It's not just the animations. Due to what we model in game (including the physics, armor and penetration) it takes awhile to set up. RO 1 tanks are very simplistic in comparison.
I'm just wondering, how much more time & resources would be available to focus on those elements if the animation & coding of the interiors (as well as possible enter/exit animations) were put on hold or scrapped for the time being?
At this stage, anything that would help speed up the process would be a good thing.
Don't get me wrong, I love the interior details and the amount of work put into the tanks, but I don't love it enough to have the design time end up being so long.
But its true isn't it? Designing new tanks and putting them on the existing infantry maps is just a waste of time,these maps won't play any differently just coz you got a new tank,and Gumrak will still be Gumrak,no matter what kind of tank you're in.
Besides a few of the existing maps being able to handle more types of vehicles (Fallen Fighters / Gumrak / Pav's & Comm's House) there are a couple of community maps out already that could really use them, especially transports..... and if transports and more vehicles were available now, I bet you $2 that many more maps would start to be worked on by the community.
Right now, there's no real point in making larger maps, because nobody wants to spend 3/4 of their playing time just walking to the combat area.
But we shouldn't be in such a circle,TWI had always intended to make new tanks,they should have been making a map or maps that make full use of them.
Wolverine who made Arad2 as a combined arms map is already working on a tank only version,but as far as i know he's the only modder interested in doing any work with maps that involve tanks.
I was starting to work on a new version of Karlovka from the mod a few months back, but things in my personal life reduced the free time I had to work on it.
But, sometime down the road, I might just grab the original Karlovka map and work on that to update it for RO2..... But it won't be the same if it doesn't have Half-Tracks.
All the more reason to try and streamline things a bit. I just worry about the posts in the modding forum where people are giving up making vehicles because the ENTIRE interior is too difficult to model off existing references. If it is possible to code the tank so that each position just has a narrow view angle in the tank (like in RO1, so only a small area of the inside of the tank need be modelled for each position) when zoomed out. Couple this with a black screen saying "moving to position X" when you would normally move about in a fully realized interior and vehicles may become less daunting to the modders from a 3D modelling, texturing and reference standpoint.
Naturally you'd need to keep the physics, armor and penetration set-up (I assume this includes things like hitboxes for the various systems in the tank). The detailed physics and damage model of RO2 is a really great thing and should not be dumbed down.
Cheers,
Fafnir_6
Aggreed on all parts and the above would work great imo.