639 replies to this topic

[Carrioncrows]

I would be ok with that.

[Brkojle]

There is no Flea...its just an urban myth!

[stjobe]

Okay, so now that the Orion lads have gotten their coveted "Kerensky 'mech", can we please have our little Flea?

Pretty please with sugar on top?

Pweeeese? *puppy-eyes*

[Akule]

Next month is the Locust and the start of the Project Phoenix mechs. I wouldn't expect the flea until next year, at the earliest.

[stjobe]

Akule, on 05 September 2013 - 03:31 PM, said:

Next month is the Locust and the start of the Project Phoenix mechs. I wouldn't expect the flea until next year, at the earliest.

Shush, you. Let me live in my fantasy world where the Flea is coming soon™.

[Amsro]

stjobe, on 06 September 2013 - 03:43 AM, said:

Shush, you. Let me live in my fantasy world where the Flea is coming soon™.

They did say 2 mechs per month come september... maybe the flea this month too..

[Cybermech]

the flea and masc have so far been in the same boat for a while.
I'm nearly sure I have seen them mentioned a few times in the same updates.
Maybe they will be released at the same time.

[HammerSwarm]

*eagerly awaiting this announcement* Due to problems with the masc the locust has been delayed indefinitely. Look for more news coming soon.

No but seriously couldn't they deploy this with a masc that does nothing similar to the command console?

[stjobe]

Yes, the Flea needs MASC, and the reason it got pushed back from its original March release was due to MASC not playing well with the netcode. We're also waiting for the CTF-3L, a Cataphract variant that comes with MASC.

AFAIK, none of the Locust variants announced use MASC so it won't be affected by this particular problem.

As for releasing a non-working MASC implementation; I'd rather wait.

[Koniving]

Koniving, on 19 August 2013 - 10:20 PM, said:

"Protect the Ambassador" game mode, anyone?

If that post here (click the arrow next to the quote) keeps getting likes, at this rate I think I'll have to have it as a serious suggestion or question in ATD.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Koniving, on 06 September 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

If that post here (click the arrow next to the quote) keeps getting likes, at this rate I think I'll have to have it as a serious suggestion or question in ATD.

Hey I'd run that one - biggest problem with escort type quests in multiplayer though... if the escortee is destroyable.. whats to keep the other team from just nuking it?

[Fred013]

Why not protect the Flea gamemode?

[Koniving]

Fred013, on 06 September 2013 - 09:58 PM, said:

Why not protect the Flea gamemode?

You could have multiple fleas. The Ambassador has no weapons at all and it's also 20 tons. Plus Ambassadors are diplomats. People like to intercept politicians and blow the {Scrap} out of them. It's a win win (unless you're the ambassador).

Shar Wolf, on 06 September 2013 - 09:19 PM, said:

Hey I'd run that one - biggest problem with escort type quests in multiplayer though... if the escortee is destroyable.. whats to keep the other team from just nuking it?

That's quite possible. I picture the Ambassador as a playable role randomly assigned to someone.

The other possibility is the Ambassador being a bad person by hiding in a corner, so there can be a list of assigned points that the Ambassador must go to in order to negotiate for a set amount of time. It's preferable that these points be on a list with no set order or a randomly set order, so that Ambassadors can choose (or be randomly sent to) locations rather than have one predefined path that everyone learns within the first hour.

The Ambassador, while possessing unparalleled agility, cannot fight in any capacity. Its small size makes even ramming to be a terrible idea. As such, it makes the role rather interesting. Of course, since the Ambassador is assigned to you, you can't customize it (although I would like it if the paintjob took colors from your mech's paint to allow you that unique flare).

This obviously should never be played on a small map.

(Essentially this is not that different from a one-sided conquest, where only the Ambassador can capture. His allies must protect him; slower ones would likely engage the large groups or provide walls to fall back behind. Faster allies would keep on his tail to engage faster threats. The only real goal for the other party is to kill the Ambassador. The question is whether or not there should be more than one Ambassador; perhaps in dropship/respawn mode, the Ambassador player gets as many Ambassadors as he had mechs lined up for a drop -- if the player had two Atlases, then only two Ambassadors. If the player had 4 mechs, then 4. If he had 1 mech for some reason, only one?)

[Morang]

Koniving, on 19 August 2013 - 10:38 PM, said:

Partly the issue is a 1:1 scale on battlemechs... in an engine designed for human-sized figures. MWO did not make the mechs human-sized.. So when the hit boxes divide the geometry quality resolution by 8, there's a huge difference between the landscape we see and the one server side. This is why shots fired around the pillars of Tourmaline magically hit invisible walls up to 6 meters away from the pillars.

This is also why HSR has had so many issues running at the current game speed. However if the simulation aka game is slown down, say 1 RL second = 0.75 seconds in game, there would be more time for the system to communicateback and forth, giving us better hit detection. Sadly every aspect of the game would suffer a 25% "slower" feel, to include the movement of our crosshairs and travel of our bullets.

It sounds interesting, can you explain a bit more or put a link? Not a joke, I'm really interested about some technical aspects sometimes. What is "real size" when it comes to in-game models?

I thought that if you put large mechs in an environment suited to FPS you will end up having MORE fidelity than you need (which will possibly cost you some performance) - for example, having a grass that looks plausible from 1 meter height when you're sitting in the cockpit 10 meters above it. I though same applies to hitboxes and it's strange to have a glitches on the mechs scale when the engine should be capable of working in the indoors environment. How did this geometry quality division by 8 happen?

[C E Dwyer]

Red squirrel, on 24 June 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

A Hussar would be great if they implement the large laser properly.

Possibly add the cockpit to the CT and have the laser in the head with additional x-axis movement?

People want mechs that look like Head lice ?

[C E Dwyer]

Amsro, on 06 September 2013 - 04:03 AM, said:

They did say 2 mechs per month come september... maybe the flea this month too..

I think the pheonix project covers that, assuming they're not just pretty pictures, nice to see some stills of what been paid out for

[Koniving]

Morang, on 07 September 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

It sounds interesting, can you explain a bit more or put a link? Not a joke, I'm really interested about some technical aspects sometimes. What is "real size" when it comes to in-game models?

I thought that if you put large mechs in an environment suited to FPS you will end up having MORE fidelity than you need (which will possibly cost you some performance) - for example, having a grass that looks plausible from 1 meter height when you're sitting in the cockpit 10 meters above it. I though same applies to hitboxes and it's strange to have a glitches on the mechs scale when the engine should be capable of working in the indoors environment. How did this geometry quality division by 8 happen?

This is information a network engineer fed me. The first question: The Commando is 9.7(9.something) meters tall. The Atlas is 17(point something) meters tall.

In the image below, the third mech is the current scale. The second is a 25% reduction. The fourth is what the person wants the Atlas to be sized (with a claim of it being 27 meters in the new scale for god knows what reason), and the first is approximately 2.(something) to 3 meters, as a much more "ideal" and network friendly scale.



The core engine is designed to give you maybe no more than 500 meters draw distance with incredible detail. Instead the game is being forced to render out to 2000 meters, with much less detail but superbly large objects. Unfortunately the tax is about the same. But if you were to lie about size, say 1 meter of actual size is "5 meters," you'd be able to get away with so much more. Instead of forcing the engine to draw incredible distances of 2000 plus meters, it can draw distances of 400 meters but tell you it's 2,000 meters, and in that space you can cram in a lot more detail for a similar same tax on the engine. (Shadows stretch for no more than 5 actual meters, even if they're stretching for "25 meters" according to your screen, meaning a LOT less processing power is consumed to render it and lighting is much more precise.)

From what I was told, the collision or hitbox meshes are generally 1/8th the detail (the network simulation does not use the same geometry we see, it needs to be rapid.
Picture the difference between
Battlezone Atari

and Battlezone PC


So if you're 800,000 polygons, the network's hitbox is 100,000 polygons.

The best comparison is this:


reduced to this.


After all you can't see the network simulation, and it doesn't render anything in visual 3D, so there's absolutely no reason to use full fidelity.

Far as grass goes, with a larger environment, you'd have to have more panels of grass. For a smaller environment but giving the gigantic illusion, you'd have to shorten the length of the grass but those same size panels would cover more.

Think of it this way. If your panels cover 2 meters, tax you 400 polygons, and you have 2000 meters to cover.. That's 400,000 polygons just in grass and 1,000 panels.

But if you scaled it to be 1 meter = 5 meters, then 2000 meters = 400 meters, then 2 real meters covers 10 fake meters, then you need 40 panels and 16,000. I'm sure I botched that math somewhere but I have to take a shower for work. Ask SCJazz about his slowing time idea, but be ready to spend hours listening to him loop back and forth.

[HlynkaCG]

Koniving, on 07 September 2013 - 09:12 AM, said:

This is information a network engineer fed me. The first question: The Commando is 9.7(9.something) meters tall. The Atlas is 17(point something) meters tall.

In the image below, the third mech is the current scale. The second is a 25% reduction. The fourth is what the person wants the Atlas to be sized (with a claim of it being 27 meters in the new scale for god knows what reason), and the first is approximately 2.(something) to 3 meters, as a much more "ideal" and network friendly scale.

Having encountered a similar issue in one of my own programming projects I have often wondered why PGI did not simply divide by 10 when it comes to scale. Make a 17 meter mech 1.7 crysis-units tall (close to human scale) and leave it at that.

Edited by HlynkaCG, 07 September 2013 - 09:29 AM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

HlynkaCG, on 07 September 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

[/size]
I have often wondered why PGI did not simply divide by 10 when it comes to scale.

Because it didn't occur to them until to late to back out?

That would have been what I would have thought they would have done from the first.... but I tend to think of things a little differently I guess...

[DirePhoenix]

HlynkaCG, on 07 September 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

[/size]

Having encountered a similar issue in one of my own programming projects I have often wondered why PGI did not simply divide by 10 when it comes to scale. Make a 17 meter mech 1.7 crysis-units tall (close to human scale) and leave it at that.

Perhaps it's trying to think ahead so that at some point down the line they could possibly have more things on a personal scale, such as infantry, battlearmor and ground vehicles.

Also, shrinking down the scale for the outside terrain would also mean cutting down the scale of things inside the cockpit. While it would be great if you're talking about a 3PV only game where you're looking at the battlefield from an outside overhead view and you never see things on a personal scale, it would mean that our cockpits would lose detail if we scale them down accordingly. (although to be fair, some 'mech cockpits are already too big to physically fit inside their 'mech models to begin with *cough*Commando/Spider*cough*)