Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Spoon on March 28, 2012, 04:24:58 pm
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There, I finally finished WCS. Making notes in a notepad file as I progressed. This campaign feels about as long as the time the saga team spend working on it!
I'm going to go from the Bad to the Good since I want to end the review on a positive note. Remember, if I'm hurting you, its only because I love you.
This review might contain spoilers, read at your own risk.
The Bad
First off I'm going to be *that guy* and start about the code fork and other technical things.
Because of the code fork WCS feels like its two years behind the curve, there's a whole slew of new FSO features that are simply not present for the Terran-Kilrathi war. Post processing, FXAA, Soft Particles, Thruster and shockwave distortion, godrays, no fixed font and no widescreen hud support. For me though, the most notable is the apparant lack of self praising pilots. I still fondly recall hearing Maniac going "More kittylitter, I'm hot today!" and such. Yet despite the incredible amount of spoken lines for each pilot this is missing from WCS, even though FSO has support for it. One more thing that was sorely lacking was a command line in the launcher, no easy way to adjust the fov and no support for full screen windowed mode (this last one annoyed me in particular.)
An other thing that was changed in the WCS code was the video code. Now this new code seems to be working A-okay 99% of the time. Alas that other 1% of the time the whole video hung up on me, the video freezed while the sound kept playing for a little while longer. Then after a bit the whole game became unresponsive and crashed back to desktop. This happened to me twice during the briefings (not a big deal there) but... it also happened to me in the very last ending cutscene! After a 45 minute long mission, the cutscene froze up and the game crashed. It's not registered in the techroom so I can't bloody watch the thing! I'm denied my victory trophy like a kilrathi darket gets cheated out of his victory.
Now noooormally this wouldn't be such a big deal right? Just hit that magical Ctrl+Shift+S combo to reveal the whole list of cutscenes and missi-
oh
yeah
NOPE. (http://youtu.be/gvdf5n-zI14?hd=1)
Because for reasons beyond me, the WCS team decided it was a good idea to spend coder time to DISABLE THIS KEYCOMBINATION. No cheats, no shiplab and no Ctrl+Shift+S. :banghead: :nono:
Now I initially wrote down a note about the mouse control being RUINED FOREVERRRR but that has become invalidated with the last patch! Regardless I played through the whole campaign with just the keyboard (It's nice to have options, PC rules, consoles drool) and that worked fine for me.
On an other small side note here, I experienced two occasions (once in an arrow and once in a thunderbolt) where my shields decided that today they could have a few moments off. Resulting in a very quick death on a jousting run. Thankfully this count has remained on just two times.
Now moving on to the gameplay/story part of the bad.
The mission design: Mission should not be consistently longer than 15 minutes. Period.
Alas, they are. In fact, near the end of the campaign the average mission length became closer to 25 minutes with one mission hitting 31 minutes for me and the very last mission lasted a full 45 minutes! Now this wouldn't be toooo bad if there was a checkpoint system in place, or a way to skip through the chatter. But as everyone has already discovered, there is no such thing. If you die at the last nav point (and lets face it, you are most likely to **** up somewhere along the last nav point) you'll be punished by needing to redo the whoooole mission again and some times listen to a full 2 to 4 minute amount of banter with nothing for you to do. (No cheats to lighten some of this load either... or hell, time compression...)
The content of the missions itself was on average pretty okay but it could definitely have done with less patrol missions. There was this one escort mission that I would rate as terribad. It followed this pattern: nav one: anti cap missiles. nav two: fighters. nav three: anti cap missiles. nav four: fighters and so forth. With no interesting chatter between the pilots to make it remotely interesting. I made it through the mission with 1% hull remaining... Which was about as much as the amount of interest I had left in the mission too. Thankfully this was one of the few rotten apples in the basket.
Campaign design wise I don't understand why there was no branching. With a full 50 missions in the campaign it seems wierd that you'd force the player to go through each and every last mission. Alas this seemed to be kind of a theme in the campaign. No player choice. Whatsoever. And this felt really un-wingcommanderish to me. You don't get to:
-Pick your own craft
-Choose your missile loadout until like 20 missions in (at some point you get promoted to 1st Lt)
-Choose anything in the mission itself
Instead you get this FreeSpace 2 approach of being transfered again and again inbetween squadrons and being stuck to one type of ship for the duration that you are with them.
Also, for a game called Wing Commander, you dont actually get to be a commander of any wing... What is up with this? In two of the earlier missions you can order your wingmen around because one of the dudes wanted to see if you were 'up to it'. Well, apparantly not! Because you don't make it higher than Captain in the campaign and you never get to give your wingmen orders in any of the missions in which it could make a difference...
Let's see... who can I blame for this?
Hmmm
Ah yes, got it.
Sandman.
Sandman is bluntly put, a terrible player character. I feel like he is the victim of 10 years of development. Like in each stage of the development the WCS team couldn't decide what to do with Sandman's personality. Sandman flip flops between a clueless rookie, a smart ass, a jerk, a mute person and just your average guy trying to do his duty.
Who would want to give a guy with such mental issues a wing to command?!
However none of this annoyed me as much as the complete and utter disconnect between gameplay and narrative that flows through the whole of the WCS story. I can't even reproduce the rage that I spewed on irc ranting about this. So I'll just copy paste a bunch of irc vileness:
[02:46] <Spoon> you are some newbie pilot coming to this carrier as battle loss replacement
[02:46] <Spoon> if you ignore the 5 prologue missions (In which you fought hard and long and eventually lost your old carrier) you are new and treated as such
[02:46] <Spoon> every pilot keeps mentioning how sandman (the player character, a clueless newb) is the newbie
[02:46] <Spoon> and how he sucks
[02:46] <Spoon> and doesnt count
[02:46] <Spoon> 20 missions later
[02:47] <Spoon> 200 ****ING KILLS LATER
[02:47] <Spoon> EVERYONE STILL CALLS YOU A ****ING NEWBIE
[02:47] <@Axem> and how many bronze and silver stars?
[02:47] <@Axem> and ace commendations
[02:47] <redsniper> well you see, you have to uh... differentiate the gameplay from the story or... whatever bull**** it is people say
[02:48] <Spoon> 350 KILLS LATER, INCLUDING SEVERAL CAPITAL SHIPS, 3 BRONZE STARS, 2 SILVER STARS, 1 ACE RIBBON, 1 ACE OF ACES RIBBON AND A BUNCH MORE. THESE ****ERS, STILL TALK ABOUT **** LIKE "OH LOOK GUYS, ITS 3 VS 12. I LIKE THESE ODDS." "ARENT YOU FORGETTING SOMEONE LOL?" "OH SANDMAN? HE DOESNT COUNT BECAUSE HES A NEWBIE LOL"
[02:48] <redsniper> since naturally we can't even ATTEMPT to make the gameplay logically fit in with the story, or something
[02:48] <Spoon> **** YOUR ****
[02:48] <Spoon> I MADThe kill count rapidly starts inflating when you get to fly the Excalibur too. I often found me with around 50-80 dead cats on my name in the last missions. At one point I was actively wondering why nobody was on their knees sucking my ACE COCK. Oh right, I forgot. I'm 'just a newbie'. Damn you Sandman for being such a ****ty character. Before the last mission I was at 961 kills. This included several carriers, destroyers, cruisers and a drydock. I singlehandely took down several kilrathi carrier groups worth of cats and war material. Can I at least get some proper respect?!
Unforunately, the whole of WCS is written under the motto of this one quote "The reward of doing your duty is not getting punishment" (I probably didn't quoted it exactly word for word, but you get the point) In the end this kinda resulted in me just not caring about completing certain objectives. I don't really feel compelled to give my best just so I can have Bronze Star (5) instead of (4) in my medal case and then get called a newbie in the mission after. Even in one of the last three missions they told me that I was 'still in diapers'. Wow guys. I nearly flipped my desked at this point. Semi related to this subject was the last fight with that Kilrathi Ace. It didn't really felt like 'my fight'. Why should I care? This is some feud between Venom and him. I have no beef with this guy.
WCS unforunately does not use the more advanced A.I. seen in Vassago's Dirge, Blue planet and Wings of Dawn. Resulting in sluggish and easy to destroy Kilrathi. Making them seem more like snails than fierce cats at times. And in some missions they do not seem to have a basic grasp of tactics. Sending mindless waves after waves of fighters to destroy (what I assume to be) unmanned fighters transfering between two carriers seems like a terrible idea to me. Trading over 60 fighters (and in the end a whole carrier) for the destruction of a few unmanned fighters? Really? Why are the Kilrathi so mindless in WCS? I keep needing to be reminded that we are 'losing this war' in briefings. Because when every mission I fly involves dealing devastating blows to the Kilrathi, its easy to miss that.
One more point I feel WCS is unforunately kinda lackluster in is weapon impact effects. Powerful guns like the Plasma has this tiny itty bity impact that is hardly visible. And I think it was the neutron gun has an impact effect of a different color than the bolt itself. There are also no muzzle flashes coming from the turrets or the guns on the fighters. Pity.
The questionable
There is only one piece of fiction viewer. This struck me as a bit strange, I for one wouldn't have minded a bit more of :words: inbetween the missions. Flesh the characters out a bit more (ya know, give Sandman an actual personality), give the player a bit of a moment to settle down inbetween the furious missions too. On the other hand, I understand that writing these things take an ass load of development time so I can't really fault the WCS team for it. (I think headdie already pointed this out in one thread, but Greywolf seems like a tremendous douchebag in the one bit of fiction writer, but he's actually one of the more cool characters in the missions themselves imho).
Now this next point is debatable but while WCS captures the Wing Commander atmosphere perfectly and sets a pretty good military tone to the missions, I feel that there could have been space for a bit more 'inventive gameplay'. Check Vassago's Dirge and Blue planet out for example, they do more with their missions than just 'follow nav points, blow up stuff'. Alas, this is kinda what Wing Commander tends to be about most of the time so.
Also, the briefing cutscenes could have done with a few more camera movement and/or angles.
Cut off at least 5 seconds from the autopilot sequence. The camera follows the ships into the distance for just that tad too long... Shaving off that 5 seconds quickly becomes a time saver (assuming an average of 5 auto pilot sequences for 50 missions = 1250 seconds, that's 20 minutes you could have saved the player fiddling his thumbs)
The confederation consists of nothing but white people apparantly. The only token black guy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokenMinority) gets killed off (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst) immediately in the only mission he appears in.
Strakha aren't actually unshielded while cloaked.
The Good
Still with me after that rant? Great!
First off, WCS captures the Wing Commander feel perfectly. The sounds, the feel of the craft, the atmosphere of it all, the weapons, the missiles, the autopilot system. It's all there and it feels great. The assets are all great looking, the confederation fighters in particular look like how you'd expect them too look in 2012. It was just plain fun to fly around these iconic (for me at least, I have strong nostalgia goggles for wing commander) ships and fighters. Blowing up those great looking kilrathi caps and fighters is just good fun.
Props to the music too! It helped set the atmosphere and was plenty of blood pumping.
The whole experience just feels really polished, it has a few nice cutscenes and every briefing cutscene is pretty well done. The mainhall is a nice touch too. You can certainly feel the 10 years of development in these parts.
However the biggest props has absolutely without doubt got to go to the voice acting. The sheer amount of different voices and the amount of spoken dialogue is staggering. And each voice actor gives a good performance. Out of the huge amount of voices I only disliked the voice of Mastermind. (He talks like captain kirk or something, putting accents on random words, not ending his sentences normally. After a bit it started giving a headache. Also why can't Captain Moran pronounce Loki as Loki, instead of 'lo-kai'?). And I tend to be pretty damn critical of voice acting so that's a major acomplishment in my book. And while I'm on the subject, an other big props to the large amount of female voices that contributed. These kinda 'nerdy games' often become a bit of a sausagefest but WCS has skillfully avoided this.
On a few occasions the dialogue is really witty and funny too. I was laughing out loud when a captain named pothead decided to be stupid and died trying to take on a destroyer alone. The resulting spite his death got from his wingmen was just my type of dark humor. And the banter that involved Ninja and Assassin tickled my funny bone on numerous occasions.
The few voices done for Kilrathi aces sounded pretty kilrathi-ish too. :yes:
With the exception of Sandman and Mastermind, I ended up liking the vast majority of characters that WCS presented. They all had some touch of personality, eccentric behavior or crazyiness to them. I though the way the guys interacted with the Victory crew was kinda cute too. Though at a few moments it was a little too obvious that the whole dialogue was written to accomendate what lines could be used from WC3 and it didn't flowed too well because of it. Still, it was a nice little touch. (Props for using Primate for this btw)
What I unforunately didn't liked was how scripted and unavoidable the deaths of a few characters were. (Like this pilot named Dawn suddenly going "HURR DURR DONT WORRY I GOT THIS BLARGH I DED" even though she didn't even reached weapon range yet...) while the rest had plotarmor.
The character that was not part of the Hermes and stood out the most for me was M.D., he was just all sorts of crazy. And because of it, highly amusing.
There are two missions that really stick in my mind as THE absolute highlights of WCS and imho should have been the final missions of the campaign. The first one being the attack on the Drydock. Punching through the defensive line with full afterburner to put the torps into the Drydock's hangerbay was a rush. Tons of lasers going past my Longbow, while Kilrathi fighters closely pass by with guns blazing. Then skimming along the Drydock's shielded surface and seeing all these lasers, that are aimed for me, impacting with it. I was about to declare that mission to be my favorite but then only shortly after there is one more highlight.
The mission that has the Hermes' battlegroup doing an all out assault on a Kilrathi heavy carrier and her group. Especially the first moments of the mission remind me of this star wars scene (http://youtu.be/weDrSphcVEg?t=2m2s). It just an insanely awesome furball followed by capital ship bombing. I would have been content had the campaign just ended right after this mission, cause imo nothing topped that came after it topped it.
And a honorable mention to the mission with the Valkyries.
Overal I give WCS a 8 out of 10 and a seal of Spoon approval.
While the list of negatives is longer than the list of positive things in this review, its because this game made me care (which is an acomplishment in itself, since I'm a jaded and cynical person). I spend a whole bunch of hours playing WCS these past few days and I often found myself thinking about it in bed, trying to get to sleep. WCS is definitely the closest we're gonna get to a 'commercial' done Wing Commander. Well done and thanks for delivering this Wing Commander experience.
*edit: forgot to add soft particles!*
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Well, a 8/10 sounds fair :)
Nice review.
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As a longtime Wing Commander Fan... I still give it a 10/10... because... wait for it... there is no Spoon! :)
(JK LOL, thanks for writing this up!)
Not that I really disagree with your review Spoon... it's rather that I disagree with all the 8/10 and 9/10 reviews for all that mainstream garbage that is floating around. :p
Frankly... considering the amount of lackluster mainstream releases that all get reviewed with 8/10 9/10 ... one could in all seriousness argue to give this an 11 or 12/10.
This is easily in my top 5 most enjoyable and satisfying games of the decade as far as my own personal and wholly subjective opinion is concerned.
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I agree with your rating. There are few things the team could have done better. I'm going to mod some of them in, as some sort of enhancement project, or as an additional (though short, and without VA) campaign. WCS forked later than I initially though, so modding in Fury's AI and improving physics seems doable. I'm also going to try and re-add some cut content and make Kilrathi fighters flyable.
My distant future plans aside, it's still an amazing piece of work and I think that a "Director's Cut" of WCS, hopefully built on a normal FSO build (my guess is 3.8 or something like that), it could hope for a 9/10 or even 10/10, though the complaints about Sandman's character would be difficult to address. The modpack could easily get 10/10 after some modifications, and once the team releases the SDK (and the source code) for the Saga, I'm sure that quite a few good campaigns will be made for it.
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I agree with your rating. There are few things the team could have done better. I'm going to mod some of them in, as some sort of enhancement project, or as an additional (though short, and without VA) campaign. WCS forked later than I initially though, so modding in Fury's AI and improving physics seems doable. I'm also going to try and re-add some cut content and make Kilrathi fighters flyable.
Dragon actually doing some work? :eek2:
Maybe you'll finally earn one of those badges
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Funny thing a). Only one of our badges overlaps (there was one more, but it was you who got thrown out, for not doing anything except of being a jerk :)), and I'm in SAFSO mostly for testing, so what do you really know?
Funny thing b). I don't actually have a WCS badge (though WCHF will almost certainly benefit from these modifications). :)
I've done my share of work in mods I'm in. You've seen my fix for the VLS on one of ships in SAFSO. I'm implementing working runways as soon as there's a model on which it can be done.
Speaking of which, working runways using Diaspora landing code are one of the reasons I want the Saga source code released. Unless the fork was after the collision physics were made customizable, this is a feature I'd really like to see in WCS, but which is unsupported by Saga build. Scooby's models have their runways done as separate subobjects, so they're already perfect for this.
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The confederation consists of nothing but white people apparantly. The only token black guy gets killed off immediately in the only mission he appears in.
Ummm, Spoon, there are no black people in Wings of Dawn either, and that's the whole human race also.
Oh, and you practically exterminated the black race in your universe's storyline. In your universe ALL the black guys died first! And the girls too. I'm just saying... :D
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Well, at least Spoon justified it. It served a purpose (of making UEU look like complete jerks, but still), and was a logical consequence of UEU policies.
In WCS, there's no such excuse, other than perhaps the fact WC also wasn't exactly rich in black people. I remember Cobra and Eisen, both from WC3. Right, they were very important, but there were only two of them.
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Well, at least Spoon justified it. It served a purpose (of making UEU look like complete jerks, but still), and was a logical consequence of UEU policies.
In WCS, there's no such excuse, other than perhaps the fact WC also wasn't exactly rich in black people. I remember Cobra and Eisen, both from WC3. Right, they were very important, but there were only two of them.
I thought I'd get that. It is true. I posted it more because I found it amusing. But what if there simply weren't any black people on the team? Remember the prologue is seperate from the main campaign, made years before. Maybe that dude left the team, and there were no black people on the team for the main campaign. If there's no black people, there's no black people.
I don't want to get a race thing going here though, it's the last thing I want.
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Not choosing your ship and loadout has a long and glorious history in Wing Commander.
(It's called the first two games.)
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It was only from wc3 onwards where you had any choice in loadout and that was because you were the commander of the carrier's air wing so literally had the run of the ships fighter related inventory. The rest of the time you were a combat pilot in the air wing even when you achieved colonel because someone else occupied that position already (and no getting it on with the air wing commander in WC2 didnt help you cherry pick your loadout as iirc the chars agreed not to let their relationship affect their work).
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IIRC, fighters from before WC3 didn't had interchangeable loadouts at all. It's not like it was even possible under the old engine. It does return in WCP, though it's missile loadouts were rather unusual. This time though, they were definitely interchangeable, as we see as many as 4 different ones on the Vamipire (normal, Wild Weasel and enhanced variants of the two).
Anyway, doing this in WCS actually made sense, though it was annoying a few times. HS missiles aren't much good on Longbow.
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Funny thing a). Only one of our badges overlaps (there was one more, but it was you who got thrown out, for not doing anything except of being a jerk :))
I wasn't kicked from those. I left due to lack of time (and I also wasn't being a jerk in any of them)
and I'm in SAFSO mostly for testing, so what do you really know?
I know that as a staff member of SAFSO, I've never seen you post on the forums nor in the IRC channel about any of the missions, which you would have done had you actually done any testing.
Funny thing b). I don't actually have a WCS badge (though WCHF will almost certainly benefit from these modifications). :)
I never said anything about you having a WCS badge, rather you actually perhaps actually doing the work instead of just saying you will which I've seen you do in the several mods we had shared together, one being Inferno, which all you did for the mod was ***** about ships not being close enough to the original model when it was being upgraded, sound familiar? (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=120.0)
I've done my share of work in mods I'm in. You've seen my fix for the VLS on one of ships in SAFSO. I'm implementing working runways as soon as there's a model on which it can be done.
You fixed a single bug in a pof .pof, something that'd not really be that difficult or time consuming for anyone with a decent enough knowledge of PCS2. This is certainly not something that means you earned that SAFSO badge and a spot on the team, perhaps a special mention, but not a badge.
I'll believe that about the runways when I see it.
Speaking of which, working runways using Diaspora landing code are one of the reasons I want the Saga source code released. Unless the fork was after the collision physics were made customizable, this is a feature I'd really like to see in WCS, but which is unsupported by Saga build. Scooby's models have their runways done as separate subobjects, so they're already perfect for this.
Considering they forked ages ago for rather silly reasons that only ended up biting them in the ass in the long run, being recent features, code optimizations, etc that they don't have, I would not be surprised if their build did not have customizable collision physics.
On topic: I agree with much of the original post, as well as the notions about ship customization. I also think the prologue's first mission needs some working, I accidentally fired my primaries ONCE and had to redo the stupid boring training mission ALL over again, all 7 minutes of blabbering and key presses. This is silly. I think perhaps a warning with Sandman going 'Whoops... sorry, that was an accident.' or something would do better.
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I figured that Sandman getting spoken of as a newbie is just something that became a running joke among the other pilots and kind of stuck even after.
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Spoon, thanks for the review. I've never been much of a WC fan so I don't have any nostalgia goggles to speak of, thus a lot of good points of WCS are lost on me. I still applaud WCS developers for finishing the project that was 10 years in the making. I know it is extremely hard to keep a project technically up-to-date that has been in progress for so long. Which explains many of the gameplay shortcomings compared to newer mods like Blue Planet and Wings of Dawn. You just can't keep redesigning missions forever and must draw a line somewhere if you want to ever finish and release.
Stuff like post processing, FXAA, soft particles, thruster and shockwave distortion, godrays can all be patched in later without requiring any changes to missions. But sadly gameplay improvements like better AI can't without significant effort at least.
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Damn I just posted something and deleted it instead of editing when I found a mistake in it...
What I wanted to say is that Dragon's List of black people misses some. Doomsday (ok he was Maori), Knight and Zero for example.
Also keep in mind that there are quite a few mods in history that were killed by feature creep, and that was almost the case for Saga. So while it is a pity that some features are missing the branching was needed to get around compatibility issues. I think without it there would be no release to play now.
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I like the review. Could have maybe used some polishing up before posting, but well written none the less.
My apologies here as I don't mean to step in on any toes but:
Dragon, Hades: Take it to PM. Srsly. But stop doing it here much less in general public. It has no place here. Consider this a warning.
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I never had an intention of responding to Hades's accusations, and certainly not here. Maybe on SAFSO forum, after, I'm done with the runways. Actions speak louder than words. Now, OT:
What I wanted to say is that Dragon's List of black people misses some. Doomsday (ok he was Maori), Knight and Zero for example.
All of them were from WCP though, and weren't as memorable as characters from the first four games (though to be fair, no one in WCP really was). Also, I was mostly talking about the WC1-3, since WCS is set during Kilrathi war. Most likely, the relative lack of black people in most Wing Commanders might have been the because of the time they were made in. Eisen was already a bold move, at least by '94 standards.
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Ahem... no, I'm sorry.
Zero was from WCP
Knight was from WC1
Doomsday appeared in WC1SM1 and WC2
EDIT: Also if you look at other minorities (minority in the European sense of course):
WC1 had two Asians (Spirit and Bossman) and the already named black guys.
WC2 had at least one Asian and the black guy
WC3 did have at least one Asian and one Latino and also two black guys, so half of the cast is from a minority
WC4 had two Asians at least (Vagabond and Catscratch, the latter one being half asian)
and we could go on. Those are just from the top of my head.
I don't see any strange picture here nor any racist tendencies.
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Maybe. My memory is a big fuzzy about WCP, and I haven't played Secret Missions. Somehow, I recall somebody with a "Knight" callsign being in WCP, though he might have been a different guy. Was Knight your wingman on the Raptor in WC1?
Well, seems like I have to replay all Wing Commanders from WC1 to WCP. :)
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Knight flies on your wing in the Dakota system, in a Raptor. That's right.
Also on the losing path in Port Hedland in a Scimitar.
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His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! :doubt:
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His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! :doubt:
"I'll bite your legs off!"
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His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! :doubt:
"I'll bite your legs off!"
"Pfftt, tis bearly a scratch!"
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In WC1/2 I think Doomsday was actually Maori despite appearing black.
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I see black guys is still a subject here. Well, I found one. I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol. At the last nav, a black guy gives you an information packet.
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It's a very small part though. IIRC, there was one captain (TCS Cabot?) who also looked black.
They have only a few lines though.
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I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol.
Oh that reminds me.... to whoever it was who was wondering why I needed so many textures for one model... thats the model :p
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And it turned out great.
I'm still blown away every time I see that station.
@Woolie Wool:
Correct, as I mentioned earlier in the thread you could easily tell by the black lines on his face. That's a Maori warpaint.
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I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol.
Oh that reminds me.... to whoever it was who was wondering why I needed so many textures for one model... thats the model :p
Eck. That's the most inefficient model I've seen since Steve-O. 25 textures? That makes for at least 82 maps in toto. Surely, you don't need all of them. Thankfully, no mission should require more than one. But it still has too many textures, even more than some old WCS models, like the Concordia-class from WC4 recreation.
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There's a simple solution. Model and texture that station so it looks as good as the one in WCS but is more efficient. In the mean time, the current one seems to work just fine without FPS drops for me. It's tempting to say things like that, but speaking as someone who's fully modeled and textured quite a bit of stuff, when you see someone doing something as enormous you might want to cut them some slack, especially if it works in the end. Getting huge stuff just looking right (let alone working right) in the game is a whole different ball game to pretty much anything else. You want it to look good while you're still reasonably close, and you want it to be nice and detailed. And it's huge. Sorry, that's going to cost. Sure you can optimize and save here and there by smart planning, tiling where applicable, etc, but in the end anything that huge will be a resource hog if you want it looking right. If it works on most current systems without issues, it's probably best to count your blessings and leave it.
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Combining it's model-specific maps into 5 4096^2 maps could already give a performance improvement, and those maps could be scaled down to 2048 for low-end users. Also, for some reason, two of it's maps are duplicates of your general-purpose maps. So, there's potential for even more cuts. It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.
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So now you need two separate sets of VPs for high end and low end users.
Welcome to the start of support hell. Enjoy your long sledge ride down the slippery slope.
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@Dragon:
Well, the low-end users don't seem to mind.
Those with performance problems usually complain about the huge fleet battles' performance on their PC, I think I haven't read a single complaint about performance in the missions with the station yet.
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Maybe they heven't got there yet. :) WCS missions are really long, and it appears more than 20 missions in.
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Torgo
ThE mAsTeR wOuLd NoT aPpRoVe.
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Combining it's model-specific maps into 5 4096^2 maps could already give a performance improvement, and those maps could be scaled down to 2048 for low-end users. Also, for some reason, two of it's maps are duplicates of your general-purpose maps. So, there's potential for even more cuts. It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.
Torgo alone would not result in an FPS drop. Our VRAM/RAM memory consumption is fairly low and the Torgo model does not put a lot of strain on the GPU. There is also a reason why Torgo uses "duplicate" maps.
Using 4096 maps is out of the question since older GPUs do not support texture resolutions above 2048. It is a support nightmare. Actually, the only models that cause slow downs (according to the received feedback) are asteroids from the media VP. :)
Torgo HQ works just fine in our missions. If you use it in a large combat scenario (which will have a huge fps impact), now that is not my problem. :p
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For the purpose it was meant for, i.e. "Holy crap that's huge and doesn't look like someone scaled it too big," I'd say Torgo is very effective.
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It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.
If that was directed at me, I'm not (and never was) a WCS member, so even if the above statement was true, it would be rendered irrelevant by the fact that I'm not on their team. So you might want to cool off a bit. But as someone who has quite a bit of experience modeling and texturing assets to be used in a fs2_open based projects, I can tell you that you definitely need to have a lot of experience with this sort of stuff, then have first hand knowledge of the project, speak with the artist and understand why he made the choices he made, and finally have some test results that actually confirm that there is a problem, before you go making qualified statements that the author didn't optimize enough.
Or, you could talk out of your @ss. Throwing the statement about "not caring for low end users" and then requesting 4096x4096 maps - 5 of them, no less - which low end graphics cards don't even support was worth a chuckle, though :)
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I've played the first 10 missions or so of WCS then replayed them since the mouse patch arrived.
I found this a useful review. I think the main points it raised aren't being discussed though - the posts here are about the minor diversity issue and the potential for one model to possibly cause problems.
Personally I'm wary about the campaign now because I was expecting some development of/around the main character who already seems like a mix of doormat noob and battle hardened veteran (in his own eyes only apparently). Is WCS supposed to be character driven, or is Sandman just a way for us to be there like Alpha 1?
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@Dragon:
Well, the low-end users don't seem to mind.
Those with performance problems usually complain about the huge fleet battles' performance on their PC, I think I haven't read a single complaint about performance in the missions with the station yet.
I was fine with the fleet battles but would occasionally suddenly drop to 2-3 FPS in the Torgo missions even when the station wasn't onscreen.
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Personally I'm wary about the campaign now because I was expecting some development of/around the main character who already seems like a mix of doormat noob and battle hardened veteran (in his own eyes only apparently). Is WCS supposed to be character driven, or is Sandman just a way for us to be there like Alpha 1?
The inconsistency of the main character is most likely due to a combination of multiple FREDers and long development time. It's very difficult, from inside the modding team, after years of development and multiple versions of the same missions, to have the hindsight/perspective you currently have after playing through the whole campaign in a few days.
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I can see how that would make it very difficult and it probably invalidates my question, which is about what it is supposed to be rather than what it currently is. What it was envisioned to be probably fluctuated a lot in those 10 years.
So far I don't find Sandman as aggravating as Spoon did, but he's looking back having played the entire thing. I started and promptly stopped playing a jrpg recently when my friend, who had completed the game, told me the main character only gets more annoying as time goes on. Since my original question to him was 'is this guy going to get any less annoying',... well you get the idea.
To clarify when I say Sandman is annoying I mean Sandman and the way he is treated. If everyone in a game regards your character a certain way it's hard to avoid either seeing him that way yourself (which can be a good thing), or simply thinking 'wtf is wrong with everyone?' (which is almost always bad). It's a common problem when a character is written as 'cool' and everyone talks about how cool he is and treats him like he's cool, but he doesn't seem cool to the player.
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The problem is, Sandman is exactly the opposite. He's quite badass and have gone through a lot, yet nobody gives him any respect until the very, very end. Not to mention he's quite generic, so it's easy for the player to "superimpose" himself onto him. And of course, nobody like being treated like a newbie when he has 500 or so kills on his account, giving the allmighty Heart of the Tiger a run for his money. Especially that since WCS seems to acknowledge the novels as canon, and the novels make Blair seem like a medicore pilot at best. Taking that into account, Sandman has most likely outdone Maverick in kills by the end of the campaign. But nobody seems to care, from either side.
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I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol.
Oh that reminds me.... to whoever it was who was wondering why I needed so many textures for one model... thats the model :p
Eck. That's the most inefficient model I've seen since Steve-O. 25 textures? That makes for at least 82 maps in toto. Surely, you don't need all of them. Thankfully, no mission should require more than one. But it still has too many textures, even more than some old WCS models, like the Concordia-class from WC4 recreation.
Be thankful it had tons of symmetry. The main reason is because of it's ungodly massive size. The textures are sized the same as capships.
For the purpose it was meant for, i.e. "Holy crap that's huge and doesn't look like someone scaled it too big," I'd say Torgo is very effective.
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I've played the first 10 missions or so of WCS then replayed them since the mouse patch arrived.
I found this a useful review. I think the main points it raised aren't being discussed though - the posts here are about the minor diversity issue and the potential for one model to possibly cause problems.
Personally I'm wary about the campaign now because I was expecting some development of/around the main character who already seems like a mix of doormat noob and battle hardened veteran (in his own eyes only apparently). Is WCS supposed to be character driven, or is Sandman just a way for us to be there like Alpha 1?
I am seriously hating Sandman right now. Possibly the worst player character I've ever played as. At times I feel outright offended that this... this pussy is my representation in the game. It's no wonder everyone treats him like **** with the personality he projects. And I'm sure they have better things to do than check the killboard for some new guy's stats. If it looks like a pussy, acts like a pussy, talks like a pussy...
I'd have 0 confidence in Sandman if I was flying with him, with the way he conducts himself.
EDIT: I also think the game so far scores weakest in gameplay and replay value, which to me are the two greatest priorities I have when I look for a game.
However, so far just about every other aspect of of the product has been top class. I still want to continue and see what happens, and I also want to get to the two missions Spoon describes and see them for myself. But the gameplay itself is starting to become a chore.
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It's very difficult, from inside the modding team, after years of development and multiple versions of the same missions, to have the hindsight/perspective you currently have after playing through the whole campaign in a few days.
That's why you get testers?
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It's very difficult, from inside the modding team, after years of development and multiple versions of the same missions, to have the hindsight/perspective you currently have after playing through the whole campaign in a few days.
That's why you get testers?
I don't get this either. He's the main character. This should NOT slip through the net. Unless they actually want him to come across that way. I wonder who created Sandman, and what they wanted him to be.
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So far, outstanding game - and well balanced. I am at mission 10 or 12 only, though. WC's spirit is captured beautifully. I am really having fun, and the mission, while heavy on the scripting (on which I am OK), are really well led and well-FRED.
I would easily give it give 8/10 - it might seem average but I am the kind of guy who uses the whole range of grades, from 0 to 10.
Dialogs are oustanding. The green walls of text could be shorter but they replace the bar chatters, so OK.
My only grip, for some reason, is for the 3D models, which I find a bit too angulars (esp. fighters). Am I missing an "hi-res" mode or something ?
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So far, outstanding game - and well balanced. I am at mission 10 or 12 only, though. WC's spirit is captured beautifully. I am really having fun, and the mission, while heavy on the scripting (on which I am OK), are really well led and well-FRED.
I would easily give it give 8/10 - it might seem average but I am the kind of guy who uses the whole range of grades, from 0 to 10.
Dialogs are oustanding. The green walls of text could be shorter but they replace the bar chatters, so OK.
My only grip, for some reason, is for the 3D models, which I find a bit too angulars (esp. fighters). Am I missing an "hi-res" mode or something ?
remember WC3 which the era this is set in strong simple angles was the chosen styles, especially for the kats. While this was due to technology reasons the textures didn't give away a lot for expanding on the detail level and most of the theme seemed to be Navy fighters in space so lots of streamlined hulls and grey paint for the terrans and strong, plain angular designs for the kitty kats