Factory models
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@Ninrai these are primarily cosmetic changes. One could make a sim mod and play with the old models. But that mod would not be rated.
This feels like a "sunk-cost fallacy" to me.
There is no sunken cost dilemma. This direction started in 2021 with the aim to improve the immersion of the game for the average player. See also my second post on being game lead:
The initial prototypes were looking good, all we needed at that point was more general interest in the subject because the project is too large to tackle alone. It took a few patches, but slowly and surely people joined in and we're taking more and more steps into this direction. As we do this we found some bad apples, some bigger than others. The HQ factories are the bigger bad apples so far.
@ninrai said in Factory models:
no matter what the "community" says.
I feel slightly frustrated that you write this.
We're always open to feedback. In this particular topic I've mentioned that multiple times, let alone that we've even opened up a topic where you can give feedback on specific line ups.
@ninrai said in Factory models:
If you insist on remodeling I think it would be a good idea to lay out which options are available. Can new elements be added? Any shape? Any restrictions?
We can try to do so, but there aren't that many options in practice. Take for example the Cybran naval factory:
It already takes up the entire texture space, there's very little room for something new. Therefore the only thing we can do when we add parts is to re-use the texture space with respect to the dimensions of the individual shapes. If we don't, then they get all stretchy and things just look bad, which is exactly what happened:
This applies to essentially all factory line ups, which is exactly why the average HQ factory has so many visual issues. They re-use parts of the texture, but they forget the dimensions or what the texture represents and therefore it looks skewed and various properties (reflections, spec lighting, lighting) look off, breaking immersion.
@penguin_ said in Factory models:
Why/how is this an unsolvable problem? Why can't we just make and or generate new texture bits and pieces (or whole textures) that fit the old models?
I feel like I've already described it in this topic, but for the sake of it I did it in another topic too.
@thomashiatt said in Factory models:
We were happy with the game the way it was, and did not ask for PBR or different factory models. You go out of your way to change the game that we were content with. You think we should all go out of our way to keep up with the all the latest news and changes and beta test them for you? You could make all your changes as UI/SIM mods like a normal FAF citizen has to, but you were granted the game councilor position so you have the privilege to push whatever you want to the main game. All the criticism comes whenever you want to use/abuse that privilege.
There is no 'we' here Thomas, there is just 'you'. Stating I abuse the privilege of being game lead is pretty disgusting when I announced that these were my intentions from the very start.
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@jip said in Factory models:
I feel slightly frustrated that you write this.
We're always open to feedback. In this particular topic I've mentioned that multiple times, let alone that we've even opened up a topic where you can give feedback on specific line upsNot my intention to frustrate you. Probably more of a question how to get which information across in the future. I tried to explain how "it was written on page 76 of the proposal - how could you not have seen it?!" most likely is going to cause friction.
Alternative: have the most important/impactful changes listed at the top of your post, and even on the whats news page in the client
"New things coming up/which can be tested in FAF DEV:- Remodeled factories!
- Improved sim speed
..."
Then link to the forum and people can jump into discussion.
I wrote "community" in quotation marks bc I don't want to imply that my opinion is representing the community. Several people in this thread, however, seem to have issues with the direction taken.
I read your 2/3 post you linked to. Did not see any reference to immersion/remodeling.
The feedback options now are good. Just want to point out that I felt like initial pushback from the devs here ("you didnt read", "you didnt play FAF dev" etc. which felt like blaming, nothing constructive). The feedback "let's roll it back bc the changes caused bigger problems compared to the texture issue before" will not be considered from what I understand.
The game was shipped in 2007 - I can live with imperfect textures I barely ever see. What I need to see instantly is which factory is an HQ. The old models served their purpose just fine imo. It does feel feel a little like "the back of the fridge texture looks messed up, even if we hardly ever see it - let's remodel the entire fridge".
Fingers crossed the final result will work well.
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have the most important/impactful changes listed at the top of your post
This is of course subjective, there's no order that would satisfy everyone. I get the idea of course, but in the end we'll always have the wrong order. In this case I didn't think the factories would be such a drastic change as none of the hundreds of people that play tested on FAF Develop mentioned it.
I wrote "community" in quotation marks bc I don't want to imply that my opinion is representing the community. Several people in this thread, however, seem to have issues with the direction taken.
There are always people that consider a patch harmful. For some just the idea of change is harmful. Don't get me wrong, I take serious feedback seriously and I hope you get that impression too. But at the moment there was more backlash on removing the blinking lights then what I have perceived so far with these factory changes.
The feedback "let's roll it back bc the changes caused bigger problems compared to the texture issue before" will not be considered from what I understand.
Yep, because I'd prefer moving forwards instead of spending time to go backwards again. We're open to suggestions on how to improve the situation, and I hope you too come up with suggestions to improve it.
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@jip said in Redesign of all HQ and support factories:
(1) There are no proper upgrade animation
(2) A lot of 'HQ bits' have stretched textures
(3) A lot of 'HQ bits' have baked in ambient lighting at the wrong places
(4) A lot of 'HQ bits' have bad normal maps
These all seem like fixable problems. Why can't we just fix/adjust them as needed and use the old models?
For 1/3/4,, couldn't we just adjust or redo the HQ upgrade animations, normal maps, and baked in ambient lighting?
And for 2, couldn't we just use a larger texture size (with some not too difficult tweaks) to gain additional texture resolution space?
pfp credit to gieb
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@jip You "prefer moving forward" and it is fine by me. Even if I do like the actual HQ models I'm not opposed to replace them with something better, graphically, gamewise but also visually. The people behind the Engie mod made the effort to create true HQ models visually striking and that you could clearly identify. The changes you are proposing are bland, half-baked and not an improvement visually speaking. They don't bring anything to the game visually on the contrary. HQ should look like HQ, the old ones did, whatever their graphical imperfections, yours don't. Replace the actual HQ models with new true HQ models and keep the original game factory models for the support factories. You are doing a fantastic job on FAF and I do support your work, the direction you have taken FAF and the changes made so far and I thank you for that. This needed to be said.
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@penguin_ said in Factory models:
These all seem like fixable problems. Why can't we just fix/adjust them as needed and use the old models?
This would need a complete texture rework which is a lot of work. It's a way easier approach if we try to come up with different models. I am positive that it is possible to come up with good ideas for the HQs. Some of the old HQs are not exactly the pinnacle of 3D design even if you ignore all the technical issues. Take for example the cybran T3 navy HQ. It looks very weird.
It will be hard for people that don't know how to use 3D software to really gauge if their proposals are feasible, but in essence we can take any part of the model, duplicate it as often as we want and attach it in arbitrary rotations somewhere on the model. We can scale it a little, but not too much and ideally only the same amount in all directions. Otherwise the texture will begin to noticeably stretch.
Lastly the new geometry should come out of the ground or from somewhere in the model during the upgrade animation as we need to "store" the parts for the higher tier factories somewhere in the model or underground. -
lotta text that i aint reading but i very very much prefer the old factory looks, especially HQs
if it is not possible to make them look like that with better shading/animations, then i'd prefer there be no shading/animations and we keep the old models -
@blackyps said in Factory models:
attach it in arbitrary rotations somewhere
while possible this will cause the same lighting issues we are fixing
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well, it depends if there is inbaked ambient occlusion at that part. But yes, that can happen, that's why I said it's hard to gauge if that would be feasible as it depends on the specific part that you choose and it's easiest to gauge that by opening the unit in blender and checking which not everybody can do
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Me personally i honestly like the design of mostly aeon but i think cybran take the cake for worst hq designs besides air factory
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Idk i liked designs of old hqs more because they were super distinct, but i never looked at them closely, so i never noticed anything wrong with them. Like you dont look at buildings ever, its just waste of time, so it doesnt break my immersion in game. Benefit of old design is that you have easier time spotting hq once in eternity when you zoom in. But so far i had no issue with hq models and likely will never have them.
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I like the idea behind the new design but yeah what they lack is the ability to know if they are HQ or support facs when zoomed out.
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Could we at least have the Engie mod on the vault for legacy purposes an so the hq models are not lost forever ? AFAIK it isn't. Thanks.
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Albeit I see the frustration of some people with the similarity of the models, these changes will be better long term.
Jip and co get feedback and improve on the models, then we get better animations / looking structures and so on.
Again, I understand the frustration but every development proceess takes times and testing in production to get real data. Only so much you can do with a few people working on something new
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@femboy said in Factory models:
Albeit I see the frustration of some people with the similarity of the models, these changes will be better long term.
Jip and co get feedback and improve on the models, then we get better animations / looking structures and so on.
Again, I understand the frustration but every development proceess takes times and testing in production to get real data. Only so much you can do with a few people working on something new
How are things going to get better? Basically no one cared for a few stretched textures. Now most everyone commenting is unhappy with mutilating existing and by now familiar structures which perfectly serve the purpose of allowing to distinguish between factories.
Your comment reads like "trust the plan" - which brought us this "mess" in the first place.
I try to be cool with the new facs - yet the new Cybran factories alone (stripped off outer elements) is a visual clusterf*ck in my book.
I hate what and how things have been handled here. Including the stark push-back on here at first to then - without taking back this criticism - acknowledge that communication was not exactly stellar.I usually welcome changes on FAF, but this is something where I see no reasonable calculation in terms of pros and cons as a basis but the sheer will and determination to change a thing no matter the costs.
It's alien races, for god's sake - who cares about "stretched textures" as if there is any real logic behind it? The "immersion" tagline was newly introduced while I could not find any reference to that in older statements.
Animations? They occur ONCE in the game for the facs, visible only when zoomed in. I look at the outline of the facs ALL GAME. What a horrific trade-off."Trust the plan"
"Which plan?"
"Exactly!"(Still wishing the team success with their ideas and overall grateful for their work!)
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There's only topics for factories, but this doesn't warrant its own thread I guess so I'll just post here:
This LOD level for aeon pgens looks very strange. -
A lot of LOD1s look absurd, the closer you look you'll find that they are all over the place
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Apologies if this has already been considered @Jip but can the original texture be replaced with a higher resolution one that makes room in UV space for new HQ geometry? For example, take a 512 texture and place it top left in a 1024 canvas, divide base model UV coordinates by 2, allocate new UVs in the 0.5 - 1 range that is now available for use in the 1024 canvas. Of course that still leaves the problem of actually authoring these additional textures and my instinct is that it would involve reusing repeated patterns from the original. The problem of albedo being mixed in with the baked GI could be solved in principle with a high/low pass filter as a starting point, making a plausible albedo texture without GI contribution available for copy-paste over the new geometry, and blender can be used to provide the GI for these new elements.
Basically I'm asking if this sort of solution is acceptable from your developer perspective, fully aware that it creates work on the art side but ready to contribute. I know it doesn't address animations but could be part of the answer if you decide to iterate on HQs further.
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