Friday with Means - May 29th, 2009

[Autohead]

They could always add more yes/no display options like we have for shoulders and helmets now. Could use one for back slot while we're at it too as many have said.

Would be great.

[shadowgod]

Why did we have to wait this long for the new engine, again?

hindsight is a great skill, aint it?

had they trained presight, maybe we would already have the new engine. (which by all technicalities, is Dreamworld 2.0. as AO is already using the original dreamworld engine).

[Wrangeline]

Good stuff. Please tell me there's no hecks in there though.

Imagine the riots on forum if the new dungeon looks just like an inferno team mission filled with hecklers in the corridors.

I'd quit the game instantly if that happened. It would just show that all hope is lost!

Edit: Oh and if there are any red, blue, yellow and green lights we have to step on in there, I'm going to cry man-tears!

[PhoenixOfAges]

Balancing Efforts

Some criticism (understatement) has been made concerning the "band-aid" style fixes to some professions. Keep in mind some of these changes ARE temporary while we work out the larger issues of retooling all specials and healing. A temporary fix means that the most affected professions can perform adequately while we make more significant changes without having to wait until we are done to be effective. Slapping an AS weapon on everyone is not the current team's idea of balance...big changes are necessary. We know and we are working on it.

Good to know. I knew and everyone else should have as well that all the adjustments weren't being done in one patch since we were specifically told that. So those going nuts since prof ___ or prof type ____ got sooooo much and they got nothing were certainly premature. Although saying that there would be adjustments, temp adjustments and readjustments as you moved along I think was not mentioned and would have helped some to know that sooner at least.

It's also good to hear that AS and other specials themselves will be adjusted some along the way. Such changes and those to healing are bound to result in more screaming and complaining than anything else so good luck and make sure that flame retardent teletubby suit is ready.

[Odov]

Sweet

[PhoenixOfAges]

Means:

I know this is a difficult question to answer, but do you have any ballpark ETA for the graphics engine update? Originally we were supposed to have it by now. **** happens, it's all good, but are we looking at another block of time equal to what we have already spent waiting until we are only caught up with the new engine? Or is development with the new Dreamworld engine happening at a faster rate than Ogre?

Thanks

P.S. I don't care how long it takes, the day it launches any inactive accounts I may or may not have will at least log on to check it out.

Try reading the prior FWM.

[Aethyrguard]

They could always add more yes/no display options like we have for shoulders and helmets now. Could use one for back slot while we're at it too as many have said.

AoC lets you disable head & back items.. I would be surprised if you couldn't when AO gets it actually.

[Berinda]

Will the change to the AoC engine allow customizable faces or are new heads still the plan for character models?

[Keldros]

Make using the nutrition bar on the door spawn a boosted Ian Warr (bouncer for apartment complex ofc) and wtfpwn whoever tries to access it illegitimately :O

Apartment boss <3!


(and really looking forward to improved capes in the new engine )

[vadagget]

Comments/observations on apts/Charon

1) plz add skylight over bed so we can watch the planet roll by

2) Charon has huge reflect but breaks on attack...which way is this going?

3) bed over the kitchen!!

4) wtb visuals of random orbital strikes as seen from space

[Cdogg421]

while it is nice that profs are getting balanced and such, when do you plan on balancing tl 5 and other title pvp. 220 is not the only pvp in game and it is getting old seeing ppl matching base evades of acro profs, and some times even more.

[Quilluck]

Psst, Means...

The Funcom tribute bookcase is a bit screwed up :>

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/15/scrn0150.jpg

[Metafly7]

lol mirror books ftw

[PhoenixOfAges]

Will the change to the AoC engine allow customizable faces or are new heads still the plan for character models?

AoC lets you disable head & back items.. I would be surprised if you couldn't when AO gets it actually.

A graphics engine is just a graphics engine. What they do with it is something else entirely. Those things have more to do with what they programed AoC to do with the graphics engine than the graphics engine itself.

I think some are creating all sorts of false expectations of what this graphics engine change will mean. The main thing is that the new graphics engine will make use of more features of current graphics cards such as for lighting and make more use of the GPU rather than largely the CPU as the current one does. While it could allow them to more easily add functions and options such as those mentioned they'd have to change the AO client to make use of those things. They don't come automatically with the graphics engine itself.

They have said they're adding or adjusting some things at the same time like new face textures and showing more things on chars but they have to program the game to add that. It's not just add a new graphics engine and bouncing boobs, fully customizable faces, fluttering capes, showing or not showing things and so on will be added just like that.

while it is nice that profs are getting balanced and such, when do you plan on balancing tl 5 and other title pvp. 220 is not the only pvp in game and it is getting old seeing ppl matching base evades of acro profs, and some times even more.

This would likely come more from the adjustments we're seeing to perks plus how they plan to adjust weapon specials (such as AS), healing, damage caps and so forth. Currently though due to some of the grossly overpowered or where the heck did that come from stuff in the higher lvl range due to some of the things we got mostly in the Sil period the higher range seems more buggered up than the lower ranges.

Also these balances and adjustments they've mentioned are not solely PvP balances but game balances. They have said they're adjusting things not just in relation to us but mobs and what not as well.

[Aethyrguard]

A graphics engine is just a graphics engine. What they do with it is something else entirely. Those things have more to do with what they programed AoC to do with the graphics engine than the graphics engine itself.

Actually, it isn't "just a graphics engine" that is a bit of a misconception. It is a "game engine". The graphics being an integral part of it. The code allowing for such features to exist has already been written for the Dreamworld engine. It is not quite like you are thinking here. Perhaps you are going off assumptions of what a game engine means?

Code is text, if the procedural calls and functions exist they can be implemented rather easily depending on what part we are discussing.

For example, new faces and bouncing boobs have little to do with the game engine itself beyond the fact that it is possible once written to be supported with sliderbars for the faces and how detailed an animation (eg, the number frames and amount of points able to be manipulated in a given frame). The rest still falls in to the graphics teams (modeling/animating departments) hands predominantly. However, the ability to show/hide a part of a 3D object is strictly code based. In short, really most of the work is already done for them regarding showing/hiding back items, they need only call the functions that already exist within the game engine then edit the options menu to enable the feature for AO. So what I stated was not in anyway misleading or offbase. I would actually be quite surprised if the feature was not there soon after the new engines release.

[Lektronik]

This also means that the current version on test will contain the updated version of the "Sunrise Luxury Residence" apartments.

Those have to be the best apartments I've ever seen. I wish I'd have that in an RK4 apartment. There's even "extras" that make it a nice place to hang out at for more than just looks.

Question: Will OOC/Shopping Channel reach these apartments?

- Addition and code support of new attractors for character models. (For boots, belts, thighs, calves (calfs?) upper arms and lower arms that will have additional real mesh items to display...ie: A belt component platform you can SEE on your character.)

Nice!

This Thursday there were only 6 spam messages total accross all Dimensions. The automated systems have not even been turned on yet. It feels good to make progress.

This may be the case for Thursday, but last weekend, I created a new toon just to goof off with and was bombarded (literally) by that noob spammer that thinks 100 messages per second is going to win him some customers. The problem wasn't his mere existance but instead that he was there all day with no one stopping him. I tried petitioning but the petition system died. It was all very borked that day.

Granted, this was a holiday weekend so I didn't get so angry. Also, I'm not going to press the matter anymore - at least for the very most part - in-light of the new chat filter option coming soon (among other things). It goes a looong way in my book when you provide a means for me to prevent chat harassment myself.

Client side chat filter lesson from Macrosun for the upcoming client-side chat filter (currently on the Test Dimension):

This is working just as I had hoped for with one exception (which was pointed out earlier in this thread). Could there be some kind of option to toggle whether or not "park" would be filtered out when you have "ark" as a keyword? (as an example only)

If I wanted to filter out a word, it shouldn't filter out other words that have the same combination of letters as a filter keyword.

The only reason I ask for an option would be because there may be instances where you would want "park" to be filtered out even though "ark" is a keyword. For the most part, this is not so though.

Maybe add a text command that you could add to the "filter add" string to toggle the option?

Thanks.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see this filter in place, even if it stays as-is. (And it puts a huge smile on my face every time I see this filter provided from FC despite the trolls swearing up and down that the client-side chat filter idea was either impossible or not cost effective.)

Work also continued on the level 150ish Shadowlands team instance to be released as part of the 18.X series.

I'm very much looking forward to this!

Some criticism (understatement) has been made concerning the "band-aid" style fixes to some professions. Keep in mind some of these changes ARE temporary while we work out the larger issues of retooling all specials and healing. A temporary fix means that the most affected professions can perform adequately while we make more significant changes without having to wait until we are done to be effective. Slapping an AS weapon on everyone is not the current team's idea of balance...big changes are necessary. We know and we are working on it.

Boy am I glad to see this statement. I was beginning to think that you weren't understanding what Aimed Shot Online is all about.



Thanks Means/Macrosun.

[Maxisolja]

wtb all information I can get about the 150ish SL instance

[Berinda]

A graphics engine is just a graphics engine. What they do with it is something else entirely. Those things have more to do with what they programed AoC to do with the graphics engine than the graphics engine itself.

Since all the graphic capabilities they are coding are what was coded into AoC, my question stands: Are they making new heads for use with the old character creation system, or are they implementing a new character creation system similar to AoC's?

I wasn't expecting anything one way or the other - I was simply asking.

[PhoenixOfAges]

Actually, it isn't "just a graphics engine" that is a bit of a misconception.

As I said earlier "while it could allow them to more easily add functions and options such as those mentioned they'd have to change the AO client to make use of those things." They still have to get the client to tell the graphics engine to do this, do that, do the other. The video we saw a long ways back as far as we were told while looked great was just due to the improved display of things in the game by the Ogre graphics engine such as lighting and shadows.

Lighting, shadowing and so forth are one thing, features like custom faces, showing textures or not, moving capes, etc, etc, etc are another. With the faces they still have to impliment a function that allows the user to adjust certain values to mainpulate the face in many ways, add tatoos, change colours, alter shading, alter the mesh the custom face is layered over and so on. Now it's pick a texture and move on, that's a big difference. While the engine handles the display of it either way they still have to add the control options to adjust those things and change the info storage from show texture A on model 1 to something completely different.

The same goes for other things like moving boobs, moving cabage, showing or not showing textures of items on the char, flowing hair, waving capes and so on. While it could contain things that could make adding such things easier as I said earlier in this and the last post they still have to change things, it's not just a matter of checking the jiggly boob option.

Then with showing worn items we already have a control option to show or not show some textures of items on our chars. They already can do that sort of thing so it does not take a new graphics engine to do it. New engine or the current one with that sort of thing it's really more of a matter of do they provide us that option or don't they.

Since all the graphic capabilities they are coding are what was coded into AoC, my question stands: Are they making new heads for use with the old character creation system, or are they implementing a new character creation system similar to AoC's?

I wasn't expecting anything one way or the other - I was simply asking.

See above and the prior post plus one thing to remember is the poly count in AO is much lower than in AoC. There things show up with far more detail than here so there those little custom adjustments would be more visible than in AO. So I can't really see them using anything other than fixed textures. At best maybe add things to allow us to layer tatoos or change the colour of something on the face but not nearly as many things as in AoC. At least not without redoing everything graphics wise so everything has a higher poly count and can you really see that happenning?

[Zeephonz]

See above and the prior post plus one thing to remember is the poly count in AO is much lower than in AoC. There things show up with far more detail than here so there those little custom adjustments would be more visible than in AO. So I can't really see them using anything other than fixed textures. At best maybe add things to allow us to layer tatoos or change the colour of something on the face but not nearly as many things as in AoC. At least not without redoing everything graphics wise so everything has a higher poly count and can you really see that happenning?

Well, we've already seen updated face meshes from Means for toons in Ogre, which will probably carry over to AoC engine, and they are enhanced a lot. While we may not get the mechanics of body/face manipulation, there will probably be a vast array of stuff that indeed gets the poly count increase.