1 Topic by MJ Maverick (edited by MJ Maverick 2010-11-22 02:49:09)

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Topic: Down the line - my suggestions.

Not sure what you guys have on your to-do list but here are some subtle things I think would make a big difference on hitting that professional standard.

Anyway this is me just trying to help, put this game at the top of its genre.


1. On the dynamic TOD (Time of Day) shadows, make the old one fade out and the new one fade in at the same time. That's if you can never achieve the streaming TOD that the CryEngine 2 uses.

2. LODs, already talked about that in beta but the forums been deleted (fail). They really are an industry standard and at this day and age there really is no excuse not to have them in at some point.

3. Scale up bots at least to 150% their current size. The textures on the floor make it seem you are an ant. I'm not sure if you are after Optimus Prime size Mechs but if you want to give the feel that you are then you really need to make them much bigger in comparison to the floor and other objects.

4. Re-theming, may just be me but I was thinking that if the Attalica island was themed with a cold, ice and snow environment it would go great with the blue. Opposed to the current barren rock theme.
New Virginia could have the nice lush fertile environment (think waterfalls) it current has but maybe bring in some lakes. So not much change there.
Daoden, again, I think it's themed well with the sandy desert. Although I don't go there much so couldn't offer any improvements for that island.

5. Change the map to show true colours instead of a generic height map, for example Daoden is green on the map, but it's actually a desert. Include structures in the map so it's like a full blown aerial photograph.

6. Relocation for a much more realistic geography. Given the different environments on the islands I'd say shuffle them around a bit in the world to make it more realistic to the player when looking at the map and traveling across the islands. I've redesigned the world to give you an idea of what I mean in an image ([Image-1]) attached to [7].

7. Redesign of islands environments. At the moment you can't tell so much because the map thinks everything is green, but it will be obvious if the change from [5] is implemented. Instead of having one island all green then one right next to it totally desert (which doesn't make sense), blend them. Like real world Spain is lush in the north but arid in the south. Here is an image showing and noting how I have redesigned the world as an example.
[Image-1] http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9264/movement.jpg

To alaberate on the green texture/environment notes in [Image-1] here is an example in [Image-2] using a world crafted by a true expert, mother nature herself. If you imagine each area I've named was an Island you'll see in southern Spain particularly it blends from one environment to another.
[Image-2] http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2324/earthp.jpg


If you decide to make a story regarding this for roleplayers, it could go something like this. Each of the 3 megacorporations are mainly interested and experts in extracting different types of the planets resources. ICS (Institute of Corporate Security) want to discover and control the cold regions, covered in ice. So their first expansion after Attalica is aimed at Domhalarn. Truhold-Markson want to discover and control the fertile Amazon and European like areas of the world and exploit thier resources. While Asintec want to find the hot, oil rich (from past inhabitants) desert areas of Nia in the south.

8. Tracking, at some point, if you can perfect it like Eve Online. It needs to come back.

9. Trim down how steep bots can go up/down hills. It's a little daft watching an Arkhe go up a very steep near cliff-side hill when you know full well it would just roll over backwards down the hill if it were to attempt that in real life. It looks daft and distracts you from the game itself.

10. Dynamic lights, we all love them. Imagine this, you are sitting outside the ICS Alpha terminal, it's going dark. What shadows are still visible are long across the landscape. Then just before the sun goes down, floodlight attached to the station light up one at a time like someone is flicking the switches inside. These floodlight are hung from several places on the terminal and light up the floor around the station.


Anyway; that's me, for now. Just giving my ideas for game design for you to play with. Developer feedback would be real nice.


MJ

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Re: Down the line - my suggestions.

I can answer the 3d engine related ones.
#1: We looked into that about a year ago. The problem with that approach is that it would require two shadow renders per frame instead of one, making the whole thing twice as expensive. (Shadow maps change around with the camera view and the scene so if you change the camera or animate something you need to re-render them, so keeping an old shadow map and fading the shadows from that into a new one is not an option) -
As for the shadows jumping around, that is the lesser of two evils: to our knowledge there is currently no shadowing method that would achieve all three of the following at once on the level of hardware we choose for the game: rendering a large outdoors terrain, having dynamic lighting, and having completely stable shadows. We managed to get the first two right, however if we changed the time of day to the exact value each frame, the shadows would flicker all the time which would result in a white-noise like effect on the ground. If at some point we find a better solution we'll implement it.

#2: LOD has been discussed, and for some of the decors is already in the works, however it won't result in any dramatic framerate changes as the game is mostly CPU bound.

#10: Dynamic lighting was dropped for now as it was a huge performance hog. We'll revisit it when we have the time.

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Re: Down the line - my suggestions.

MJ Maverick wrote:

10. Dynamic lights, we all love them. Imagine this, you are sitting outside the ICS Alpha terminal, it's going dark. What shadows are still visible are long across the landscape. Then just before the sun goes down, floodlight attached to the station light up one at a time like someone is flicking the switches inside. These floodlight are hung from several places on the terminal and light up the floor around the station.

That would be so awesome! May not add directly to the game, but the level of atmosphere and immersion it would create is huge, which would improve the enjoyment of the game immensely.

Never underestimate atmosphere.

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Re: Down the line - my suggestions.

Surge wrote:
MJ Maverick wrote:

10. Dynamic lights, we all love them. Imagine this, you are sitting outside the ICS Alpha terminal, it's going dark. What shadows are still visible are long across the landscape. Then just before the sun goes down, floodlight attached to the station light up one at a time like someone is flicking the switches inside. These floodlight are hung from several places on the terminal and light up the floor around the station.

That would be so awesome! May not add directly to the game, but the level of atmosphere and immersion it would create is huge, which would improve the enjoyment of the game immensely.

Never underestimate atmosphere.

that would be great. with places and structure like the roads from terminals lighting up.


On what BoyC has said, how multithread capable is the client/engine right now then and would you look at expanding it to 3+ threads [if cpus are available] in the future this would help deal with the cpu limitations by using all cycles at the pc's disposalal instead of bottlenecking on a single thread...seeing as os's arent at the point to fully do this automatically lol

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