The Alpha Commander

A vastly different mesh that still conforms to all of the Delta's proportions, armament and animations.

For a supposedly unique individual I, and others it would seem, were expecting a hell of a lot more than just a skin-swap.

Well you be able to see the difference under normal conditions?

Yes, the silhouette differs slightly, but the animation looks the same. You could let them walk (not stand!) side by side - and they would look pretty much the same.

In the end it's barely more than a custom paint shop. There is no point in selling "different commanders" as a feature, if they still end up the same. With neutrinos plan of differentiating them by the set of abilities, that's probably causing more diversity than the different models.

Would you be able to see any difference under normal conditions? Can you say for certain that knight's changes would make the Commander immediately stand out in a game where there is a couple of layers of gameplay that involve the Commander being reduced to a 2D tactical image?

I don't think you could. The silhouette is only a valid complain if you can see the model as well and it isn't obscured by the tactical icon. Even assuming that you have the tactical icons disabled (for whatever reason), once you zoom out to the world view you're not going to be able to see any particular detail of your specific Commander. What will matter is your colour scheme and the appropriate 2D artwork that will show up on various parts of your UI.

You can not deny that they were selling the Commanders however Gorbles, both in digital and physical form, on the basis of noticeably differing conceptual pieces of art.

When the product is but a facsimile of what was advertised and customers are unhappy with a product they expected (based on all available information) to be more than just a model-swap, then the buyer is well within their rights to complain.

The Kickstarter Pledge promised

You can debate and split-hairs over the interpretation of "unique model" if you like and argue if that should include its own Rig and Animations, but Uber (once again) did not provide adequate information for the customer to make an informed choice.

If they were only going to produce a skin-swap, then why was it not advertised specifically as such? Why is the concept art showing a unique Commander and the product received, a Commander that shares many of his attributes with another?

I only dread to think what unholy butchering they'd need to do to make the Theta conform to that same bipedal rig. Does the Theta get his own Rig? And if so, why does the Alpha (the more expensive one I might add) get the shaft?

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I'd like to just pick up on the "designed especially for our Alpha users" part. Now, I can't speak for every Alpha+ grade backer here, but I can say that; to me, this unique, in-game commander model does not feel like it was designed "especially" for us. It feels like it was created because they were obliged to to fulfil their promise with the smallest possible amount of work to achieve a finished product.

I don't know about everyone else, but that doesn't say "especially" to me.
Maybe that makes me sound entitled. But I feel like the Alpha+ backers deserve better than a model swap.
Sue me.

Renders of what exactly? It's just a concept so far as we know.

But the Bone is still there all the same, that's the problem. Also, The Progenitor has a diamond shape in the concept, hard to say how well that will carry over to the Delta rig. It's not an issue of some commanders sharing some elements. I'm fine with the Alpha and Progenitor having some similar proportions, just like I'd be fine is a commander had some of the same proportions of the Delta. The problem is that that isn't the case based on what we've been told, every commander that is an Upright Bipedal Type will have the same proportions aside from exceptions like the size of the shoulders, or the amount of Bulk on a limb.

So they lets just have everything be a Box then? Sure would be easier on the GPUs eh? That would certainly be valid for some people, but definitely not everyone. There are also a lot of subconscious things going on in your head, for example even from above the Delta's Shoulders really stand out, these kinds of things and differences can really stand out to players even of they don't actively recognize it. The Great thing about Strategic zoom is that you can play at whatever zoom you want and there will be people who play more zoomed in and they will be looking at things like the commanders, turns out the camera controls are pretty snazzy even in Alpha;




Also consider that the Commander, which ever you choose, is meant to represent you and people get attached to certain aspects. Like for the Alpha commander, I like the Gun and Lathe arms it has. I like the Mono-Eye, the Vents, and they don't all have the same impact in the official art as they do in the concept.

6-8 months from now when they're putting out new commanders, this issue won't pop up because I'd be surprised if they share concepts at that stage, they'll just trot out the final art and call it a day and no one will have anything to compare to.

Eh, I think that's taking it a bit far. I will say that it's unfortunate they never thought to come to the community and say something like "Hey guys, unfortunately we can't deliver an Alpha that looks the same as the Concept we shared with you guys during the Kickstarter, here is a second quick concept showing the basic idea of what we can deliver and lets talk about it" instead of what could almost be described as denial that there is anything wrong and just leaving us to deal with it.

Mike

Hey, I said I'm happy to agree to disagree!

Certainly, I disagree with the ludicrous hyperbole of "make everything a box". I'm saying the issues that you and others may have with it may not have that much of an issue with the rendering in general gameplay.

You're entitled to your opinion, but please do not ever forget that I am entitled to mine. There are a lot of subconscious things with regards to art. The beauty of it is that every person's subconscious is different, and that twenty people on an Internet forum are not indicative of the general population.

I deleted out a few responses on this thread, and edited one or two that quoted those comments.

Please re-read the rules for those of you who don't understand the "don't be a ****" simple rule. That also includes off topic name calling and pissing in threads that have a fairly clearly defined topic.

Well now we know they're reading this thread - they just don't care to respond to the discussion. Sad, sad panda.

Don't forget: There is a game to be made.

Good grief. If i had something smart to add to the conversation, I would. Commanders are being worked on, and the last thing I said was "we'd like to see about at least getting the original commanders back to rigs that don't require conforming their art". But I haven't had an update in a while. We have PAX starting the day after tomorrow. We have a beta starting in the next few weeks. We have a lot of features to finish.

Please keep our level of communication in perspective with occasionally, we need to fit sleep in there somewhere too. ;-)

.....have you read the thread? There was plenty of discussion within the first week or two that the thread was posted, everything since then has be my explaining to people the issues I have over and over again. It's been more than a month since the thread was created after all.

Mike

Uber has shown that they read everything and listens to us. They have made a first pass on the Alpha commander so we have something to discuss about. I think we as a community need to discuss what we want first. It doesn't make sense for them to mingle in the discussion atm.

Relax sirs - I wasn't being completely serious (sad, sad panda isn't a serious comment by any stretch). Only thing I do think is still vague/waiting for answer is how rigid the skeleton is. I could have missed something in the past pages on that though?

On the commanders we're making, the rig will be pretty rigid. Or more to the point, limited to a fairly small set of options. However, for modding, there's no real limit. It's simply an issue of time and polish to make a new rig look good. To my knowledge, there's no technical limit to the number of custom commander rigs that could be loaded at one time. But for our purposes, it's simply a matter of we have neither unlimited time nor resources.

Will we see support for more flexible Rigs at any point?

Mike

What do you mean support? If you make a rig, it's supported. We have a bone limit for now that I think is tapped out at 32, which does place some limits, especially on bipeds, but not all THAT limiting.

It's mearly an extension of your own train of thought, instead of me needing to make 100 new rigs I just want to modify existing ones. For example, placing the legs further apart.

You're talking to the guy that Maxed out the SupCom 80 Bone limit.

I'm gonna want more than 32! ;p

I also take it this means we'll only see 4 sets of Gun and Lathe arms? One for each Rig?

Mike

More than 32 bones IS a technical limit, and I'm not sure how much of a pain it will be to make larger. Given the scale we're talking about with this game, that seems like a more immutable limit than as many unique rigs as you want.

You'll just need to figure out a way to meld four rigs together as a single mega-rig.

A limit of 32 might be fine for PA, but I'm more worried about stuff beyond PA naturally.

Nothing on the Gun/Lathe Arm?

Mike

Ask me on Tuesday. I'm not going to assert something I don't know to be absolutely the case, and that's more a Steve question. Normally I'd know, but I'm not sure where we currently are at on gun/lathe variants, though I think you're being a little too conservative on your estimate.