IceFire
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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
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 This guy knows what im talking about
I read this on the B5 FirstOnes forum. Read the last 1/3rd. Its the same thing I've been saying to everyone since the beginnig of time (or this MOD).
quote:
It is important to remember that we were walking a bit of a tight rope. We wanted to have good simulation, but at the same time preserve the "look and feel" of the show.
As Randy, Dan, Marc, and Jack can attest I would whine incessantly about the "lack of engines here" or the "need for more turrets" there. I am an engineer by training (B.S. Aerospace, M.S.++ Mechanical), and the shortcomings really irritated me. The answer was, however, always the same. "No, we aren't going to change the model to make it a better design for the game."
So what did we do?
The way this was handled on ItF was as follows: All ships had the ability to speed up or slow down along any axis. Yes, even the ships without forward facing retros could still "decelerate" without having to do flip around. The same holds for the cap-ships.
This didn't mean that they could arbitrarily thrust along any axis quickly, only that they could, at least a little bit.
Is this physically correct in relation to the ship's models? No.
Ships which had the obvious features necessary for good 6DOF flight, particularly if they had large forward-facing engines and/or obvious slew thrusters were given superior abilities to those which did not.
Another source of contradiction and uncertainty was the above mentioned "gravitational thrusters". Minbari and Centauri ships, in particular, are seldom shown with exhaust plumes or other obvious thrust-resultant visual artifacts. In this case, the behavior of the ships as observed in the show, and any footage John Trauger ("the oracle") could come up with were used to try to figure out the performance. This only produced rough guidelines. "Whitestars are very fast", "Auroras (Starfuries) are very maneuverable", "Thunderbolts are a bit faster than Auroras, but a little less maneuverable", "Narn fighters are tough", "Nial (minbari) fighters seem to always be 'wooshing' by their targets", etc.
This was used to make starting performance parameters for each ship type. These were then altered for game balance. Why?
Because of the first law of computer game development.
The absolute most important thing in a computer game is fun gameplay.
Period.
Simulation, visual canon, logic, physics, and everything else will always be sacrificed when they confict with the first law.
A few more things to think about : The artists and designers that created the ships were not engineers. Neither were the writers of the show. Nor were the animators. Not even the Great Maker. That doesn't matter, because their first law was all about story and drama. Everything else didn't matter, which is why even canon from the show must be taken with a grain of salt when trying to make a game, and especially when trying to make an internally consitent, physically correct simulation.
Do the best you can, but make sure to keep the "fun" and "cool" first. If you want more of a simulation, go for it, but you are going to have some tough decisions to make when it comes time for game balance...
He worked on the game and he knew a thing or two about what it was supposed to do.
http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/Forum1/HTML/004430.html
Thought I'd post that, just so you know tham im not a heretic for not sticking with complete show canon and that I'm not 100% insane.
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12-02-2001 05:45 AM
