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Thread: Attention Devs! Your Art Team has it right.
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ShadowSaber5
Fri Dec 10, 2004 5:18 pm
#14
ah but the thing with them starting to spread out after 500 Meters wont matter since you can't hit anythng that far out ANYWAY.
Also, i have noticed different damage amounts done when more or less bolts hit to the earlier posts about "doesn't matter if one or all hit." i think it does just through my own personall experience. And if you think about it, the X wing has 2 separate weapons on the wings and 1 in the middle. So if only one weapon hits it does that damage, but if one from EACH cannon hits it registers the entire hit of EACH weapon since each one hit. However, if only the Center weapon hits, the other 2 miss.
Also, i have noticed different damage amounts done when more or less bolts hit to the earlier posts about "doesn't matter if one or all hit." i think it does just through my own personall experience. And if you think about it, the X wing has 2 separate weapons on the wings and 1 in the middle. So if only one weapon hits it does that damage, but if one from EACH cannon hits it registers the entire hit of EACH weapon since each one hit. However, if only the Center weapon hits, the other 2 miss.
Sylia
Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:06 am
#15
TjadenFederov wrote:
I've flown my Dunelizard on Bria and I must say it is a HUGE pain to have to roll the ship to have both weapons hit. Instead of having this:
Now -- o oo o
how about this: : :
I have no complaint with imperial ships, however, but that can be seen as a possible trade off~ The most weapons an imperialfighter ship can have is 2 blaster weapons and 3 ordanance racks, which is the oppressor, however both weapons on the oppressor fire at just about the same location: Dead center just below the center pod, out of the same barrel it seems. We have no issue with convergence, but on the other hand we are only able to use 2 guns, and that chassis is a bit slow (0.850 modifier on speed) and doesn't have the best PYR.
Rebels, i know for sure can hold 3 guns on the X-Wing, with a wider area of fire. I am speculating on this, as i've never flown a ship with non converging weapons other than the dunelizard, but this must mean your shots need to be less precise. You can hit targets much easier, but you swap that off withthe imperials small window of fire and only 2 guns. 2 guns isnt exactly a bad thing, we are not as heavy on the capacitator, and we have more options in terms of mass. (less guns = less mass, or just more powerful guns with more mass).
Either way all 3 pilots have their ups and downs. Maybe a solution would be an option for convergance: Non-Converged for maybe small hard to hit targets (birds!) convergedfor big strong targets where you want every shot to count. ( sort of like a shotgun spray for non converged versus a pinpoint rifle accuracy for the big targets. You wouldn't use a shotgun on a bear would you? Seems like a rifle would be the reasonable choice, but i've never hunted).
The Interceptor has the same 4 point spread like an X-wing, but like all our other fighters, with the exception of the Advanced,only can load one gun.
And only being able to load 1 gun on most of our ships and 2 guns on our biggest does not give us "more options in terms of mass", because we have less mass available to start with.
As far as visuals, whether you hit or miss has nothing to do with what you see your blaster bolt doing.
Tangle with nothing but tier 5 A-wings at point blank range for a while and you come to realise this.
Sometimes your shots go right through them .. and miss.
Sometimes your shots fly 10 meters wide .. and hit.
I've noticed often at high angles while the A-wings are changing direction (which they do constantly now) the targeting reticule will be projected to the wrong side of the target, in other words instead of leading the target, the reticule is trailing the target. Yet if you line up on the reticule and blast away, your bolts will visually fly way wide behind the A-wing, but register as hits. Meanwhile if you correct to where you should logically be firing you visually hit the target, often even getting visual shield impacts, but the shots do not register as hits.
Message Edited by Sylia on 12-10-2004 11:07 PM
Zade_Taerin
Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:06 am
#16
The fact is that I'm not entirely convinced that where your bolts hit on the target has anything to do with determining a hit connection outside of perhaps where to put a graphics flash. In the evidence I've seen I'm apt to believe that a hit or miss is determined the second you pull the trigger. There's been times when I swear every shot seemed to miss the target visually but damage was still registered. In this case convergnece is nothing more then optics and has very little to do with the amount of damage per bolt or on whether or not you could land with at least one bolt. The whole thing could come down to being as simple as: Pull Trigger, Game determines if you should be registered a hit, Draw Bolts, when time has passed for bolts visuallyto reach target apply damage if a hit was predetermined, if damage inflicted draw explosion or shield effect. The game is a massive MMORPG, if it had to track every bolt/missile/etc. as an individual object then you are looking at some sizeable impacts to server performance. Now if the bolts/missiles/etc. are just a client side graphic and the hits are predetermined on the server irregardless of where they visually impact on your client they you can see that the amount of work and tracking need by the server would be significantly less.
I think the only person who could formally respond with a definitive decisionon this would be a developer...
hmmm.... Now... thinking about this from the other side where weapon placement matters, people with Firesprays and B-Wingshave expressed concerns over the difficulty to affect hits from both weapons because they are placed widely apart. Perhaps each weapon has what you could call "a zone of contact" based on it's position on the craft. Mathematically it's not that much for your machine to do some vector geometry to determine if a line drawn from the end of the weapon (at x1,y1,z2) when fired at a specific time will make contact with a zone determined by the target box of the target craft. If when you fire the weapon the game determines that mathematically the line drawn from the end of the weapon will intersect with the estimated location of the target box after an amount of time it takes for the bolts to reach the target then it registersa hit. In this case convergence could be implemented such that the lines from the end of the weapons are bent towards a position in front of the craft at a specific range. I couldn't see why this couldn't be implemented client side and allow you to change where those lines would bend to depending upon a range setting you could adjust. However, the same rule would seem to apply in that if the line from either of your right or left or even both intersect with the target box that it's registered as one hit on the target.
....Oh... heck... there may be convergence... and there may not be... I've just talked myself into considering two different points both of which have to do with predetermined hits on the pull of the trigger... Again... we would need a developer to provide a definitive response...Message Edited by Zade_Taerin on 12-10-2004 03:20 PM
TjadenFederov
Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:07 am
#17
I've flown my Dunelizard on Bria and I must say it is a HUGE pain to have to roll the ship to have both weapons hit. Instead of having this:
Now -- o oo o
how about this: : :
I have no complaint with imperial ships, however, but that can be seen as a possible trade off~ The most weapons an imperialfighter ship can have is 2 blaster weapons and 3 ordanance racks, which is the oppressor, however both weapons on the oppressor fire at just about the same location: Dead center just below the center pod, out of the same barrel it seems. We have no issue with convergence, but on the other hand we are only able to use 2 guns, and that chassis is a bit slow (0.850 modifier on speed) and doesn't have the best PYR.
Rebels, i know for sure can hold 3 guns on the X-Wing, with a wider area of fire. I am speculating on this, as i've never flown a ship with non converging weapons other than the dunelizard, but this must mean your shots need to be less precise. You can hit targets much easier, but you swap that off withthe imperials small window of fire and only 2 guns. 2 guns isnt exactly a bad thing, we are not as heavy on the capacitator, and we have more options in terms of mass. (less guns = less mass, or just more powerful guns with more mass).
Either way all 3 pilots have their ups and downs. Maybe a solution would be an option for convergance: Non-Converged for maybe small hard to hit targets (birds!) convergedfor big strong targets where you want every shot to count. ( sort of like a shotgun spray for non converged versus a pinpoint rifle accuracy for the big targets. You wouldn't use a shotgun on a bear would you? Seems like a rifle would be the reasonable choice, but i've never hunted).
Aden_Nak
Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:36 am
#18
Zade, I've seen evidence of what you're talking about as well, as it does seem at times that shots that clearly missed (visually) registered hits, and vice versa. On the other hand, I've also seen my shots fly hopelessly between the wings of a TIE Fighter. I DO think that the game uses a pre-sciprted event for enemy turrets, at the very least. However, if you get into a large firefight (taking out the escorts on the Corvette mission, for example), the enemy AI begins doing some very freaky, unpredictable things, often in the span between when I fire my shot and when the graphic of the attack strikes the target. And also, in that case, what does it do for PvP damage, since the flight patters of players are not pre-scripted to follow targeting trajectories?
I would like to see a "concept" of convergence in the game, especially one that the player could set at certain distances. Darth Vader's TIE Advanced had this feature in Epi4 (as can be evidenced both by him setting the range on his control yoke via the clickity twist knobs in homage to WWI and WWII weapon calibration, and by the off-center targetting of his actual shots). In realty, if there were no weapon convergence, every ship manufacturer on the planet would mount the weapons directly above/below the cockpit by default, like on most TIEs and on the Y-Wing.
I can definitely say that one of the biggest advantages I have in my Longprobe is that both sets of guns are right in line with my cockpit, and when I fire, I get a concentrated, single burst of energy. With that kind of lineup, I can actually treat my shots as "bombs" rather than supressive fire. Of course, the fact that they send off as four cracklign balls of energy don't hurt that illusion. But I digress.
Even if weapon striking is "simulated" and calculated before the shot is fired, the specifics of the weapon mounts is still a factor, and convergence would simply adjust that calculation.
I would like to see a "concept" of convergence in the game, especially one that the player could set at certain distances. Darth Vader's TIE Advanced had this feature in Epi4 (as can be evidenced both by him setting the range on his control yoke via the clickity twist knobs in homage to WWI and WWII weapon calibration, and by the off-center targetting of his actual shots). In realty, if there were no weapon convergence, every ship manufacturer on the planet would mount the weapons directly above/below the cockpit by default, like on most TIEs and on the Y-Wing.
I can definitely say that one of the biggest advantages I have in my Longprobe is that both sets of guns are right in line with my cockpit, and when I fire, I get a concentrated, single burst of energy. With that kind of lineup, I can actually treat my shots as "bombs" rather than supressive fire. Of course, the fact that they send off as four cracklign balls of energy don't hurt that illusion. But I digress.
Even if weapon striking is "simulated" and calculated before the shot is fired, the specifics of the weapon mounts is still a factor, and convergence would simply adjust that calculation.
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