Game News BattleTech Released

[Bohr]

Regarding performance and Unity, something I posted in the main BT thread

Spoiler

 

[Bohr]

Also, this has to be the worst tutorial in the history of gaming.
I have no idea what half of the UI elements mean/do.
What is S? Structure?
What is A? Armor? How do the two relate? What are their effects, exactly?
Why does the attacking show specific zones, but I cannot click on them? I mean, I can click on them, but it does nothing. I would assume I can aim at specific regions, but.. how?
What are the three arrows next to my health? Is that even health? Is that evasion?
What is the yellow bar under my heat? It goes up when I am attacked, but goes down again after moving... Hmmm.

I guess most of this is second nature to BattleTech veterans, but I am ignorant of the system, so some things should be explained better.

What it did explain was that I should rotate my mechs, stick to cover and attack from behind if possible...
No shit, Sherlock. This isn't my first game

(On the aiming at specific sections point, when a mech has fallen over you get an automatic "called shot" where you can try to target a specific section and you can also use morale to do a called shot (precision strike) when the mech hasn't fallen - not guaranteed though, just increased chance of hitting that area)

Would honestly suggest watching this 11m video, packs in a lot of useful tips:


Someone has written a bit of a manual here
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cyttoraks-illustrated-tutorial.1090127/

And here is a guide by a BT backer who ended up working at HBS:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1365402907

 

[Van-d-all]

I mean, what went wrong her-

Made With Unity

Oh, ok.

Seriously, though, it seems as if the graphics are waiting for damage calculations in order to be displayed, causing a lag. Who the hell codes shit like that. Graphics should never wait for gameplay. Use threads, FFS.

Unity classes aren't thread-safe.

 

[Roguey]

Sure are a lot of people putting their faith in HBS to deliver a demanding tactical experience when they have no such record of being able to do so.

Another accurate Roguey prediction!

Though I shouldn't brag too much. Everyone should have been able to see this coming. I mean this was the equivalent of looking at some dark clouds to the west and saying "Hmm, looks like it's going to rain."

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Loading Times And Unexpected Lags: The Game

... seriously, how can a game that doesn't look too special and feature simple geometry take 10x as long to load than a game that has more advanced everything and bigger maps (like Vermintide 2) and also perform significantly worse (almost every shot makes the game lag, on every setting, while I can play Vermintide 2 on highest settings without any problems)?
I mean, what went wrong her-

Made With Unity

Oh, ok.

Seriously, though, it seems as if the graphics are waiting for damage calculations in order to be displayed, causing a lag. Who the hell codes shit like that. Graphics should never wait for gameplay. Use threads, FFS.
Or - as it happens mostly after map load or on new attacks - it seems like assets required for shots are loaded on demand instead of when loading the mission. Oh, dear...

Also, this has to be the worst tutorial in the history of gaming.
I have no idea what half of the UI elements mean/do.
What is S? Structure?
What is A? Armor? How do the two relate? What are their effects, exactly?
Why does the attacking show specific zones, but I cannot click on them? I mean, I can click on them, but it does nothing. I would assume I can aim at specific regions, but.. how?
What are the three arrows next to my health? Is that even health? Is that evasion?
What is the yellow bar under my heat? It goes up when I am attacked, but goes down again after moving... Hmmm.

I guess most of this is second nature to BattleTech veterans, but I am ignorant of the system, so some things should be explained better.

What it did explain was that I should rotate my mechs, stick to cover and attack from behind if possible...
No shit, Sherlock. This isn't my first game

Not only does the tutorial suck but there's no ingame help or explanation of mechanics that I could find. How effective are evasion pip's "raise difficulty of targetting" anyway? What is that, 10% miss chance or something? I need to know these things.

 

[thesheeep]

I mean, what went wrong her-

Made With Unity

Oh, ok.

Seriously, though, it seems as if the graphics are waiting for damage calculations in order to be displayed, causing a lag. Who the hell codes shit like that. Graphics should never wait for gameplay. Use threads, FFS.

Unity classes aren't thread-safe.

They don't have to be.
All engines have things that cannot or should not be done in non-main threads, that's fair and not a problem.
But raw calculations (like damage, AI, etc.) can be split off from engine classes - and should, if the game demands threading.
I am assuming that normal C# threading also works with Unity.

The game itself (the tech, tutorial and story shortcomings aside) seems solid to me, though. Certainly has been fun so far. I made some stupid mistakes and learned from them, too.

 

[ArchAngel]

The most irritating part of UI for me (there was more but it seems other stuff that irritated me was just hidden and unexplained) is how to easily see weapon ranged for all your weapons and how hit chance would change based on your movement.
At least they need to put some markings on your targeting UI where each marking represents 20m or something similar.
And only way to see how movement changes hit chance is to click where you want to move but before clicking again you need to mouse over all possible targets. But wait, it does not show what was previous hit chance, for that you need to ESC to cancel that move and then mouse over same mech from the place you were standing (or remember these values before starting this minigame). And to see hit chance vs a single target for each possible place you can move you need to click on each, mouse over enemies, press ESC and click on next and so on... And of course you are supposed to remember hit chance values for each... at this point I guess they decided to only have one (easy) difficulty because they could not make their UI good enough for a harder game.

 

[Van-d-all]

I mean, what went wrong her-

Made With Unity

Oh, ok.

Seriously, though, it seems as if the graphics are waiting for damage calculations in order to be displayed, causing a lag. Who the hell codes shit like that. Graphics should never wait for gameplay. Use threads, FFS.

Unity classes aren't thread-safe.

They don't have to be.
All engines have things that cannot or should not be done in non-main threads, that's fair and not a problem.
But raw calculations (like damage, AI, etc.) can be split off from engine classes - and should, if the game demands threading.
I am assuming that normal C# threading also works with Unity.

The game itself (the tech, tutorial and story shortcomings aside) seems solid to me, though. Certainly has been fun so far. I made some stupid mistakes and learned from them, too.

It's not that simple. While Unity is mostly compliant to standard C# it actually uses Mono and sometimes differences pop in here and there. C# threading does work, but it doesn't remove the engine's chokepoints. Pretty much all scene objects need to be descendants of Unity classes, so while you can get all the calculations done separately, at some point they need to be applied to those objects and it's almost certain to clog, just like updating textures does at the moment in Battletech.

 

[GarfunkeL]

discussion of SJWs is topical and relevant in threads about games that are developed by SJWs and include blatant SJW shoehorning

Sure and you have made your point clear and obvious in EVERY BattleTech tread on Codex and you repeat it every few pages. And in this one you once more made it blatantly clear in the very first page, yet you kept up the ranting for four pages and, despite claiming to have left the thread, returned multiple times to continue sperging about it. And to make it worse, you can't even stick to facts but have to re-invent your own reality and exaggerate stuff so that the pointless circle-jerk can keep going. And now I have to read even more retarded conspiracy bullshit from Grampy_Bone because they're encouraged by your example.

Also you gotta remember that "certain someone" is a tranny-loving bug chaser that flew all the way to US of A for SMA (just for that sweet taste of pre-op tranny cock)

Huh, I seem to have dementia because that's not what I remember, but you must have been hiding in the bushes, camera in one hand and your cock in the other.

To actually add something to the conversation, my thread over Paradox forum about the always-online DRM was deleted and the thread discussing hair options was trimmed down significantly with this notice added:

 

[Fenix]

I have basically stopped buying them at this point, I have about 80 games I legitimately might like in my collection... and perhaps 70 more on my wish list or coming out over next year or so. I can't ever play all these games. Sort of the same with movies and TV shows too

Depressing. I usually buy something when I want to play it right now, no matter sellout or what.
So far the only game I bought I should not - DOS2. It would be better if I buy it now and played, than I bought it then and waited for them patching it.

 

[thesheeep]

They don't have to be.
All engines have things that cannot or should not be done in non-main threads, that's fair and not a problem.
But raw calculations (like damage, AI, etc.) can be split off from engine classes - and should, if the game demands threading.
I am assuming that normal C# threading also works with Unity.

It's not that simple. While Unity is mostly compliant to standard C# it actually uses Mono and sometimes differences pop in here and there. C# threading does work, but it doesn't remove the engine's chokepoints. Pretty much all scene objects need to be descendants of Unity classes, so while you can get all the calculations done separately, at some point they need to be applied to those objects and it's almost certain to clog, just like updating textures does at the moment in Battletech.

That's really not true. You can apply loads of calculation results to the "main" objects using proxies or other techniques. I did it myself for hundreds (!!!) of actors all going about their business at the same time (created a mini engine myself at some point, never finished it, though) - though that was with C++ + Lua, not C#. I imagine games like SupCom do it similarly.
It really is far less problematic than it sounds, the application is not a bottleneck, especially not if you can spread it over multiple frames.
You do the calculations as soon as the button is clicked, then they have many frames to commence and be applied until the first shots have to be visually fired. A bit similar to how lock-step mechanism works for MP.
In the worst case, the animation wouldn't start before calculations are finished - that's still much better than visually lagging.

However... this shouldn't even be necessary. What are we talking about here?
4-12 weapons fired at the same time at less than a handful of targets, each with some zones. Even with a rule system with the complexity of BattleTech, this is nothing for any CPU and shouldn't require threading to begin with.
And as I said, this happens only when some shot is first fired, so I'm very certain by now that this is a problem of lazy asset loading and not calculations.

 

[DeepOcean]

Made With Unity

City skylines was made in Unity and that game certainly had more objects, animations and systems running at the same time, It is like a dont blame the hammer if you are a poor carpenter situation.

 

[Van-d-all]

That's really not true. You can apply loads of calculation results to the "main" objects using proxies or other techniques. I did it myself for hundreds (!!!) of actors all going about their business at the same time (created a mini engine myself at some point, never finished it, though) - though that was with C++ + Lua, not C#. I imagine games like SupCom do it similarly.
It really is far less problematic than it sounds, the application is not a bottleneck, especially not if you can spread it over multiple frames.
You do the calculations as soon as the button is clicked, then they have many frames to commence and be applied until the first shots have to be visually fired. A bit similar to how lock-step mechanism works for MP.
In the worst case, the animation wouldn't start before calculations are finished - that's still much better than visually lagging.

However... this shouldn't even be necessary. What are we talking about here?
4-12 weapons fired at the same time at less than a handful of targets, each with some zones. Even with a rule system with the complexity of BattleTech, this is nothing for any CPU and shouldn't require threading to begin with.
And as I said, this happens only when some shot is first fired, so I'm very certain by now that this is a problem of lazy asset loading and not calculations.

Quite a strawman there. Firstly, it's doubtful that the lag comes from calculations, and even the puny assets present, already take ages for scenes to load, also a known Unity issue. Secondly it's not about the possibility of doing it in general, but about doing it with what stock Unity has at disposal, and that engine uses non thread-safe blocking calls to update textures. And yes, this could probably be even fixed with fragments re-implementing some cloggy functionalities from scratch, but again, that engine was probably chosen to not invest time into such things because it's known for it's simplicity and low development times. The results are as seen in the game. But most of all, I'm not defending it, I'm speculating as to why it is as it is.

 

[aweigh]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Calling people &quot;trannies&quot; is a slur, man. Dehumanization and othering of people is form of violence. Games culture allows such obvious toxicity it&#39;s easy to lose perspective, but you don&#39;t have to literally call for a person&#39;s head on a pike in order to qualify as hate speech.</p>&mdash; Uncle Zack (@Toasticus) <a href="https://twitter.com/Toasticus/status/989298104368336896?ref_src=twsrc^tfw">April 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[thesheeep]

That's really not true. You can apply loads of calculation results to the "main" objects using proxies or other techniques. I did it myself for hundreds (!!!) of actors all going about their business at the same time (created a mini engine myself at some point, never finished it, though) - though that was with C++ + Lua, not C#. I imagine games like SupCom do it similarly.
It really is far less problematic than it sounds, the application is not a bottleneck, especially not if you can spread it over multiple frames.
You do the calculations as soon as the button is clicked, then they have many frames to commence and be applied until the first shots have to be visually fired. A bit similar to how lock-step mechanism works for MP.
In the worst case, the animation wouldn't start before calculations are finished - that's still much better than visually lagging.

However... this shouldn't even be necessary. What are we talking about here?
4-12 weapons fired at the same time at less than a handful of targets, each with some zones. Even with a rule system with the complexity of BattleTech, this is nothing for any CPU and shouldn't require threading to begin with.
And as I said, this happens only when some shot is first fired, so I'm very certain by now that this is a problem of lazy asset loading and not calculations.

Quite a strawman there. Firstly, it's doubtful that the lag comes from calculations, and even the puny assets present, already take ages for scenes to load, also a known Unity issue. Secondly it's not about the possibility of doing it in general, but about doing it with what stock Unity has at disposal, and that engine uses non thread-safe blocking calls to update textures. And yes, this could probably be even fixed with fragments re-implementing some cloggy functionalities from scratch, but again, that engine was probably chosen to not invest time into such things because it's known for it's simplicity and low development times. The results are as seen in the game. But most of all, I'm not defending it, I'm speculating as to why it is as it is.

And I agree.
I just told how it could be done better - that it was no priority to do so is obvious. I mean... we see the results
HBS are the masters of cutting corners, but if they weren't we possibly wouldn't have this game.
All is well improvable.

 

[Mieron]

Liking it a lot so far. The game only really opens up after a few missions though, and I wish you could skip those first ones where you have to learn the ropes, mainly because I already learned them in the beta.

I really whinge whenever I lose a mechwarrior, or a particularly nice piece of gear on my mechs. As it should be.

 

[Blaine]

...you repeat it every few pages.

This is false. It only seems that way due to the magnitude of your butthurt.

And in this one you once more made it blatantly clear in the very first page, yet you kept up the ranting for four pages and, despite claiming to have left the thread, returned multiple times to continue sperging about it.

Did you happen to notice why I said I was leaving? I said that I was leaving because the thread was getting boring.

Well, I suppose it's sheer coincidence that I returned when you started squealing and Godwinning about me ruining every thread. There couldn't possibly be any connection between the beginning of your whining and lecturing and the end of my boredom.

 

[Urbanolo]

Politics are killing rpg codex.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Overall I'm liking the game. It's pretty much exactly what I wanted in a Battletech game, ever since playing Crescent Hawk's inception. Still has plenty of rough edges though.

-Really need settings to increase animation speeds
-A weapon range overlay would be nice
-Speed up/engine optimizations

-Finances seem "gamified" unnecessarily. It costs $250k per month in upkeep and the missions pay $50-100k. Takes 2 weeks to travel to another system, never seen more than 2 missions in the same system, so its' hard just to break even. I know I am at the beginning of the game still but how can any merc company stay in business with costs like these? Lose one mech limb plus the weapons on it and you're deep in the hole.

You can salvage mechs but you need 3 pieces to build a complete mech. You can buy the pieces but not sell them; why? Have to build the whole chassis just to sell it. Then they jew you down to 10% value. Come on!

Where's my Bakpar stock investment when I need it?

 

[Cynicus]

To actually add something to the conversation, my thread over Paradox forum about the always-online DRM was deleted and the thread discussing hair options was trimmed down significantly with this notice added:

So...we will inject this RL shit into our game, but don't you dare come here to talk about it? Nice. That doomsday asteroid can't get here soon enough.


To the dudes already playing: are you experiencing memory leaks? The game seems to have a pretty severe one based on some reports I've seen.

 

[Blaine]

To actually add something to the conversation, my thread over Paradox forum about the always-online DRM was deleted and the thread discussing hair options was trimmed down significantly with this notice added:

So...we will inject this RL shit into our game, but don't you dare come here to talk about it? Nice. That doomsday asteroid can't get here soon enough.

Thing is, progressives don't want their ideological propaganda to be seen as such. They want everyone to pretend that it's unforced instead of shoehorned, that it's not a deliberate crusade, and that it's normal rather than abnormal.

I'm not the one who injected politics into computer gaming. Conservatives, centrists, and apoliticals aren't responsible for this state of affairs; progressives, gaming "journalists," and the Anita Sarkeesians of the world are responsible.

This particular game receives special attention from me because it's BattleTech, it's a turn-based tactical game, and it's been developed by one of the studios that was part of the Kickstarter quasi-sort-of-but-mostly-not-really resurgence.

I'm happy to leave just a post or two noting that a game is SJWified and move on. If refutations and lectures appear, then I may press my case. The simplest way to avoid BLAINE RUINING THINGS WITH POLITICS is to stop defending SJW developers who shoehorn politics into their games, and ideally also stop encouraging them by purchasing their games.

Search results by my username for instances of "SJW," "feminism," "progressive," etc. in the Underrail megathread, which I started and in which I have hundreds of posts:

 

[Darkzone]

I have a made a saying for myself, based on a saying of Douglas MacArthur: There are retards on the left of me and there are retards on the right of me. There are retards in front of me and they are behind me. There are retards above me and they are below me. The retards cannot escape me.

I thought this was based on a quote from marine general Chesty Puller at the battle of Chosin Reservoir, and not that tool MacArthur.
“They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can’t get away from us now!”
also sometimes reported as: "We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."

You are correct on this one and thank you for correcting me. I was a bit exhausted as i wrote this and didn't checked this. I'm getting slowly confused with all the military quotes in my mind and as long as i do not confuse Sun Tzu with Clausewitz everything is still ok. Nevertheless i was correct about the war theater and one could state also about the war and time. In the end MacArthur was perhaps right, but we will see this in the near future.
What i express with this saying is that wrong thought processes are on each side: the left and right, progressives and conservatives, religious and irreligious, higher and lower in every social hierarchy. And that no side can claim the right and truth for them self and everyone should make informed correct thoughts and decisions.

 

[Cynicus]

This particular game receives special attention from me because it's BattleTech

That's pretty much what it boils down to for me. This ain't my first rodeo with these yahoos. I do wish they would quit touching my precious, however. Honestly, I think what offends me the most is how infantile they are about it all (says the man who just wants to play with his giant robots in peace ). That and their total lack of self-awareness. They like to point the finger and yell "Nazi!" yet it's they who act authoritarian. Useful idiots, indeed.

At any rate, I suffered a mild hipot failure, but I'm now just curious to see if the game will ever be worth picking up for a buck or two down the road. Sounds like it's a mess right now.

 

[Saduj]

Replayed the mission again today, like a dummy. Crashed to desktop again at the same point. This would be annoying either way but that the game is crashing during mission debrief rather than during combat just adds another layer to it.

Edit: These fuckers may have inspired me to write my first ever Steam review.....

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Ack, spent all night trying to replay one side mission with a low payout and no good salvage. 4 vehicles that wouldn't fucking die plus 2 light mechs bombarding me with PPCs. Convoy ambush missions suck.

->Do the next story mission and whatev, not hard at all, get 1,000,000 spacebucks.

Also, the general slowness and crummy loading times are starting to make me hate it. Game does not look good enough to play this poorly.