Car Play Balancing

[Lammashta 12]

If I'm not mistaken, isn't the player mesh parented to that of the vehicle as long as you're sitting inside it and therefore unable to take damage?  If that's the case, they'd have to rework how player and vehicle meshes interact with each other, and while I know very little about game development, I imagine it's not easy to do.

[Stunny 42]

"car play balancing"

 

what.. you mean like.. introducing a new wep.. maybe some kind of a bazooka or rocket launcher? or how about some kind of device.. some device that beeps and explodes, or some kind of.. i dunno.. maybe a grenade of some kind? hmm

 

why do you want to change and ruin the game? "if you don't play the way I want you to play then I'm gonna demand the game changes to cater for me!"

Edited December 26, 2018 by Stunny

[dShade 3]

I mean LO could just buff other vehicles like cisco instead, no?

[Fortune Runner 796]

5 hours ago, Lammashta said:

If I'm not mistaken, isn't the player mesh parented to that of the vehicle as long as you're sitting inside it and therefore unable to take damage?  If that's the case, they'd have to rework how player and vehicle meshes interact with each other, and while I know very little about game development, I imagine it's not easy to do.

I see somebody was thinking  about this. *clap clap* good job.

The old chaos we had when cars could be completely shot through was because of a few reasons and that was one of them that was mentioned back in the day.

It wasn't too clear on all the reasons but this was one of them given.

 

The windows are not separate but a part of the whole sprite.

APB is not real it is computer graphics and thus each sprite has to be tended to to allow shots through the windows. as well as unknown coding for any bugs that arise current ones patched or new ones.

 

"BUT THERE'S ONLY SO MANY CARS AND ONLY SO FEW SPRITES BECAUSE OF IT"

........

Wrong.

Each car has multiple sprites built into that one car to simulate damage.

That is a lot of work for just one car to be shot through.

As Lammashta caught on to it is a  problem , and from my personal experience one that caused the cars to be shot through.

Lammashta for someone who is not into game development I am impressed that you noticed this.

 

And even after it is coded properly ,  the 4.0 upgrade is a whole new library and may or may not need complete rework all over again.

That part I don't remember what MattScott said or if the statement needs to be revised since then changed since then.

It would take a reply or long briefing from Little Orbit to answer that part properly.

But either way saying it would be better to wait to do major changes like this is not a bad thing.

Especially with how Little Orbit gave no hint to even starting on studying cars being completely changed like is being discussed.

 

It is not a minor thing you guys are discussing and me preferring  for Little Orbit to have proper grasp on this task is not bad.

Rush in and get destroyed or strategize and conquer. I'd choose the  latter.

 

If cars can be shot through a new mod like  a slight heal buff while the car is in motion might be a good addition.

It is not being suggested for one to be able to do doughnuts near an objective and it count.

Just a idea to suggest to see if it could work or not.

 

 

 

A few things to remind people as well.

 

Computers only know what you tell them to know.

They can not think for themselves and if they did there's plenty of movies showing why those soulless automaton would kill us off.

Cheeky bastards.

 

3.5 is not a fix me all. It will not magically solve all your problems.

Because of that there will be things that have to wait for 4.0 and beyond.

 

The radar tower bug needs to be addressed which is  closest to balancing from the bug unbalancing , but cars being shot through falls more under realism.

 

Coding is not easy.

One single period can change the coding completely to make it do something completely different so proper time would be needed and thus if Little Orbit does not know the car coding in detail yet it may be best to wait or risk breaking the game far worse than just a few things changed on guns to try adjusting gameplay.

 

 

And one final thought , though just my opinion and not intended to be rude. If it does come off as rude and insulting by all means I sincerely apologize.

 

You guys are appearing to act as  entitled and toxic from someone not agreeing with you and it may be bad for the forums.

It is coming off as a give me it now attitude and that is not healthy.

if that is true please stop.

And regardless of that  - as an unbiased solution I would recommend everyone taking a breather and stepping back to ponder over what I  just posted.

 

[Thaumaturge 83]

nerf sp3

 

 

see how it is, go from there.

 

really is no need to make such drastic changes to start with and tweak back, ruins the gameplay for everyone when it stays like that for months if its too much. shredder balance was perfect example of this

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by Thaumaturge

[Fortune Runner 796]

14 hours ago, Haganu said:

It's risible from Fortune Runner to call it Engine Limitations in one way or another.

since when did i say the engine upgrades can not handle fixing things?

I said our current engine can not.

If you're going to be rude about something I said in the past at least get it right *facepalm*

[ZoriaDunne 327]

Those kind of changes would change the core of "what the game is right now" a lot, making old players dislike it, but it would maybe attract new players.
Like having headshoots.
Any big change you suggest that would change what APB is, is going to get hate, even if the game only has 600 players thanks to how bad it is in terms of gameplay/optimization.

[Cheeseburger! 47]

Thankfully, this isn't GTA. 

[Gateron 267]

Or revert car health like they used to be. People started car gameplaying after health buff of cars and Nerf of anti vehicle weapons. Here is your fix revert the buffs/nerfs back to normal.

[Xegethra 22]

23 hours ago, Haganu said:

Devs with proper knowledge of Unreal 3 should be able to implement breaking glass and shoot-through windows into a game without much problem. It's not even a might be. 

 

Pretty much, the engine is fine..not perfect nothing is but it's fine and there have been decent games made on it, much higher quality than APB. All you have to do is lookup a list of Unreal 3 games. It's like having someone wanting to draw, and they have perfectly good pen and paper but if they can't make an image in the fashion they want to you can't blame the pen and paper. All engines have their problems and limitation of course, there will be things in every engine that block you off certain ideas (while I don't make many games, I do a bit of Doom modding, and can't quite even make cars for my map...There's a way, I've seen it just have to learn. The rideable trains were hellish enough)...technology loves to be a pain sometimes but Unreal 3 is capable of much better and greater than APB....The devs weren't. Of course easier to use and more expansive engines is always a plus!

As for those who would complain that APB isn't APB anymore....I tend to brush them off. I want APB to be different, I want it to be closer to what it originally wanted to be. Any new iteration can keep the core element but just give us something new.

[Haganu 104]

9 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

since when did i say the engine upgrades can not handle fixing things?

I said our current engine can not.

If you're going to be rude about something I said in the past at least get it right *facepalm*

cough cough

On 12/23/2018 at 6:48 PM, Fortune Runner said:

When the engine upgrade is upgraded to the final upgrade the changing car programming would be safely possible without  making a chaotic mess of bugs so i would rather wait

Though, nobody can even tell what you even mean with "final upgrade," but since LO told us they intend to upgrade to Unreal 4 a long while after Unreal 3.5 is pushed to live it's safe to assume for everyone that you meant Unreal 4 with what you said. If everyone is somehow wrong, maybe try to be more explicit in what you're trying to say. Poor communication leads to misinformation. In that sense I can see why Cookie told you to stop spreading misinformation.

 

That aside, it's not a technical issue. With enough testing and QA, changing hitboxes to allow player vulnerability after car glass has been shattered should not be impossible, especially not in Unreal 3.5. Hell, it's already possible in the engine APB currently runs on, considering Reloaded Productions changed crouching hitboxes a good while ago. It requires a lot of work, and will most likely cause a lot of bugs and break things. It wouldn't be a clever decision, but it's not impossible on technical aspect.

How it shifts the balance though is going to be a problem, on top of the fact that APB veterans are about as conservative as half the republicans in the American Senate.

It's like TheKeanuReeves said, it will generate a lot of negative backlash because "it wouldn't be our potato we all love/hate APB anymore." It would also require immense rebalancing, due to with the current speed cars are limited to.

 

Edited December 27, 2018 by Haganu

[Fortune Runner 796]

9 hours ago, Haganu said:

~snip~

You really didn't read what I posted all these months or you would of never tried to twist words to justify yourself.

I've said the same thing for months now.

How 3.5 is not a fix me all but can help fix bugs.

How bigger tasks would probably take to 4.0+ because of how its not a bug alone but major reworking in itself.

And how Little Orbit would need more knowledge than just tweaking stats since bigger tasks to work on APB for a more real environment would need a lot more knowledge of APB including fixing the spaghetti coding preventing a lot of this.

 

Also the current version of unreal engine is 4.21.....so as of today that would be the final upgrade scenario until a new release is made.

 

It is not a technical issue to rebuild an individual car from the ground up.

The glass as you call it IS NOT a separate sprite. That is not how the original makers of APB encoded it or we would not of had cars that provided no cover in those bugs we had before.

I just covered that.

They would have to rebuild each car image (sprite) from about the ground up for each individual sprite for each individual car.

You are appearing to be thinking "oh we snip this and its done " which is not how programming works Sorry.

 

Oh and to help clear this up somewhat.......if you put a sticker on a wall in your house and say " you can see through here because I say so" it doesn't actually work until you rework the wall mesh to allow it.

Coding is very similar to that.

[Vincci 24]

think of a shaw with aimbot, shoting people inside cars, i think it should stay this way.

[vsb 6171]

18 minutes ago, Vincci said:

think of a shaw with aimbot, shoting people inside cars, i think it should stay this way.

game mechanics should never be balanced around cheaters

[Fortune Runner 796]

26 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

game mechanics should never be balanced around cheaters

 true

[Mozie 54]

WTH how do you even suggest something like this stop listening to bad people on youtube, silly.

[Vincci 24]

7 hours ago, BXNNXD said:

game mechanics should never be balanced around cheaters

 

6 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

 true

i know but its apb its not a normal game, its sad but real.

[Haganu 104]

11 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

You really didn't read what I posted all these months or you would of never tried to twist words to justify yourself.

I've said the same thing for months now.

How 3.5 is not a fix me all but can help fix bugs.

How bigger tasks would probably take to 4.0+ because of how its not a bug alone but major reworking in itself.

And how Little Orbit would need more knowledge than just tweaking stats since bigger tasks to work on APB for a more real environment would need a lot more knowledge of APB including fixing the spaghetti coding preventing a lot of this.

 

Also the current version of unreal engine is 4.21.....so as of today that would be the final upgrade scenario until a new release is made.

 

It is not a technical issue to rebuild an individual car from the ground up.

The glass as you call it IS NOT a separate sprite. That is not how the original makers of APB encoded it or we would not of had cars that provided no cover in those bugs we had before.

I just covered that.

They would have to rebuild each car image (sprite) from about the ground up for each individual sprite for each individual car.

You are appearing to be thinking "oh we snip this and its done " which is not how programming works Sorry.

 

Oh and to help clear this up somewhat.......if you put a sticker on a wall in your house and say " you can see through here because I say so" it doesn't actually work until you rework the wall mesh to allow it.

Coding is very similar to that.

You should've applied for Reloaded Productions. They also kinda looked for any and every excuse - even blatant lies like "it's technically impossible" - to do nothing. Lol.

 

 

With the Upgrade to UE3.5 the base game code is already going to change to the libraries included in UE3, so anything including word combinations like "underlying code made by the original makers of APB" already is a null argument, keeping the same code would literally mean upgrading to UE3.5 is a waste of both their time, our time, our hopes and their resources.

 

Upgrading to UE3.5 is LITERALLY MEANT to clean up the spaghetti code RTW left behind, so either your English is super flawed and there's constant mutual misunderstanding, or you have no idea what you're talking about, or your constantly twisting words. I can't decide which of the three it is, so I'll just go with all of them. The project is LITERALLY INITIATED because adding content and making large changes is difficult due to RTW's spaghetti coding. If the devs still end up struggling to make content and change things in the UE3.5 update, it would mean the devs have wasted about HALF A DECADE AND STILL COUNTING for a few visual upgrades, that didn't even look that great in the videos and console versions.

Changing car hitboxes is indeed not a technical issue, nor an engine limitation. It requires work, as for anything. Hitboxes can be changed in current engine and car models can be edited in a 3d studio. Saying they should not change anything till Unreal 4 and blaming it on workload is literally something Bjorn-Brook Larsson (Techmech) would be adviced to do with APB, if he still had ownership of G1. It's not about sprites, it's not only about programming. It's literally about 3d modeling and programming hitbox availability.

Bugs where cars could be shot through was basically Reloaded Productions half-assing their work, as they did with pretty much anything in APB. That includes, but is not limited to QA and testing.

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by Haganu

[YakuzaStyle 5]

Yes, they should.

The problem with gunfights in this game are the people that you drop their health to less than 10%, getting into their Steel Plated III-modded Pioneers, knowing that they can get invincibility frames a while after they open the vehicle door, and realize even if you empty a full clip into their Pioneer, they just get to wait until their health regenerates at no risk. This is just exploiting the game mechanics, and it allows bad players to survive fights that they normally wouldn't in any other game. I'm talking about 1v1 fights, if it was me and 2 other guys against that guy hiding in his car, it wouldn't be much of a problem.

 

Getting into a car isn't a talent, you just press one button and you're safe. They can also keep switching cars whenever it's smoking this way without any risk of dying unless you use a Volcano or grenade launcher (Concussion Grenades don't count because it's a hit or miss many times, you might not even get a chance to finish cooking the grenade because the guy jumps out of the car, meaning you need to switch weapons fast). In my opinion it shows poor mechanics, because you can't damage someone in a car without an OSMAW, shooting a car only gets you killed since like I said, the car driver can just get out and kill you since they don't risk anything. And no, not everybody can or has the money to get an OSMAW,

 

"Maybe learn to aim better!"

 

Hitting 5 out of 6 shots, and missing the last shot because of invincibility frames because the enemy is getting in the car is "aiming better", and like I said before, this exploit allows bad players to survive and still get kills in this game. Bad players can already win games out of luck in APB: Reloaded, we shouldn't be making it easier for them. There should be no such thing as "safe" in a shooter game, this is especially true if you're in a vehicle. There should always be risks. If you're on the battlefield, I'm going to kill you. That's all.

 

This game's going to need a lot of refining and changes to many the mechanics in order for the game to improve, it can't survive being the same game from Gamersfirst. If the game was so good, it wouldn't have such a low player base as it does now. It's like expecting broken bones to get better without proper treatment. Changes are going to need to be made.

 

You can make some interesting and good, well-thought out mechanics without ruining vehicles, that is if you have the right minds behind the designs.They just need to have proper guidance and some testing. Just my two cents.

[Akito 29]

On 12/23/2018 at 2:07 PM, Mitne said:

It never gonna be added.

OP think UE 3.0 is sponge which can take everything.

LOL, ur inferring that Im limiting the idea to UE 3.0, (which i clarify, I dont)

On 12/23/2018 at 6:37 AM, CookiePuss said:

Oh great, this nonsensical topic again.

 

 

"nonsensical topic"

 

 

*Forums are known to have topics constantly talking about car play and balancing*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"nonsensical topic"

On 12/23/2018 at 11:57 AM, Mitne said:

Nerf tank

Don't have windows

Ironically this is the case for cars like the Nulander. Coincidence? Maybe not.....

On 12/23/2018 at 5:03 PM, BXNNXD said:

up conc hard damage to explode any car with one grenade and bring back the ability to run yourself over with your own vehicle 

I already think the ability to run yourself over with your own vehicle is still a thing Kappa.

 

Merged.

On 12/23/2018 at 7:21 PM, CookiePuss said:

Just go away already.

Spreading misinformation is harmful to the community.

Its ok not to know stuff.

You dont always have to pretend.

the guy is genuinely not informed correctly, and he's looking to be corrected so he can update his knowledge of said topic. He even asked to be corrected so he can know...

 

saying "you're spreading misinformation" and not elaborating on what he said was wrong and correcting it with the right information doesnt help the community nor the person itself who has errors in their data, It just makes the problem grow (yeah addressing it is fine but not doing the due diligence to actually correct the misinformation isnt doing anyone a favor)  

On 12/23/2018 at 10:00 PM, Lyfeld said:

I'd go ahead and say that High Burn Fuel is a worse offender than all of the above, but it "disguises" itself as a quality of life mod pretty well. It takes out the risk of relying too much on one's car for cover, and some cars' huge health pools don't exactly help. 

 

 

 

lol yeah, High burn fuel seems like such a convenient mod. However, the amount of people that use their car as portable shields isnt suprising. The mod itself just helps in that idea since it doesnt hurt the use but helps in keeping a cover for said player without having an unpleasant explosion bombarded in their face. (Just like how people use the remaining exploded car models as a shield)

 

Merged.

On 12/24/2018 at 5:34 AM, MrsHappyPenguin said:

Players shouldn't be able to repair their vehicles on the spot. Remove blowtorch and vehicle play will be balanced again.

Thats totally not a bad idea actually..... never thought of that... hmmmmmmm, I guess its because I dont use Blowtorch, I just drive to repair stations.

 

Merged.

On 12/26/2018 at 10:50 AM, Stunny said:

"car play balancing"

 

what.. you mean like.. introducing a new wep.. maybe some kind of a bazooka or rocket launcher? or how about some kind of device.. some device that beeps and explodes, or some kind of.. i dunno.. maybe a grenade of some kind? hmm

 

why do you want to change and ruin the game? "if you don't play the way I want you to play then I'm gonna demand the game changes to cater for me!"

that makes no f*cking sense. Saying a game doesnt need to change for the better is like saying time doesnt move. In sense everything does change as time goes on for it to adapt to the times. Having the game not change makes it perpetually stuck in a limbo state and in due time it will lose the playerbase it still has due to the game turning STALE.

 

It doesnt have to apply to just mechanics wise either. The game has already changed for the better in several ways after all these updates. Guns were actually worked on and re-balanced as to give players more "fair" experiences and less about what the current METAs of the game. Change is inevitable for games like APB since theyre already so old and when it comes to APB like games where its more grounded in reality compared to something like FORTNITE which has cartoony graphics and overall childish un-aging game design (which really helps in its life span since the art style is very bright and rarely needs any work on if not at all).

 

Change isnt always for the best but most of us can agree that the changes to APB in the recent has been beneficial most of the time and has led to a little bit more than just an acquisition by a new company. The treatment for this game that G1 never did now falls unto LO. As I said not all the updates were good, but collectively its nice to see things move forward instead of the hell we were all experiencing during the rule of G1.

[Fortune Runner 796]

2 hours ago, Haganu said:

You should've applied for Reloaded Productions. They also kinda looked for any and every excuse - even blatant lies like "it's technically impossible" - to do nothing. Lol.

Is this your way of saying that you know nothing about computers and programming?

If you don't know it's ok to say so *shrugs*

there's plenty of us who do know some stuff and can teach you a few things.

good for the community

3 hours ago, Vincci said:

 

i know but its apb its not a normal game, its sad but real.

Thankfully Little Orbit is looking into multiple ways to deal with that.

[Haganu 104]

At this point you're just a troll. Be sure to send Techmech and Tiggs a mail with your self-proclaimed expertise, you'd fit perfectly in Reloaded Production's A-team of people that looked for excuses to do nothing.

[Fortune Runner 796]

Just now, Haganu said:

At this point you're just a troll. Be sure to send Techmech and Tiggs a mail with your self-proclaimed expertise, you'd fit perfectly in Reloaded Production's A-team of people that looked for excuses to do nothing.

Saying to hold of until proper knowledge of APB and the cars is not doing nothing.

Saying to never do it would be doing nothing.

Somewhere there is an old thread of this very topic and I said how I'd want  to be able to shoot through windows for the realism that should of always been in APB

However wanting it done right is by far important to do especially since this was attempted in the past and if failed miserably.

If you actually ever read anything of my posts without being bias you'd know I want whats best for APB but in moderation , rather than rushing in like G1 did , so that it is done correctly.

But lets ignore any valid points that were brought up sure...sigh

[Vincci 24]

6 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

 

Thankfully Little Orbit is looking into multiple ways to deal with that.

i hope so

[CookiePuss 5377]

62% no

At least the forums still know a bad idea when it sees one.