Programmers, I need your help ?

delete5230

I want to drop this irritating subject of coding.  Apparently I'm seeing issues that no one else does.

I'm the elephant in the room and because of that I'm the bad guy for some odd reason.  Let me expand on this.... It's like being at a party and a fight breaks out.  Everyone just stands their and does nothing, yet one person out of forty says "hay, theirs a fight".  Well their is a fight but the guy that says "hay, theirs a fight" is the bad guy !.... I guess that's me.

Now that that's over with, on to the question.

I'm not a programmer, @Lokero pointed that out.... Since I'm not a programmer can the programmers explain some of this ?.....I directly relate this to coding.... am I wrong ?..... I feel the game will not run well, because of odd animations from past mistakes of Vanguard.  If it looks like Vanguard, it will play like Vanguard.


Two years of Pantheon videos and I see zero improvements in animation.  I relate animation to coding.

-Creatures, NPC's, and players alike float across the ground exactly like hard plastic Chess pieces. Re watch every video and you will understand. 

-Creatures and Mobs attack players they float across the ground to attack players, then stand in front of the player, swing and recover "to their original statue state" after each swing.  Re watch every video and you will understand. 

-As players are moving about arms and legs are disappearing and reappearing. This is most apparent when the player swings their camera angle when they are close to a wall or structure. Re watch every video and you will understand.  

-Players get stuck with half their bodies stuck half way into the ground.  This was a major issue in Vanguard.  Remember a major issue on release was players would fall through the environment ? This was talked about in detail as a major problem with Vanguard !..... Guess what...same shit. 

- On several occasions, the hosting player would spin the camera angle and you would only see a pair of eyeballs, only a PAIR OF EYEBALLS ! 

What I do see for improvements are environment textures, lights glow softly, trees look more crisp and sparkle, shadows and armor glows are unmatched to any other game.  BUT Vanguard was great for this feature too BUT THE GAME PLAY WAS A MESS. 

THIS IS EXACTLY VANGUARD. 



For some reason, anything that moves seems to be a copy and paste into the environment. 

The environment itself is absolutely beautiful by it self ! 
The creatures and players are absolutely beautiful by it self ! 

Add both together, and their disconnected. VANGUARD !




I would love to drop this issue, but now I'm mad... Never any acknowledgment of extreme issues. Instead I'm just a bad guy ! 

rounner

VG felt like a mishmash of different assets from different sources but I think I remember their lead artist passing during the development which might have had an affect.

Vrika

delete5230 said:

-Creatures, NPC's, and players alike float across the ground exactly like hard plastic Chess pieces. Re watch every video and you will understand. 

It looks like Pantheon's movement does not depend on game's ability to animate that movement, causing moments where the character is moving even though the game can't animate it properly.

This does not affect the gameplay. On contrary it means the game is allowing you to stay in control of your character.

delete5230 said:

-Creatures and Mobs attack players they float across the ground to attack players, then stand in front of the player, swing and recover "to their original statue state" after each swing.  Re watch every video and you will understand. 

Creatures and mobs likely also have movement that does not depend on game's ability to animate them.

As for "recovering to their original state" Pantheon is supposed to have slower gameplay. You don't get to spam your abilities as fast as the animations execute, but rather have to wait a bit. Gameplay was slowed down like this also in games like WoW.

delete5230 said:

-As players are moving about arms and legs are disappearing and reappearing. This is most apparent when the player swings their camera angle when they are close to a wall or structure. Re watch every video and you will understand.  

Arms and legs appearing and disappearing is a graphical bug.

Gameplay wise a creature is just one hitbox moving around the world, and that hitbox either is there or is completely lost. Losing arms or legs would be concerning in a game where you have to aim and can hit individual body parts, but not for something like Pantheon (or EQ or WoW).

delete5230 said:

-Players get stuck with half their bodies stuck half way into the ground.  This was a major issue in Vanguard.  Remember a major issue on release was players would fall through the environment ? This was talked about in detail as a major problem with Vanguard !..... Guess what...same shit. 

Getting stuck in environment is a problem that they need to fix, but it's not an unsolvable problem. Depending on how players get stuck, they may either have issue with some actions or abilities that need game engine changes, or simply an issue where their map has holes in it and they need to fix them when they spot them.

delete5230 said:

- On several occasions, the hosting player would spin the camera angle and you would only see a pair of eyeballs, only a PAIR OF EYEBALLS ! 

It's likely just a camera problem where player is able to place the camera inside character's face. It's not a very high priority to fix during early development, because player has control of the camera and can place it elsewhere.

Camera having trouble with walls and such would be much higher priority problem than camera swinging inside your face.

kertin

pff comparing this to Vanguard, Vanguard was awesome game compared to what Pantheon is going to be...I'm very surprised how much ppl tries to defend Pantheon, if you've watched VOD's , there is no single reason to believe, it's gonna be good game

delete5230

Vrika said:

delete5230 said:

-Creatures, NPC's, and players alike float across the ground exactly like hard plastic Chess pieces. Re watch every video and you will understand. 

It looks like Pantheon's movement does not depend on game's ability to animate that movement, causing moments where the character is moving even though the game can't animate it properly.

This does not affect the gameplay. On contrary it means the game is allowing you to stay in control of your character.

delete5230 said:

-Creatures and Mobs attack players they float across the ground to attack players, then stand in front of the player, swing and recover "to their original statue state" after each swing.  Re watch every video and you will understand. 

Creatures and mobs likely also have movement that does not depend on game's ability to animate them.

As for "recovering to their original state" Pantheon is supposed to have slower gameplay. You don't get to spam your abilities as fast as the animations execute, but rather have to wait a bit. Gameplay was slowed down like this also in games like WoW.

delete5230 said:

-As players are moving about arms and legs are disappearing and reappearing. This is most apparent when the player swings their camera angle when they are close to a wall or structure. Re watch every video and you will understand.  

Arms and legs appearing and disappearing is a graphical bug.

Gameplay wise a creature is just one hitbox moving around the world, and that hitbox either is there or is completely lost. Losing arms or legs would be concerning in a game where you have to aim and can hit individual body parts, but not for something like Pantheon (or EQ or WoW).

delete5230 said:

-Players get stuck with half their bodies stuck half way into the ground.  This was a major issue in Vanguard.  Remember a major issue on release was players would fall through the environment ? This was talked about in detail as a major problem with Vanguard !..... Guess what...same shit. 

Getting stuck in environment is a problem that they need to fix, but it's not an unsolvable problem. Depending on how players get stuck, they may either have issue with some actions or abilities that need game engine changes, or simply an issue where their map has holes in it and they need to fix them when they spot them.

delete5230 said:

- On several occasions, the hosting player would spin the camera angle and you would only see a pair of eyeballs, only a PAIR OF EYEBALLS ! 

It's likely just a camera problem where player is able to place the camera inside character's face. It's not a very high priority to fix during early development, because player has control of the camera and can place it elsewhere.

Camera having trouble with walls and such would be much higher priority problem than camera swinging inside your face.

Thanks so much @Vrika
Your the first in two years that addressed and answered programmer questions. Most simply hugely ignore these issues and resort to name calling.

Most suppress issues and cant face problems that are factual, much like a bad car accident. 

I hope your saying this can all be fixed...... Because of my non-programming background, I CAN'T HELP BUT THINK, THIS IS VANGUARD all over again, just a leap in time. 



One more question please,
It does appear Visionary Realms needlessly struggles with something that has been solved with years of advancement since 1999 and 2004. 

However, all video programmers may have to over come these "same exact struggles" and suffer the same animation problems. Is it just that were seeing pre pre alpha footage ?

Nilden

This isn't really a programmer issue. It's much more about textures, 3d modeling and animation and resource managment.

For starters one of the main reasons Vanguard characters looked off is because they used a unibody method for all the races. Making the non-human races look like a human body with different scales and a fox or wolf head because that's what they were.

The reason to do that is because it makes it much easier to apply items to the models like armor, weapons etc. As well as animations.

If you have unique body types for each race, you need to make each armor and weapon type plus have animations for each race.

It's not so much about programming but resource use. I'm sure every developer would love to have dozens of unique racial animations from dances to multiple idle animations and hundreds to thousands of items and armors and weapons with high poly awesomeness all around but sometimes corners get cut.

Lokero

delete5230 said:

I want to drop this irritating subject of coding.  Apparently I'm seeing issues that no one else does.
I'm not a programmer, @Lokero pointed that out.... Since I'm not a programmer can the programmers explain some of this ?.....I directly relate this to coding.... am I wrong ?..... I feel the game will not run well, because of odd animations from past mistakes of Vanguard.  If it looks like Vanguard, it will play like Vanguard.

Two years of Pantheon videos and I see zero improvements in animation.  I relate animation to coding.

-Creatures, NPC's, and players alike float across the ground exactly like hard plastic Chess pieces. Re watch every video and you will understand.

Well, I don't work for them, and Vrika covered some basics, so I'll try and breeze through. 

I'm sure Pantheon has animators on the team responsible for the majority of things.  They are using the Unity engine, but no doubt they've heavily modified it to their personal use-case, so I don't know how deeply involved programmers/animators are in each other's business.

Typically, animations are done with "state machines".  Basically, it's like a big node system where one animation blends into another at the appropriate time.  Largely, this will be set up by the animators(I assume), and the programmers will simply trigger those animations in their code during the game.  Code links to the animation system and lets the animator know what's going on during gameplay so that it can play the appropriate animation.

<Placeholder: Was going to link a couple animation/state-machine articles from CamelotUnchained and GloriaVictis, but I can't find them since they are so old.>

But, in general, with a game so early in development, I'd hardly be worried about sliding animations and goofy visual bugs.  These things would fall under the category of "polish".  Make sure the game functions first then worry about tweaking things that don't impact actual gameplay.

Sliding animations is a very common thing to see in a game's development.  If it were close to release, I'd be worried, but not now.

-Creatures and Mobs attack players they float across the ground to attack players, then stand in front of the player, swing and recover "to their original statue state" after each swing.  Re watch every video and you will understand.

I will first say that I've not watched that many Pantheon videos - only a couple.

This is probably directly related to the state machine system I mentioned.  Basically when an animation finishes, it returns to whatever default state it's been set to shift to.  They probably just don't have an animation in-place that eases them back to that default state smoothly.

-As players are moving about arms and legs are disappearing and reappearing. This is most apparent when the player swings their camera angle when they are close to a wall or structure. Re watch every video and you will understand. 

Again, haven't watched the videos really so I'm guessing what you mean here.

This is probably a camera clipping issue.  Cameras have settings that cut off anything too close to the camera, basically.  If something reaches beyond that "too close" limit, then it simply won't render and will be invisible.

-Players get stuck with half their bodies stuck half way into the ground.  This was a major issue in Vanguard.  Remember a major issue on release was players would fall through the environment ? This was talked about in detail as a major problem with Vanguard !..... Guess what...same shit.

Well, getting stuck in the ground is definitely an issue.  Actually falling through the world has happened in a lot of games.  I know that happened a lot in Everquest, as well.  I don't know what the specific issue is there.  They may simply need to tweak the environmental "hit boxes" - as Vrika was talking about.  Or, it could be a coding issue with their movement system.  Even animations can cause abnormal movement if the locomotion settings are not set up properly.

- On several occasions, the hosting player would spin the camera angle and you would only see a pair of eyeballs, only a PAIR OF EYEBALLS !

I will say that setting up third-person cameras is a royal PITA in most games.  In almost every game, there is some type of issue like this left in at launch.  It's really difficult to deal with all the edge cases, particularly in indoor/cramped settings.

What I do see for improvements are environment textures, lights glow softly, trees look more crisp and sparkle, shadows and armor glows are unmatched to any other game.  BUT Vanguard was great for this feature too BUT THE GAME PLAY WAS A MESS. 

THIS IS EXACTLY VANGUARD.

For some reason, anything that moves seems to be a copy and paste into the environment.

I would never insult anyone so much as to say their work looks as bad as VG.  That thing was a coding disaster

As for the copy-paste movement, they probably are all using the same skeletal mesh and animations.

Typically, animations are developed around a skeleton, which can be fit to any similar model - example, all humanoid-type models could use the same skeleton and animations).

You couldn't use humanoid animations on a horse, for instance.

But, every bandit, gnome, human, orc, giant, etc., in the game could, theoretically, be using the same exact setup.

You will see many games that only use basic human-like models, especially for player-races, simply due to being able to share those skeletal rigs/animations.  If you ever wondered why you so rarely see games that let you play as weird monstrous creatures, this is why.

It's a massive time, money, and testing undertaking to add in unusual new races.  Plus, anything that wears armor or uses equipment will require basically new/revamped models for everything.

This is why games like WoW, instead of adding new playable creatures, simply add in the same races with different skins.

Bit of side-trivia:  Everquest's Beastlord class was a class where each race had a different pet type.  Trolls originally had an alligator pet since they were a swamp race.  Their alligator had tons of clipping and animation issues due to its long body and little legs and big tail.  Instead of fixing it, they eventually went back and just removed it entirely and gave Trolls a basilisk pet.

Edit: @delete5230 - Bonus: We were talking about Arcfall not too long ago on this forum.  If you want to see some interesting running animations, check out this review video.

ChildoftheShadows

All I read was asking animation relationship with coding and something about gliding across the ground. Here's an ELI5 on the subject.

Animations are typically constructed in animation software. There are a few different types  of software and I wont get into it because it doesn't really matter. There are a few different ways you can trigger an animation and control a character. One of those methods is called root motion. Root motion is when you press W to go forward and the game tells the animation controller to play the forward run animation and the animation itself actually drives the character movement. This is really good for making the animation look the way you are talking about because the feet hit the ground at precisely the right time and at the correct speed because the animation determines the speed. You can of course speed up and slow down the animation itself to control the speed of the movement. The downside to this is that it can make the movement feel less responsive and less like you are in 100% control of the character.

Another method is without root motion meaning when the animation plays the character doesn't move at all and all is controlled by the programmer. This for some people is better because it gives the player full control of the character and you don't wait for animations to play before getting the movement and feedback you're looking for. The downside to this is you have to figure out how to time the animations to fit the movement. This can be done in several ways, including procedural methods, but the point I want to make here is that this is likely what is happening in Pantheon if I had to guess. I've never played obviously and I haven't paid much attention to the videos so I can't say 100%, but based on what you're saying this is probably what is happening.

It's completely possible this is the case and if so then you will likely just have to wait until they go back and polish that up.

Quizzical

A game's physics is completely independent of its graphics.  Indeed, trying to make them intuitively feel like they match each other can be very hard.  If you're falling through the terrain where you shouldn't, that's a physics problem.  Good graphics or bad graphics won't make a bit of difference there.

skeaser

The game isn't even in Alpha testing yet. In July they showed us some of the animations and systems they're working on:

July Newsletter

Luiden

As a developer I will leave you with a couple of things:

1.  If the game is having all those problems at this stage of development then yes, it will fail.  Those won't be fixed in time by their 'release'.. maybe one or two, but not many.

2.  A simple statement that was true 20 years ago and is still true today is that the quality of your product directly represents the quality of your development team.  So when you look at an application and you see many issues you can map them back to the developers who are creating the product.  It's kind of odd when you think about it but it's very true.  So for example when you walk into their office and see developers acting like idiots then you can actually map their behavior to defencies in the game.

3.  A perfect example of this is Riot game (maker of League of Legends).  They have been in the new quite a bit over the past year supporting a toxic work culture when employees punch each other in the balls, talk down to women etc.  End result?  League of Legends is by far known as having the most toxic community of any game on the planet.  You could write a senior thesis on why that's the case.  

4.  In the game industry, you don't really have the best and brightest in programming and computer science building the games.  There are so many rejects coming out of college that will basically work for 'free' just to get into a game company that it creates a toxic environment of low pay and immaturity.  The real programmers see this early on and get out, they go to work for corporate companies making a lot more money and deal with a lot less stress.  The end result is that in the gaming industry the industry as a whole doesn't mature.. they don't learn from past mistakes hence why they keep getting made over and over again.

5.  Seeing the same mistakes happening today that you had to deal with in Vangard?  See above.

6.  To specifically respond to your post, there are many things that can contribute to what you are describing above.  Characters gliding across the screen?  That's typically called rubber banding and it happens when the developers don't fully understand UDP concepts and have correctly implemented an algorithm to compensate for the lack of guaranteed delivery.  Or worse, they try to implement using TCP and can't figure out why they have so much lag for movement.

7.  Like others have said animation really isn't programming.. it's just an artist using a tool.  But how programmers integrate those animations into the application can cause a number of problems.

8.  Getting stuck?  That's actually a very hard problem, imagine in your head a world where everything is represented by numbers on a 3-dimensional plane.  Than plane can vertically rise and fall and you are trying to keep an object (the player) always on top of that plane.  Now throw in all the world objects.. their interactions etc and you will find that there are a lot of things to get stuck on.  There are tools to help, but at the end of the day, it can be very tedious finding and then fixing those issues.  Imagine a programmer spending an entire week trying to isolate and resolve where a player gets stuck at... it happens.

So I guess my point is, you don't need to dive into all the specifics.. but as a rule of thumb if you see a game in beta where there is rubber banding, players getting stuck, animations not lining up then run like hell.. because that game is and will always be a POS.  It will take too much effort and too much time to fix those problems at that stage. 

If you see a game in beta that doesn't have those problems then you know that the developers who built this game learned from the past and as part of the design came up with a process & tools to avoid these issues.            

delete5230

Luiden said:

As a developer I will leave you with a couple of things:

1.  If the game is having all those problems at this stage of development then yes, it will fail.  Those won't be fixed in time by their 'release'.. maybe one or two, but not many.

2.  A simple statement that was true 20 years ago and is still true today is that the quality of your product directly represents the quality of your development team.  So when you look at an application and you see many issues you can map them back to the developers who are creating the product.  It's kind of odd when you think about it but it's very true.  So for example when you walk into their office and see developers acting like idiots then you can actually map their behavior to defencies in the game.

3.  A perfect example of this is Riot game (maker of League of Legends).  They have been in the new quite a bit over the past year supporting a toxic work culture when employees punch each other in the balls, talk down to women etc.  End result?  League of Legends is by far known as having the most toxic community of any game on the planet.  You could write a senior thesis on why that's the case.  

4.  In the game industry, you don't really have the best and brightest in programming and computer science building the games.  There are so many rejects coming out of college that will basically work for 'free' just to get into a game company that it creates a toxic environment of low pay and immaturity.  The real programmers see this early on and get out, they go to work for corporate companies making a lot more money and deal with a lot less stress.  The end result is that in the gaming industry the industry as a whole doesn't mature.. they don't learn from past mistakes hence why they keep getting made over and over again.

5.  Seeing the same mistakes happening today that you had to deal with in Vangard?  See above.

6.  To specifically respond to your post, there are many things that can contribute to what you are describing above.  Characters gliding across the screen?  That's typically called rubber banding and it happens when the developers don't fully understand UDP concepts and have correctly implemented an algorithm to compensate for the lack of guaranteed delivery.  Or worse, they try to implement using TCP and can't figure out why they have so much lag for movement.

7.  Like others have said animation really isn't programming.. it's just an artist using a tool.  But how programmers integrate those animations into the application can cause a number of problems.

8.  Getting stuck?  That's actually a very hard problem, imagine in your head a world where everything is represented by numbers on a 3-dimensional plane.  Than plane can vertically rise and fall and you are trying to keep an object (the player) always on top of that plane.  Now throw in all the world objects.. their interactions etc and you will find that there are a lot of things to get stuck on.  There are tools to help, but at the end of the day, it can be very tedious finding and then fixing those issues.  Imagine a programmer spending an entire week trying to isolate and resolve where a player gets stuck at... it happens.

So I guess my point is, you don't need to dive into all the specifics.. but as a rule of thumb if you see a game in beta where there is rubber banding, players getting stuck, animations not lining up then run like hell.. because that game is and will always be a POS.  It will take too much effort and too much time to fix those problems at that stage. 

If you see a game in beta that doesn't have those problems then you know that the developers who built this game learned from the past and as part of the design came up with a process & tools to avoid these issues.            

Thanks so much for the detail !

It's all great stuff, the getting stuck things fits because I've seen several games with that problem and in hind sight they never really get fixed, add that someone else had mentioned that too.

I'm willing to bet Visionary Realms are more a bunch of mature developers because Brad doesn't seem the type to allow fooling around in his work place... I'm most concerned with being stuck in time and not embracing the new technology and stubborn about his own way. You don't have to be a programmer to realize that, after all old auto mechanics could be the same way in fixing newer cars..... it's more keeping up with the times thing that any business owner can fall into this trap.

It still amazing to me after all the videos, others are not seeing any of the HUGE flaws that should scare the hell out of them.  Some of them are technical people too, yet are blind.  In their defense they could be relying on Pre Pre Alpha.... But I don't buy into that crap... Why because it really really looks like crap and should be embarrassing to showcase that footage.

Because others cant see, I seem to be the bad guy.

And again Pre Pre Alpha excuse doesn't cut it for me.  Then you have the possibility, the game is not even in development yet..... That could be worst, to each their own with a developers speed, but the public is involved with the cost in this case.... Ten more years is unacceptable to the good people that invested. 

Vrika

delete5230 said:

It still amazing to me after all the videos, others are not seeing any of the HUGE flaws that should scare the hell out of them.  Some of them are technical people too, yet are blind.  In their defense they could be relying on Pre Pre Alpha.... But I don't buy into that crap... Why because it really really looks like crap and should be embarrassing to showcase that footage.

I think people are just being realistic that Pantheon is a small budget project and even in the end it will not look that good.

delete5230

Vrika said:

delete5230 said:

It still amazing to me after all the videos, others are not seeing any of the HUGE flaws that should scare the hell out of them.  Some of them are technical people too, yet are blind.  In their defense they could be relying on Pre Pre Alpha.... But I don't buy into that crap... Why because it really really looks like crap and should be embarrassing to showcase that footage.

I think people are just being realistic that Pantheon is a small budget project and even in the end it will not look that good.

Vary profound,
Maybe I should be looking at it that way too.... Unfortunately many large investors will be disappointed, some are small people giving part of their pay check in belief that it will be huge. 

Lokero

I don't know, I think the majority of people that are even paying attention to Pantheon are quite comfortable with it not looking that great.  I think the majority of people willing to pledge money to an indie game like this are pretty realistic when it comes to quality.  It's NEVER going to look like a top-of-the-line game.  It's NEVER going to be flawless.

This actually goes for all the upcoming indie MMOs.  I don't think anyone who backed/follows them is really expecting them to turn out looking great.  None of them will be amazingly polished either.  They will all have flaws and bugs, though hopefully nothing game-breaking.

This isn't an issue for their core followers.  However, it will definitely turn away potential customers post-release.  The gaming masses are going to see games like Pantheon/CU/Crowfall and say "that looks like some garbage from 2009" and move on.

However, people who have played real MMOs aren't going to be that concerned over the appearance.  It's a genre where looks have rarely been impressive. 

CU, for example, is trading visual quality for large player counts.  People interested in the game are perfectly happy with that trade-off since that means more people together at once for battles.

Heh, actually, to contradict myself... Retro gaming has become rather huge lately, for some unknown reason, so maybe people won't even notice the low-quality appearance.

Adamantine

kertin said:

pff comparing this to Vanguard, Vanguard was awesome game compared to what Pantheon is going to be...I'm very surprised how much ppl tries to defend Pantheon, if you've watched VOD's , there is no single reason to believe, it's gonna be good game

Even if that was true ... Vanguard is still gone.

Amathe

Quizzical said:

A game's physics is completely independent of its graphics.  Indeed, trying to make them intuitively feel like they match each other can be very hard.  If you're falling through the terrain where you shouldn't, that's a physics problem.  Good graphics or bad graphics won't make a bit of difference there.

You know, every now and then I learn something here. Thanks for that.