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Sometimes I forget Battletech also has infantry? And apparently Clanner shock troops are also something that I only discovered so recently just because everyone else just talks about the Clan Omnimechs much more than anything else, really.
So uhh, genetically modified to be tall, shripped, fight and kill, but also fit snugly in their own suits of dedicated Battle Armour, wich in illustrations frequently resemble miniature mechs more than "power armour" as frequently portrayed in Sci-fi settings.
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@butterdog @deprecated_ii @Curvin @MachineMadeDog Unreal engine is the only game engine, and it only works for 3rd person over the shoulder perspective. Cluttering maps with random garbage and foliage is the only way to make a map, which kills performance. Using the most advanced and realistic and performance heavy way to render grass is absolutely vital when you drive 60m tall mech. And no, you cant disable it, because "its already well optimized, you dont need to disable it, just upgrade your pc, and enable frame generation."
No matter what game you want, this is the baseline for every new game.
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@butterdog @MachineMadeDog @Curvin to do it well you need a shitload more art than usual, and your engine has to be able to handle huge variability in loading and draw distance, which isn't a common feature
there are lots of compromises you might make to mitigate those problems but making the right choices is itself very difficult and can be risky in terms of development effort (you realize you made the wrong choice, but have a ton of work sunk into it)
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@deprecated_ii @Curvin @MachineMadeDog for sure feels like a feature you have to have in mind from the get go, not as an after thought
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@MachineMadeDog @Curvin I mean there's a big difference between the perspective of an infantryman and the perspective of a bigass mech. this has major implications on the technical design of a video game
imagine a game that is designed for someone walking around slowly in a city. a high level of detail is possible and desired because they can get close to everything, and you don't need to load things quickly because the camera can't move quickly anyway
now put that camera in a car and let it drive around. suddenly you need to be able to load the world way faster, and you won't be able to maintain the same level of detail. if the game was designed around a car in the first place you wouldn't try to have high detail because the camera can't get right up close to things and is expected to be moving around a lot. but maybe you just dynamically choose lower fidelity textures to cope with the problem
now put the camera in something that's tall, fairly fast, *and* can see for miles around. you can't afford the fine detail anymore at all, but you still need it to look good, and you need to be able to load the world blazingly fast
it's not impossible to accommodate all these things at once but it's technically very difficult and expensive
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@deprecated_ii @MachineMadeDog @Curvin not a vidya dev by any means, but isn't at what LOD is for? The katamari games did it pretty well
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@MachineMadeDog @Curvin I think it would be pretty hard technically unless it was like, isometric or something
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@deprecated_ii @Curvin conflict scale fluctuates a lot between tabletop, books, and games. combined arms battletech could be a coh level game all the way up to something like eugen sized wargames.
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@Curvin combined arms is my favorite thing about battletech. its a shame none of the videogames ever explore this
Stanley from Counter Strike: Condition Zero (2004)
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butterdog (nudes at 1M followers)
MachineMadeDog
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