I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so apologies if this has been asked and answered, but this is really bugging me...
[b]English or metric?[/b]
I've been thinking about bases, which in CoX had a 1 ft. grid for object boxes. It would be nice if we could maybe use meters this time around, though, with a 0.1 m or so grid. Or something.
[h2]Metric[/h2]
[list]
[*]Pleonast
[*]JayBezz
[*]cybermitheral
[*]Xnarl
[/list]
[h2]English[/h2]
[list]
[*]Brand X
[/list]
[h2]Either[/h2]
[list]
[*]Gangrel
[*]Lin Chiao Feng
[*]Mendicant
[*]WarBird
[*]Twisted Toon
[*]greenstalker
[/list]
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[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Personally, I am ok with either.
Of course, being in the UK, I tend to use imperial or metric according depending on what it is that is being measured (and in some circumstances, use both... depending on the size of what is being measured.
Same here (my job makes me convert between the two a lot), hence the question.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I'm fine with either, although metric would be easier to work with. Just so long as they're not measuring in furlongs...
I know that in carpentry the standard is imperial, due to it dividing easily and evenly by more numbers, such as 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not sure if this is good reason for game use or not, just thought I'd mention.
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Actually, I've seen carpentry move toward decimalized inches. Engineering has already headed over there. I drive the "everyone should use Metric" crowd nuts by pointing out how many of the advantages of Metric have been back ported to English, and the inch has been defined as exactly 25.4 mm since the 1930s.
Anyway, thinking about it more, I could just work in arbitrary "grids". One feature I'd want would be an adjustable "user" grid on top of the system grid. For example, were this to be grafted onto CoX's base builder, the "system grid" would be the aforementioned 1 ft., while the "user grid" could be any multiple of this. So I could set a user grid of 12 ft. and then place objects exactly 12 ft. apart (minus the size of the object, of course).
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I love criticals! While it's nice to be able to have builds that are solid and steady-state, I also like to have builds that are very random-numbery. And there should be variability on both offense and defense.
So a low-variance attack might do damage like 90-110, with a 5% chance to crit for double damage. A high-variance attack might do 50-125, with a 20% chance to crit. Yet their average damage would be the same.
Many games already have criticals on healing. We could certainly have them on buffs and debuffs in general.
Depending on how defenses work, there should be variability and a chance to crit on them, too.
(Oh this thread is about what? Yeah, I prefer everything in metric.)
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I'd be ok with any increment, metric or english as long as the objects we have to work with are designed to fit exactly in those increments.
I like the idea of a player grid, but i'd also like to be ability to lay down individual "snap-to" lines. At least along the x/y axes.
And if we're talking about base building, I hope there is a better eye for scale of objects than in CoH.
Metric Please.
English system is wack and doesn't do anything to expand the player-base
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I personally have no problem with either... although England (and the rest of the UK) is officially Metric, although we do still use Imperial measurements in some areas. We *really* mix them over there.
The English measurement system refers to the system that was used pre-1824... and after that date, although we used some of the same names for measurements, their actual value was changed.
To be fair, it is probably going to be fairly easy to code in an option that the user can set to flick between the two (or 2, or however many different systems they want to accommodate)
My Brittish friends and American gamers completely understand the metric system.
My French Friends and friends throughout Africa completely do not understand the English system.
Programming wise its a no-brainer to go with the one that uses the 0 correctly. I dont want to know what 24 ft is.. you could just as easily "Call" it 24 Metres
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Whatever system we use it should be consistent. No metric for outside and English for Bases.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
This is probably the most important thing. Consistency.
(although having the option to flick between the two at least, would be nice ;) )
*edit* And this should extend through to other things as well, and not just measurements of distance, but also weights, temperature, land area, etc
I find this discussion interesting, because the game is meant to be based in the US, so I would have thought it would have made sense to use measurements that relate to the country as well... which would mean that it would be more US flavored.
It would be odd for Titan City to be the one place in the USA that had the sense to switch to the metric system. However, as others have pointed out, in most Commonwealth countries it is still quite common for people to use imperial units in daily life, even though the metric system has been introduced a decade or more ago. Given the city's geographic location and that most of the players will likely be from America, it could well be worth it to stay with imperial units to avoid stress.
Like JayBezz wrote, the actual units aren't likely to be all that important. Whether the '30' in 'Range: 30' is meters or feet is largely irrelevant. Even if it is meters, I have little doubt that most Americans will call it feet (or yards, at best) out of habit.
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You could call it that, but you'd be off by about 50 feet (or 16 meters), give or take.
I don't have a problem with either type of measurement, just as long as it's consistent.
Also, I would like for my six foot (1.824 meters) tall character not to bang his head on EVERY awning on EVERY building in the city when he enters or exits. I have seen some low clearance awnings before. But those were few and far between. I'm 6' 3" (not quite 2 meters) and I rarely have to duck to miss them.
Having said that, they weren't all that much of an annoyance.
I vote for Imperial! Though I don't know where anyone gets this idea that metric is becoming popular. I have lots of family in construction, my job requires the use of measurements, and none of us use metric.
That said, whatever the devs use, I really can just adjust to. It's not that hard, and those who do have a problem adjusting either way, I often have to ask myself "Why is it so hard for you? It's not complicated." :p
Yeah but according to President Carter the US was supposed to have been switched over to Metric by 1980. ;)
Perhaps if we pretend that Titan City is set in a "near future" then it might be more acceptable to vaguely assume the US finally went fully Metric. But as others have said I'd ultimately prefer consistancy in the game more than whether it's all strictly labeled Imperial or Metric.
If the game's "length units" are left vague enough it could allow us the option to have things displayed to us in either "meters" or "yards" as a player option even though the game itself sticks to its own internal system that it applies to everyone and everything.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I understand there are plenty of industries in the US (i.e. construction) that still use the Imperial system and they'll probably continue to use it for the foresable future. But you can't really argue the notion of whether or not the Metric system is "becoming popular" in general when a vast majority of the people of the planet have been using it as their sole system of measurement for decades or longer.
One way America is still "exceptional" is that it's easily the largest holdout resisting the switchover. Not going to suggest that's necessarily bad or good, just pointing out that it does leave us in the global minority as far as that goes.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Any system that devalues the Zero or Decimal makes me laugh as it is simply impractical mathematics.
That being said someone touched on something VERY important to me.. Character size (height etc). I want my character (who is 5' 1" or 1.55 metres) to not need to write her height in her Bio because the game scale is insanely incosistent (Granted she wears platform wedges into combat to make her closer to average height). If there is a slider for height or any kind of in-game measurement system, I hope that it be consistent.
This complaint comes from Champions Online, where all of the NPC characters seem HUGE compared to the scale they created on their creator's slider. To create a "average sized" woman she had to start at 7ft tall. It was super annoying not having the in-game representation of my character match her bio.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
CO actually has a tape measure at the Tailors in RenCen to tell you exactly how tall your character is in game. The issue however, is (almost) everything else in game is made for characters who are generally much bigger.
The NPCs are also generally made bigger. So my 5'1 main is towered over by NPCs made to be 7'+ tall :p
I admit, the "popular" comment was more based around USA, where I believe the majority of players will likely originate.
I could be wrong, but haven't all the Superhero MMOs been more popular in America than anywhere else? This isn't to say they don't have non-American players, I'm sure you understand what I'm saying.
But like I said, I'm fine with either. If the game does it in meters instead, I can always convert to figure out the difference if it really bothers me so much.
For what it's worth I wish the last Imperial system holdouts could just bite the bullet and switch to Metric.
As a case in point I'll freely admit it's probably always going to be hard for me to "naturally" think of temperature in terms of Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. I understand the math conversion between the two and have used Celsius in my professional career for decades. But since I grew up using Fahrenheit first I always find myself having to "convert" to Celsius in my head like a person who's using a second language having to spend the extra time switching between the two systems in their head.
For dinosaurs like me the conversion to Metric will always be a bit problematic. But like I joked earlier about the US converting to Metric by 1980 if we had ACTUALLY done that by 1980 there would have already been several generations of kids who would have had no problems using it naturally because they wouldn't have had to deal with the "switchover" the way my generation did.
The longer we wait the harder it'll be once the Chinese finally FORCE us to use Metric. ;)
It's probably relatively hard to get the character models to match up perfectly with the scale of the rest of the game world. Maybe it'd be easier for the game to have character height be represented by generic "unit numbers" that are defined on a scale but don't necessarily match up to either inches or centimeters. That way you can make your character be any height you want without the game attempting to "label" you as any specific real world height that doesn't make any sense like your 7ft CO example.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Another potential solution is to actually use the character creator itself to make the NPC's...
Hell, probably also be handy to list the heights of NPC's as well, so if you make a character who is meant to be taller than Superman, you don't have to make him maximum height.
Could make all the game world items be what they would be naturally, instead of trying to make everything big enough for the big characters.
The short characters would still feel short, the tall characters would feel tall. Huge bricks of characters, well, they'd be in a world where they will have to sit uncomfortably on that "tiny" chair :p
Exactly what I want to avoid. Make the world scale universally. If Anthem is SUPPOSED to be 7 ft tall.. great.. but that is exceptionally tall and should feel that way standing next to her.
Don't do what Champions Online did. Make the measuring stick mean something. I dont mind if the doors are innately larger because you dont know the scale of things.. but when I walk by an NPC I shouldn't feel like a giant nor should I feel like a little person if I am meant to be averaged sized.
DON'T DO What Champions Online Did..
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Agreed! I want the size of the world to be universal. This, to me, means that a chair that a person of average height would sit in normally would leave the abnormally tall person going "*sigh* Why isn't everyone taller?" and the short person going "Gawd! I'm short!"
My main being 5'1 would totally need a step stool or crawl on the counter to reach that top cabinet, she shouldn't however, be head height to a desk :p
Having worked in restaurants, I have actually thought that. every work space in every restaurant that I have worked in is about 4 inches lower than what is comfortable for me to work on. Of course, I'm about 6 to 12 inches taller than most of the people that I have worked with at those restaurants as well.
Tell me about it ...
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Countries using Imperial vs Metric:
http://www.zmescience.com/other/map-of-countries-officially-not-using-the-metric-system/
Let Titan City be the leader to the logical system:
Temperature
Celsius: water freezes at 0 and boils at 100
Fahrenheit: water freezes at 32 and boils at 212
Distance
Kilometers is a base10 number. 1km = 1000m. Logical.
Miles is (I have no idea). 1mile = 1760yd, 5280ft, ...
But then again it doesnt really matter. Giving me the choice as a player running 1km or 1.609miles to a mission door makes no difference to anybody else.
"The exploration badge is 2 meters from the status"
"Meters? Im using yards"
"Take 2-3 steps from the statue and you will find it"
Hey thats an idea. lets use "walking steps". 14526ws to mission door.
And other non-real values.
Chilling Aura.
You generate an aura of extreme cold causing foes affected to become slowed.
Do I need to know if its -25 celsius or whatever in fahrenheit? Nope.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
I go offline for a couple of days and [i]this[/i] is the thread that's full of posts when I get back?! Wait, what? O_o
Don't get me wrong, lots of good posts. This reply's going to be a bit long, though...
Solid-state criticals... random bases... WAT I don't even...
.... All righty then. O_o
[i]* head explodes anyway.[/i]
Yeah, it was lame having so many pieces that couldn't join with pieces right next to them because they were 10 inches wide in their 12 inch bounding box. The ones that weren't even centered in their bounding box were off-putting, too.
That would definitely be awesome to have. They'd be planes instead of lines, though, and you'd need to be able to have two different ones active at once.
Yes, definitely this. CoX was annoying with the ridiculously oversized Tyrant's Throne as seen in Redlynne's pic, down to common thugs having two-foot-long 150 cal. pistols with six-inch-wide grips.
For display units, sure. I was wanting to focus on design units: map and base editing standards, and the underlying units for determining things like maximum ranges on powers. Nobody wants to code both "Metric dimensioned" and "Imperial dimensioned" versions of all the things you can put in a base.
They both use 0 correctly. Not sure what you're getting at. Temperatures? Fahrenheit and Celsius both have arbitrary 0 points. Science uses kelvins (the one temperature unit that isn't degrees-something) and engineering uses whatever is in the spec sheet, including degrees Rankine (absolute Imperial temperature units; °R = °F + 491.67).
/signed
Could be an alternate universe where we really did switch to Metric, or more likely, we just require everything be denoted in both systems, like how Quebec requires everything to be labeled in English and French. So on the highway (in CoT) you'd see signs that say "EXIT 1 MI./1.6 KM".
Yeah, "eat your own dog food" would help keep everything in scale to each other, at least.
Definitely this.
I'd love it if tall characters had to treat normal-sized doors like other players would treat 4 ft tall openings, and had to crouch-walk or duck-walk to get through.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I wonder if that variation in scale is in the game to support a 'heroic look and feel'?
Be Well!
Fireheart
12 inches = 1 ft - Improper use of 0
4 Quarts = 1 gallon - Improper Use of 0
Even Pounds (lbs) don't make sense when broken up in imperial...
if you tell me you're 312 metres away I can tell you exactly how many centimetres you are away immediately. PROPER USE OF ZERO.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
When you use the phrase "improper use of 0" are you really taking about how the Metric system is more decimal-oriented than the Imperial system? I sort of understand what you're trying to say as far as how much relatively easier it is to convert between one Metric unit and another, but your phrase doesn't covey that idea very well.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
/signed
Still, if there was going to be a grid for base design, there would have to be a decision on what that grid standard will be, and for simplicity's sake, metric makes more sense. Although I'd like to see more free-form base-building ... Still miss that feature from SWG
But for character height, travel, speeds, etc. conversion would seem to be a simple feature. And some cities in the U.S. have put both miles and kilometers on road signs, so it would make perfect sense to me if a Modern and "International" city like Titan City featured both publicly.
(Also, as someone who's brother is in construction, he has dual ratchet and wrench sets: one inches and one metric ... although he usually measures stuff in inches down to 16ths 'cause thats what his tape measure is set up for.)
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They're all using the Zero correctly. They just don't fall into easily divisible-by-ten units, like Meters and Liters do.
I am of course totally on the side of the Système international d’unités. Would you please throw that primitive and incoherent junk of system that only you use nowadays?
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Bah, you metric '10-ers' just need to learn to count with something other than your fingers! Feet are base 12, pounds are base 16, bytes are base 2, it all makes perfect sense! *grin*
Be Well!
Fireheart
No, the proto-SI systems that only Americans* use (and which by now are actually defined from the SI, and not for science or engineering) is simply confusing in their utter inconsistency of unit relations. And while several special units** have at least some merit as they fit better for their field of application, such as the Lightyear or the Electronvolt ( note that both are products of fundamental constants and SI-based units), or (somewhat more arguable) the day, the year, the parsec or the nautic mile, and the byte's aberrant progression of suffixes is based on an actual inherent progression (for binary data storage, at least) and an approximation for the normal progression, this cannot be claimed for the proto-SI systems. Indeed, what is the yard but a somewhat shorter meter with an rather impractical definition, so it is not even practical for estimates?
You claim that the entire world but America is too lazy to count, but this certainly is not the case in my case. In your oppinion, all calculations between units, even among those of the same quantity, would have to include completely arbitrary factors - not to think of any international context, where you have to convert between [i]two or even more[/i] completely arbitrary unit systems. Indeed, this is what the world used to be like.However, within twohundred years, the entire world with very few exceptions has realised that is far better to have a single unified system of measurement, and that the one where the only conversion between units, even those of other quantites, is shifting the decimal.
*and two other countries
** leaving aside the metre and the bar, which are nothing but names for convenient decimal factors of the SI-conform unit.
A shorter, less ranting and arguably more relevant reasoning:
Using SI-conform units will be better for localisation, as the SI is international, while the traditional units of the USA are used only in the anglophone world at best.
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We'd love to, but unfortunately Windows is here to stay.
Which is most all of the target market.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
But it is not [i]all[/i] of the target market, such as me.
And even if you end up putting everything into US feet, could you please choose to have the "standard distances" (i.e. a melee attack has a range of 8 feet, a blast of eighties) to be multiples of three, so in the translations, you can divide everything by three and round to get metres (say melee attack - 9 feet=3 metres).
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Can't please everyone. IMHO, it would be best if there were simply a "Display units: English/Metric" switch in the player's options, which would autoset based on country (if possible). (This goes for a lot of other internationalization options, too, like how to display decimals, what to use for thousands separators, display of date and time, etc.)
Multiples of three feet... oh, you mean [i]yards?[/i] :P
Though if you wanted more accuracy, you'd want them to show inches, so you could just divide by 40 to get approximate meters. :P~~~
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
For a change of pace shall we debate using the long scale versus the short scale? Not that I'd expect that to really come up unless something goes pear-shaped with the CoT economy.
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Good point at the end. Some countries use the comma to show decimals, others use the "full stop". And for thousands, its the *other* symbol that is used.
ie 2,333,432.89 = 2.333.432,89
It just depends on the country that you are from.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark]Decimal mark, and thousands seperator Wikipedia[/url]
Xnarl wrote:
And even if you end up putting everything into US feet, could you please choose to have the "standard distances" (i.e. a melee attack has a range of 8 feet, a blast of eighties) to be multiples of three, so in the translations, you can divide everything by three and round to get metres (say melee attack - 9 feet=3 metres).
Multiples of three feet... oh, you mean yards? :P
Though if you wanted more accuracy, you'd want them to show inches, so you could just divide by 40 to get approximate meters. :P~~~[/quote]
That is a far better way to do it, and you can do it in 2 easy steps, if you find that you cannot cope with such large numbers ;)
(divide by 10, divide by 4... makes the maths a LOT easier)
As others have already said, Titan City is supposed to be located in the US. The vast majority of the US still uses feet, yards, miles and not meters, even if they have been trying to get us to metric for over 40 years. Except when I was in manufacturing and had to convert for export, we never used metric. It would be odd for a city in the US to use the metric system on as a general rule, at best distances may be posted as both. To be honest, one way or the other does not matter except for the setting. If i was playing a game that was supposed to be set in Europe I'd expect to see everything in metric, I would find it odd to be traveling down a highway in the US and not see distances posted as miles. Converting us to the metric system has pretty much been given up as a lost cause :P
Simple logical solution:
Have BOTH systems of measurement in place, and give us the option which one displays in game.
As for the grid for placing things in a base, hopefully it can be made less rigid than COH made it, and we can get controls to place items pretty much exactly where we want them. Below is an example of a game that allows this sort of placement.
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Up with metric!
(I am saying this while laughing.. I don't want anyone to think I'm actually internet ranting).
Seriously it's almost as bad as using the length from your fingertip to your elbow as a measurement of length. (Name that biblical measurement?)
I'mma let you finish.. but Metric is the best measurement system of all time.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I believe the answer is Cubit.
What amuses me the most about this topic is not the fact that we have a debate over which is better (metric is clearly a simpler system due to the fact that all its units are base 10) but the fact that our actual perception of distance in a virtual environment is going to be relative to our experience regardless of what the actual measurement system is.
Other than a reference system for base building and character height, all the other distance information (aoe, range, etc) will take care of itself in our minds after a few days of playing, regardless of what the numbers behind the actions are. And all of these numbers can easily be displayed however the player wants with a simple preference toggle for meters/feet. The only place this might cause problems would be in base building, where the grid-size should be a standard of some kind -- maybe a new measurement: SGrid! One SGrid= .913 Feet or .278282 Meters (just to be sure it doesn't match anything)
Also, as I've said before, I'm all for a no-hook base-building system. I don't mind if there's limit to how many items can be put down, but don't decide for me where they should go, or how they should line up with each other. SL is another good place to see how no-hook placement can be easily done, although unless CoT is going to let us size, stretch and/or scale our base stuff, a simple "move, rotate and lock" system would be fine.
Back to Star Wars Galaxies, one of the coolest things they did was make pretty much anything you could get in game something that could be placed in your home. Have an old blaster you loved but don't use anymore? Put in on the mantle. Have a cloak you only use for as a costume for Halloween events? "Hang" it on a coat rack. Obviously, most of us are hoping we don't have a lot of gear we have to deal with, but it might be cool if we could place a "spare" costume on display in our homes, or if we defeat an AV we get his helmet that can be placed, etc.
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I doubt SI is better just because there are no convenient ways to estimate any of its basic units in the field if you don't have an instrument.
As always terms like "best" or "better" tend to be relative.
As I implied earlier I intellectually understand the many reasons why the Metric system is superior to the Imperial. But then again I also grew up in the US using miles, pounds, ounces, and the Fahrenheit scale so for me even to this day I find using those units easier (better?) just because they are what I'm used to from childhood.
Now I imagine if I were to move to say France or Germany that I would eventually get much more used to using Metric and eventually I'd have no problems considering it the "better" system.
Again I made the joke about how the US was "supposed" to have switched to Metric by 1980. I firmly believe if we had actually made a serious effort to switch back then that this whole thread probably wouldn't have happened because there would have no question that this game should/would use Metric.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I would say metric only because it has better finer management (mm, cm and it can even get smaller or bigger etc) but since we are talking about making bases I don't really mind either way.
Last time I was in the field (1980's), I had a roughly one meter long object I was required to carry. Not sure about issued weapons nowadays. ^_^
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In the words of Bill Cosby:
"Right. ... What's a cubit?"
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
It's really more an issue of objects' scale relative to one another. And really, the whole "units are base 10" thing is [i]really[/i] that Metric doesn't define several units for the same fundamental property (e.g. length).
Yep.
... Brilliant. World peace is within reach. >_<#
Seriously, though, another place this can cause problems is in art assets that display distances, such as highway signs.
I'm sorry I missed this, but what do you mean "no hook"? No grid snapping? No "Magic 8 ball must be in the center of its room with clear pathing routes"?
Having somewhere to display Power Armor Unit Mk I to Mk XI would be awesome.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
What is this base-10 nonsense about counting on your fingers?
*holds up one hand, closed in a fist*
One. *extends little finger*
Two. *extends ring finger, folds little finger*
Three. *extends little finger*
Four. *extends middle finger, folds ring and little fingers*
*
*
*
Thirty. *extends ring finger, folds little finger*
Thirty-one. *extends little finger, leaving all fingers and thumb extended*
:)
So which inconvenient multiple of the base SI units do you intend to use, since the base-unit 'meter/gram/second' (MGS) system is routinely dumped for either the MKS ('meter/[b]kilo[/b]gram/second) or CGS ('[b]centi[/b]meter/gram/second') systems, because the base units have inconvenient ratios? All measurement systems have inconvenient stupidities in the choice of base unit built into them.
CGS had a bunch of stupid ratios built into it on top of that. When I'm messing with magnetics, sometimes I run into things written back in the mid-20th Century, when CGS was dominant. So I have to convert gauss and oersteds to teslas and amp/meters: 10,000 G = 1 T, and 1000/4π Oe = 1 A/m. Good luck keeping track of the decimal.
MKS FTW.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yup.
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While all this esoteric talk about which system is better is academically interesting does anyone really think this game would need anything more than:
1) kilometers or miles (for long-range distances)
2) meters or yards/feet (for short-range distances and power effect ranges)
3) centimeters or inches (for maybe displaying character height)
4) KPH or MPH (for speed)
It's not like players are going to be doing any other serious scientific or engineering work while playing. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Wait, what if I want the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight?
Be Well!
Fireheart
Then you're going to have to spend an awful lot of time AFK in order to determine that information ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlongs_per_fortnight#Furlong_per_fortnight]work's already been done[/url]:
edit: lost the superscript in copying the quote ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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According to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system]this wiki page[/url] this is "Strapp's Constant" (after a likely humorously named Jock "Strapp" Marshall) and is equal to 1.8026×10[sup]12[/sup] furlongs/fortnight. Just when you thought you couldn't deal with any more useless trivia...
P.S. Foradain beat me to it by a few minutes. Oh well... still funny. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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There are several reasons for this that have been given to me over this. None of them were to my satisfaction, but I'll share them here:
- Contact NPC's are often made larger than they should be to make it less likely that a player will be crowded out and unable to reach the contact.
- Generally speaking, player feedback has been that they feel more "heroic" facing off against foes larger than they are and more like a bully when in the reverse situation, so opponents are often scaled slightly larger.
- Vehicles, on the other hand, are often smaller than their RL counterparts, in comparison to the character's body.
- Regarding buildings and landscapes, the trend was to make them much smaller in scale than what their measurements in "meters/yards" really indicates. A building may be a hundred yards long based on the game's internal metrics, but MUCH less if measured by taking the actual heght of a character as a measuring stick. This lets them create the illusion of full and robust city blocks that don't take forever to run through (at human speeds). The intent is to provide the sense of scale without the pitfalls of actual scale.
1) Avoid Kiosks.. if kiosks are to exist let them be AoE spaces on a map where you can interact from a reasonable distance.
2) I don't mind facing the Juggernaut sometimes.. but that doesn't make fighting against an Arcade feel any less threatening. I wager that facing off against regular old Human sized Magneto is no less threatening. Not saying that Godzilla isn't a big threat to a city, but a corporate greedy mogul or corrupt police commissioner can cause just as much trouble.
3) Vehicles.. meh. I'm looking forward to a world where humans find a better way to travel. Teleporters over Taxies any day.
4) The scale for buildings look really large.. I like that. But that doesn't mean I need to feel that I am a human living on Krypton.
Give me relative scale based on realism
Crowd Control Enthusiast
This is my favorite example of this sort of phenomenon, and is a screenshot I took during Issue 2(!) that still makes me laugh in retrospect to this day:
[img]http://srv.fotopages.com/images/2/7/9/6/3/3336972.cmp[/img]
[url=http://shw.herodawn.fotopages.com/3336972/This-will-hurt-you-a-lot-more-than-me.html]This will hurt you a lot more than me[/url] ...
Redlynne, in that screencap stands at 5'0" ... meaning the 5th Columnists she's fighting are [i]literally NINE FEET TALL[/i] in comparison to her! And although it doesn't look like it, in this pic I was in the middle of starting to animate a Martial Arts kick attack (can't remember if it was Thunder Kick or Storm Kick now) rather than getting ready to throw a punch in the 'nads.
I told Positron about this particular screencap I had made back in Issue 2 at the last Player Summit (even getting down on one knee to give him an idea of the wonderfully whacktastic scaling involved relative to his body size) and got one of the more wonderful answers ever from a Dev for any game. It turns out, back in the early days of City of Heroes, there was a BUG in the code that would make the 5th Columnists have a randomly generated height, which meant they could be anywhere from 5 to 10 feet tall. They eventually got it sorted out, but it happened because a programmer took a shortcut somewhere (isn't this ALWAYS the way these things happen?) and it took them a good long while to figure out what was causing it, but they eventually did and so you didn't wind up fighting Giant NPCs if they weren't supposed to be Giant Sized.
Needless to say, playing as a "short" scrapper of only 5 ft/152.5 cm in height and being able to "kick the crap" out of 5th Columnists (I was a Natural Origin, which meant my 1-5 missions were mostly against 5th Column and Clockworks in those days) who were literally twice my size (and presumably more than 8x my weight class!). Really gave me the feeling of being the underdog in a scrap.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Ah yes, Shandora, my tiny asian teen character's highest possible kick still just caused sympathy pain among all males in the team. Most of her attacks just kneecapped the Council foes. Several of my claw-based characters had similar problems.
I swear, with all the nutshots and castration-attacks that game had, I'm shocked it managed the "teen" rating :P
Its actually quite the opposite.
IN CO, for instance, one of our SG's picked out a warehouse to make into "our base" and wondered if I could draw up a floorplan. We took positioning data from each corner of the building to get its dimensions and then I drew it up quickly in Frontpage. According to the actual in-game-reported measurements, something that looked like a single-wide garage door would have been wide enough for 3 or 4-cars wide if those metrics were taken at face value.
I never did measurements that solid in COH, but I don't think they went nearly as far with the scaling- many of the buildings had bases smaller than buildings in the real world would and the intval between "stories" was less than they should be (but not as substantial as the width issues). A common trick is to make the "height" at a different scale thant the width-- we often notice problems with the height before the width.
I don't think this was done in COH, but a common illusion that's usd from theme parks through video games (at least games that don't have easy z-axis travel) is to make the upper stories progressively smaller and lean outward slightly. This gives the illusion of a bigger structure. Cinderella's palace in Disneyland even has the stonework get smaller as you go up to contribute with the illusion. That wouldn't be right for THIS game, since easy availability of z-axis perspective changes would make the illusion break
I had a little girl in a cheerleader outfit (Pom poms o'Doom) who was an EM stalker. Her standard assassin strike was a double handed groin punch to most male adversaries.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I'm talking about the the released screenshots/videos for CoT not CO or CoX
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Huh, I always assumed they were meant to be that way. It was always the Raserei Ubermenschen that I noticed towering into the sky. Those start out as champion athletes who are then buffed up with all sorts of super-soldier treatments. I thought perhaps the serums and mutagens added a foot or two to the guys that were already freakishly tall.
Kind of like some of the 9 foot tall Lost, except less mutated-looking.
[b]NARRATOR:[/b] Little did he realize...
Back when Dual Pistols was on public beta, my character got her second attack in the set, where she spins around, lands on one knee with both pistols forward, and fires. In the process, the character moves forward a couple feet.
Which meant that this attack generally involved planting the guns right in a Hellion's crotch. Half the time, burying them in said crotch up to her wrists.
My character quickly switched to latex gloves and got an autoclave for the guns.
Oi vey.
We should have started a support group.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I'll leave [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLMrtJn-MOYmdbPmMYmArKa-LPIQmeicJB]this video[/url] right here. While you enjoy the show I'll be running for my life at many ashatments per second.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I wonder how difficult it would be to animate the fist, or kick, to elevate slightly higher (or lower when fighting rikti monkeys)? :)
Well the main thing I learned from that video is that it seems just about every noun in the English language can also be defined as a certain unit of non-Metric measurement. Makes you realize just how unimaginative and woefully uncomplicated the Metric system really is. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
NVidia APEX looks interesting for moving cloth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrtwESnTOwY
SDK: https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-download-page
Am I naive in thinking that the English/metric thing could be a configurable option in the GUI settings? How hard is it for the computer to convert one number to another like that?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
We're all pretty much assuming the existence of a "Displayed Units: English/Metric" switch at this point, honestly.
The discussion isn't really about UI displayed units as much as it's about which unit system the underlying game should use. This comes up in the base builder when you deal with grid snapping and object boundary boxes.
Bloody trivial. One multiply by a constant, plus a string formatting operation.
Except where graphical assets are concerned, such as highway signs that say things like "EXIT 1 MILE", since these things are pixel-mapped textures rendered from text long before the client gets them. I'd like to see them say "EXIT 1 MILE (1.6 km)" for example.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
More often than not, it'd be a whole new animation. Otherwise you'll likely have really weird graphical oddities.
Most attacks "put your whole body into it" as it were.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I've seen this in some larger cities ... Considering how "modern" Titan City should be, I'm expecting something like that as well.
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Idea.
How about we let you swap at will between the two in the options? A drop down window for "US Standard" and "Metric"..
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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Back in the last century, about three quarters of the way through, there were quite a few signs like that. Since the turn of the millennium, I know of one that says "SPEED LIMIT 40 MPH (64 KM/H)". And it seems that's all that's left around here :(
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Yea, probably right ... Still a good idea.
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Exactly this. City of the future, yada yada yada.
See above:
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"But officer, it said the speed limit was 64 MPH!"
That said, this isn't really needed since just about all dial-type speedometers on cars sold in the US have both MPH and KPH scales.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I was going to critique the way that the video you provided hides many of the issues I've seen with clothing simulations before- the way the dress doesn't even exist in front of the legs is often a technique used to remove the risk of clipping and would suggest that this had very limited application.
Then I took a look at some of the other videos on the dev website and, while you can still see tricks used to maintain the illusion, some of the examples provided in Wushu and bioshock videos show how broadly this technique could be applied.
Much more impressive than I expected.
I actually avoided watching that video, knowing that I had seen it before.
I just re-watched it and then realised that the video was done 3.5 years ago (as tech demo for their Carbon Character Tech. The hair uses PhysX as well) I *believe* that the style of outfit was more as a fashion choice instead of a "tech choice". I could well be wrong, but this was around the time that rumours of WoD online started firing up again (as well as Walking in Stations for EVE Online work being done) as well.
Still amazing nowadays, in my eyes.
And also, once again if i remember correctly, there is a CPU implementation of PhysX that can be utilised for those who don't hae an Nvidia graphics card.