What are your thoughts on the terrain missions?

Pedro

Pedro

Admiral
Well that time has come, my 3rd year project, the outline was decided upon last year, obviously I chose to do a space combat simulator, the focus being on reviving terrain missions as seen in Wing Commander III and IV.
Firstly I should point out this is a solo 1 year project, its not aiming to be large scale, the focus will primarily be on terrain, associated effects, LOD and ground units.

What I need from you guys is suggestions on what you felt needed improving, what you felt worked well and what would have been really cool.

For example Quarto suggested to me that the Kilrah bombing mission felt far too relaxed, no sense of speed, there are plenty of ways to give a sense of speed so this will be a good one for me to work on :)
 
Well...
the terrain was too plain
you could stop your ship and turn like there were no gravity
colision should be more letal (hit the ground at 600kps and only take minor damage?)
there was no altitude display
would be cool to see an airstrip with docked fighters that you try to destroy before they takeoff to attack you ;)

...what else?
 
KillerWave said:
Well...
the terrain was too plain
you could stop your ship and turn like there were no gravity
colision should be more letal (hit the ground at 600kps and only take minor damage?)
there was no altitude display
would be cool to see an airstrip with docked fighters that you try to destroy before they takeoff to attack you ;)

...what else?
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...If you kill your engines in mid air you will fall to your death. If you eject, you will fall to your death, instead of just hanging in mid air.
 
Dyret said:
If you eject, you will fall to your death, instead of just hanging in mid air.
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Yeah, I agree. After all, everyone knows the art of making parachutes was lost in the 25th century!
 
Quarto said:
Yeah, I agree. After all, everyone knows the art of making parachutes was lost in the 25th century!
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Those chairs/pods was made for outer space. Thats why i assumed theres no parachutes on them.
 
Given the speed at which fighters are designed to move its plausable their manuevering thrusters could counter the effects of gravity though isn't it? Would be intresting to set it up so that you could kill them and allow your ship to freefall at your discression?
 
Dyret said:
Those chairs/pods was made for outer space. Thats why i assumed theres no parachutes on them.
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So you think Confed would be stupid enough to build fighters capable of atmospheric flight without bothering to provide the pilots with atmospheric ejection capabilities?

(in any case, we know of more than a few cases where Confed or Kilrathi pilots ejected in atmosphere and survived, either by parachuting to the ground or using thrusters to escape the atmosphere entirely)
 
Quarto said:
So you think Confed would be stupid enough to build fighters capable of atmospheric flight without bothering to provide the pilots with atmospheric ejection capabilities?
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Yes.
 
Don't we see pilots eject in WCA with parachutes (could be wrong though)?

One thing I didn't like about the kilrah run was the length of that canyon, the first time I did that mission it took forever to fly that damn thing and there wasn't are really resistance besides 2 ekasphis.
 
the detail of the "cities", it just looked crappy. a bunch of rectangles spaced out in the middle of no where.

i found the kilrah run to be boring also. the first time i tried it, i got disoriented and slammed into the canyon wall. the second time, i just flew straight over to the fault. i didn't like the canyon aspect, i expected kilrah to look like it did in the opening video.
 
Detailed buildings is easy, they're loaded from a model format (any will do), my challenge will be specifying areas of ground which despite any changes due to LOD algorithms are suitable for the buildings (don't want the ground dissapearing from under them), this all depends upon the algorithm I decide upon, worst case scenario is I just "lock" certain areas at a minimum level of detail.

Ok sense of speed and improved collision detection and response are now offically on my to do list :)
Also gonna get tanks slightly more aware of the ground ;) rather than just hovering so high that they could never come into contact with it.
 
There was an altitude indicator in the game.
But it wasn't very good. And the interval of altitude you could play in was too low. We need a higher ceiling. and some gravity.
 
The altitude indicator was just a line that moved along a vertical axis, and you were limited to a rather low ceiling.

We can't really complain too much as WC is much more space based then in planetary strikes, leave that stuff for the marine wings and CVEs....
 
But ground pounding is fun in the novel. IT would be great to have nice atmospheric missions. Of course, not at the expense of the quality of the space part.
 
In ER it didn't sound so great actually sounded more dangerous than space combat.

Without a doubt a solid ground mission/campaign would be great but it would have to maintain that WC feel without getting to SC and feeling like a normal flight sim.
 
Dyret said:
...If you kill your engines in mid air you will fall to your death. If you eject, you will fall to your death, instead of just hanging in mid air.
Click to expand...

Fighters do have thrusters that give them hovering Capabilities you know? My Major thing is that you should have to fight your way through planetary defenses and larger scale fighter wings. Possibly a few Bloodfangs.
 
even though they do have thrusters, the ingame effect is way too weird. it could model the whole gravity+atmosphere thing better. Not realistic, mind you, but better. Although the games' are pretty fine even as they are.
 
Realism? No offense to the game itself, but if your looking for realism, play Airforce Delta Strike, the flying in this game isnt that real.
 
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