[CBD-Ikariya]

I've noticed lately that many companies seem to be skimping on some basic but extremely important design priciples. Graphical and Audio feedback is absolutely essential to make things "feel" like they're doing something, but unfortunately, some games such as Age of Mythology and Generals seem to lack it.

Graphic feedback in Generals:

The one thing that irks me the most is the tank firing. The tanks experience almost zero recoil, and after firing such a massive 120mm gun, it just looks unreal to have the tank not recoil at all. If you've seen Laputa, or hell, come look at my first flash animation http://www.geocities.com/bwana1000/PreloadingTank, you'll see that a large recoil makes the tanks "feel" much more powerful and alive.

Now enough talking, to do this in Generals, set the WeaponRecoil = 12 or variations of that number for all the tank weapons in the weapon.ini. However, because the tanks have borked springs and shocks right now, you'll have to modify the locomotor else it looks like total cheese.

For all the tank locomotors, set the second part of it to resemble these settings.

AccelerationPitchLimit = 5 ; Angle limit how far chassis will lift or roll from acceleration.
PitchStiffness = 0.20 ; stiffness of the "springs" in the suspension forward & back.
RollStiffness = 0.10 ; stiffness of the "springs" in the suspension side to side.
PitchDamping = 0.4 ; How fast it damps. 0=perfect spring, bounces forever. 1=glued to terrain.
RollDamping = 0.2 ; How fast it damps. 0=perfect spring, bounces forever. 1=glued to terrain.
ForwardAccelerationPitchFactor = 0.3 ; How much acceleration will cause the front to lift, or dip for stops.
LateralAccelerationRollFactor = 0.33 ; How much cornering will cause the chassis to roll.


Now, fire up Generals, and see how much more alive the tanks "feel". A very easy to do fix, but it's amazing what a difference it makes.


Audio Feedback:

I've noticed that the sound fx in Generals are extremely good, but unfortunately, I wouldn't have known that if I didn't extract all the audio files to listen to them . Many combat sounds, such as explosion, tank fire, and machinegun impacts are too low in volume. It's important to have them not too loud to make them annoying, but currently, they are so low that it makes the fighting muffled and "dead". So DL the Soundeffects.ini I have included below, and see how much more alive the game becomes.

The Graphical feedback combined with the new Audio feedback makes the game a lot more alive, which in turn makes is so much cooler. [/url]

[DeeZire]

Excellent observations, you are absolutely right on all counts. Its the sum of all such little things that really make a difference to mod users.

The changes are not all to my liking, but they are cool none the less.

Thanks!!

[mrpoo]

the thing about tanks of today they weight up to 100 tons

if they fire there cannon its only going to wobble the tracks, its not going to look like its tipping over

with the coding you've put, the tanks look like there floating cos of the jumping about they do

[Phoib]

The recoilling is essential indeed.

Don't forget the heaviest tanks is just below the 70 tons, and the recoil of a 120mm cannon is about 150 tons...

[Flyby]

Heavy calibre guns do have an important recoil, however, if you observe some Gulfwar or Afghanistanwar footage, you'll see that the gunblast and the secondary dust wirlls it causes are also very important for the realism...