XWAU Balancing - Feedback needed

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Re: XWAU Balancing - Feedback needed

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capitanguinea
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Post by capitanguinea » Sat Jul 04, 2020 10:22 pm

Maybe it is not felt as priority but... the point values for skirmish mode should be considered because in some case they reflect no more the correct relative strenght... i know tournaments are not so common today but the issue has to be spoken off imho

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Post by BattleDog » Sun Jul 05, 2020 12:42 pm

Something that occurred to me the other night:

We all know the XWAU ISD has a lot more hardpoints than the original TG model, but something that hasn't been talked about as far as I've seen is the size difference. The TG ISD is 2Km long, the XWAU one 1.6Km. That means the XWAU upgrade ISD is 20% smaller, or to put it another way with the same number of hardpoints it's guns are 25% more densely packed.

That means vs other cap ships more guns will come into range of a target sooner whilst vs fighters it means AA fire is going to be considerably thicker.
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theonegalen
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Post by theonegalen » Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:50 am

Wait, was the TG ISD actualy 2km? I didn't think it was!

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Post by Ace Antilles » Tue Aug 18, 2020 8:55 pm

The XWAU have released a new Imperial Star Destroyer II now.
I would be interested in peoples view if it's now more balanced or not.
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Post by Vince T » Tue Aug 18, 2020 9:08 pm

theonegalen wrote:
Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:50 am
Wait, was the TG ISD actualy 2km? I didn't think it was!
It was indeed 2km.

The new version has the same number of hardpoints as the original, might even be 1 or 2 less....
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Post by lew1984 » Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:13 pm

Just my two cents. I love the visual updates, they really are incredible however I have had to uninstall this update as it OPs larger vessels making a lot of missions unbalenced. Freighters completley destroy my ship within seconds making the convoy raid mission a joke lol. Is it worth looking at a visual update only version? Other than bug fixing I'm not sure why this modd would change the capabilities of ships etc. Anyhow on the visual side of things this modd is great... its a shame I can't play it! Cheers

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Post by Ace Antilles » Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:35 pm

lew1984 wrote:
Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:13 pm
Just my two cents. I love the visual updates, they really are incredible however I have had to uninstall this update as it OPs larger vessels making a lot of missions unbalenced. Freighters completley destroy my ship within seconds making the convoy raid mission a joke lol. Is it worth looking at a visual update only version? Other than bug fixing I'm not sure why this modd would change the capabilities of ships etc. Anyhow on the visual side of things this modd is great... its a shame I can't play it! Cheers
That mission has been a pain for a lot of people. If you have gone and downloaded all the "NEW" ships then you should have the Container Transport v2.3 added.
That has been fixed to remove the Hardpoints from the 3 extra Gun Turrets, as it made it very tough in missions.
We are also working on a Mission pack release which will hopefully fix the unbalanced missions.
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Post by eddyfurax » Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:39 am

Hello to all the Community of Xwing Alliance.

It is very nice to read you work for a better balance!

It is sad that the game was very beautifull with all this new effects and models but the original gameplay was lost.
Thank you all for your work an effort specially you Ace for answer too the gamer !

(I hopes Star wars squadron will be a good experience. twoo weeks ; ) I fell i have precommand the game yesterday... :handy: )

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Post by lew1984 » Thu Sep 17, 2020 5:27 pm

Ace Antilles wrote:
Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:35 pm
lew1984 wrote:
Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:13 pm
Just my two cents. I love the visual updates, they really are incredible however I have had to uninstall this update as it OPs larger vessels making a lot of missions unbalenced. Freighters completley destroy my ship within seconds making the convoy raid mission a joke lol. Is it worth looking at a visual update only version? Other than bug fixing I'm not sure why this modd would change the capabilities of ships etc. Anyhow on the visual side of things this modd is great... its a shame I can't play it! Cheers
That mission has been a pain for a lot of people. If you have gone and downloaded all the "NEW" ships then you should have the Container Transport v2.3 added.
That has been fixed to remove the Hardpoints from the 3 extra Gun Turrets, as it made it very tough in missions.
We are also working on a Mission pack release which will hopefully fix the unbalanced missions.
Thanks for responding and all your hard work with the game, I appreciate it!

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Post by sedenion » Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:23 am

Ace Antilles wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 9:12 pm
Ok listen up Pilots, it's time for your briefing.

The XWAU main purpose has always been to improve XWA. Whether that's with visual effects, ships, backdrops etc.
With some releases though it can be a tricky balance between improvement and game breaking.
For example one thing that the XWAU doesn't look into often is mission editing. This is where we need your feedback.

We want to know which missions either don't work with the new XWAU ships or are just too hard now.
For example: In a mission a ship is supposed to dock but it's too big!
I will not comment on specific details (except by giving few examples) but more in general. The XWAU work in term of graphic enhancement is globally very nice, but, I discovered some time ago that indeed, there were to me a big issue : Some of mods enhance the graphical or logical aspect without any consideration for the original gameplay.

The example that will speak to everybody was the X-Wing cockpit, which was modeled in respect and according the "real" (we are in a space opera) of the X-Wing's geometry. But, this "realistic" cockpit created a problem of visibility and targeting in game, because of a very bad field of view. As you know, this was corrected by proposing a "rotated" cockpit that "cheats with the reality". If we look to the XWA original cockpit, we can guess the developers were totally aware of this problem, and this is why they created a cockpit that really cheat with the reality to offer a better game experience (more balanced) to the player.

In general manner, I discovered too many things were unnecessarily modified, in a sort of unilateral "flavouring" without thinking of their potential side effects. As an example : Why chaning the Cockpit Point of View constants by modifying bytes in the original executable (which is a dirty way to do things) while you can simply move the polygons in the 3D data file ?

In brief, I think too many mods were created with good intention to enhance things, but ignoring the original intent of the developers and game designers, and i think things should be done here to better fit the original gameplay and avoiding as most as possible to change the constants values (values hard coded in the executable).

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Post by Will T » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm

sedenion wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:23 am

As an example : Why chaning the Cockpit Point of View constants by modifying bytes in the original executable (which is a dirty way to do things) while you can simply move the polygons in the 3D data file ?
In short, because it's easier.

You have to understand that XWA is an old game, and wasn't built with any sort of mod support in mind. It keeps a lot of data within the exe file.

While you're right that you can change cockpit POV by moving the cockpit geometry around, you still need to edit the exe file for certain other changes.

Things like how a craft uses its weapons, what weapons can be linked together, the slot a craft occupies etc. All these things are stored in the exe. While it's less needed when changing existing craft than installing a new, any XWAU change still requires editing the exe. If you're going in and changing stuff already, why not put all your changes together? Once we have a program that patches the exe anyway, it becomes way easier to use that for changing cockpit POV than manually going in and moving all the meshes. Believe me, if you'd tried moving even one mesh in Optech or OptEditor, you'd see what I mean.


But more to the point, over the years we have been able to do more and more outside the exe. That's essentially what Jeremy's hooks do. A quick central patch to exe to change what is referenced at run time, and now we can store data in ini files outside of the exe.

So there is a preference coming in to keep modifications to the exe simpler, and more consistent among different customised installs.


But you have to understand that this isn't ever going to be like Skyrim where you just drop an appropriately formatted package into a mods folder. Any substantial change to XWA requires a change to the exe somewhere. Either directly, or indirectly through a hook.
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Post by sedenion » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:59 pm

Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
In short, because it's easier.
This sounds very strange to me...
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
You have to understand that XWA is an old game, and wasn't built with any sort of mod support in mind. It keeps a lot of data within the exe file.
I very well understand that, but what I understand too, is that things that are hard coded in the executable file, are what we call "constants", and "constants" are not always, but generally "constants" for some good reasons... This is something which is very susceptible to change the gameplay and induce side effects.
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
Things like how a craft uses its weapons, what weapons can be linked together, the slot a craft occupies etc.
This is precisely changing the original gameplay, and here you cross a line. I don't tell this is bad, but, this is a fact, here, you modify the gameplay : people may want to keep the original game, with its original gameplay, but with good graphics. My personal flavour and deontology is : Do not touch the original gameplay, respect the view of the original developers and game designers...
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
Believe me, if you'd tried moving even one mesh in Optech or OptEditor, you'd see what I mean.
Well, actually I did it... and yes, OptEditor don't make the thing easy... However, a lot of this positionning work can be done directly within your favorite 3D modeling software. It may still some specifical parts (I though about moving part) that must be adjusted withing OptEditor, but once its done, you have nothing else to do.
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
But more to the point, over the years we have been able to do more and more outside the exe. That's essentially what Jeremy's hooks do. A quick central patch to exe to change what is referenced at run time, and now we can store data in ini files outside of the exe.
And that is a better way to do than patching the exe file, but, again, it should be avoided - in my point of view - as most as possible to modify constants.
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
But you have to understand that this isn't ever going to be like Skyrim where you just drop an appropriately formatted package into a mods folder. Any substantial change to XWA requires a change to the exe somewhere. Either directly, or indirectly through a hook.
I think I quite well understood how the whole thing works and I am perfectly aware that the executable must be altered in order to "unlock" some essential things. XWA is an old game, from an epoch where development paradigm was quite different. However, I think the rule should be : Modify the less constants as you can, because constants are, not always, but generally "constants" for a good reason.
Last edited by sedenion on Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Vince T » Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:14 pm

I'd like to point out one main thing here, namely that we, the XWAU team in that case, try avoiding changing a ship's stats and configuration for the exact balancing reasons mentioned. The project was originally founded the premise of creating a visual upgrade without altering the ships' behavior.

The modification of the exe as Will described it, mainly comes into play with custom ships which weren't in the vanilla game - Clone Wars era, Legends, totally custom, there are hundreds of custom models out there, which weren't in the vanilla game.
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Post by korekwerner » Wed Sep 23, 2020 8:43 pm

@Sedenion you are 100% right.
It is also very strange to me. Creating things from scratch where we have everything explained, drawn, shown, described and not benefiting from it is a waste of time. And still someone creates their own vision of the world of Star Wars. I understand mod (alternative vision), but tweaking the game and changing things because I like it that way is weak. On the other hand, changing the game too literally in line with the world in the books without taking into account the balance, It's also strange.
Everything requires balance. We learn from mistakes and keep on making them.
I understand the limitations, but force changes I think are not needed.
However, I am hopeful that XWA will be this game for the next generations of young people, what it was for us, old pilots :-)

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Post by BattleDog » Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:17 am

korekwerner wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 8:43 pm
@Sedenion you are 100% right.
It is also very strange to me. Creating things from scratch where we have everything explained, drawn, shown, described and not benefiting from it is a waste of time. And still someone creates their own vision of the world of Star Wars. I understand mod (alternative vision), but tweaking the game and changing things because I like it that way is weak. On the other hand, changing the game too literally in line with the world in the books without taking into account the balance, It's also strange.
Everything requires balance. We learn from mistakes and keep on making them.
I understand the limitations, but force changes I think are not needed.
However, I am hopeful that XWA will be this game for the next generations of young people, what it was for us, old pilots :-)
In general the XWAU only changes the look of the ships - in some cases this meant re-scaling them. Notable examples of this are the A-Wing (smaller), Planetary fighter (smaller), CORTs (bigger) and ISD (smaller). Over the years some errors have crept in, such as extra turrets on the container transport or having two lasers on the standard CORTs instead of one. These have been recognised and are being corrected.

If you look back to the vanilla game there are extreme errors - like the B-Wing cockpit being cantered on the engine pod instead of the cockpit pod so that the ion cannon actually fire from above you. That's not something you can really avoid fixing when making a more accurate model. Some of the other issues like the CORTs you could make arguments for either way on scale but there too the cockpit in manifestly in the wrong position, between the actual cockpit module and the main body, so that in the Death Star mission if you hug the right-hand wall (as you should) you're constantly crashing into things.
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Post by BattleDog » Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:26 am

sedenion wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:59 pm
Will T wrote:
Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:11 pm
In short, because it's easier.
This sounds very strange to me...
Will's explanation is incomplete and, to be honest, not very accurate. The POV of craft are changed so that, taking the original centre of mass from the original game (in most cases) the player is actually positions so that they sit in the cockpit. I refer you to my previous answer regarding the B-Wing and the CORTs.

XWA opts are usually made like this:

Make high-detail exterior -> Make Cockpit -> make base opt. All three models line up, if the player is then not sat in the cockpit in-game you have two options:

Move the centre of the model or move the POV.
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Post by Forceflow » Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:55 am

BattleDog wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:26 am
Move the centre of the model or move the POV.
And everybody keep in mind that moving the centre of the model can mess up the games targeting system as it will oy shoot at the centre of the model. So it's never as easy as it looks and honestly moving the POV is the least intrusive and least likely to cause issues down the line.
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Post by sedenion » Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:31 am

BattleDog wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:26 am
XWA opts are usually made like this:

Make high-detail exterior -> Make Cockpit -> make base opt. All three models line up, if the player is then not sat in the cockpit in-game you have two options:
This will for a line up between exterior and cockpit models is an unnecessary "correctness". Technically, the external view and cockpit view uses two separated mesh/model used in two separated situations. Therefore it is perfectly valid to "cheat" by sightly positioning elements respectively in the cockpit and external model to fit the hard-coded values.

I can hear there may be exceptions, but in the general case, it is perfectly possible to avoid changing constants. For the B-Wing I understood this was a kind of exception due to its particular folding wing animation, and, to be honest, I has been terrified while trying to understand the underlying logic of the Opt's organization...
BattleDog wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:26 am
Move the centre of the model or move the POV.
I add you have two options to visually change the position of a mesh. The first by changing the object's position relative to "world" origin (scene's center), and by moving object's vertices relative to its local origin. Both can be used together to adapt the model/mesh position to what the software is "waiting for".

Forceflow wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:55 am
And everybody keep in mind that moving the centre of the model can mess up the games targeting system as it will oy shoot at the centre of the model.
This is true only for the external model. for the cockpit model you are free to "cheat" as you want, and the original game clearly does this way.
Forceflow wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:55 am
So it's never as easy as it looks and honestly moving the POV is the least intrusive and least likely to cause issues down the line.
Last year, I created new cockpits for rebel crafts, I spent some time to understand Opt structures and game engine logic... and I am sorry, but there is absolutely no problem creating cockpit model with adjusted position according the POV constants, I can speak in experience since I precisely was horrified when I understood this "POV" was unnecessarily altered in the executable file to fit the 3D model.

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Post by Vince T » Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:16 am

@Sedenion, I wish you wouldn‘t judge and demonify the things we do, just because it doesn‘t comply with your understanding on how things should be done. You may mean it as constructive critique, but right now it‘s coming across rather judgemental.

Also, remember that the project was originally founded with the premise to make everything as movie-accurate as even possible, which also included the PoVs relative to the ship‘s center. That was twenty years ago and by now we have already realized that some of the creative decisions may have looked great on paper but brought along a whole lot of other trouble.
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Post by sedenion » Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:52 am

Vince T wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:16 am
@Sedenion, I wish you wouldn‘t judge and demonify the things we do, just because it doesn‘t comply with your understanding on how things should be done. You may mean it as constructive critique, but right now it‘s coming across rather judgemental.
Sorry for this, and I admit I am quite too assertive. My intention is not to "demonify", but yes, if I had to do some things, I would have do another way that is more rational and optimized to me, according tools and knowledge I have currently in the present. In paralelle I Am perectly aware that there was an hard "retro-enginering" process, and in the past, not all things were as easy as this is now. Available OPT editor were, in the past, very unadapted to proceed some mesh/object adjustments. The underlaying logic were probably not so well understood, because not everybody have the knowlege to understand every subtilites and even more about an engine we can only guess how it was designed. Everybody does things, at one time, as its best according the availables options, knowledge, and "best guess". Be Sure I Am aware of all of that.

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Post by Trevor » Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:59 pm

I would like to point out that if POV was a constant then all cockpits would use the same POV but they don't therefor each cockpit has its own POV - i.e. individual to ship i.e. not constant.

Trev

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Post by Ace Antilles » Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:37 pm

Personally I can manage change a number up or down in an editor to alter a cockpit look or gun power etc.
But if you tell me that I would need to learn how to use a more complex program or 3D editor for something like that I would say no way.
Most visitors have no expertise in that area or time to learn. But opening a prepared ship file and importing it is something most can do.
It doesn't matter if it's not the "right" way, it's what's easiest for the masses.

Yes we've come a long way in the editing world. But a lot of that progress is down to dedicated people like Jeremy.
If he decided to stop with XWA then so would most innovation. What we can do now is a long way from 20 years plus ago when we started editing XvT.
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Post by BattleDog » Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:46 pm

sedenion wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:31 am
This will for a line up between exterior and cockpit models is an unnecessary "correctness". Technically, the external view and cockpit view uses two separated mesh/model used in two separated situations. Therefore it is perfectly valid to "cheat" by sightly positioning elements respectively in the cockpit and external model to fit the hard-coded values.

I can hear there may be exceptions, but in the general case, it is perfectly possible to avoid changing constants. For the B-Wing I understood this was a kind of exception due to its particular folding wing animation, and, to be honest, I has been terrified while trying to understand the underlying logic of the Opt's organization...
In general changing the centre of the model is a no-go for the reasons Forceflow mentioned - it basically breaks the game. We actually used to do this with the B-Wing where the model was re-centred around the cockpit but it caused the enemy AI to miss the ship to to much and friendly AI to crash into things. If the base opt and exterior opt do not line up then you will start to see visual oddities like the X-Wing's lasers not emitting from the canon barrels. For this reason the three opts, base, exterior and cockpit, need to line up. In most cases the changes to the POV have less of an impact than the change of the shape of a model to be movie accurate.
I add you have two options to visually change the position of a mesh. The first by changing the object's position relative to "world" origin (scene's center), and by moving object's vertices relative to its local origin. Both can be used together to adapt the model/mesh position to what the software is "waiting for".

This is true only for the external model. for the cockpit model you are free to "cheat" as you want, and the original game clearly does this way.
Non-viable for the reasons listed above. In order to avoid serious balance issues the X-Wing needs to be approximately where the vanilla X-Wing is, it's guns need to be in the same place relative to the centre of the craft etc. and the cockpit needs to reflect that.
Last year, I created new cockpits for rebel crafts, I spent some time to understand Opt structures and game engine logic... and I am sorry, but there is absolutely no problem creating cockpit model with adjusted position according the POV constants, I can speak in experience since I precisely was horrified when I understood this "POV" was unnecessarily altered in the executable file to fit the 3D model.
Not without "cheating" which means breaking with visual fidelity. The XWAU was founded 20 years ago with the express mission to respect visual fidelity where TG and Luscasarts had not. The adjustments to the POV you are describing are really in most cases very minor with a few exceptions like the B-Wing and CORTS. Much more significant, and long recognised, are the changes to the geometry of the ships which we discovered long ago make XWAU ships incompatible with the vanilla game in multiplayer, causing de-syncing.

What you are suggesting, fiddling with the geometry, would not make the ships more faithful to the original TG models in terms of performance - you're just squashing the cockpit opts so you don't have to edit the exe. You may be horrified that we casually edit the base exe but I assure you - we know what we're doing at this point. Welcome to 1999, modding is really janky and scary.
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Post by BattleDog » Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:56 pm

sedenion wrote:
Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:52 am
Sorry for this, and I admit I am quite too assertive. My intention is not to "demonify", but yes, if I had to do some things, I would have do another way that is more rational and optimized to me, according tools and knowledge I have currently in the present. In paralelle I Am perectly aware that there was an hard "retro-enginering" process, and in the past, not all things were as easy as this is now. Available OPT editor were, in the past, very unadapted to proceed some mesh/object adjustments. The underlaying logic were probably not so well understood, because not everybody have the knowlege to understand every subtilites and even more about an engine we can only guess how it was designed. Everybody does things, at one time, as its best according the availables options, knowledge, and "best guess". Be Sure I Am aware of all of that.
Actually, I'd have to disappoint you here - the basic opt format was carried over from XvT and was quite well understood. From a technical perspective the first XWAU opts were not very different from the current ones. The differences are actually things like high resolution textures and landing gear, things that have been hacked into the engine and are not part of the original game. Really, I think you are making an awful lot out of this. The changes to cockpit POV are not very significant in most cases, we're talking about something like 10-20cm up/down in most cases on ships that are usually around 10 metres long. It's not a big deal.

As regards the X-Wing specifically, the field of view in the cockpit has actually got better over time, but it is no worse than the games that came before XWA. In X-Wing the cockpit takes up about 50% of the available screen as did the original XWAU cockpit. The current version actually takes up less space than that.

The received wisdom regarding "balance" is actually that you turn the cockpit off, anyway.
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Post by sedenion » Thu Sep 24, 2020 2:07 pm

Okay... It's enough for me, there is clearly a communication problem. Things go crazy to me, and it is accentuated by the fact english isn't my natural language. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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