Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: CoilSpring on August 16, 2002, 02:32:09 AM
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Tell me what you think of this...
You know when you return crippled from a great bombing run and miscalculate your descent rate or lose control of yaw(Rudder damage, etc) and you plane bites it hard and skids on its belly? Or how boats react when dropped from 50 ft in the air?(Probably not, its neat) Or even how the GVs will realistically handle landings when the slope of the cliff you're sliding down at 80Mph suddenly increases by 15 degrees and you fly for a few dozen feet?
It's all the exact reason I first tried, and still am with AH. (No joke) There's no doubt Hitech knows their physics. But in my opinion, they're not fully taken advantage of.
Here's my philosophy on the visual side of game-creation. The ideal eye-candy really only needs 3 things:
1. Good texture work
2. Good view-distance/polygon count
3. Good physics/animation
Then there are the lesser, (but not unimportant) visual tricks like gouraud shading(AH uses it) and fancy reflection maps, etc.
AH has 2 1/2 of the three I listed (Textures sort of lack, sorry)
But the phyisics, damn they're good.
But then to ram my PT ashore at 30mph....and die...makes me sad. You can see that just for a millisecond, the boat wants to realistically slide up the shore and beach itself. But it's not meant to be; any contact with land at any speed in a PT kills you.
Or how about when you are in the process of botching up that bomber landing I mentioned above. What happens when you really get off course and your wingtip catches the edge of a hanger? You wing doesn't rip off, you die. AH has the capability to detect specific object-to-player collision points and rip up your plane accordingly. If it were a crappy collision engine, the Whole plane being destroyed would be acceptable....but AH physics are far more advanced than that. So why this? Imagine the times you flew through a hanger for the hell of hit...and have your vertical stab catch on the roof and kill you. There's no arguing that just having your stab rip off, allowing you to continue without it, would be alot more fun, realistic, and rewarding(Instead of instantly going back to tower, you have the challenge of surviving while crippled)
And if your wingtip hits terrain or a stationary object? wouldn't it again, be fun and realistic if your plane's wing/wingtip ripped off and you were sent into a deadly flat spin? If you wonder what I mean by "rewarding", I mean that a whole slew of possibilities and situations would become possible with correct collision modelling, adding to the game.
It doesn't matter if the collisions I mentioned are not survivable; that's not the point. But more attenton could be given to the results of fatal decisions. After all, isn't death a part of living? So why isn't crashing a part of flying in AH? Lamely said, but true.
Implementing these sort of things would mean allowing for some sort of leniency towards collision-related deaths. And maybe instead of an instant teleport to tower, a few seconds of viewing time after death would be an incredible addition. What I mean is let's say you DO hit the runway at -7000 Feet/minute and you kill yourself, why not allow 3 seconds to actually see you plane burning and tumbling in pieces on the runway? Or even spawn a small pop-up that has a "Return to tower" button below a few flight stats. It could appear while you still see your wrecked plane in the background. Too gamey, you say? I won't even start to go into all the things that are far more gamey about AH. (Not referring to next arena, of course) I don't see how it could be a problem.
What I'm suggesting here doesn't tax AH's performance at all, AND it adds realism, imersion, and simply great eye candy, even with the limited graphics engine. And with the CTD bugs completely fixed, I see absolutely no reason to not do this. If anyone disagrees or agrees, write it below. Thanks.
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I think Aces High has a pretty good physics engine. I'd say that it has forgiving points though, and maybe some "gameyness" to it for ceratain aspects, but over all very good.
The best I've seen as far as real word physics in a simulation hands down is x-plane, aside from the real planes that I fly or the multimillion $$ full motion sims ive flown.
:)
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Karaya2
"Here, have some cheese with that whine."
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heaven forbid someone suggest improvements to a game that they like...
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No whine here. Just simple suggestion. I really think that a simple adjustment in how we crash(like the way I mentioned) would make AH that much better. You can't say it's a BAD idea...can you?
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to the hanger example:
its actually alot more fun to see if you can get thru without any damage. certain things left out of the physics engine actually make the game more fun. if it was really realistic you could take out a groupd of hangers at a large base by simply crashing a lanc. with a 14k load of bombs. or how about the top part of the tower flying off and leaving its peices all over the feild when someone accidently smashes into it at 500mph with a full load of fuel. we should also get kill by the shrapenal of the planes that we just shot down if were to close.
there thats my rant for the day
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You completely misunderstood the point.
I never once mentioned changes in damage to Buildings. What YOU said would be hard to implement. That's not what I suggested.
And any collision with an object, hanger or otherwise is still probably going to be fatal, so there's no big change there. I just think that AH has the capability, without taxing or slowing the code, to make crashes more fun and realistic. That's all.
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They make sense to me and I didn't read it as a whine either, of course I read the whole post...
Those are some things I've wondered about in the past too but never posted about.
You presented a well thought and well written suggestion, keep it up :)
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Ditto.
It's a fair observation to AH physics.
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"""we should also get kill by the shrapenal of the planes that we just shot down if were to close."""
you may not get killed , but you will take damage if you run into pieces of a enemy plane that you have shot off .
shot part of the tail off a bomber at D150 , then ran into the pieces, CRASH ...BANG........oh ..oh!
44MAG
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i just think it would be nice to see planes keep flying (falling) even after pilot is killed instead of instant explosion.. i aim for cockpit alot .. would be more fun for me if i didn't know i'd killed pilot for sure.
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I read the whole thing and I agree with you CoilSpring! You make some good points about the gameplay that could be improved. Especially showing an aircraft after the pilots demise. I mean how cool would it be to bail out of your burning wreck of a plane and watch it sail to the earth in a firey blaze!:D
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I'm curious as to how you guys think the "physics model" works in AH.
AKDejaVu
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I'm curious as to how you guys think the "physics model" works in AH.
dont know how it works just saying what I would like! I just pay and play, dont get into the technical side of it.:D
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Nicely presented Coil. Well done. No way this could be considered a whine.
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very nice idea CoilSpring!
In h2h we some times have races, would be more fun seeing some loose control, flip out, crash and slide along the ground, than the instant explosion thing we have now
and vorticon,
RDX, the explosive in bombs of that day, was quite stable
besides, what you just said there can already happen, kamikazi lanc dive bombers
and just who the heck is Karaya2?
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well I think it was a wonderful post. But the jury is still out on wether or not it was a whine. I've seen no sine of Rude in here and we all know he is the final judge on whines :)
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CoilSpring, I agree with most of your thoughts, with exception of having to wait while you see yourself die.
But adding in the things like what happens when a plane crashes into the building at high speeds,is much more involved than you might think.
P.S.
Nice post
HiTech
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I'm also surprised Rude hasn't commented, but there's still time.
Thanks, all of you, for actually reading the whole thing and for the reasonably small number of whine-accusations.
It's kind of humbling to have your very first post commented on by one of the creators themselves. Neat.
Hitech, I've been an amateur programmer for 2 years. Could you explain what you mean by "More involved than you think". Even though I'm not familiar with your particular code, I sort of have an idea how it works, and I honestly can't see anything more than a few adjustments in the way of making the changes I mentioned. I don't mean to sound determined to have my way, I'm just curious by nature. Humour me.
Again, thanks.
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And hpw bout some propwash! Maybe a little dust debris when a fighter is 20 feet off the deck. Right now theres nothing.
RafBader :CO RRR
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here's something for every1 to think about.
If someone whines, and some1 complains about said whine, don't they become whiners themselves?
and raf, WTFH!! is that thing? a pony on steriods?
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Just thought I'd add a little levity to this serious post.:D
RafBader
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good points,intelligently made,welcome to the board Coil :)
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I'd also like to see the plane tumbling down after the pilot bails.
(Watch plane fall in awe.. turn around, spray chute with 30mm :D)