Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: 666maslo666 on August 08, 2015, 01:58:23 am
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Are you adequately impressed now?
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oh wow i never realised CIG were good at making impressive demos before now
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But it was played live...
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Are you adequately impressed now?
Not really. Why should I be? BF2142 had multicrew vehicles and modeled interiors back in 2006. Battlefront 2 had multicrew vehicles and mediocre shooter boarding actions during space battles back in 2005. This just looks prettier (and it does look very pretty).
You really need to understand that for people who haven't bought into the hype, this just looks like a better looking version of games we've played before. There's absolutely nothing new or original show in any of these videos except shiny graphics. AC still plays worse than modded FS2 and Diaspora. Judging by videos I've watched of E:D, it plays worse than that too. Fully crewed bombers aren't going to fix its problems. But I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing all the Retaliator and Constellation owners get pissy about how their 250$ ships are getting blown up by fighters that cost a fraction of that.
Still, it's progress, and it makes me think SQ42 will probably be a decent game. Not as good as FS2, because CR has no idea what good writing and good mission design is, but maybe something worth 30-45$. I still see no reason to believe the PU is any closer to happening though. Multicrew is by no means the biggest hurdle.
I'd also be curious to see how it looks when the ship is flying and you're not strapped into a seat.
And the FPS gameplay showed at Gamescom looks like the most generic shooter I could possibly imagine. Someone really ought to let CR know that headbobbing is neither fun nor realistic.
Oh, I do have to give credit where it's due. The new Retaliator sale is an amazing way of getting more money.
"Here's multicrew. Get hype! And here's our fancy bomber for 100$ less than we sold it last time, perfect for multicrew. Oh but you need to pay an extra 150$ for torpedo launchers to make it work as a bomber. And another 50$ to give it turret guns that aren't ****. And probably 20$ for actual torpedoes. Give us more money please!"
Selling ship modules is just a brilliant way of selling more crap to people. People aren't buying as many ships? Sell modules so people will buy them out of fear that their existing purchases will be obsolete without them. CIG are very, very good at marketing.
Tangential: This is a small thing, but I find it very amusing that SC, a game that prides itself on *realism*, still fell into the common "gatling weapons overheat more" trope. Gatling weapons are less susceptible to overheating than single-barreled guns. That's the entire point of having multiple barrels.
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They should really hire someone with all those crowd funding bucks to make actual good sounding gun effects. It's still as badly PEWPEWPEW sounding as during its first arenacommander days. Hell, wingcommander 3 had far better gun sounds than star citizen has right now.
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Maybe I've been spoiled by FS2_Open but I swear even retail FS2 sounded better. Not just the gun sounds, everything.
After watching the trailer, there may be a good game in here, but there is just as likely to be a horrible mess with a few playable sections. What really worries me about Star Citizen though is that it's going to be a failure and then people will start on again about how space sims are dead.
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oh wow i never realised CIG were good at making impressive demos before now
I was trying to find the "favorite" or "like" button to your comment but couldn't find it :D
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Why should I be? BF2142 had multicrew vehicles and modeled interiors back in 2006. Battlefront 2 had multicrew vehicles and mediocre shooter boarding actions during space battles back in 2005. This just looks prettier (and it does look very pretty). You really need to understand that for people who haven't bought into the hype, this just looks like a better looking version of games we've played before. There's absolutely nothing new or original show in any of these videos except shiny graphics.
I dont expect too much originality from Star Citizen. Even taking good aspects from previous space games and combining them in a shiny new package would make for a great game. The fact that it has been done before is in no way an argument against SC. And done in an inferior way - you really cant compare simple and unrealistic Battlefield vehicle system with the seamless SC way where you can walk around and interact with ship components. BF is not even a space game. The fact is, there arent many space games where you can walk around the ship while it is flying, too. I could probably count them all on fingers of one hand. So while it is not an entirely original concept, it is definitely something we need more of, IMHO.
Freespace wasnt very original in its time too - it just took the good things from other space games and combined them well.
]AC still plays worse than modded FS2 and Diaspora. Judging by videos I've watched of E:D, it plays worse than that too. Fully crewed bombers aren't going to fix its problems. But I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing all the Retaliator and Constellation owners get pissy about how their 250$ ships are getting blown up by fighters that cost a fraction of that.
AC plays well and has potential. Yeah, I think modded FS or Diaspora is more fun, but these games are based on a flight model developed and optimized for many years, the best spaceflight model space games have to offer now. It takes time to pin it down. And about E:D, I play that game too, and I must say I prefer the latest AC builds flight style to E:D.
I'd also be curious to see how it looks when the ship is flying and you're not strapped into a seat.
This was demonstrated in the demo. It looks just as you would expect in a ship with inertial dampeners and artificial gravity. The devs have stated that things such as centrifugal forces and physical impulses from impacts will come later, too.
Selling ship modules is just a brilliant way of selling more crap to people. People aren't buying as many ships? Sell modules so people will buy them out of fear that their existing purchases will be obsolete without them. CIG are very, very good at marketing.
Which is a good thing. The more money they raise from people with deep pockets, the higher quality the product can be - this is a crowdfunded game, no investors. As long as you dont NEED to buy those things to get the final game, I dont see anything wrong. I only own the base package (Aurora).
This demo is impressive because it shows the core SC technology, that is large world (up to 8.7 billion kilometres) + spaceship flight + first person mechanics, finally coming together in a playable way. There is a lot of content and gameplay still to add, but I believe now it is only a matter of time, not if, but when.
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And the FPS gameplay showed at Gamescom looks like the most generic shooter I could possibly imagine. Someone really ought to let CR know that headbobbing is neither fun nor realistic.
Without headbobbing, the player feels like sliding around instead of being grounded in the world. So headbob or not is an artistic choice, there is no objectively right answer, unless it is overdone. I happen to like moderate amount of head bob. Also, headbobbing does happen in real life, after all your head does bob when walking, but is visible only in periphery, because in the center of vision it is compensated by eye movement. This is similar to what SC is going to do, they have a special system where the center of screen wont experience head bobbing and there will be progressively more of it in the periphery. The only downside is that it will only work for screen center, you would need eye tracking to simulate this perfectly..
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funny how every other FPS manages to feel pretty acceptable without star citizen's innovative, massively exaggerated headbob
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funny how every other FPS manages to feel pretty acceptable without star citizen's innovative, massively exaggerated headbob
You can see the FPS demo here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuuCRbFb-PI
I do not consider this to be "massively exaggerated" headbob. It looks like a pretty mild headbob, very well done. Special touches like this is what separates "pretty acceptable" games from truly great games that push the industry forward bit by bit.
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Which is a good thing. The more money they raise from people with deep pockets, the higher quality the product can be - this is a crowdfunded game, no investors. As long as you dont NEED to buy those things to get the final game, I dont see anything wrong. I only own the base package (Aurora).
(http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/youre_serious_futurama.gif)
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(http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/youre_serious_futurama.gif)
Of course I am serious, more money for development can only make the game better and with more content. Especially an ambitious triple A game like SC, it takes a lot of money to develop all that content backers were promised. I expect they will burn through all that $80+ million of backer money by the time the game is released. I just hope the result will be worth it.
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Only if that money is well-spent. Which generally means being conservative about extending your plans and focusing on delivering what you initially promised.
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More money is not at all a definite good thing in AAA dev.
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I dont expect too much originality from Star Citizen. Even taking good aspects from previous space games and combining them in a shiny new package would make for a great game. The fact that it has been done before is in no way an argument against SC. And done in an inferior way - you really cant compare simple and unrealistic Battlefield vehicle system with the seamless SC way where you can walk around and interact with ship components. BF is not even a space game. The fact is, there arent many space games where you can walk around the ship while it is flying, too. I could probably count them all on fingers of one hand. So while it is not an entirely original concept, it is definitely something we need more of, IMHO.
Freespace wasnt very original in its time too - it just took the good things from other space games and combined them well.
That it's nothing new isn't meant to be an argument against SC, it's an explanation for why I'm not really impressed.
Freespace 2 has the advantage of story and mission design. Historically, CR is terrible at both of those things. Contrary to most CR fanboys, I don't think shinier Wing Commander or shinier Freelancer is something to get too excited over, and AC's current state does the game no favors.
And no, BF isn't a space game. So what? Space means fewer factors to consider, not more. For example, IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad has been in development for less time than SC has. It's a far more complete game with a significantly more complex combat environment and flight models than SC has. The map has 82340 square kilometers of actual terrain.
SC has a half-baked 16 player closed arena deathmatch game which will soon let you move around the corridors of your ship while it's flying.
BTW, in BF2142, you could walk around the inside of Titans while they were moving. Wasn't too smooth in multiplayer because netcode, but you could do it. As for SC, remember we don't know how well it'll work in actual mutiplayer rather than a LAN.
AC plays well and has potential. Yeah, I think modded FS or Diaspora is more fun, but these games are based on a flight model developed and optimized for many years, the best spaceflight model space games have to offer now. It takes time to pin it down. And about E:D, I play that game too, and I must say I prefer the latest AC builds flight style to E:D.
AC plays well? Have we played the same game? The Hornet flies like ****, and TTK is so long boredom is a bigger enemy than the Vanduul are. If this is CR's vision, it isn't fun. Multicrew won't change that. Neither will generic corridor shooter.
"It takes time to pin it down" would be a lot more convincing if Diaspora didn't have the exact kind of semi-newtonian combat environment SC is going for, yet it's still more fun. This isn't an engine issue, it's a general gameplay issue.
Which is a good thing. The more money they raise from people with deep pockets, the higher quality the product can be - this is a crowdfunded game, no investors. As long as you dont NEED to buy those things to get the final game, I dont see anything wrong. I only own the base package (Aurora).
Alternatively, the more money they get, the more CR can let his imagination run wild and constantly increase the scope of the game until it isn't doable (which, IMO, happened a while ago). Then he runs out of money. How long does $86M last when you have 300 employees?
This isn't an implausible situation. It's exactly what happened with Freelancer, and it's why CR had to sell Digital Anvil to Microsoft. In interviews, CR talks about how if he didn't have this kind of money, he wouldn't be able to make the game he's promised. I've never seen the problem with that. I was much more excited about this project when it was demonstrably achievable, not the bloated mess it now is.
This demo is impressive because it shows the core SC technology, that is large world (up to 8.7 billion kilometres) + spaceship flight + first person mechanics, finally coming together in a playable way. There is a lot of content and gameplay still to add, but I believe now it is only a matter of time, not if, but when.
For SQ42, it's a matter of when (though whether it'll be a good game isn't). For the persistent universe, it's definitely still a matter of if. Basically, if they amend their PU ambitions to something like E:D, it's very doable. But E:D isn't what they're going after. CR wants **** like hundred ship battles with boarding actions and ****. Multicrew isn't the biggest hurdle to overcome. It's not even close. Like I said, it's been done by games like Battlefield and Battlefront over and over again for years. Do you know what the biggest hurdle is? Netcode. SC's netcode has undergone two overhauls over the last two years, and what's that done? The max player count in AC has gone from 8 to 16. 16 single seat fighters. A hundred potentially multicrew ships? Lol. EVE manages massive battles by incorporating time dilation, which SC can't do.
And apparently, according to a networking engineer over on Something Awful, their recent netcode overhaul aren't going to resolve this. Actually, he claims current network and server technology can't manage it period. IDK how credible he is, so take that as you will. Most of that is over my head, but given how netcode issues remain pervasive in pretty much all fast-paced MP games, I don't hold out much hope for CIG. Especially since Frostbite 3 is generally a much more robust engine than CryEngine is in everything from netcode to general optimisation, and Battlefield games still have netcode issues, despite being among the best working large scale FPS games on the market.
Without headbobbing, the player feels like sliding around instead of being grounded in the world. So headbob or not is an artistic choice, there is no objectively right answer, unless it is overdone. I happen to like moderate amount of head bob. Also, headbobbing does happen in real life, after all your head does bob when walking, but is visible only in periphery, because in the center of vision it is compensated by eye movement. This is similar to what SC is going to do, they have a special system where the center of screen wont experience head bobbing and there will be progressively more of it in the periphery. The only downside is that it will only work for screen center, you would need eye tracking to simulate this perfectly..
This is a core problem with SC's development. They're taking gameplay proven to work by other games, and then throwing in pointless, completely unnecessary features for the sake of realism. Your brain compensates for headbobbing. Evidently, at some point in SC's thousand year timeline, it loses this ability. All because CR can't stand the idea that the player's viewpoint might be a few centimeters away from the character model's eyes during the walk animation. It's so dumb.
And the notion that without headbobbing, the player feels like they're sliding around is complete nonsense. This is solved in most games by making the first person model give an indication of movement, not the viewpoint. And it works perfectly well.
There's a reason games don't match first and third person animations. This is one of them. It's a stupid idea that adds absolutely nothing to gameplay, yet CIG spends months implementing it and it ends up looking and feeling like ****. In SC, fun and logical gameplay decisions are subordinate to ~realism~ and ~immersion~ (god I hate that word).
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There is no disjoint first and third person mode in reality. So yes, the devs could cheat and do the same ugly hack other games do, make two independent models and it will be good enough for the most part. Or they can take the time and effort to do it correctly, in an immersive and realistic way, so that there is only one model that looks correct from both first and third person. SC chooses the second, doing it right, and I wouldnt have it any other way. People did not pledge $86 million to have yet another game like all the others, they did so because they want to push some boundaries of immersion and realism.
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Oh please. Using the same animations and models for 1st and 3rd person isn't "doing it right". For one, it's a really inefficient use of resources. You don't need the same amount of detail in a 3rd person model as you need in a first person model, purely because the latter is going to be seen from much closer. The same is true of animations.
Furthermore, 1st person animations have different requirements than 3rd person ones. Example: when you're reloading a gun IRL, you don't lift the thing up to your face to do it. You leave it more or less where you're holding it and you turn your head to see what you're doing. But when you're playing a game, you don't want to lose control of your camera whenever you need to reload, especially not in fast-paced gameplay. So animators, to make it clear that the gun's reloading and to tell the player when it's done, animates it so that the gun is clearly in your view while the animation is playing, even though that's not how it would look in real life.
First person animations need to smoothly transmit information while still looking good. Third person animations need to look natural. These are often not compatible.
You can see CIG struggling with this in the FPS preview. The animations are trying to look natural from both perspectives, and they end up looking natural from neither. The ADS animation for the pistol looks like the gun and the forearm are jammed in the player's face, and the rifle reload looks jerky as hell. I suspect this is one of the reasons CIG never actually showed off the 3rd person animations for anything besides walking and crouching, even though CR was bragging about them during half the demo.
Whole FPS demo here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXiw_wbWYAc), 3:25 to 3:35 show both pistol ADS and rifle reload.
Also why is the HUD (like the radar) wobbling when the player moves? I can understand why the gunsight would, but for the other stuff? Is the helmet not securely strapped to the player's head?
See, developers don't "cheat" because they're lazy, they cheat because matching animations is completely unnecessary. It adds nothing to gameplay, it looks worse, and it's more work for no reason.
I didn't pledge to get a game that pushes the boundaries of immersion and realism. I (originally) pledged for a space sim, which by its very premise has already told realism to go **** itself. Good thing too, because a realistic space combat game wouldn't be fun.
BTW, if headbobbing is ok despite your brain filtering it out IRL, why isn't the viewpoint tilted when the player aims down sights? I tilt my head to do that, so shouldn't SC tilt the character's head? This seriously breaks my immersion.
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Oh please. Using the same animations and models for 1st and 3rd person isn't "doing it right". For one, it's a really inefficient use of resources. You don't need the same amount of detail in a 3rd person model as you need in a first person model, purely because the latter is going to be seen from much closer. The same is true of animations.
They can still use LODs on the player model depending on camera distance, so with LODs is just as efficient as the old way.
First person animations need to smoothly transmit information while still looking good. Third person animations need to look natural. These are often not compatible.
The fact that they are the same thing in reality proves that it can be done. It just takes some time and effort. CIG animation system is brand new so it is still weird sometimes, but I expect it will look good a year from now.
The ADS animation for the pistol looks like the gun and the forearm are jammed in the player's face, and the rifle reload looks jerky as hell. I suspect this is one of the reasons CIG never actually showed off the 3rd person animations for anything besides walking and crouching, even though CR was bragging about them during half the demo.
I disagree, first person animations already look very good. They may look a bit different than other games we are used to, but that is because they are actually done right, not faked. As for third person animations, those still look weird, however I suspect that has more to do with their new "jukes" system rather than unified animation system. Jukes system has to do with giving the player body correct inertia and blending that into animations, or something like that. It is why animation transitions are jerky. Again, I expect them to nail it sooner or later.
They did show zero-G animations in PU demo, both first and third person, and it looked great.
Also why is the HUD (like the radar) wobbling when the player moves? I can understand why the gunsight would, but for the other stuff? Is the helmet not securely strapped to the player's head?
Yeah, that is weird.
BTW, if headbobbing is ok despite your brain filtering it out IRL, why isn't the viewpoint tilted when the player aims down sights? I tilt my head to do that, so shouldn't SC tilt the character's head? This seriously breaks my immersion.
Maybe it should tilt the head, I dunno. You have to realize that things are different when playing on a monitor vs. in real life. For example, when playing with Oculus Rift you do tilt your view a lot and it looks completely natural. But on a monitor, it may look like the world itself is tilted instead. These are things you just have to try to see how it looks.
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First person animations need to smoothly transmit information while still looking good. Third person animations need to look natural. These are often not compatible.
The fact that they are the same thing in reality proves that it can be done. It just takes some time and effort. CIG animation system is brand new so it is still weird sometimes, but I expect it will look good a year from now.
That wasn't Aesaar's point. If you reload a gun IRL, you move your head and look away from the action. Doing this ingame doesn't feel right because taking camera control away from the player in an FPS never does. The solution game developers have converged on is to use exaggerated movements that are visible no matter where the playeris looking.
Trying to serve both masters, staying "realistic" and being a good game, means compromising both approaches at not inconsiderable developer cost.
Maybe it should tilt the head, I dunno. You have to realize that things are different when playing on a monitor vs. in real life. For example, when playing with Oculus Rift you do tilt your view a lot and it looks completely natural. But on a monitor, it may look like the world itself is tilted instead. These are things you just have to try to see how it looks.
If complete realism is the goal, then little motions like that need to be in. If you're committed to not cheating in the ways that game devs normally do, then that has to be the case for every detail.
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That wasn't Aesaar's point. If you reload a gun IRL, you move your head and look away from the action. Doing this ingame doesn't feel right because taking camera control away from the player in an FPS never does. The solution game developers have converged on is to use exaggerated movements that are visible no matter where the playeris looking.
Trying to serve both masters, staying "realistic" and being a good game, means compromising both approaches at not inconsiderable developer cost.
The solution SC seems to be using is to use real movements and at the same time not taking away camera control from the player. And there is nothing wrong with that. It looks great in first person, IMHO. As for third person, it is hard to judge because the only example of that I saw occurs in a dark room and is barely visible. But it also looks OK at first glance.
I just dont agree that there is a compromise here. It is possible to have best of both worlds, simply because thats how it is in reality, the devs just have to copy that behavior. I imagine it as those helmet camera combat footages that you can look up on youtube. That is how correctly done FPS should look like, while being both realistic and fun.
If complete realism is the goal, then little motions like that need to be in. If you're committed to not cheating in the ways that game devs normally do, then that has to be the case for every detail.
Complete realism is not the goal, more realism than the average FPS is.
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Besides, its not like unified first and third person wasnt done before. As far as I know, Arma series does it too. It is very much possible to do, merely harder than the traditional approach.
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That wasn't Aesaar's point. If you reload a gun IRL, you move your head and look away from the action. Doing this ingame doesn't feel right because taking camera control away from the player in an FPS never does. The solution game developers have converged on is to use exaggerated movements that are visible no matter where the playeris looking.
Trying to serve both masters, staying "realistic" and being a good game, means compromising both approaches at not inconsiderable developer cost.
The solution SC seems to be using is to use real movements and at the same time not taking away camera control from the player. And there is nothing wrong with that. It looks great in first person, IMHO. As for third person, it is hard to judge because the only example of that I saw occurs in a dark room and is barely visible. But it also looks OK at first glance.
I just dont agree that there is a compromise here. It is possible to have best of both worlds, simply because thats how it is in reality, the devs just have to copy that behavior. I imagine it as those helmet camera combat footages that you can look up on youtube. That is how correctly done FPS should look like, while being both realistic and fun.
Reality isn't a video game. Again, in reality, you move your head a lot when doing things like reloading a weapon. You can't do that in a video game because no one wants to take camera control away from the player. Which means you need to have the whole animation clearly visible, which means doing this weird reload dance at eye level when it would mostly be done at you waist IRL. Which looks weird.
Reality has ****ty gameplay. People say they want more realism, but most of the time, they don't know what realism actually entails. This is very, very common among SC fans.
And using ARMA 3 as an example of how feasible this is probably isn't the best idea. Character animations in ARMA have never been very good, and that hasn't changed in ARMA 3. Most look fine in 1st person, but in 3rd person, not so much. Kinda supports my point, actually. No one plays ARMA for the graphics. I suppose it could be considered an achievement for SC to have worse animations than ARMA though.
Also ARMA 3 doesn't have headbobbing except when sprinting (and even then it's side to side motion, not up and down). Rather than design a stabilization system to fix a problem that shouldn't exist, the devs and players are ok with the eyepoint being a few centimeters away from the actual eyes from time to time.
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I like the music in the demo. Especially the part when they leave the airlock at the beginning.
EDIT: I don't understand why unifying the first and third person views would be difficult. If you get the third-person walking animation right, wouldn't the first-person headbob come along for the ride?
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Reality isn't a video game. Again, in reality, you move your head a lot when doing things like reloading a weapon. You can't do that in a video game because no one wants to take camera control away from the player. Which means you need to have the whole animation clearly visible, which means doing this weird reload dance at eye level when it would mostly be done at you waist IRL. Which looks weird.
Are you sure reloading is done at waist level? I am no professional soldier but I looked up some reloading videos on youtube and the gun hardly ever reaches near waist level. Or do you mean the magazine is at waist level? Why is this an issue? I am fine with the reload animation being partially cut off if you are looking too high to see it. If you really have to see it all for some reason, then look down.
There is only one right way to reload a weapon, and if you mocap it really well, it should look correct both in third and first person.
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There is only one right way to reload a weapon, and if you mocap it really well, it should look correct both in third and first person.
The problem is that you mocap it well (read: realistically), it's not even actually visible from the viewpoint of the player and the way the player's viewpoint works in FPS games. This automatically fails the most important part of having an animation in the first place, which is telling the player important information.
This is why Star Citizen is an awful game, or will be when it's released.
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In real life you have a ~wide field of view and access to proprioception. In a video game, you have a narrow field of view and no access to proprioception. In a video game, a good way to create a realistic sense of spatial awareness is to have different first person animations that move proprioceptive information into the visual field.
There is nothing inherently unrealistic about disjoint first/third person animations. Arguably, disjoint first person animations are more important.
Games are not reality. Reality is not inherently immersive. Creating Csikszentmihalyian flow is immersive. Good game design creates flow.
There are many right ways to design a video game. (I don't mind experimenting with more complex, distracting reload animations, but it probably won't look more realistic or fun in a game.)
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In EVE Online, you have to perform hours of training and mind-numbing busywork in order to develop skills and make a living. All your accomplishments can be stripped from you in an instant of random violence. You exist at the mercy of enormous power blocs who operate on amoral rules of realpolitik.
This is extremely realistic and {immersive}.
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Reality isn't a video game. Again, in reality, you move your head a lot when doing things like reloading a weapon. You can't do that in a video game because no one wants to take camera control away from the player. Which means you need to have the whole animation clearly visible, which means doing this weird reload dance at eye level when it would mostly be done at you waist IRL. Which looks weird.
Are you sure reloading is done at waist level? I am no professional soldier but I looked up some reloading videos on youtube and the gun hardly ever reaches near waist level. Or do you mean the magazine is at waist level? Why is this an issue? I am fine with the reload animation being partially cut off if you are looking too high to see it. If you really have to see it all for some reason, then look down.
There is only one right way to reload a weapon, and if you mocap it really well, it should look correct both in third and first person.
Actually, I'm wrong about reloading magazine fed weapons. It's perfectly doable at shoulder level. Reloading, say, a shotgun at shoulder level is a lot harder. Reloading a bullpup weapon while prone is probably best done on your back. Belt fed weapons are a ***** to reload at shoulder level too. It very much depends on the weapon and your stance.
You keep on saying that this is doable because real life does it. That's completely idiotic reasoning. Video games aren't real life. You can't simulate real life when you're looking at it through a screen. Real life never looks jerky because real life doesn't have preset animations. That gameplay preview is just one long example of animations get interrupted by other animations. It's pretty typical for 3rd person FPS models, but CR has seen fit to grace us with that **** in 1st person too. You think it looks fine. I don't. I think that Star Marine demo is one of the worst looking examples of gunplay seen in a modern AAA FPS. When ARMA has smoother animation than you do, something's gone very wrong.
Actually, the ARMA 3 comparison gets interesting. ARMA 3 has gone with making 1st person animations look smooth, and as a result 3rd person animations look stiff. SC, for some reason, has decided to make the 3rd person animations look good (which they might eventually), which results in 1st person animations looking jerky and exaggerated.
3rd person animations in 1st person look overdone. 1st person animations in 3rd person look underdone. This, I think, is a fundamental issue related to perception of space in FPS game. Specifically, FOV. FPS games always have a narrower FOV than you do IRL. There's no way to fix that except to make a VR system that wraps around your head (so not Oculus). This means that animations that looked fine from the mocap model's point of view take up a lot more visual space on screen (exacerbated by the camera itself being zoomed in because of the narrower FOV), which makes the animation look exaggerated. This is also the reason why the pistol ADS looks like the character's arm/shoulder is jammed in the player's face.
This is not something that can be fixed as long as we're using desktop screens. This is probably the biggest reason everyone making FPS games "cheats" on animations. To make up for the narrower FOV, 1st person animations look much better when the movements are underdone. 3rd person models don't have this restriction.
The other reason is that rapid animation transitions, like going from sprint to a complete stop, looks like ****, and the only way to "fix" that would be to delay responses to allow for a transition animation to play. Bad idea for obvious reasons. The understated animations typically used for 1st person models are designed to not jerk as much.
TL;DR: They can't make these animations look good as long as FOV discrepancies between real life and FPS games exist.
EDIT: Battuta and Scotty beat me to it.
Tangentially related: I love how the Glaive sale is "clear the enemy waves in Arena Commander to earn the privilege of giving us 350$ for yet another nonexistent ship. Hurry, only 1000 available".
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Not that I'm terribly interested in the overall discussion but some of the modern carbine doctrine I've seen advocates keeping the "workspace" up at eye level rather than un-shouldering the weapon, basically to minimize motions and keep the focus at the target. I'd imagine such methodology would keep most of the weapon animation in FPS view without looking hilariously awkward in 3rd person.
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Not that I'm terribly interested in the overall discussion but some of the modern carbine doctrine I've seen advocates keeping the "workspace" up at eye level rather than un-shouldering the weapon, basically to minimize motions and keep the focus at the target. I'd imagine such methodology would keep most of the weapon animation in FPS view without looking hilariously awkward in 3rd person.
Yeah, I should really have been more specific. It's perfectly doable for most carbines and lighter assault rifles. It gets more and more impractical the heavier the weapon is or the more involved reloading is.
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Creating Csikszentmihalyian flow is immersive.
I think this is the most Battuta-y sentence I've ever read. <3
On the main topic: demo was impressive, and I think does a good job conveying the "feel" that they're going for. I'm not terribly confident in their ability to make an open-world MMO game that works well. I am, however, optimistic that they can pull off the single-player Squadron 42 with some really cool setpieces and mixed FPS/flying sequences.
I don't think the current space combat OR their FPS stuff is terribly compelling on its own, but I think successfully mixing them will bring something fun and novel to the table.
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Nah, it's a creative dead end. Combining a space sim and an FPS could be compelling, but you'd have to invest a lot of work into the interaction between the two components. CIG have just split them off into separate teams and seem to be planning to glue them together later.
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I'm also imagining how utterly stupid and immersion killing it is to be conducting a boarding action on an enemy ship and that one asshole on your team blow it up anyway and suddenly 10-30 people just wasted the last few minutes of their lives and gameplay doing something that literally did not mean a single goddamn thing.
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I'm also imagining how utterly stupid and immersion killing it is to be conducting a boarding action on an enemy ship and that one asshole on your team blow it up anyway and suddenly 10-30 people just wasted the last few minutes of their lives and gameplay doing something that literally did not mean a single goddamn thing.
"Meaning" in games = Acquiring a space ship/things/items/always winning ???
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No, and you know that's not what I meant. If the ship you're on during a boarding action gets blown up in the middle of the action, what was the ****ing point? There is no win or lose condition, there's no reason to go for a boarding action, there's just a bunch of wasted time.
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No, and you know that's not what I meant. If the ship you're on during a boarding action gets blown up in the middle of the action, what was the ****ing point? There is no win or lose condition, there's no reason to go for a boarding action, there's just a bunch of wasted time.
What s the difference to the match timer running out in a traditional round of team vs team fps?
/shrugs. In any case I'd doubt boarding would be all that common ... but if one is serious about walking around planets (and having the ability to shoot people in the face) in a Space Sim, one needs some kind of FPS interface for that Space Sim. /shrugs
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No, and you know that's not what I meant. If the ship you're on during a boarding action gets blown up in the middle of the action, what was the ****ing point? There is no win or lose condition, there's no reason to go for a boarding action, there's just a bunch of wasted time.
What s the difference to the match timer running out in a traditional round of team vs team fps?
Obviously the fact that the timer doesn't have malicious intent.
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I'm also imagining how utterly stupid and immersion killing it is to be conducting a boarding action on an enemy ship and that one asshole on your team blow it up anyway and suddenly 10-30 people just wasted the last few minutes of their lives and gameplay doing something that literally did not mean a single goddamn thing.
Seems not very different to games with friendly fire and powerful area of effect weapons. Its not a problem. If your team member is so incompetent as to blow up a ship while others of his team are on it, choose a better buddy. And occasional friendly fire is certainly not immersion killing, it happens in reality surprisingly often.
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And occasional friendly fire is certainly not immersion killing, it happens in reality surprisingly often.
Games are not reality. Reality is not inherently immersive. Creating Csikszentmihalyian flow is immersive. Good game design creates flow.
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And occasional friendly fire is certainly not immersion killing, it happens in reality surprisingly often.
Games are not reality. Reality is not inherently immersive. Creating Csikszentmihalyian flow is immersive. Good game design creates flow.
Having destructible ships full of players is not a bad game design, anymore than for example having a nuke in UT2004 makes for bad gameplay. I dont see players ragequitting when a friendly nuke accidentaly blows up a power node full of same-team players in UT. That whole objection does not make sense, especially the part about people not having reason for a boarding action just because there is a risk of being killed. No reason? How about getting the ship - the whole point of boarding actions?
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And once again a massively-hyped ~innovation~ of Star Citizen is reduced to speculation and faith in how CIG could possibly tune it to work with the rest of the game.
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Having destructible ships full of players is not a bad game design, anymore than for example having a nuke in UT2004 makes for bad gameplay. I dont see players ragequitting when a friendly nuke accidentaly blows up a power node full of same-team players in UT. That whole objection does not make sense, especially the part about people not having reason for a boarding action just because there is a risk of being killed. No reason? How about getting the ship - the whole point of boarding actions?
Comparing teamkilling in Starcitizen to Unreal Tournament is retarded because there's no real deep consequence attached with it in UT, whereas in Starcitizen, there's permadeath, shiploss, credit-loss, etc.
The fact that you cannot make this distinction is a bit telling on your [in]ability to actually understand game design...
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Remember, immersion > fun is good game design. So sayeth Our Lord Christ Roberts.
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If we've learned anything from EVE Online it's that every mechanic which could be used for griefing will be used for griefing, to the maximum possible extent.
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Having destructible ships full of players is not a bad game design, anymore than for example having a nuke in UT2004 makes for bad gameplay. I dont see players ragequitting when a friendly nuke accidentaly blows up a power node full of same-team players in UT. That whole objection does not make sense, especially the part about people not having reason for a boarding action just because there is a risk of being killed. No reason? How about getting the ship - the whole point of boarding actions?
Comparing teamkilling in Starcitizen to Unreal Tournament is retarded because there's no real deep consequence attached with it in UT, whereas in Starcitizen, there's permadeath, shiploss, credit-loss, etc.
The fact that you cannot make this distinction is a bit telling on your [in]ability to actually understand game design...
There are many games with such more serious consequences for death (most MMOs), and they are doing just fine, so I dont think your example holds water. I think you just dont like MMOs, or the possibility of a more serious loss in game, but there are many players who dont mind it, and even demand it (you forgot the other side of the equation - the higher the stakes and risks, the sweetest the victory if you win).
You seem awfully sure you know the one and only way how games should be designed..
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There are many games with such more serious consequences for death (most MMOs), and they are doing just fine
So why didn't you provide an example of widespread teamkilling in one of them, instead of Unreal Tournament?
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You seem awfully sure you know the one and only way how games should be designed..
Hades has made the same amount of good games in the last 15 years as CR.
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There are many games with such more serious consequences for death (most MMOs), and they are doing just fine, so I dont think your example holds water. I think you just dont like MMOs, or the possibility of a more serious loss in game, but there are many players who dont mind it, and even demand it (you forgot the other side of the equation - the higher the stakes and risks, the sweetest the victory if you win).
You seem awfully sure you know the one and only way how games should be designed..
How much EVE Online have you played
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Games like EvE and Dark Souls and any of the other "real difficulties" and "real consequences" games have their audience. There are people who really really love these games and go incredibly deep in them.
But at the same time, these games are comparatively small affairs. They have an audience, but it's a niche one; SC, with all its ambitions, needs a large player base and you just don't get that when the people who are lucky to be able to put in two or three hours per week feel like they can't get ahead.
Elite Dangerous did one thing really right. It made simple flying fun. It gave the people who cannot afford to sink hours upon hours into the game something to do, be it space trucking or flying off into the deep, and thus these people stayed engaged and playing (even if only in solo).
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Elite Dangerous, for reference, suffers from every kind of dumb griefing imaginable. Large stations were (and still are, to an extent) no-go zones in open play because people would ram you at any opportunity. Most players I've beaten in combat have logged out to avoid dying. You can bet Star Citizen will be even worse.
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Elite Dangerous, for reference, suffers from every kind of dumb griefing imaginable. Large stations were (and still are, to an extent) no-go zones in open play because people would ram you at any opportunity. Most players I've beaten in combat have logged out to avoid dying. You can bet Star Citizen will be even worse.
I haven't seen any station griefing problems lately. All of the ramming and re-docking stuff has been fairly firmly squashed. But yeah, for a stretch it was quite possible to ram (or even shoot) players inside stations and suffer no consequences.
Combat logging, while irritating, isn't griefing. It mostly serves as an example that a large chunk of players are not willing to risk assets they took dozens or hundreds of hours to obtain. Given SC is planning to have even more serious consequences for getting blown up, they're going to have at least as hard of a time dealing with it.
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There are many games with such more serious consequences for death (most MMOs), and they are doing just fine, so I dont think your example holds water. I think you just dont like MMOs, or the possibility of a more serious loss in game, but there are many players who dont mind it, and even demand it (you forgot the other side of the equation - the higher the stakes and risks, the sweetest the victory if you win).
You seem awfully sure you know the one and only way how games should be designed..
I never said anything about how games should or shouldn't be made with consequences, that's where your lack of reading comprehension fails you. I was pointing out that griefing in a game being designed around such hard consequences is not the same thing as griefing in a game that has no real consequences. This is why the comparison between Starcitizen and Unreal Tournament doesn't work.
Also what the people said above (especially Aesaar) is true.
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There are many games with such more serious consequences for death (most MMOs), and they are doing just fine, so I dont think your example holds water. I think you just dont like MMOs, or the possibility of a more serious loss in game, but there are many players who dont mind it, and even demand it (you forgot the other side of the equation - the higher the stakes and risks, the sweetest the victory if you win).
You seem awfully sure you know the one and only way how games should be designed..
I never said anything about how games should or shouldn't be made with consequences, that's where your lack of reading comprehension fails you. I was pointing out that griefing in a game being designed around such hard consequences is not the same thing as griefing in a game that has no real consequences. This is why the comparison between Starcitizen and Unreal Tournament doesn't work.
Also what the people said above (especially Aesaar) is true.
Yeah, comparison to UT wasnt very good, comparison to other MMOs (such as Elite Dangerous) is better. They are still very good games despite the griefing - griefing is not some new problem unique to SC, or something game breaking that cannot be mitigated sufficiently. And I plan to play PU with a crew of friends, so griefing at least among the close team-mates wont be an issue for me.
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Never assume that anyone you can't punch in the face during the course of a normal day won't grief you.
Again, how much EVE have you played?
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Never assume that anyone you can't punch in the face during the course of a normal day won't grief you.
Again, how much EVE have you played?
If there was a mandatory Slap I/O device added to internet capable machines the web would be much more civil.
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Yeah, but quite a few people would have been slapped to death.
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That's not really a "but"
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Definitely a feature, not a bug.
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You forget that people would start griefing the slapping device. :p
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Yeah, let's give the internet sociopaths the ability to slap people at random, that'll end well.
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It's a totally serious idea, I'm totally recommending it for its seriousnessness.
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It's a totally serious idea, I'm totally recommending it for its seriousnessness.
Seriously!
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It's a totally serious idea, I'm totally recommending it for its seriousnessness.
Seriously!
Guys, I seriously don't think it's a good idea. I would seriously suggest you do a serious attempt at reconsidering.