I never said I was trying to be different simply for the sake of the difference. No but you said you didn't want to follow the norm while giving no reasons why you didn't want an Avatar. Saying "I want to be different!" while giving no validation to be different usually means it's just for differences sake.
My apologies, but allowing for an inference to be made does not make me guilty of much. Speech is wonderfully ambiguous. I understand your concern though, this happens much.
The initial decision to omit players came about because of two factors. Neither of these are stubborn design nor being different for the sake of being different. Fair enough. Next time possibly give reason for not designing something in rather than just saying "we don't want to" essentially. It would also be nice to assume that I'm not a blind bull, charging away without a reason .
The first reason is a technical one, in many parts.
-One off content takes time and resources more than dynamic solutions. This is the difference between procedurally animating something vs keyframing all possible movements this thing can make. We do not have good keyframe support in the engine currently, and we also don't have a strong ability in keyframe content creation. As such, many things are procedurally animated. Vehicles are much easier to procedurally animate than people, by several levels of magnitude. It is not 'easy enough to do' on an MMO scale. Naw. Check out NaturalMotion. It is easy enough to do, just because you can't or won't find a solution doesn't make you right. If you do not fully understand what you are saying, it's better not to say anything. Euphoria is an amazing piece of technology. It is complicated as hell, and took a long time to develop. It is currently being sold, and it's likely not cheap, as it is almost a one of a kind technology due to the scope of it's functionality. I am usually willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but saying Euphoria is 'easy enough' is very dumb. It is not that easy. Both because it was hard to develop, and it costs money. Thirdly, I believe some of the interviews with the devs behind The Force Unleashed do make note of difficulties in integrating the technology with their piece, even after the money and difficulty is solves. So it's not because I can't or won't, it's because it would make release highly difficult.
Oh right, I forgot to mention. Euphoria can't synchronize over network, because that would be nearly impossible with a technology that complex ( that's where both people see the same thing ). This would make the 'real time' quite hard, given that you need to know where something is to shoot it. Don't flame for the sake of flaming.
-You also have to remember that making real time collisions accurate over the network is not trivial. Especially so when animations are 'soft' as with fleshy things. A tank is a very rigid body, and because it is procedurally animated, we can very accurately validate shots, as well as diseminate that information. I never stated the solution was the permanent presence of soft body avatars, you obviously just assumed it. A much easier solution would be the addition of towns or depots for refueling, buying of parts, and other necessities. Here the Avatars could get out of the vehicles and move around, giving the players "some sense" of connection as I said. Lore could follow that the planet is poisonous, perhaps even corrosive, meaning they can never get out of a vehicle. You could cause all vehicles to explode when destroyed.
Even if this doesn't fit to your design the POINT is that it can be designed for and doesn't need to overrun the game, it can merely be a small additive, I entirely disagree it is as hard as you are making it out to be and am SURE I could design for every problem you bring up. There is always a way around things, it may not be what you wanted exactly but you can usually get pretty close. There is always a way around things. However, this way may compromise other things, things that are valued far more. This is what we call opportunity cost. What you give up in opportunity to perform a task.
Making cities bubbles makes the combat boring. How would you handle a city being taken over while there's people walking around in it. Why, as a combat vehicle, couldn't I blow it open and kill everyone inside? Bases are open, and not well established because of the lore, so this idea of bubble cities is silly. I want people to be able to roll into your city and take out your generators, disabling the turret defenses and such. The bubble is much less pleasing to me. However, I can find a design/lore way to 'excuse' all this away, but that would muddle it in my opinion. However, that point IS a matter of opinion.
As for there always being a way, and you always being able to design around things... that is false. There have been around 7 or so games that have ever even gotten close to full real time non instanced based combat on a massive scale. Much fewer depending on whether do not want to count client side aiming solutions such as Neocron, Auto Assault, and Tabula Rasa. I promise you there are technical issues coupled with security considerations that make that statement extremely false.
Remember, that large studios with hundreds of devs and multi million dollar budgets, have only made Planetside, which is the closest thing to a full MMOFPS imho. And even then, it has some technical limitations and things it didn't/couldn't do. So for you to claim that you can design around anything, is silly.
-The way our netcode works is geared very much towards vehicles. What this buys us is the ability to scale much better than current engine solutions, which is why I made a new engine. Our bandwidth footprint is much much smaller by order of magnitude than your average FPS and even top of the line titles such as CSS. This allows us to fit many more people on our servers than previously allowed. However, avatars break this in a way because they do not have constant turning rate and acceleration. This of course can be remedied and 'faked' but it would make them handle clunky. Could you not create city or town instances as I stated before? I find it hard to believe you couldn't even make believable moving Avatars in an instanced town setting where they go from shop to shop buying parts, getting quests or whatever else you desire. Nor can I see why you wouldn't want to. I explained why I wouldn't want to in the previous post. Outposts aren't safe havens, they're war zones you have to defend while going to the shop etc etc. Think like the bases were in Mech Warrior 4. I could instance it completely sure, but that would make for a shittier experience imho as a game designer. This is something we simply disagree on.
-Our current usage of vehicle allows us to do an unprecedented amount of latency mitigation, which involves mathematically constructing the world model client side, without knowing all the data necesarry, and synchronizing it with the world space, rather than always trying to catch up. Avatars would break this math, or at least require a great deal of refactoring. Even when fully separated from the vehicles? I never stated they needed to be part of the gameplay, merely a part of the world. The sloution to this would be instanced towns, or non instanced towns if you so desire as long as they were invulnerable to attacks and such. The lore can be tweaked to fit it, meaning I really can't see your issues as much more than excuses, unless you really can't do it with your Engine. If they are not part of the combat, it can be done easily enough. If they are instanced somewhere else then sure. However, given that this is a very weak gameplay component and the things I've stated before go against it, I wouldn't want to do it. Incidentally, it's also a ton of work with not much gameplay actually coming from it.
The second reason is based on design.
-Tanks kill the shit out of people in war, breaking that makes things make little sense. Again, don't need to as you would never see them on foot outside of the social structures. Social structures in a warzone, makes little sense either way.
-The maps are set up to be traversed very quickly, avatar speeds would make the game shit to walk around in. Again not an issue as you would never see them on foot outside of the social structures. What did this bring to the table in something like Space Cowboy, that did exactly that? Not much, other than clunky animations and ugly character models. The reason for this is because they didn't spend a huge amount of time on it. And why should they, it has nearly 0 gameplay value to do it this way.
-An entire inventory system would entirely different game mechanics would have to be devised for a small subportion of gameplay, inevitably making it rushed and shit ( see Pirates of the Burning Sea personal combat ). The avatars don't need to be functional for major gameplay, I agree rushed design is a bad idea but this is a small concept. I see now why you believe it to be so big but you incorrectly stuck with one train of thought rather than thinking how it "could" be worked into your game. I know how it could be worked in my game, not how it could be worked in well, and be worth it. That is the train of thought I stuck with, and it's not incorrect.
Anyways, as you can see, this has nothing to do with me being stubborn. It is simply a decision that was made on fair ground, and with the realistic goal of releasing the game as a small indie team in mind. If it was very easy to put it in and lots of people enjoyed it, we would put it in no problem. However, I don't think this is the case. Regardless, thank you for the comments, the feedback is appreciated. I agree it might not be stubborness of your concepts but it is stubborness not to attempt to find solutions to what could be potential problems. I really think your concept is a good one but I feel you will be cutting out a huge potential group who won't even give the game a chance without the use of Avatars somewhere. Avatars are very meaningful for a lot of people, and all that needs to be done so that they can completely understand the gameplay focuses on vehicles is to be given lore to support the idea of no Avatars getting out of vehicles outside of the social strutures.
I'm glad you responded but I'm still in disagreement with your diagnosis unless of course what I'm suggesting your engine simply isn't capable of doing.
I don't entirely disagree with you even though I'm being harsh, because I think some of your statements are a little overly sharp without much backing ( see Euphoria ). Expecting someone to find an all means necessary solution for a specific thing like this is just as bigoted as you think I am being. However, so many people cannot be wrong, and we do ultimately design games for the user base. So I will keep listening to people, maybe form a poll, and will keep this issue on the table.
I know I've been harsh, but either way, thank you very much for your input. It would not be useful if someone didn't ask the hard questions. We need more guys like you in the electoral process in the US.
Patchday, you are very much on the money with your comments.
In the end people are also much harder to animate, and consume many more resources than solid objects that can be articulated simply. Our artists are also much better at vehicles, at the moment.
Animation is the same way. In animation, people are composed of skeletal 'bones'. These bones are connected to each other in a hierarchy, so that they can affect each other. Just how your shoulder moves your elbow, and your elbow moves your hand etc. Each depth level is a different operation. This incremental process is what causes fleshy models to animate softly. These operations are usually computed on the CPU, which is shitty, because it slows things down. Once all the transformation Matrix' are computed, the GPU makes the points do what they do. GPU's are very very good at this type of thing, so that's no big deal.
Some of our tanks are currently at 50k polies. This is very high for a game, but it runs just fine because of the way we do things.
All of these things are also considered in my initial decision to omit avatars.
What really boggles the mind is why so many games are Fantasy and not Sci Fi. Typically Sci Fi games are easier because of many of the things I've mentioned.
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Patchday, you are very much on the money with your comments.
In the end people are also much harder to animate, and consume many more resources than solid objects that can be articulated simply. Our artists are also much better at vehicles, at the moment.
Animation is the same way. In animation, people are composed of skeletal 'bones'. These bones are connected to each other in a hierarchy, so that they can affect each other. Just how your shoulder moves your elbow, and your elbow moves your hand etc. Each depth level is a different operation. This incremental process is what causes fleshy models to animate softly. These operations are usually computed on the CPU, which is shitty, because it slows things down. Once all the transformation Matrix' are computed, the GPU makes the points do what they do. GPU's are very very good at this type of thing, so that's no big deal.
Some of our tanks are currently at 50k polies. This is very high for a game, but it runs just fine because of the way we do things.
All of these things are also considered in my initial decision to omit avatars.
What really boggles the mind is why so many games are Fantasy and not Sci Fi. Typically Sci Fi games are easier because of many of the things I've mentioned.