The Other Side of the Looking Glass - Friday, May 19, 2006

Message Edited by Walrus on 05.19.2006 09:27 PM

Looks great!

What did you mean with this:
I'm glad so many of you enjoyed the E3 report. As always, it was good
to show off the game to so many new people. I'm also looking forward to
the new games we had at E3 this year (along with those we haven't
announced yet ).

We as in SOE I'm assuming?

Anyways....

Very good to see that we're getting a new cinematic! I'm very excited to see what it will be like, plus the new story!

Sounds like a big update with a lot of needed bug fixes. I hope the team can continue to work this fast with upcoming content.  We need details on organization abilities!

We'll also be adding 20 additional spaces to everyone's Central Storage, to make up for the additional Abilities.

Thank you!! I will be looking forward to this patch...

It'd be awesome if they could just add like 50 more

Awesome new patch, Walrus...

But I'd be a liar if I didn't saw I'm not disappointed with the removal of the "Double-tap Roll". Though it had no gameplay value, it was something that would be cool to use for player-created videos and such.

Looks good, sad to see a novelty move like rolling go, but I can understand.  Bug fixes are nice, but I'm here for the story.  Really excited about the cinematic and missions. (we'll see how my theries have been recently)

Message Edited by ZaneZavin on 05.19.2006 09:55 PM

I guess that the total memory points that they will take are the same as is is now. And that the new style ability will require the original ability to be loaded, and vice versa. If not the last part, it's going to help my loads instead...

The ingame engine cinematics took too long to make, so they opted with these. Should be pretty sweet.

And I dont think we're getting missions with this patch btw

Yay, more work for the out-of-game ability tree on Resource! >_>

All good news.  Can't wait for the patch.  I'm a little saddened by the removal of the dive-roll.  It makes you think what kind of problems it was causing...hmmm

In our continuing desire to make Data Node Tapping worthwhile, we are increasing the $Information payout by quadrupling it.

Yes, finaly a reason to level that data mining skill. I'm just hoping it would be worth it.

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new cinematics will be done in an animated "comic-noir" style that we've been talking about.

Aww, but I loved the ingame cinimatics. You guys really pushed the evelope everytime you made. The General almost made me believe in the possiblities of vehicles in this game. However comic noire style is not a bad idea and worth a try....

Walrus your the man for being at E3; *sobs in envy*

Message Edited by Firsthorseman on 05.20.2006 01:54 AM

I love the comic book idea so much, I bet the quality of the cinematics will go up now.
Will Niobe look like Niobe again, or like the fake-Niobe she is now?

wait Im confused now on the new cinamatic format.... Is the entire cinematics going to look hand drawn like that picture he posted in Looking Glass or is it still going to actaully have color and 3D and everything....

It's going to be like that picture he has on DN1 I believe. It's all hand drawn none the less.

While I am not quite certain why/how the change to those abilities actually FIXES the style stacking exploit I'm sure you guys know what you are doing.

I've been talking about increasing central storage forever now and Rarebit said in his "Ask a Dev....." thread that it would not be that easy to do - and now you do it and we only get 20 spots? So still no way to have each and every ability in th egame AND be an efficient coder at the same time - sad.

On the other hand - new cinematic format looks great - new chapter and missions are always great - and I couldn't care less about the double tap roll being gone as long as it fixes some bugs...

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Walrus wrote:
After Update 44, all event items will grant a 10% bonus for players who posses them.

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Holy **bleep**!  My question in the Ask Rarebit thread actually got a bug fix!  I feel so...listened to.

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Walrus wrote:
In our continuing desire to make Data Node Tapping worthwhile, we are increasing the $Information payout by quadrupling it.

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And Phrog's!  Excellent!

I like the idea of having others do artwork for cinematics. Is there
any chance these "other artists" will be players themselves? Perhaps
those who have provided excellent examples of their artwork in the RSI
board? Or is there a legal reason preventing it?



I look forward to seeing the cinematics to come. Should be a fresh change.

<3

Can't wait to see it ^^

And.. :\ you're gonna make me code Data Miner Tree again

Oh man, no more dive roll



But rolling forwards up slopes was always so much fun because of the
clipping problems. I loved disappearing into the ground. And I only
figured out how to do sideways rolls a few weeks back



Oh well, if it makes your job easier I suppose. Code storage is a nice
little boost, glad to see the style stacking exploit is fixed, although
I don't really see how the new tree style will make too much difference
personally.



Now, please tell me one of the fixes you're going to give us on Monday is the Q-Gun and NPC Evade



EDIT: And at that, I think that quadrupling the info payout doesn't go
anywhere near far enough. I'd rather see something like 8-10 times as
much, especially when the 'best' datanodes is DT still only give about
2,500k each.

Message Edited by RockyB on 05.20.2006 01:37 AM

Nice update, good to see your looking at making these smaller tweaks to make the game more fun. 

BTW its probably a noob question but what is double tap rolling lol

Keep up the good work

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mitez wrote:

Nice update, good to see your looking at making these smaller tweaks to make the game more fun. 

BTW its probably a noob question but what is double tap rolling lol

Keep up the good work

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Press one of your direction buttons twice really quick, you'll roll in that direction. Sad to see it go, but if it makes life easier on your end, it's more then worth it.

And yay for stacking fixes and more code space!

Since you mentioned that you're meant to take 3 single-chevs of even level at a time, what about 2/3 chevs? What should we be expecting there?

Thanks for the update! Great to see several things fixed. Looking forward to the new style cinematics too

Infinitely grateful for more code storage, but why only 20
spaces?  I guarantee people will fill those extra 20 without even
really noticing, so while we're at it, why not give the code storage a
real boost?  Another 100 spaces or so ought to do it I think.



Let's get this right the first time and just bump it big now instead of waiting for the complaining to begin anew.

A small internet is winging its way to you as we speak Walrus. Awesome LG.

So the new cinematics are going to be like comics. I don't see how that fits in with the matrix theme but if it makes the devs lives easier thats fine but won't they at least have some colour.

Message Edited by Fractor on 05.20.2006 03:42 AM

How excellent are the new cinematics going to be!

Mega
Sin City for the win! :smileyhappy:

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Fractor wrote:

So the new cinematics are going to be like comics. I don't
see how that fits in with the matrix theme but if it makes the devs
lives easier thats fine but won't they at least have some colour.

Message Edited by Fractor on 05.20.2006 03:42 AM

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Never read the Matrix comics then?

I really wouldn't like to judge about the new cinematic style before I've seen it, but honestly, I'm very sceptic. The Animatrix was meant to be an Anime series and it was good that way. The style was quite conventional, but after all, that was exactly the intention.

However, notice that "The Final Flight Of The Osiris", the canon part of the Animatrix, the direct forerunner to "Reloaded" and the CGI-animated "Enter the Matrix", was photo-realistically CG-animated aswell, and that was the only right thing. I also wouldn't like the "cinematics" from EtM look like a cartoon.

MxO is also such a computer game. The graphics, including the whole world and all kinds of character models (guess we can let out the hacker effects, can we), are all photo-realistic, the characters we meet in critical missions are all photo-realistic. Why should the most important and authentic story medium in the game, the convention-vacant cinematics, look better as comics? I think the cinematics are way too important to change their style so drastically just because it takes developers' time. After all, that's defined after priorities -- that way, taking out the double-tap rolls and getting rid of a bug source instead of dealing with it, is entirely justifiable because it was always rather unimportant.

But the cinematics should stay somewhere at the very top of this priority list, they're movies after all -- events, criticals and all the other content in the game, no matter how good it is, is full of conventions due to the game system. The cinematics are something like an island of total authenticity to me. However, I wouldn't be concerned if it was only temporary, and as I said, I haven't seen it yet.

So, let's just wait for five days, and then I'll judge about it.

What about the neuro darts? Will anything be done to those things?

Also "Hyper Sense" is useless... no matter how much thrown resistance you're wearing or how much thrown defense you have it's useless.

Message Edited by Inguss on 05.20.2006 08:30 AM

I like everything, except the movie idea... I love and enjoy the MxO movies the way they are! This new comic book style looks kinda dumb, no offense.  It kinda looks like your trying to go for a City of Heroes approach or something.

I really like everything about this patch.  The new cinematics will be stylish instead of a clunky marrionette show.  The double tap roll is GONE! YAY! Heh... was I the only one constantly annoyed by this happening whenever I DIDN'T want it to? (**bleep** my parkinson's!)

I don't understand the style-stacking fix at all but if it fixes style stacking /thumbsup.

Good to see NPC balancing being tweaked still.  Just hope soloability isn't damaged and I also hope clothing with damage resistance isn't made mandatory by this.

As for the data mining.  Sweet.  And if the info payout doesn't seem like enough folks, DON'T WORRY!  They're working behind the scenes to figure out how bits and frags can come out of those big green buggers ;-}

Heh heh... would Data Mining be an in-character no-no for the Machinists?  I would think that would be frowned upon.... of course it hasn't been an issue before

If the cinematics are changed because it takes too much dev time than that is okay with me. I'm excited to see the new style especially because they said they can do much more with them now. Before they were restricted to using the ingame engine for the cinematics which took a sizable amount of dev time that they could presumably use to make more and better content for the game.  Perhaps this will allow them to speed up the story and the release of cinematics because it wont take as long to make? Maybe we'll get some really cool scenes in them now?

I can't really give it a thumbs down until I see it. Until then, I'll just go by what the devs said were the merits of the new system.

Looks great, thanks Walrus!

hmmm... was it that bad that the rolls had to be removed? They looked cool in Fanmovies... But if it's causing exploits, well, we'll maybe have to take it.

yeah also does this mean the story line will pick up more now cause i know were so far behind the firts year  was supose to be peace and how people ruin it somethin along those lines and were in our second year and were still in the firt part of the story

Moondog548 wrote:

The new cinematics will be stylish instead of a clunky marrionette show.

Sorry? I won't judge about the new style because I haven't seen it, and I agree that Animatrix was very "stylish". But come on, a "clunky marionette show"? I agree, the previous cinematics weren't always perfect, but ... "clunky marionette show"?? What's so bad about ingame character models and ingame world locations being used in cinematics that are supposed to play in this world and has these characters in them? Sorry, I'd rather like to see the CG method being upgraded a bit. Although, again, I believe the new style shall be of high quality, I'm just concerned about the way they fit into the game.

Oh, and as of adding new content... seriously, the cinematics are content. Photo-realistic movies in a game that continues the story of a movie series -- what does that leave to be desired?

However, especially if the current style isn't gone to never be seen again, I pretty much support this change. Especially if it looks good, I'll hardly have any complaints. But if it stays this way forever, I'm less certain...

I'll miss rolling... not that I ever really did it, and it certainly had no real use beyond looking cool, but I guess it gave me hope that movement and cover would someday be implemeneted into the ranged combat 

Nice to see code storage increased... but I'd still love to see an increase in on character storage even more.  I know I have too many clothes for my own good, but I just can't bear the thought of getting rid of more than I already have so I'm stuck with the 7 or so slots I have been able to free up 

Also nice to see another NPC balancing pass.  Not that I had an issue before, but it does show that the devs aren't just considering things "done" because they've already been rolled out.

Now for the biggie, the new cinematic style.  The game graphic ones were getting better and better each time, but I am actually looking forward to the new ones.  My only problem really is that a set style has been chosen.  The image shown looks good, and I can't wait to see what that looks like in motion, but I'm just afraid that it's a style that may not be suited to every moment that gets shown a cinema,  While I don't think it should be a requirement for each cinema to have it's own style, I think that the style shouldn't be set in stone and that if a specific cinema calls for a different style, it shouldn't just be shoe horned into this "comic noir" one.

Message Edited by ShinryuMxO on 05.20.2006 01:49 PM

For those who are disappointed with the style of the new cinematics, let's wait until we actually see it! The great thing about the Matrix franchise is that it has been done in so many different media formats. Cinema, comics, anime, video games, etc. It's just another unique perspective to view the continuing storyline of the Matrix.

Also, Rarebit said the old way of creating cinematics takes a very long time. The only reason the previous ones were released fairly quickly was because they were already completed by Monolith, SOE just had to patch them in. Now, with Paul creating the cinematics in this fashion, we can most likely see an increase in cinematics and the time we receive them. You can also do so many new and interesting things with this style that couldn't have been done with the in-game engine.

If I recall correctly it will be still pictures with captions on the bottom with the recorded audio.

I own the animatrix dvds (box set ftw) . I was never impressed with the style. It is different yes. But I wish they had done it better. To do it in black and white too? Sounds like SOE is getting lazy.

This game I once loved is now making me very sad. I got 2 months left. I hope that something big happens within those 2 months.

SOE has got to stop working on these little things and get more story driven events going (i do applaud the events that have been happening though) But the players should be able to make a difference on the storyline.

I know you guys have heard it a thousand and 2 times but its true. Get rid of the exploits sure. But NPCs not doing enough dmg?..... that kind of thing could wait.

This games kind of weird. At the low lvls (not 45-50) the game is fun and a new challenge every day. Then you hit 50 when you have every ability, any choice of clothes and can do anything. The game stops!!

/clap for the effort and the game you have made. But if this is the type of updates we will be getting in the next couple months I wont be hanging around.

Nice looking glass Walrus

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XxS3P3RxX wrote:

I own the animatrix dvds (box set ftw) . I was never impressed with the style. It is different yes. But I wish they had done it better. To do it in black and white too? Sounds like SOE is getting lazy.

This game I once loved is now making me very sad. I got 2 months left. I hope that something big happens within those 2 months.

SOE has got to stop working on these little things and get more story driven events going (i do applaud the events that have been happening though) But the players should be able to make a difference on the storyline.

I know you guys have heard it a thousand and 2 times but its true. Get rid of the exploits sure. But NPCs not doing enough dmg?..... that kind of thing could wait.

This games kind of weird. At the low lvls (not 45-50) the game is fun and a new challenge every day. Then you hit 50 when you have every ability, any choice of clothes and can do anything. The game stops!!

/clap for the effort and the game you have made. But if this is the type of updates we will be getting in the next couple months I wont be hanging around.

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/agree

Thats awesome news, the art style looks great... hopefully there will be a bit more color to it then that, but hey.

*drools*

Chapter 5....

Question: Why not take the rolling animation and make a few new emotes?

/frontroll

/backroll

/leftroll

/rightroll

<= definately looking forward to the new cinematics. And cant wait to see this 'plot twist' in C5.1

Message Edited by AmbrielSyntax on 05.20.2006 06:11 PM

What I want to know, is as we now have 2 abils to level simultaneously, is their levelling cost halved?

  Anyone else think of this?

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Ntrails wrote:

What I want to know, is as we now have 2 abils to level simultaneously, is their levelling cost halved?

  Anyone else think of this?

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Someone did....

Walrus wrote:

"The memory and leveling costs for these separated Abilities have been divided between the two. So loading and leveling both with be the same as with the current, single Abilities."

Yes. Oh yes:







That's going to be extremely cool.



And with double-tap rolling gone... Can we get a /cartwheel emote? Hehe.

I officially can't wait for the weekend to end. Man, I never thought I'd say those words in the same sentence.

Everything about this patch sounds cool. What kinds of problems were the dive rolls producing?