Combat-Helo presents a persistent world, day-time / night-time mission capability where you can stand around your base with your thumb up your rear-end. The game's heartbeat is the day cycle clock from which all missions, AI entity start/stop times, spawn times. All operate as offsets from mission start time. This presents the issue of real-time vs game time.
To offer variety of day/night operations in a real-time game could be tedious. I want to fly a night mission, but it's noon, I can't. If mission clocks are running there's two options, kill the mission and advance time, or interpolate mission outcome as if they proceeded (can you open this can of worms for me please?)
The alternative is to adopt MMO time where game-time has no parity with real-time. 4 hours of real time = a full day-night cycle. In a military game, I don't think so.
So faced with real-time, how do you ensure everyone gets to play some day and night missions within a reasonable time-frame? Time advance, with constraints. No mission clocks can be running. This means everyone will need to be within the base compound with no active missions before a time advance option can be used. I can't think of any other easy way around it.
The time-advance could be applied to your base tent or in the command HQ tent command terminal.
I don't think a real-time system should be used to be honest. It's good to have it work in-game, while you play but other than that, a persistent world does not work well in this kind of game, imo.
ReplyDeleteIt should probably work like this: "hey guys we have a night mission. It starts at 2200 (game time). At what time can you guys be on so we can do it?". Forcing people to be on at given game times will eventually disencourage and frustrate people after some time.
I know it's not breakthrough, and most of the combat sims use it, but it works, it's simple and it keeps everyone happy playing at whatever time they can.
A little misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteYour local clock can be 18:00 and game clock at anything you like but time passes at the same rate.
One second of real time as a second in game time. Not parity with the current time of day, which in a multi-player environment just wouldn't work.
But there needs to be some controlled mechanic to deal with advancing time. In sandbox games this is typically done with the "sleep" or save mode that advances a few hours.
So what you're asking is how to zoom into the time for the next mission? Just jump to it, I guess?
ReplyDeleteWell, putting myself into the players shoes (which I do all the time), "I'm board running these patrols in the day, I want some cool looking night action"
ReplyDeletePlayer_SpaceRat:"Yeah, the graphics are really cool at night. Lets get some kip."
Host runs to tent and advances time to evening (which just happens to be 4 hours). Then go fetch the next available round of missions.
Missions will always be available from the HQ tent but they are considered "unassigned". As unassigned they are inert, meaning they will not spawn anything or interact with the game world until a player chooses them.
The mission clock starts ticking from dust-off.
It's not that different from the 2D snapshot playstyle of Longbow 2 but here time is a more natural progression.
I should add that missions are assigned to aircraft. You pick a flight and what mission it has to fly. The aircraft labels you toggle when on foot will change to show it's assignment status. By boarding an aircraft with an assigned mission, you're then attached to that mission. And weight-off-wheels triggers the mission start timer...or leaving the camp area. Whichever works best in testing.
This system permits players to roll-play a CO who can assign players to missions. Just like players can role-play ground crew and arm others helicopters.
I have no idea if this is going to be entertaining but for the squad I used to fly with it would have been a cool thing to do. I quite like the arming process now but the camera has to point to the ground so it's hard to see the stores appear on the pylons. Might work better in 3rd person.
Getting it all to stay in sync is the hard part. Game clocks are vital to that.
BTW Dave will tell you, talking about this really helps fix it all in my head. So asking questions is good.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this the same it worked in Falcon 4? Ga,e time moves along in realtime speeds, but with the ability to do time acceleration. In multiplayer, the time acceleration factor will be the lowest of all players setting.
ReplyDeleteThe ability to sleep off time is a nicety but not a necessity in my opinion. Missions could run consecutively as they do in EECH without any ill effect on the gameplay. For multiplayer it's not just practical.
ReplyDeleteIn Falcon 4 missions are fragged at certain times and normally you must advance time at a factor of 32 or more in order to get to the start time without waiting hours in real time. If missions in CH are separated by several hours, as in Falcon 4, and all players must be on base in order to 'sleep', the entire process will become an annoyance. On a public server the process will be near impossible as getting players to follow a commander's will is like herding cats. Can you seriously imagine this happening?
Commander: Flight 2 - Stop your mission please, fly back to base, and come get in the tent with me! We need to 'waste some time'!
The normal response will be something along the lines of:
Flight 2: Commander - Nah I'm fine thanks, Cheers for the offer anyway.
Personally I have never played a multiplayer sim or game where someone has said "Lets change to night time, it looks cool". The majority of people just get on with flying/playing regardless of whether it's dark or not.
In my experience the time of day is a non-issue in combat sims.
Cheers
I agree that in game time should be real time.
ReplyDeleteIn the real military world there are some missions which would only be considered at night and others only during the day.
You are no doubt creating a whole bunch of missions. May I suggest that you assign a specific start time to some and leave others up to the player (e.g. Convoy Escort - 0030 , Casevac Support 0900, Insurgent defence - Player, etc). Forcing players to play at certain times adds to the experience.
BTW on another note I was just looking at the youtube in cockpit vid, with you using the trackir. With the heli on ground (horizontal)the Helmet HUD Artificial Horizon seems to indicate bank when you lean your head to one side. Is this intentional?
ReplyDelete@Druid See bottom of my Friday blog post. All HMD elements will be corrected.
ReplyDeleteWell the way you described it would be nice. "Let's just do this one at night" and zoom to the given time.
ReplyDeleteA nice way to do it would be to maybe zoom out the camera to the sky, where you'd see a vast area, darken the image, place a clock running and the sun positioning to the right time. I don't know how the rendering load would be though. It could hog the system but only you can test it now.
Li'l draft: http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z33/Spac3Rat/Combat%20Helo/ch-tw.jpg
Sorry missed that comment in yr blog but figured you wouldnt miss something like that. Just checking ;)
ReplyDeleteI believe you are contructing missions as part of a campaign (if my memory serves me right). Are you intending for players complete missions in a specific order and to fully complete a mission before they move on to the next?
If so I think its important that you set some missions to specific times of day. The visibility element affects the difficulty.
If you intend players to be able to select the time of day they want to play each mission then do you go to the next step and allow them to control the weather also.
I like the idea of forcing me to complete a relatively straight foward mission but against the elements i.e. Dusk with poor weather. It might also force the player to 'get on with it' so to speak before complete darkness makes accomplishing the mission that more difficult.
e.g. I constructed a fairly simple mission in black shark just before dusk with low cloud base and rain, starting high up in a mountain valley. Until you descended out of the valley (when viz improved considerably) the flying element was particularly tricky. Its still my favourite mission.
Will there be a EASY/MED/HARD difficulty for each campaign?
Rendering isn't an issue. Setting the game world time is a simple matter of sending the time of day to the environment class. The issue is keeping any campaign progression in sync. Which MIGHT end up having to use something like that that mock-up (calling campaign updates with an appropriate delta-time factor without any simulation or render updates).
ReplyDeleteI like the fonts used in the mock-up Spac3Rat. What are they?
@Druid
ReplyDeleteMissions will be spun out of what is happening in the campaign (the AI going about its business, infultrating/advancing/probing). The quality of intel is a reflection on your factional standing which in turn is a reflection (in part) of past performance. (The B-side armoured campaign is a bit of an action fest ala LB2)
There will always be some missions available, and you can always construct your own, but I've not worked out how much editing is going to be available in the HQ tent for the first release. It's down on my list as a subset of functions the AI commander uses to generate them. Time is a factor here.
What I don't want is a bland repetition of missions with different waypoints. It's going to be hard to do without having a full range of helicopters from the start.
I've learned that there are things you can do to spice things up, smoke and mirrors. But I don't want to talk about those in public, it would spoil the surprise.
Difficulty factors are not things I'm mad about except as ways the player can choose to task themselves. Traditionally easy/normal/hard modes adjust hitpoints or deployment levels, either way you do it it's a damage sponge factor.
We'll see how it goes.
Did we fly that Black Shark mission with the bad weather together? If so, yes it was very challenging, that experience influenced my creation of the environment class.
Flex, the font is "DIN 1451 Std". I thought it works pretty well. I'm pretty sure it's a payware font, though.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said rendering could be an issue I was talking about how would lower-end machines handle the constant calculations to cast light and shadows on the scenery. I don't know a thing about graphics engine. I'm just wondering.
Flex, you know what I think we did. Follow the river down the valley etc..
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean with regard to the 'dynamic'campain. That certainly follows the real world in Afghanistan. "You have probably read it but if not get "Apache Dawn" , about the british AH1s in Afghanistan.
Speaking of which I hope your Apache is the Brit version old chap! with HIDAS and Rolls Royce engines eh what..
Sorry, it's not the AH Mk1 Apache. That's what I wanted to do originally, the internal cockpit details are taken from a Mk1 as presented by the UK MoD on a public web-site. I don't think they paid their bills as it got removed by their hosting provider :)
ReplyDeleteTo broaden the appeal it seemed natural to adopt the US Apache and keep it US centric, this makes more sense with the B-side campaign.
Also we needed US voice actors and got lucky there. The recordings I have received so far sound pretty good. For an indie production I think we can deliver a lot of value, good people are jumping in to help when they can, it's really nice. I wish we had a moderate budget to pay people.
I have Apache Dawn somehere under the mountain of papers on my desk, along with Macy's Apache and Attack State Red. I'm old enough to remember when the Soviets were in Afghanistan, with 300,000 mechanised infantry they couldn't keep the peace either. My original intention was to write a number crunching simulation to work out disposition and resource levels required to maintain order. That factional simulation work is being used in Combat-Helo's Side-A campaign.
I've no idea if it's going to work as is.
I'm working on NAT punchthrough and this long reply is my way of putting it off. So I better get back to it.
Re-read your post just to make sure I didn't miss anything. I think you're right. Have everyone at the camp (or FARP, as long as they're not on a mission) and then you can do the time warp. Would work great imo. Maybe make it so that the server (the user acting as server) could force other players to return to FARPS or the camp (maybe by calculating the ETA for the last pilot to arrive to the camp, changing the time accordingly and making them "forfeit" the mission). Just so that you don't end up having to wait 30-45 minutes or so for a pilot to return when you just noticed the mission he/she's flying is not important and want everyone to fly a different one ASAP.
ReplyDeleteThe tactics used by the American Apache Sqns differ greatly from the British in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteThis is mainly down to the HIDAS defence suite that the Brits have on the AH1 but missing on the US versions.
The americans typically Roar in strafing or hold off at max hellfire range circling. The brits can get in much closer to the action as the HIDAS will even warn them of a Rpg launch.
I'm sure, HIDAS would be classed as 'gravy' or ver2, but it sure would make the game more playable and fun with it equiped imo. Remember Black Shark with no RWR ! ..kin useless.
Oh almost forgot, the American can't carry a full load in the Summer (make sure your Campaign gives everyone Summer leave), too hot for 1,265KW engines. The brits Rollers produce 1,693KW. A considerable difference.
ReplyDeleteIts rare for the Brits to have better kit but in the Apache they do.
Some interesting info there Druid, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteDoes the HIDAS system work in a similar fashion to Trophy or Arena active protection systems? Is it controlled through the MPD's or a separate cockpit panel?
I have a feeling that if it worked as advertised, and if it was available in a Flight sim, it may end-up making the player a little bit invulnerable.
An interesting system nevertheless.
Cheers
TROPHY, ARENA and the U.S. QUICK KILL tank protection systems all actively try and destroy incoming missiles with their own form of ordinance.
ReplyDeleteHIDAS is a passive system, it identifies the type of missile threat, creates a warning and dispenses flares or chaff as appropriate. It also, like the aforementioned tank systems, provides a warning of launched unguided missiles/RPGs.
As for how HIDAS is intergrated into the Apache, I'm not sure about that one ..sorry.
You could be right about the invulnerability element if too many systems are automatic. You do of course still need to manoevre away from the threat once you have identified the direction its coming from and then dive for cover or try and engage it.
Its the RPG warning element which is of partcular importance in Afghanistan. Every man and his dog has one. If your kit can't inform of launch & identify from which direction Rpg's are coming at you from then basically you are going to stay well away from the threat area, engage hover at a safe distance and 'turkey shoot'. Not as exciting as mixing it with the bad guys if you ask me. So imo some defencive systems add to the playability in a flight sim. Especially a very vulnerable helicopter sim.