So, the latest engineering report has Improving Hair and Cloth tech on the Long Term section. I was wondering if any devs could let us know just what kind of improvements the team is considering. Are we talking something as radical as the
Hair and Cloth tech that CCP demonstrated at GDC 2010 using Nvidia Apex? Because I'd love free flowing hair and clothes in STO (the game already has free flowing cloth tech on the one Orion costume).
Comments
First , why the delay?
Second, what does it actually do: add a texture channel, provide hair physics, etc?
It really would be nice to know.
Yeah if they can make it like that it would be really awesome!
I would find a way to buy a lifetime if it looked like that
Whatever they have planned it wont be as aesthetically pleasing as the apex tech. AFAIK the tech is used for their carbon engine which obviously Cryptic can't use. However if they intend for clothes and hair to move as they would in real life (whatever that is) this would be a welcome change. I really dont know what my main uses to keep his ponytail so rigid all the time
Edit: did a quick bit of digging I was wrong apex tech is not exclusive to CCP though apex has nothing to do with graphics just physics of a kind so even if it were used in STO, graphics would remain the same.
Well, they've already demonstrated moving clothes in the game with the Orion slave girl outfit. So, it should be possible for them to do the same with hair, even if it isn't as advanced as Apex.
110% agree. Only reason I can think of that we havent heard anything is cause they have so much on their plate withh ground re-vamp and exploration AND duty officer AND foundry AND upcoming weeklies that the tech is on the backburner as its just fluff albeit very very nice fluff
Yeah, that's most likely why. i can't wait until later this year when they add it. It will be epic.
How about (this may sound weird but go with me) if they could apply something similar to ships? I.e. when you get hit by something rather powerful like a tri torp or something similar that you see ripples over your hull matrix style I guess and bits of debris fly off as well?
I agree. Better battle damage tech would be nice.
Cryptic; make it so (always wanted to say that)
lol, I've said that several times while asking the devs for various things
There's no math in the STO engine to support that level of realism. In fact, this is something we don't see in games in general and I'm going to assume thats because the tech involved is expensive to develop and to run on the client machines. Maybe for STO2 ?
They could make debris bits fly off at the very least. They have similar things in game already with the asteroids that break apart.
I'm sure they could add it, similar things are already in the game on the ground after all its just particles really, thing is again they have so much to do and DStahl's whip is probably getting pretty worn down by now with all the updates and things we've been getting. Lets just hope a dev has seen this and passed it on so its at least on their radar for the future.
Yeah, we can hope. Little things like improved tech really add up when it comes to making a better gaming experience.
Thats a different kind of tech. To have your ship break apart like that they'd need to create art for the various levels of damage and then add additional animation for the pieces flying off. Those pieces would then disappear when the animation was finished. This would need to be done for all the player ships in the game and would ultimately look a bit goofy since the animations would necessarily match up with what was happening.
For instance, you took a front phaser hit to the nose of your ship dropping you below a percentage that showed your engine flying off.
I'd love to see a system that detects where torpedoes hit and places a sort of damage decal in that spot as well as tiny pieces of metal flying off at the damage site (that aren't actually a part of the ship, they just appear to be). These spots would slowly repair themselves through the crew mechanic. It shouldn't be that hard to develop tech for, damage decals have been in games for years.
I really don't want much of a cosmetic overhaul. Nothing like they are doing with EVE. The game looks fine, the ships look great, the character models totally gel and look good in the environments. I feel like diverting as much to polising gameplay is all I expect at this stage.
But then again, all those modelers and texture artists have to do something with their time, so if they want to really overhaul the character cosmetic options more power to em.
I'd love that kind of tech too but thats not damage decals. You'd actually have to track and count the math for every shot fired through space and thats not at all trivial. Most full blown FPS games don't offer that kind of detail, and for good reason: its pretty expensive on the client and the server.
A "would be nice", for sure, but I'd rather they focus on the ground combat ravamp.
Halo has for a long time. It places bullet damage decals on walls if you shoot them. That's kind of what I want STO to do with torpedo hits.
The hair tech seems to be on the schedule for after the ground combat revamp. No need to worry.
Let me back track here. FPS games keep track of projectiles. They have to. What they generally don't offer are realistic physics on static game objects: an RPG on a side wall, for instance. In your halo example, you'll notice on close inspection that the animations for the bullet holes are all the same. An image placed where the object is calculated on hit.
Why wouldn't that work in STO? STO doesn't calculate projectiles in the same way an FPS does. I'm assuming its a bit like wow, where damage is calculated on the target on spell use and applied when the spell projectile has hit the target. A quick example is to run by the gargoyles outside of Icecrown citadel in WoW, aggro, and fly away. The projectiles follow you forever, no matter where you go fly off too and the damage is applied when the projectile hits. Alternately, go out of line of sight a photon torpedo after its been fired. Rather, try to at least.
Damage decals can always be made, but it wouldn't match up with the spell animations all the time.
STO's damage animations could be better though >.<
That has been on the engineering report for a while now.
If it was just options, it would be "Hair options" rather than "Hair tech".
Yeah, it would take some work to make it that good, and making it that good would raise the minimum graphics card requirements I believe. It doesn't need to be quite that advanced. Really just an improvement of the current free flowing cloth tech from the Orion slave costume and free flowing hair.