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Hey Positron,
What would be more useful than a huge Trinitron to view the matches inside the arena, would be a terminal where combatants could view a DEMO FILE of their battle AFTER the event. I know that each individual could do this client-side, but it would b really cool to just come out of the arena and have access to a "replay".
Anyone else like this idea?
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That's a good Idea! Replay after the match is done could add for a more effect not only for the normal gamer, but for the Roleplayers as well.
how about just the TEXT FEED of the battle?
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This technically isn't possible with our engine. It would have to be a huge animated texture refreshing at 20+ frames per second.
We did think of it, but the engineers' eyeballs popped out of their sockets when we suggested it.
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That's when you say, "So, it isn't that it's not possible, you just don't know how to do it, huh?"
I love pulling that one on people...
If the action inside the arena was taking place in the same instance (server process) as the zone itself, then this would, in fact, be trivial, no more real work then rendering a few more characters on the street in front of you, with an additional transform on the render view to align with the geometry of the billboard.. After all, the view you see when you play is essentially an animated texture running at 20 frames a second splatted on the view frustrum. The real issue is needing to send data not just from the server process your currently in, but from seperate process where the fight is taking place, as well.
Now what they could do is...
...Have the zones where top-ranked players compete be more like a city zone than an instanced zone so that you can have more than just 8 players in them at one time. When you enter the Arena, you see special doors leading to championship matches, which take you to these special zones. To avoid clogging the client-side renderer, each team that enters gets its own "suite" as described above with a wide screen TV watching a camera "view" into the Arena. That would limit the network and render load to the team, and the players or teams competing. The only additional work is, as I mentioned before, one additional renderview and transform, plus the camera logic, which could simply cycle from one competitors over-the-shoulder cam to another, though slightly more sophisticated cameras (weighted average of team position, etc) wouldn't be too tough to implement.
One could argue that a zone set-aside for nothing but championship team-ups might not see a lot of traffic, but I can't imagine it being any worse than the traffic through Faultline or the Rikti crash site.
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This technically isn't possible with our engine. It would have to be a huge animated texture refreshing at 20+ frames per second.
We did think of it, but the engineers' eyeballs popped out of their sockets when we suggested it.
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I do hope you got some pictures.... That would be very intersting to see.
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Think... Clockwork King.
Here is an alternate suggestion to seeing the fights live in a viewing area or real time over a giant TV in game. have the matches recorded and your friends can check out your battles by accessing the info terminals where they can scroll down a list of completed matches ( they do not list the winner ) and a media player window pops up for you to view a replay of the match.
Well it is just a suggestion. Probably too many memory and storage issues to deal with, but it would seem easier than the whole re-write of the game engine for the TV screen idea.
Screenshots, screenshots, 10 per battle, for current fight viewing. Low storage, automatically erased 10 minutes after as new group enters (this way group exiting can see their fight in screenshots)
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how about just the TEXT FEED of the battle?
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Because there's just too much data from the Matrix, we have to watch the battles with little screens that show everyone as moving green characters.
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how about just the TEXT FEED of the battle?
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Because there's just too much data from the Matrix, we have to watch the battles with little screens that show everyone as moving green characters.
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I meant the text feed from ONE competitor the viewer can choose to see. It would replace the viewer's text with the competitors text.
Posi,
rendering to a texture should not be required.
UNREAL had portals back in '98 that would do exactly what you want, with a minor hit in performance.
The area of the TV screen is actually a PORTAL (hence the term) that allows you to see the arena from some fixed (or mobile) viewpoint.
No render to texture required at all.
It may be that the engine doesn't support view Portals like this, but that is the correct solution for having "a giant TV screen".
i'm not sure if any1 said this yet ( ijust skiped to the end after the first page...)
if they don't put the tv's in the game i'll sew them! lol (joking but i'll be mad)
but they should have civilians selling shirts with real hero's names on them
I think the best solution has been mentioned twice (by my count) already: if tv-type viewing is out, what about a text feed of the highlights: Powers used, damaged taken, etc.
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Or send a DEMO file to those watching, have the client "play it back" in near-real-time, with the ability to save it locally.
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We did think of it, but the engineers' eyeballs popped out of their sockets when we suggested it.
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And were replaced with laser beams.
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[censored]! Do we really have frikkin engineers with frikkin laser beams in their frikkin heads?????
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how about just the TEXT FEED of the battle?
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Because there's just too much data from the Matrix, we have to watch the battles with little screens that show everyone as moving green characters.
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I meant the text feed from ONE competitor the viewer can choose to see. It would replace the viewer's text with the competitors text.
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I gotta learn to put more smileys on my posts. 
I think portals are the way to go for the big-screen effect. They ought to be just as easy to implement as mobile cameras. You put them in a special viewing room that people can enter, and when they do, the portal is viewable, but the spectators are not viewable by each other to eliminate lag in the viewing rooms. If necessary, instance a small viewing lounge sized room for each viewer. Seems simpler than floating cameras, actually. Instanced viewing rooms have the advantage of allowing for private viewing parties to control lag as well - you could invite people into your own "mission" to view the arena, just like the instanced mission parties I used to hear about. Within the instanced viewing room, broadcast chatter and other effects are localized.
I was going to suggest allowing the 50s to buy box seats for like 10 million inf, but I can imagine the uproar if heaven forbid we give the 50s anything. Still, being able to sit in our high perches while betting on the events - what do you suppose the exchange rate is between influence and quatloos?
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alright not tryin to be a deadbeat downer but o well heres waht i think maby they shuld go inside and when they do go to a info booth. they see well for example Final Flash Vs Statesman. u click on that name and u get sent to the map but its just a room with a giant tv in there and therees seats and stuff and if u wanna make bets on who will win put that in there to. personaly i think that tvs will lag the n00b pplz who have Nvida GeForce 2 mx and a 1.1ghz or less comp lol. thats my main idea lol
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If the action inside the arena was taking place in the same instance (server process) as the zone itself, then this would, in fact, be trivial, no more real work then rendering a few more characters on the street in front of you, with an additional transform on the render view to align with the geometry of the billboard.. After all, the view you see when you play is essentially an animated texture running at 20 frames a second splatted on the view frustrum. The real issue is needing to send data not just from the server process your currently in, but from seperate process where the fight is taking place, as well.
Now what they could do is...
...Have the zones where top-ranked players compete be more like a city zone than an instanced zone so that you can have more than just 8 players in them at one time. When you enter the Arena, you see special doors leading to championship matches, which take you to these special zones. To avoid clogging the client-side renderer, each team that enters gets its own "suite" as described above with a wide screen TV watching a camera "view" into the Arena. That would limit the network and render load to the team, and the players or teams competing. The only additional work is, as I mentioned before, one additional renderview and transform, plus the camera logic, which could simply cycle from one competitors over-the-shoulder cam to another, though slightly more sophisticated cameras (weighted average of team position, etc) wouldn't be too tough to implement.
One could argue that a zone set-aside for nothing but championship team-ups might not see a lot of traffic, but I can't imagine it being any worse than the traffic through Faultline or the Rikti crash site.
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I especially liked this idea but i just wanted to suggest this, why not have the arenas as city zones(as said) but instead of going inside a room the fights copuld be outside and surrounded by force fields (like the ones used on tram mishes) and have heroes view it from outside force fields in the air or in the ground real-time.
i m not a computer peson so i dont kno if my idea is completely impossible
The TV idea is much better than cameras. Positron, if this is indeed possible given the new evidence, I'd take this route. You do not want to flood the arenas with cameras. Having invisible TV screens would be much better and the suites idea with individual instances would cut down on lag.
I really like this idea, but it doesn't sound very possible. If they can't show what's really going on inside the arena, then they should just create a whole bunch of clips themselves and run them in an infinite loop on the big TV. But I am in no way suggesting that this should be done if showing the real action is possible.
VR goggles would solve it. You go to the booth, shut off all active powers (a fluff requirement that would reduce lag), and select a fight - your view is replaced with the view of one of the combatants. The only interface required would be buttons for top-down view, next combatant, next fight, and exit VR mode.
I sure have seen alot of "the game engine wouldnt support it" responses to ideas. Just curious Posi, what does this game engine support? (j/k)
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The TV idea is much better than cameras. Positron, if this is indeed possible given the new evidence, I'd take this route. You do not want to flood the arenas with cameras. Having invisible TV screens would be much better and the suites idea with individual instances would cut down on lag.
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What evidence are you talking about? Conjecture from forum patrons that aren't on the development team that have absolutely no idea what the code architecture is like?
Believe me, I'd love to watch arena matches on a giant Trinitron, but if the devs say it's impossible... well, we've just got to believe them.
I still want it though...
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The TV idea is much better than cameras. Positron, if this is indeed possible given the new evidence, I'd take this route. You do not want to flood the arenas with cameras. Having invisible TV screens would be much better and the suites idea with individual instances would cut down on lag.
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What evidence are you talking about? Conjecture from forum patrons that aren't on the development team that have absolutely no idea what the code architecture is like?
Believe me, I'd love to watch arena matches on a giant Trinitron, but if the devs say it's impossible... well, we've just got to believe them.
I still want it though...
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Part of the issue with folks commenting when we aren't aware of the limitations and functionality of the engine is:
We aren't aware of the limitations and functionality of the engine.
I can find detailed info on the features of all ID engines, Epic's various UNREAL incarnations, SOURCE, Serious engine and lots of others. I could tell you that "ENGINE X supports view Portals", or "Engine X supports continuous LoD", etc.
With the CoH engine, all we really know is that it has a particle engine, has some form of LoD and draws pretty nice superheros.
Why I can't go to a page and get a list of "Feature BulletPoints", I have no idea. I don't see Cryptic working hard to gather up licensees for the engine, so any missing features aren't going to cost them a licensing deal.
SO, fess up Cryptic, what exactly, does your engine support. If we had a definitive "WE DON'T HAVE PORTALS", I'd say, "yeah, I guess render to texture is probably the only alternative, and not a good one at that".
Don't be so darn Cryptic.
*sigh*
If the engine supported portals:
1. You would need to load the arena inside texture/object set ever time you entered the city zone that contained an arena.
2. You would still not get a "TV" effect as perspective would still apply without dynamic object flattening (and that would nuke z-buffering) it would be more like a mirror (or hey, a portal)
Without portals you are looking at an animated texture thats fine in high-spec offline engines but with mmorpgs you'd need all the meshs/textures loaded (see #1) and have to locally render the whole scene to texture and _then_ render the rest of the game around you.
Also all of this would break data encapsulation of each zone (sending movement data across zones) requiring re-writes there.
So either way it's not gonig to happen
The most I think we could reasonable ask for is a hologram of the combatants is a stock pose, that shouldn't be too hard (and if they were 50ft holograms that might be quite cool)
The camera thing is simply going to be implimented as a avatar change on your character with combat limitations and special death rules. All much easier and more practical that the current crop of suggestions.
EDIT: On a finer review of the thread.... what Jarnis said.
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This technically isn't possible with our engine. It would have to be a huge animated texture refreshing at 20+ frames per second.
We did think of it, but the engineers' eyeballs popped out of their sockets when we suggested it.
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Hey Positron,
What would be more useful than a huge Trinitron to view the matches inside the arena, would be a terminal where combatants could view a DEMO FILE of their battle AFTER the event. I know that each individual could do this client-side, but it would b really cool to just come out of the arena and have access to a "replay".
Anyone else like this idea?