Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.
What is the opinion of the testers on the new scale? Should it be kept or should we go back to the old one? I'd like to gauge your opinions before outlining the pros and cons from a modding perspective.
Also need to make sure you all have the latest version (with the improved plane behaviour) so we can get a solid buglist built up.
Maps are twice as big
LoS is twice as big
Texture resolution is effectively doubled
Weapon ranges are doubled
Cons:
Next map format will have bigger maps anyway
Breaks compatibility with standard maps in regards to water depth and such
Reduces effectiveness of some weapons (although they all need a good overhaul anyway)
Footprints are just plain nasty now with very little differentiation between f.ex. a light tank and a heavy tank
Please make absolutely certain that collision models are not thrown critically out of whack by the reduced scale.
In SWS, we scaled all the infantry down so that they were much smaller; but the result was that the battle droids, who were already quite small, became practically impossible for small scale laser weaponry to hit. This completely changed the balance of SWS, where the droids became all-powerful, as can be seen in the current release.
In order to solve this issue, we played around with weapons, with health, etc; but the result was never desirable. Eventually, we simpl scaled the droids up by ~150%, which solved the problem entirely.
Spring doesn't seem to handle small units very well. Which is a big shame, because as MiniSpring showed us, it really made things look much better, with high mountains really being high mountains, and men fitting more logically under trees.
I have done tests, and if you use S3O, instead of 3DO... you can get control over the collision spheres, and this quits being a problem. Just a note...
Is there any quick and dirty way to mass-convert .3dos to .s3os? I know the model conversion is easy enough, but retexturing every single model would be a bit of a pain.
Flozi, if it will help, I can give you an early version of my urban map so you can have something that will match the feature scale that most of the modelers will be using.
Since Spring doesn't allow for units with footprints smaller than 1x1, units can only be so small. Even now, a few of the AATA units are on the small side for their footprint side. The issue is that even with half scale, AATA infantry are about 12 feet tall, with your current scale.
Smoth, if you have a map with urban features, I can run through with the various 'realistic' scale mods and let you know how they do.
My prediction right now is:
1) SWTA: Stormtroopers and such are about 18 feet tall, maybe closer to 20.
2) WD: Infantry about 15 feet tall
3) AATA: Infantry roughly 10-12 feet tall.
SWTA uses larger models, so they're easier to see and whatnot. However, this will cause issues with scale on any kind of urban map. I think a SWTA stormtrooper is roughly the same height as a peewee. Actually, I'll post a shot of AATA infantry, WD infantry, and a SWTA trooper together next to a peewee when I get home tonight.
Already they are considerably undersized for their minimum 1x1 footprint (the originals were appropriately sized) and hit detection is suffering considerably (it was bad enough with the old scale).
Edit: Now that I think about it, there's no reason to use the smaller scale. All the .fbi and .tdf values can be changed, and maps will be bigger soon anyways. Maelstrom's excel .fbi editor makes this pretty easy. If you have a version with non-shrunk .3dos, I'll double LoS and weapon ranges so we get the same effect.
wow, those infantry are really tiny. You must have real trouble with those collision spheres...
Still, if you could pull it off at that scale, it would look really good, and make it easier for scaling units later. One issue we have in SWTA is that we want everything to be to scale, but we can't scale infantry down very much without causing issues; and if we scale everything up to match the infantry, we're going to have some huge vehicles around the place.
actually, there aren't really any issues with infantry hit detection, since all of the weapons in AATA currently use the default 'blob' projectile, which is sigifigantly larger than the laser that was causing the issues in SWTA.
However, this WILL become an issue if AATA arms fire is changed to tracer-style lasers.
