News: PC Gamer UK December Issue & Interview with Higby on Scale - Page 14

Traak · 2011-10-27, 02:54 PM

Live in your world. Die and respawn in ours.

Traak · 2011-10-28, 02:35 AM

Originally Posted by Sirisian

oh man that is amazing. Best screenshot to date. Wish they'd put that one up in 1920x1080 resolution so we can use it as a wallpaper.

So umm purple mossy thing.

You do know you can resize the image to whatever you want using Paint, Photoshop, GIMP, or just stretching or cropping it with Windows 7's built-in features.

Traak · 2011-10-28, 02:54 AM

Right now our sniper class is infiltrator

They're not firing while cloaked

They're not even able to cloak effectively while loaded out as an effective sniper

Notice, he didn't say "cloak at all" but "cloak effectively." And this was while loaded out as an "effective" sniper.

Does this mean the more ammo, weapons, (or bigger weapon) they carry, the less cloaked they will become, in degrees?

If they equip the rifle, ready to fire, does it mean they are uncloaked, or does it mean pulling the trigger shuts off the cloak?

Sirisian · 2011-10-28, 04:16 AM

Originally Posted by Traak

You do know you can resize the image to whatever you want using Paint, Photoshop, GIMP, or just stretching or cropping it with Windows 7's built-in features.

heh this was said before the full resolution was uploaded. I'm not going to ruin a screenshot by upsampling/downsampling it. The pixels must match my background without removing any of the glorious detail on the edges.

Would have preferred a momentary cloaking implant like I described before for non-infiltrators. I can see this working though.

SKYeXile · 2011-10-28, 04:16 AM

this better not effect my farming of snipers.

Xyntech · 2011-10-28, 06:59 AM

My guess would be that while carrying a sniper rifle, your cloak looks extremely visible like when you were running full speed while cloaked in PS1, or maybe more visible than that (obviously with the new shaders, not just a transparency filter). Maybe it will help you blend into your environment a little better than bright reds or blues or purples, but still be easy to spot once someone is looking for you.

They need to make it right so that you aren't having invisible snipers, but considering that Higby stated that cloaking between shots was too overpowered, I have a feeling they are well aware of this and are taking steps to avoid it.

I actually think that if done right, this could be a pretty good thing. Infiltrators will probably be the lightest armored class again, so having snipers be in infiltrator armor will make them that much easier for other people to kill.

It'll actually be somewhat along the lines of some of the anti sniper ideas you have posted Traak, albeit not completely insane and imbalanced against snipers.

I can't wait to fly in and Reaver spam... Uh, I mean, Scythe spam a hill full of crouching, visible infiltrators.

Traak · 2011-10-28, 08:27 AM

Has it occurred to anyone, the insane sight distance at which equipment is still visible?

The furthest vehicle has to be about 2km away from the tail of the closest mosquito.

I wonder what the sight distance will be like in the game? "As far as the eye can see"?

Or will there be limits?

Xyntech · 2011-10-28, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Traak

Has it occurred to anyone, the insane sight distance at which equipment is still visible?

The furthest vehicle has to be about 2km away from the tail of the closest mosquito.

I wonder what the sight distance will be like in the game? "As far as the eye can see"?

Or will there be limits?

Probably varying limits depending on what you are looking at, like in any game. There becomes little need to see humans past a certain distance, as they would just be little individual pixels flickering about. Vehicles need to be seen a little further and trees a little further still.

Hopefully we will be able to see some form of the terrain at every distance. No more having this great big mountain in the middle of Cyssor that nobody can appreciate because you can't ever see the damn thing. I hope to be able to see most objects up until they become little more than small indistinct blobs.

I'd like to see sniping ranges be extended significantly. If bullets drop over distance and are affected by wind, the longer distances you force snipers to operate at, the harder it will be to land a shot.

I hope that rifles are accurate enough in controlled shots to where you can effectively kill someone with a regular MA rifle at ranges that were previously considered sniper distances in PS1. That way, sniping at those shorter distances will be a lot harder because anyone with a rifle will be able to do a lot of damage to you, especially if snipers have weak infiltrator armor. Obviously a closer sniper would still be able to land more head shots if they got in a little closer, but they would lose their impunity to be shot back at by nothing but other snipers.

If sniper head shots were balanced to only bring most armors down to low health, not OSK's, sniping at PS1 ranges would be a dangerous proposition indeed.

NapalmEnima · 2011-10-28, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by Traak

Has it occurred to anyone, the insane sight distance at which equipment is still visible?

The furthest vehicle has to be about 2km away from the tail of the closest mosquito.

I wonder what the sight distance will be like in the game? "As far as the eye can see"?

Or will there be limits?

I suspect the limit will be more about bandwidth than rendering. You might get 3-pixel-tall stick figures at 2km if there's not a lot going on around you. And when there is, that bandwidth will be used for more important things like all the bullets whizzing past your head and vehicles and troops and aircraft and missiles and explosions and THE FLAVEN!

It might also put a priority on objects based on their visibility. Tanks at 1km are more important than infantry (particularly infiltrators). Heck, tanks at 1km might be more important than infantry at 800m... based on the size they'd be on your screen.

EDIT:

At longer ranges you might get updates on distant objects less frequently... say every other tick instead of every one. That way the server could "interleave" data its sending to you. You get to hear about twice as many distant objects, but they'd require more client-side massaging to look right... and just plain might not look right. But at that point you'd hope the stuff in the foreground would be Interesting enough that odd behavior of distant objects would be less noticeable.

Xyntech · 2011-10-28, 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by NapalmEnima

At longer ranges you might get updates on distant objects less frequently... say every other tick instead of every one. That way the server could "interleave" data its sending to you. You get to hear about twice as many distant objects, but they'd require more client-side massaging to look right... and just plain might not look right. But at that point you'd hope the stuff in the foreground would be Interesting enough that odd behavior of distant objects would be less noticeable.

You could also do some prediction though right? Like you only update what a tiny, distant soldier is doing every five seconds, but in the meanwhile you keep him moving smoothly in a manner extrapolated from what information is known. Then when it gets updated again five seconds later, just smoothly transition into the new extrapolated movement. There may still be some slightly odd looking movement occasionally, but hopefully it should be hard to notice anything out of the ordinary at those kinds of distances.

Traak · 2011-10-30, 06:02 AM

So, you are saying that sending positional data FROM everyone TO everyone gets more and more costly the larger the radius of people having the data sent and received.

Some intelligent ideas up there, prioritizing big things, slow updates on distant soldier positions, etc.

I wonder how they're going to tackle it. And crucify cheaters, while they are at it. it gets wearying being more visible as a cloaker than you are as a RExo. From 3,000m, as seemed to be the case in PS1.

Oh, and how about from more than 50m, there is NO ONE who receives positional data on cloakers, period. So Joe Cheater could be standing inside a 100.001m diameter circle of cloaked cloakers, and not be able to cheat his way into seeing them.

Word.

TRex · 2011-10-30, 06:27 AM

Seeing cloakers at 50m+ was more of a bug than a cheat in most cases. If you had advanced targeting on , every now and then you would spot a red name tag with no body ,pinpointing their position. Ironically , this happened more if they stood still.
New engine,new game so hopefully will be gone in new incarnation.

dm Akolyte · 2011-10-30, 04:49 PM

WTF. I don't want to grouped as spec ops to play as a sniper. I'm a fucking marksman, not some psuedo-support wanker.

Xyntech · 2011-10-30, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by dm Akolyte

WTF. I don't want to grouped as spec ops to play as a sniper. I'm a fucking marksman, not some psuedo-support wanker.

Snipers have always been more of a supportive role in team oriented shooters. Get up close and in a real firefight if you don't wanna be lumped in with them.

Hopefully standard rifles won't have such piss poor accuracy this time and you can be a proper marksman as a rifleman.

EASyEightyEight · 2011-10-30, 05:44 PM

It was never the accuracy of rifles that got me, but the fact that at the average engagement ranges (75m+) they started doing zilch for damage. You were wasting ammo by 120m, and the tightest cone of the weapon was inaccurate enough. It was salt in the wound doing almost nothing at 190m when that one round did connect.

Counting on bullet drop in PS2 to remove the need for DD over range. I just hope our rounds don't suddenly drop like bricks until at least 200m. We don't need to encourage everyone to pick up a sniper rifle just to hit anything a stones throw away again.