Keeping the science in sci-fi

[Omnires]

Did you ever do the quests in Firefall where you dressed up as a NPC bandit and used their weapons?

Those bandits have clip sizes of ~9000 rounds on their rifles. They are just hard coded to force reload after firing a certain amount of rounds, even though they did not need to. This is because NPCs are designed to emulate player limitations, but ultimately have cheat weapons as sometimes the AI server messed up and enemies would get stuck in a state of never being able to reload.

Funny thing though, the reason why bandit grenadiers were the strongest bandit enemy to fight is because they get unmodded player weapons.




In its most basic form, its a case of gameplay and story segregation.

And that is the main reason for this thread. To focus on the science on to help better the immersion of the game. The other part is to help minimize any dissidence the might come up between the lore of the game and the gameplay itself. So throwing out ideas having the sci-fi community try and solve valid problems that might come up in the game is a good idea.

Plus I never liked the idea that all NPCs have over 9000 rounds of ammo per magazine because that means NPCs follow a different set of rules from the players. Do you know one of the main reason why the games FromSoftware make always do so will? It is because in their games the NPCs have to follow the same rules as the player. And game world is built around this idea of everyone has to follow the rules. There would be no risk of the A.i. forgetting to pretend to reload if the NPCs had the same ammo limits as players. And since there is no difference between the weapons the players and the weapons the NPCs use it means they take the weapons from NPCs and use them.

Hmm... if we can't use the weapons of NPCs we killed we can just say something like all the weapons have something like a DNA lock on them, so only the person who gun is linked to can fire it.

Relevant:

I loved that show. And it had so many hidden jokes in that shows that only people who know about real science got. It was a show I could watch with my friends and laugh at on a basic level, but also laugh at on than intellectual level because of real science problems they explored.

 

[TankHunter678]

And that is the main reason for this thread. To focus on the science on to help better the immersion of the game. The other part is to help minimize any dissidence the might come up between the lore of the game and the gameplay itself. So throwing out ideas having the sci-fi community try and solve valid problems that might come up in the game is a good idea.

Plus I never liked the idea that all NPCs have over 9000 rounds of ammo per magazine because that means NPCs follow a different set of rules from the players. Do you know one of the main reason why the games FromSoftware make always do so will? It is because in their games the NPCs have to follow the same rules as the player. And game world is built around this idea of everyone has to follow the rules. There would be no risk of the A.i. forgetting to pretend to reload if the NPCs had the same ammo limits as players. And since there is no difference between the weapons the players and the weapons the NPCs use it means they take the weapons from NPCs and use them.

Hmm... if we can't use the weapons of NPCs we killed we can just say something like all the weapons have something like a DNA lock on them, so only the person who gun is linked to can fire it.

The reason why there was risk of the NPCs forgetting to reload was that the AI server that controlled them would start breaking the more NPCs it had to spawn and control. This is part of why the player counts for a particular shard were hardcapped rather low compared to other MMOs.

It used to be in the past, back during CBT, people would drop tons of thumpers at once in a coordinated effort to break the AI server. The result? People could drop the biggest thumpers, the AI server would not spawn mobs, and mobs already on the map were frozen. People did this abuse to get lots of resources with no threat at all.

Its not about the NPCs having the same ammo limits as the player. Its about understanding that there are technical limitations that sometimes means you have to cheat a little in order to maintain some form of threat to the player.

By the way, the bandit grenadiers who had player grenade launchers were also the ones most affected by the AI server breaking. Losing the ability to attack whenever they lost the ability to reload.

 

[DARKB1KE]

When the character runs and shoots, if they're running away from their target, the character turns their head back, pulls up one arm, if they're with a pistol or a weapon that can be fired with one arm, and they keep shooting like that. If they don't completely turn towards an enemy, they turn from the waist and aim down at some critter nipping at their leg. Never saw anything like that before. And it's something so simple.

Have you played Uncharted before? That game has similar movement for shooting behind you as you run.

 

[MattHunX]

Have you played Uncharted before?

No. That series never peaked my interest.

That game has similar movement for shooting behind you as you run.

Well, I should rephrase what I said. I haven't seen such animation in an MMO title, then.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

You, have of points there. But you can have one side energy output for portals. So you can have a massive device inside a safe place (like a warehouse in a military base) that is both powering the portals and giving you the items you want. If it is a large base with a spaceship power reactor it could open and many portals at once and supply many different people things at once.

There is problems with this idea. Like what if they give you the wrong items or they have to close the portals for maintenance on the device (so you can't change weapons or get more ammo that way). But you can also make that part of the story. Like what if the aliens find out where all the teleported stuff goes and try to act that place.

that also brings up the question why that game has different weapons.
If you are using portals to send ammo to guns then wouldn't it be more efficient to have one weapon that fires an infinite variety of ammo?

 

[Pandagnome]

played a game called shatter and thought what if the projectile could be repelled by magnets and attracted back to reuse it

 

[Omnires]

The reason why there was risk of the NPCs forgetting to reload was that the AI server that controlled them would start breaking the more NPCs it had to spawn and control. This is part of why the player counts for a particular shard were hardcapped rather low compared to other MMOs.

It used to be in the past, back during CBT, people would drop tons of thumpers at once in a coordinated effort to break the AI server. The result? People could drop the biggest thumpers, the AI server would not spawn mobs, and mobs already on the map were frozen. People did this abuse to get lots of resources with no threat at all.

Its not about the NPCs having the same ammo limits as the player. Its about understanding that there are technical limitations that sometimes means you have to cheat a little in order to maintain some form of threat to the player.

By the way, the bandit grenadiers who had player grenade launchers were also the ones most affected by the AI server breaking. Losing the ability to attack whenever they lost the ability to reload.

Yea, but I like the change of the game in the form of the enemy A.I. following the same rules as the players and adapting to different things. For example, in games where it is possible to disarm the enemy, the A.I. will switch from ranged combat to melee because they can't use their guns any more or they will run around looking trying to get help while looking for a new weapon. If the A.I. is good enough you don't need to add in little cheats to make them challenge the players. I'm in favor of the mantra "Fight smarter, not harder.".

that also brings up the question why that game has different weapons.
If you are using portals to send ammo to guns then wouldn't it be more efficient to have one weapon that fires an infinite variety of ammo?

Truth is there is really no reason they can't do that outside of different guns having different calibers, rate of fire, accuracies, effective ranges, and max ranges. A gun can fire any round as long as it is the right size and shape to be fired from it. And if we are talking about things like 3D printing ammo, then there are no limits as to what we can make the guns fire. And so it all comes down to personal choice in how you want to fight. This why in some games the type of ammo you use matters almost as much as the type of bow, crossbow, and gun you use.

played a game called shatter and thought what if the projectile could be repelled by magnets and attracted back to reuse it

That could be possible when we talking about things like energy shields around players and enemies. If you know what wavelength their shields are on you can make rounds that pass through them like they were not there, be drawn to them like they were a giant magnet, and so on. This why I'm in favor of adding things like enemy scanning, research, and reverse engineering to the game. The more you learn about the enemy the better you are able to fight them because you know their weakness. "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

 

[EvilKitten]

After reading through this thread I feel the need to inject a word of caution. It is very important from a sci-fi perspective to not allow the cart to lead the horse. By this I am referring to creating science to fit the technology desired. Science drives technology, not the other way around. Any design consideration should always fit into the following three considerations:

1. Is it possible. (science)
2. Is it practical. (engineering)
3. Is it cost effective. (economics)

(Remember this is all being driven by corporations)

 

[Omnires]

After reading through this thread I feel the need to inject a word of caution. It is very important from a sci-fi perspective to not allow the cart to lead the horse. By this I am referring to creating science to fit the technology desired. Science drives technology, not the other way around. Any design consideration should always fit into the following three considerations:

1. Is it possible. (science)
2. Is it practical. (engineering)
3. Is it cost effective. (economics)

(Remember this is all being driven by corporations)

This is true. But until we know more about the game's lore and background we can't fill in some of those blanks yet to narrow down the viable options.

Although some things are easier to account for. Because if it is something that exists in real life now, then odds are it'll will still exist in the future in some from or another. For example, pilots in tanks and aircraft have night vision, thermal vision, and targeting computers to help them both navigate as well as to aid in combat (both to find targets and avoid damage). We can also make reasonable leaps in technology and computing do to the fact that it takes place in the future. So things like 3D printing will become better. What we would call "super computers" now, will be less than basic in the future (fun fact, a simple basic lap now has more power than the super computer that first sent men to the moon). And if you are a race able to travel between stars at a reasonable rate with the ability to terraform other worlds than your race has to have a large number of resources to start with. The question is more of a matter of how said resources are distribution and use to/by the masses.