Visual Indication of Armour/Weapon's wear and tear?

Grimshaw

Can we expect to see wear and tear on armour and weapons?

Personally, I think it would be nice to glance at my character model and see my shield with some scoring on it, dents on the edges, etc as its durability drops. Or even my cape starting to fray (minor durability loss), or with heavy fraying and large tears through it (heavy durability loss) or finally torn off at the shoulders when its durability is zero.

I appreciate its a LOT of work for something that is visual, but it would be cool to just look at your character model to go "dang, I better repair this stuff".

patrick68794

I agree, that's something I'd really like to see but unfortunately I wouldn't expect it. They could probably implement a generic shader based solution that would work across all gear but that would still be a huge amount of work (Star Citizen is doing something similar and it took over a year for them to get it working properly across all gear and ships in the game without artists and designers manually adding the shader(s)). Intrepid doesn't have the resources that CIG (Star Citizen's developer) has and while, in my opinion at least, it would add some nice visual flair to the game I think they have higher priorities that should be focused on instead with their smaller pool of resources.

Enigmatic Sage

Would probably need to make 3-4 visual indicators for the armour/weapon status.

75-100% 50-74% 25-49% 0-24%

or

67-100% 33-66% 0-32%

Considering how many cosmetics they want to put in the game, that's a lot of work for the dev's currently but could be an interesting post launch goal.

Grimshaw

Yeah, I know it would be a lot of work, at least tripling, most likely quadrupling the work required do deliver each equipable item.

Was it the Star Citizen crew that built it @patrick68794, or was it the Squadron 42 crew? I only ask as the SC crew has been at ghost staff level, with all other hands focusing on S 42. Well, that was my understanding anyway.

I do love how RSI are pushing the boundaries (i.e. once your in the game, there are no loading screens).

patrick68794

Grimshaw wrote: »

Yeah, I know it would be a lot of work, at least tripling, most likely quadrupling the work required do deliver each equipable item.

Was it the Star Citizen crew that built it @patrick68794, or was it the Squadron 42 crew? I only ask as the SC crew has been at ghost staff level, with all other hands focusing on S 42. Well, that was my understanding anyway.

I do love how RSI are pushing the boundaries (i.e. once your in the game, there are no loading screens).

Development for SQ42 carries over directly to SC (they just moved over all of their on-foot AI to SC actually with the last update) but I'm not sure if the wear and tear shaders were made for SQ42 first or not. They actually are already in SC but since there's no actual item durability yet they're just cosmetic for now. So if you're in a snowy biome for awhile on one of the planets/moons then your gear and the outside of your ship will start to accumulate snow and ice or if you're in a desert biome for awhile then metal on gear or your ship's exterior will get worn out and take on a sort of sandblasted look. They're going to be using the same shader system to show durability though as well.

The ships and ground vehicles do have a damage shader for their exteriors, lasers will melt it away and impact holes from ballistics will be permanent and require either repair at a space station/landing area or you can use a tool in-game with the right material to repair it. Something like that might be pretty neat to see implemented in AoC for boats/ships after launch.

Also, most of their tech teams are working on SC trying to get their server tech working and out and their content teams are mostly working on SQ42, finishing up small changes to the levels and story (they said SQ42 is feature complete and in the balancing/polishing phase now).

patrick68794

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

Would probably need to make 3-4 visual indicators for the armour/weapon status.

75-100% 50-74% 25-49% 0-24%

or

67-100% 33-66% 0-32%

Considering how many cosmetics they want to put in the game, that's a lot of work for the dev's currently but could be an interesting post launch goal.

This is where something like SC's shader based approach would be good. They just expose the properties for the materials on the gear (which were already in place for physically based rendering, and AoC should have similar properties on their objects) and the damage/wear shader is generated procedurally based on those properties. That way they don't have to do any of the work by hand.

And they can make changes to the algorithms used to generate the shaders or to the properties on the items to change the rate that the "damage/wear" spreads or increases in severity and they wouldn't have to do any work at all when adding new items aside from exposing items they want to display wear and tear to the shader generation system

Grimshaw

I find this stuff really interesting eh. I suspect that RSI might end up changing the landscape, if they sell any of their tech (e.g. the loading system, or the shader as you have highlighted above @patrick68794). Just like I believe that AoC are also building functionality that will change the market too.

Exciting times.

Enigmatic Sage

patrick68794 wrote: »

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

Would probably need to make 3-4 visual indicators for the armour/weapon status.

75-100% 50-74% 25-49% 0-24%

or

67-100% 33-66% 0-32%

Considering how many cosmetics they want to put in the game, that's a lot of work for the dev's currently but could be an interesting post launch goal.

This is where something like SC's shader based approach would be good. They just expose the properties for the materials on the gear (which were already in place for physically based rendering, and AoC should have similar properties on their objects) and the damage/wear shader is generated procedurally based on those properties. That way they don't have to do any of the work by hand.

And they can make changes to the algorithms used to generate the shaders or to the properties on the items to change the rate that the "damage/wear" spreads or increases in severity and they wouldn't have to do any work at all when adding new items aside from exposing items they want to display wear and tear to the shader generation system

I'm not too familiar with SC's system currently. I'll take a look at it later for sure. It would probably have to be unique for certain weapon/armour classes as items in each of those categories are sometimes multiple types of materials and some costumes are seen are a whole item instead of several.

Definitely interesting though. I would personally like to see things break, chip, tear, scratch, dent etc.

patrick68794

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

patrick68794 wrote: »

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

Would probably need to make 3-4 visual indicators for the armour/weapon status.

75-100% 50-74% 25-49% 0-24%

or

67-100% 33-66% 0-32%

Considering how many cosmetics they want to put in the game, that's a lot of work for the dev's currently but could be an interesting post launch goal.

This is where something like SC's shader based approach would be good. They just expose the properties for the materials on the gear (which were already in place for physically based rendering, and AoC should have similar properties on their objects) and the damage/wear shader is generated procedurally based on those properties. That way they don't have to do any of the work by hand.

And they can make changes to the algorithms used to generate the shaders or to the properties on the items to change the rate that the "damage/wear" spreads or increases in severity and they wouldn't have to do any work at all when adding new items aside from exposing items they want to display wear and tear to the shader generation system

I'm not too familiar with SC's system currently. I'll take a look at it later for sure. It would probably have to be unique for certain weapon/armour classes as items in each of those categories are sometimes multiple types of materials and some costumes are seen are a whole item instead of several.

Definitely interesting though. I would personally like to see things break, chip, tear, scratch, dent etc.

SC's solution can handle different material types on the same asset, it's a fully procedural system based on the material properties for a specific piece/layer of an asset (not the asset as a whole) so no unique work is necessary for assets with multiple material types. Damage itself isn't in yet but accumulation of snow/dirt/sand is and it visually impacts different materials uniquely so it stands to reason that the "damage" specific shaders will as well.