Scale Megathread

hehe we know, we know I knew it indeed the icons are not done, so to confirm what I suspect, will the icons fuse upon zooming out to a certain level? (I know the reason we don't need this as of yet is because there isn't interplanetary interaction yet, hence we do not zoom out much)

I can even imagine the icons being replaced entirely once in galactic view by an UI overlay allowing for some simple things such as telling the commander to get into the rocket you built selecting the rocket and the destination, selecting all factories and telling them what to build in a common mainbar. of course orbital units would have strategic icons.

Sorry I've missed it.

I did some testing on my side by importing the models inside maya, and I think the problem is also in the camera (mostly focal length).
I would be happy to give you some some test renders as reference, but I'm missing units for the scale of the planets, and I can't find the props for the terrain.

to

Scale deserves another powow.

Okay. So uh. Did like... something change? Or is this just a necro?

Necro. Nothing has changed but if I had to guess tatsujb wants to neg Neutrino into doing something for scale like he has for Orbital despite the fact that Neutrino has already commented on scale issues.

Mike

Negging, lol. It's like a PUA for game devs.

Anyway scale is still topmost on my mind but we aren't making any changes right this second.

How you doin'?

Is that the Jersey Shore version?

Hehe, you call that negging? This is how you neg.

More like:

alright this scale should be re-railed.
optimisations have been made the games runs tons better now, is a scale change possible now?

o m g.

I should have used search.

I wrote a short essay here....
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...nce-but-how-its-done.52718/page-4#post-804915


But it looks like you guys already said everything I needed to ages ago.
That's why I get for wasting my Alpha key

search doesn't really work anymore. I can find this thread because I know exaclty how to spell it's title.


thanks for talking about it in your thread

not everything was said we've basically agreed that the landmaks and the units where the main culprits and also sugested some view distortion to chage the appearence of scale but we can still be much more precise and creative in terms of what solutions we propose to this issue.

Units are definitely too big in comparison to map elevation features and their own firing range. I'm not sure about movement speed relative to their size...

The battleship is the most ludicrous example of this, as it always looks like a child's toy in a bathtub compared to most of the lakes/"oceans".

And it's range is downright silly, at 3x it's own length. I hacked together an image comparing the firing range of PA's battleship with an Iowa Class...



Understandably we are not going for "realism", but honestly the battleship's abysmal range really effects "suspension of disbelief".

Here's a screen cap of their latest live stream....



Look how big the units are compared to the map.
- That that water mass is only 4-shipyards wide. Sure, there's more on the other.

Slowing down the units will only disguise the scale.

Also look at the planet.
It's flat.
Not just a little flat. It's very, very flat.
I see only a 1 single plateau on the screen.
There are no choke points, no places where you have to make tactical decisions.
No places where the terrain offers a unique advantage.





Now compare it to this render back in January.
The first time I saw it, it just blew my mind.

• It's tight, it's congested. You would have to pick your approach, figure out tactical decisions about attack routes and choke points. The terrain will block shots. Direct fire may work, mobile artillery could be a tactical advantage. Mobile missile launchers would have some issues.
  You would actually be able to place your buildings behind terrain to block incoming artillery fire.
  After all, isn't that why it's on a physics based engine?
  
  
• Procedurally generated planets = technological marvel.
  Technological marvel != Interesting gameplay.
  Meshing together different terrain types sure is really cool, from an engineer standpooint.
  But patches of ocean, trees and a flat dessert does not make for interesting game play.
  
  
• However, flat can be seem big. Earth feels big, but it's very flat.
  Seeing planet curvature breaks a sense of scale.
  If your units are geometrically big compared to the planet, then you will zoom out to see more units.
  And you see more curvature.
  
  See how the in the Dessert Biome render you don't even notice the planet warp.
  
  Kaiokai, King Kai's planet is small.
  
  How do we know it's small? Because unit size to curvature.
  It takes what, 10 seconds to drive around his planet?
  But if it took 3 hours to drive around on that little road, it doesn't make the planet any "bigger".
  You just have a big slow car on a small planet.
  
  
• The terrain features dwarf even the larges buildings.
  The terrain blocks shots.
  It would block shots and be a pathfinding nightmare. Or so you would think.
  Unless you watched the Planetary Annihilation: March 22nd LiveStream
  That kind of terrain interference makes it feel bigger.
  
  
• And lastly, take a close look at that render.
  I count at least 5 distinct height maps on the plateaus there.
  There are mex are on 2 different levels.
  There is a radar built even higher up.

So if we ask a very, very tough question here.

Compare the concept render to the game now.
Ignore the fancy lighting and texturing.
Do you feel this game has achieved the vision of that screen shot?
- for gameplay purposes?
- for scale?

Unfortunately, definitly No
And i must say the biome concept let me think : we're really going for awesome.
Hopefully, like scaling down units, this is something Uber is working on.

I'm waiting for people saying it's probably to late to change it now, while they were screaming "it's just alpha" when I've opened the first thread about the scale 7 months ago.

@Culverin: I have to say: I realy love the desert biome concept and every single unit from it. I would be totaly happy just seeing this in the game - with exactly the same graphic and style and the same units from the concept.
But I don't think we're going to see that anymore.

But another point here is: The main issue from all those pictures compared to the game is not only the scale but the camera angle. And this is kinda sad. I love this classi camera angle from the old fashioned RTS games like TA and C&C.
Supcom did not had that anymore. Whenever people wanted to make videos from the battlefield they changed the camera angle. Because otherwise it doesn't looked cool. But normaly you don't have time for that. And it's more efficient to manage your units from the top view. Damnit!

Throwing planets together is cool. But I don't like real planets. I wish this was a flat-map-RTS where you cannot rotate the view. I hate rotation in RTS games. I never liked that. TA and SC didn't had that. Maybe I'm too old fashion. Okay... I'm out of topic now.

@rorschachphoenix
You are right, camera angle will also help with scale.

Just because we are doing 3D and planets doesn't mean we are forced into the current view angle.It doesn't have to be "90 degrees perpendicular to screen center".

Take a look at this quick mock-up I did.
You can see that the current option isn't the only one we have available.
It was just a design choice by Uber, and if I had to guess, the easiest one to code.



As for fighting on a sphere, it doesn't blow my mind. In fact, it's a rather difficult concept to grasp.
When I watched the kickstarter, I was thinking, omg. Planets, HUGE.
Interplanetary battles? Even HUGER!!!
I already knew it would be a UI nightmare. But I will reluctantly try out something different.

Plus, it's the Uber crew, so I figured they could pull it off.
It's a tough pill I was willing to swallow for the sake of scale.
I mean, that's why I pitched in for the kickstarter.


The UI will improve when Uber is done engineering the core gameplay mechanics.
But the scale?

Maybe zep is right,
Maybe we went from "it's just alpha" to "uh-oh, it's too late".