Gameplay and Graphics. CALL TO ARMS!

[smoth]

That's right stick your heads in the sand.

[clericvash]

That's right stick your heads in the sand.

Uh what?
You now with stupid comments like that it's no wonder people don't like you much

[clericvash]

Aww my feelings are hurt, hang on while I dredge some care out of give a fuck bay.

Thanks for the lovely PM smoth, even though i was one of the biggest fans of your Gundam Mod, prick.

[smoth]

Wow, class act there, posting a private message in public.

[smoth]

I agree that its outdated and there have been a lot of progress, but TA is a classic. It doesnt need to be replaced >:[

it's content does.

Now, Spring's TA mods are impressive improvements and advancements in the gameplay of the original ta

I dont think any spring TA mod is better or worse than the original TA, they just use different approaches to the gameplay.

I didn't say better or worse I said improvement.

What you fail to realize is that those 10 years of work have been community work, not commercial. People mod and fix and redo things for the love of the game, not to ca$h people in to play it ~~

what you fail to realize is that I could tha community work as part of the current incarnation of BA, which came from AA which came from the TA unit pack AA which was based on Uberhack.

Also of all people in the community you are talking to a guy who has worked on gundam will little interest coming from the community and I have to purchase most of my reference materials from japan which is in no way cheap. So I understand for the love and you people do not love your ta very much.

Spring is a engine, afaik people can do games on it however they like to. Its your loss if you cant stand the gfx of some mods.

It is everyone's loss as they have inadequate graphics which hurt the games. Gundam and many other projects will be fine, but the TA mods will one day die out.

Or you could just the fuck up and go play crysis and masturbate on the cool gfx ^__^

If I played crysis, which I don't I would play it for the large world that I can roam with cool abilities and interesting ai and vehicles. but I do not own that game. I do enjoy modern titles but that is another thread all together.

[clericvash]

Wow, class act there, posting a private message in public.

Well after i have supported you in telling people about your mod, getting people interested, actually playing it and always being nice towards you, i'm pretty pissed at such a childish attitude from you and felt the need to post it to show how you really act.

[Crayfish]

Partially agree.

However, the graphics should be designed with the camera viewpoint in mind. What looks close up might just look messy from the overhead camera.

If I had time I would learn to model and contribute some stuff. I don't have time (or any artistic talent / experience, which may be a problem), but if I were to make models I'd aim for them to be:

Distinctive
Bright
With clear features
Visible colours and textures
Full of character

I think that for an RTS these points are more important than the sort of impressive detailing that turns into a blur during gameplay.

[KDR_11k]

So how much drama can we get in a thread about "TA models are outdated, start making new ones!"?

[smoth]

Well after i have supported you in telling people about your mod, getting people interested

Even though I said it wasn't ready for me to go out and do that yet.

actually playing it

You should play something because you like it.

and always being nice towards you,

You certainly are not being nice right now, publicly deriding me and derailing the thread when this whole conversation could have been and should have been handled in pm as it has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DISCUSSION AT HAND.

i'm pretty pissed at such a childish attitude from you and felt the need to post it to show how you really act.

There are almost 7000 posts here with some containing me being much meaner then that. I have never bothered to edit one of them to try and hide anything, they are in the state they were since I posted them. What I was doing was taking the conversation to pm. You are not making some big revelation about my character, I have been here for years, helping people, flaming others and working on my project. I am not a perfect individual, I have good days and bad. There is no big reveal when I make it a point to not hide my real emotions and sentiments.

I'd suggest rather then turning on someone based on one sentence you learn to consider the character of the person more. If you treat your real life relationships in such a way you will be alone very fast.

This thread was actually a suggestion for people to get up and help improve the game they allegedly love(ta in spring). People stick their heads in the sand crying that the game is fine. Well, that is always the reaction around here and I was disappointed to see that sort of response. Luckily it was only from sleksa so far. CA hopes to change that and I commend them but this thread wasn't for them OR for people like sleksa who hate change and fight it violently. It is a call to arms, a request that people get up and help make a difference. Altogether a noble cause.
*edited a few spelling errors*

[smoth]

You really should have influence on that like a slider in the Spring settings that controls at what distance you want to switch mip-mapping levels...

the same happens to 3dos.

Gundam doesn't use dds and thus it has no stored mips for spring to use.

I am sorry to have ignored your posts there krogoth, I had to deal with vash and sleksa. I do agrea that the models need to be low poly for some of the lower end machine and I do feel their pain as I run spring often times no higher then the teens in fps. However, it has been proven that pathing causes bigger strain which means that even if the models are low poly the machines will choke up from that.

I do also understand that most people do not realize how bad the models are untill they look. However, the texturing of the 3do models is very poor. Having odd angles on many parts and seemingly random texturing on others. S3os provide both clean lines in geomitry and texture. Yes, I am a proponent that 3do can look good but when you look at the fact that you have no control over specular or reflective shaders being applied to the model you find yourself with a blob. that is ignoring the benifits of transparency and glow as well.

However, a small but vocal part of the community lacks the ability to really use reflective, spec, glow and trans. meaning they lose out on a lot of helpful visual aids because their machines are lower end. In all honesty a 70$ card can fix that, which is a pittance these days with games costing 60+

Also as a note, I own an Xbox, 360, wii and dreamcast. However, if someone said hey, you could take that wii and make it run in high def I would be overjoyed as zelda looks horrible.

I can see why people are fond of the old models, you have great memories with them. However, if you have an old car that you love to drive, why not go and fix all those holes in it's body work, maybe get it a bright new paint job and hey, get it a tune up, I am sure it will run even better.

[[Krogoth86]]

Gundam doesn't use dds and thus it has no stored mips for spring to use.

Well ok but I think you'll have to admit that this isn't really applicable for TA mods. Let's pretend you give every unit an uncompressed 512x512 texture what means 1MB each. With let's say 400 units that would be 400MB just for the unit textures! So you won't be able to play it with a 256MB graphics card (and even those 256MB are something not everyone has). Depending on the additional content you might even get problems with 512MB as many (TA) mods use even more than 400 units plus map textures, buildpics, explosions and whatever you integrated for your UI plus to complete this list having triple buffering enabled what will store some of your output images eating several MB again...

So imo dds really are the way to go and in general they also are a good solution (the way Spring handles them just is unfortunate)...

However, if you have an old car that you love to drive, why not go and fix all those holes in it's body work, maybe get it a bright new paint job and hey, get it a tune up, I am sure it will run even better.

Well I think this isn't about people not wanting to replace the models. I now could argue that it's about the cons of washed out textures and an inconsistent look when you have 3dos and s3os together but I think there's another reason:

I think that most players don't really care about the graphics as long as it's not total crap (what TA mods aren't even with 3do models). They probably don't as nearly all of the screens and promo show TA stuff and if they really would care the would have closed their browser immediately. When reading some of your postings I think that also might be the reason for some of the drama which likely happens in threads of yours. I sometimes have the perception of you totally being horrified by the visual standard most of the TA mods deliver and you look upon it as a total no-go so that opposition might cause lots of the "problems" here...

I have to add though that you shouldn't talk about people "sticking their heads in the sand". With my perception of people not really caring (i.e. it's nowhere near a top-priority) this won't lead to anything. It's also a bit unfair imo as most people are here to play the games and can't really do anything about it as they don't have th required skills. Those who actually could do something to my mind in most cases are doing something but just as you they have projects of their own and most of them are not TA-related. In fact I think Mr. D recently is the only "freelancing allround artist" here that focuses on TA...

So imo your "request" especially in this topic sounds a bit rough to me as imo the known "ressources" for doing work already are depleted and your tone doesn't really help the way to do something and that is "hunting" for possible newcomers...

[smoth]

Gundam doesn't use dds and thus it has no stored mips for spring to use.

Well ok but I think you'll have to admit that this isn't really applicable for TA mods. Let's pretend you give every unit an uncompressed 512x512 .. stuff stuff .. images eating several MB again...

Maps eat more texture memory.

So imo dds really are the way to go and in general they also are a good solution (the way Spring handles them just is unfortunate)...

Nope they are not and they are not some magic solution but that is another thread.

When reading some of your postings I think that also might be the reason for some of the drama which likely happens in threads of yours. I sometimes have the perception of you totally being horrified by the visual standard most of the TA mods deliver and you look upon it as a total no-go so that opposition might cause lots of the "problems" here...

I am horrified by the visual lack of quality and standard in the ta content. However, the drama is because people feel as though an attack on the lack of quality in the ta content is an attack on them self and their taste.

I have to add though that you shouldn't talk about people "sticking their heads in the sand". With my perception of people not really caring (i.e. it's nowhere near a top-priority) this won't lead to anything. It's also a bit unfair imo as most people are here to play the games and can't really do anything about it as they don't have th required skills.

You have to start somewhere, "no skills" is just a convenient excuse not to try. It is a matter of the fact that most people here hate any suggestions about changing their beloved and perfect ta yet, people are still changing BA.

Those who actually could do something to my mind in most cases are doing something but just as you they have projects of their own and most of them are not TA-related. In fact I think Mr. D recently is the only "freelancing allround artist" here that focuses on TA...

I am not posting this thread for them.

So imo your "request" especially in this topic sounds a bit rough to me as imo the known "resources" for doing work already are depleted and your tone doesn't really help the way to do something and that is "hunting" for possible newcomers...

That is the problem, people act like those of us "resources" just woke up and knew how to do what we know. We didn't we worked on it, for fucks sake, it takes effort.

the first gundam model at polies for lunch and looked like shit..


subsequent models also sucked.

but I worked and got better. The problem is not a lack of "resources" I mean really, do you have to refer to us like that.. the problem is lack of people making the effort to become a "resource." They can edit the wiki, make unit guides, make maps, anything... just get up and try.

[Guessmyname]

So how much drama can we get in a thread about "TA models are outdated, start making new ones!"?

Oh, we've not even started yet...

[smoth]

lol, I remember when gmn started... he was pretty promising from the begining though

[[Krogoth86]]

You have to start somewhere, "no skills" is just a convenient excuse not to try. It is a matter of the fact that most people here hate any suggestions about changing their beloved and perfect ta yet, people are still changing BA.

Well I think there's no real incitement about starting to do something with 0 knowledge of anything. You'll be rejected by all mods which might want to include your new model. Then there also is this tension you'll find at some places here which pretty much scare away any newcomers. I mean go to my MA V1.0 topic and read it - there's so much blaming, bashing and insulting that you really can't speak of any decent encouragement (although some postings in fact are but that were rather few)...

I mean it's not that I didn't do anything new for it and instead just tweaked some text files for balancing (although some actually believed me doing so as they never even touched my mod or actually read anything I wrote). So maybe you start there in order to get new people to do anything...

[smoth]

Krogoth I have always been here willing to help people. There was a point in time where I could get nothing done because people kept pming me in lobby for help. So I didn't log on to lobby for a week and just tested gundam offline .

I don't see many inflammatory posts, was the MA thread cleaned up?

[Peet]

Or you could just the fuck up and go play crysis and masturbate on the cool gfx ^__^

Works for me :)

[zwzsg]

You would probably achieve more if you softened your tone Smoth. The underlying idea that Cavedog's 3do are outdated is okay (though now there are a few people making new models, and a few TA mods using those new models), the way you express makes us want to disagree.

IMO it didn't happen because random change in FBI eats way less time than making texture and models, and gives you more a reputation of a pro skilled player.

Not to mention, if you fail at texturing/modelling, a single leaked screenshot and everybody can immediatly assess your skill. If you fail at balancing, well, just flame everybody that says so on the ground they're n00b who haven't played the mod enough, and the fifty pages balancing debate thread will make your mod looks even more awesomely pro-balanced. And did I already mention how TA's balance being completly broken yet perfect prove that anyway balance is just irrelevant wanktalk?

[[Krogoth86]]

@smoth:
Well it's about THIS THREAD which afaik wasn't cleaned up. I think more than 50% don't have much to do with MA and lots of them contain bashing or insult on different degrees of severity...

I in fact help someone else with his mod and when he read that topic he pmd me like "Omg they totally raped your work without reason - I think I won't do such an official release with thread, trailer & stuff. So it in fact isn't helping for the respective modder (in this case me - although as I gave reason in that topic this doesn't discourage or scare me away) but also deterrent for everyone who reads it and is one of the possible newcomers...

[Guessmyname]

lol, I remember when gmn started... he was pretty promising from the begining though

Haha, so do I! I'll see if I can drag some pictures up... TAU isn't dead yet...

EDIT: Whoo-hoo! Found some. Now to upstage smoth in terms of crappiness!




(In my defense, smoth had references to work from...)