at a cost, they are less armored after all