First major feedback topic regarding - Mechanics -

[James Brock]

Hello everyone, this will be my first of hopefully many large topics of feedback to our wonderful developers who I have the most trust in building a very fun an enjoyable Napoleonic era game. Also keep in mind i will be updating this topic frequently with anything that has to do with 'mechanics'

To begin with here I will try to go over some topics and then try to get to all the nitty gritty stuff underneath each one so to begin with...

Line & Skirmish mode

So as you all know (my NW fans) in NW you would have your fire and melee mode. now I am here to say I want Holdfast to be a game made for only clans and very good clan mechanics, But also a very good game for people that do not have too much time on there hands and just want to have a good 'ol fun game once every so often. Meaning I want it to have great clan mechanics but people who do not want to be in anyway competitive in regiments can just have just have all the mechanics and do not have to use them in any means necessary. see NW had really good mechanics for the casual player, and right before there development ended put in just enough mechanics to make large and competitive regiments in the game possible and fun to play. Ex Banners, some classes Ranker, Officer (they could of added Cpl, Sjt for line big miss there), some general (could of expanded on the general), and some other things i may be missing. Now to cut to the chase. Im not sure how the melee and shooting are going to work (if we are going to have like a mode for that) but the idea of Line and skirmish mode would be rather simple. Line mode would have some more fancy animations that would be rather used for Regimental game play (Clans) like when the commanding officer through teamspeak would say 'Make ready!' the player would lets say right click the musket and the musket would be ready to fire the animation would make the gun go 90 degrees in front of the soilder so he is holding his gun something like this [Keep in mind this is LINE mode]

Spoiler

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Forget the 'half cock and shoulder' part though thats too much just the first firing orders. Oh, also Holdfast we need a walking and running mode just like NW, thats a must here  .

Alright now for the 'Skirmish mode' of things. I Should honestly refer to this as a 'casual' mode. because its for the players that just want to hop on to a populated server. so in casual mode the only real thing here is animation difference, this mode would not obstruct your screen as much and would have a very small perhaps speed boost when it come to getting your gun ready to fire. it would look like something like this. [This is SKIRMISH mode]

Spoiler

[close]

Also here forget the speed or anything other then the animation.

Character Stances & Animations

As I have heard it is difficult to get proper animation's in this engine or something like this, that it is difficult making them at least at takes much time, so regard this as somethings to do in the future. Here I will also incorporate the Line and Skirmish mode as well. So here I will be showing default animation stance for soldiers in Skirmish mode :
Skirmish mode
This here would be an example of a solider standing still animation (could be used for walking to)(Skirmish mode)
This would be an example of a Solider Cocking his gun (Skirmish mode).
this one here im quite sure is the default one at the moment, it would be nice to have it as the Running animation, as well as the current standing animation (Skirmish mode).

Line Mode
Keep In mind everything in line mode will have more advanced stuff, things normal player would not HAVE to use.
this is a nice standing animation that would be most likely used for ceremonial use (Line Mode).
For this one is the same as cocking the gun but would look more professional (Basically cocking the gun in an upward position as shown, Also could be used as present arms order (no cocking))(Line Mode).
This one here would be more of the Default for the Line Mode and this animation would be given for standing still as well as walking (Line Mode).
This here is a nice ceremonial animation but could also be used for walking and standing still in combat (Line Mode).






In Game Sounds
Alright time for another topic. So i went poking my head around the internet to look for some cool things the game could use with sounds. From what i heard in the trailer it sounded relatively tinny, quiet, to simplistic, so I went around and found some really nice strong, rich sounds this great game should definitely be build of. Also Please try to listen to the whole clip as there is more to it then the first 5 seconds (no spoilers this time).

Here are some really fantastic cannon, howitzer, potentially mortar sounds. Really nice descriptive video here by the way. Sorry also definitely watch this whole video.


Some nice ambient - Relatively far.


Skirmish battle


Nearby Battle - Intense


Really intense battle a little to much though.


Nice musket fire effect - could use a little more richness to it though.


Volley fire


Nice voice acting - Napoleon total war, if you are planning to use it.


Core game Mechanics

Alrighty, we are now close to the end of this unfinished topic xD, anyway this part of the conversation should of probably been the first part but oh well, its here.
So to start of here i want to summarize everything i have been speaking about and how they would actually would be implemented into the game. So in terms of actual core game mechanics I really want this game to be clan friendly, as well as being great for casual players. the casual players would have all the mechanics to use at a click of a button on their keyboard. So how would this mode work? you may ask. Well the same way shooting and melee mode worked for NW. you could have an option for the Skirm and Line mode, so if line mode is on THEN you only have all the more complex stuff given to you with other key presses on your keyboard. So basically all the extra animations i showed you would press a different key for , and Skirm mode would just disable the presses unless the Devs would perhaps like this implemented in some different way.

                    When it comes to crouching things should be said straight. you should be able to reload and fire your gun when you are crouching, it SHOULD take longer and there needs to be a separate animation for it. Sorry, I don't want my gun to be going halfway into the dirt. Also when it comes to the musket you should spawn without the bayonet you should have to put that on after; more realistic that way. Make a different animation for reloading the musket when the bayonet is on and off as well, add Immersion you guys.

                    Also please make an Implementation for a key for when regiments would come together so when they are at walk they can synchronize the footsteps. Something like this would make my heart have an increase of blood pressure for 1 year (pretend its a good thing).

                    As another, I decided to move this from the sounds section when it comes to sounds. Distance's guys, elaborate on that. In the first artillery clip I showed there, there is a really nice amount of different distances when it comes to cannons in this case. It would sound just amazing in a huge battle field when there is a distant battle going on.

                    For classes here we all want, Ranker, Private, Cpl, Sjt, SjtMaj, Ens, Lt, Cpt, Maj for each regiment so all uniforms would incorporate this. (hopefully)


Musician Incorporation

So for our final incorporation into this game is a really nice version of musicians. NW got it kinda right, you could play together in a group, but essentially what you were hearing is the exact same thing overlapping its self. in my personal opinion NW did not do a good job with the musicians, just bad job overall. Here I will show you a video of a bunch of young students playing much better than tale worlds could of imagined

- Skip to 8:50 for some good music / Skip to 12:10 for some good musket drills if your interested.

To continue on this, a good extra addition would be different octave of music or other parts entirely of the music to make it sound so good like the video showed. Also when an officer is doing firing orders for example, it would be nice for the musician to have like an option to connect with that officer in some way so when the officer make an order of some sort the drummer could follow up with a trill, as they did in the day, but in more of an automatic sense. unless the drummer has short keys so different area's of music and drill orders.




Alright i did not speak about Melee today because that deserves a thread of its own respectively and I want to thank everyone for reading this. I will be most likely updating this thread so stay posted, thank you again and please post feedback.

Cheers,
            29th Sjt James Brock.

[James Brock]

Developers, let me know what you think 

[Harris1815]

Looks Great I like your Thinking this is would be awesome in VR I mean can you imagine, but im not a developer.

[GodEmperorTitus]

Some of those diagrams looked a bit iffy to me but of course they're yank drill from the civil war. I'd be careful using those pictures. The secure arms and shoulder arms look good though.

This is what Olafson on the topic of animations so we'll just have to wait and see.

Hey guys.

I like the idea personally, I would really love to see some proper shoulder arms in the game, but there are a few problems.
About a year ago we had a shoulder arms animation, just like you requested. It looked great when standing still, but as soon as the player would move, switch weapons, go into melee mode or aim the weapon would twerk around and do all kinds of crazy stuff.
Reason for that is the engine we are developing on. It has no (direct) internal support for weapons as we use them. That caused the weapon to twerk around when going from one animation to another. We tried various solutions (or so we thought) but in the end we had to go with an animation that does not cause this problem. This is why the musket idle animation looks how it looks like today.

So I am sorry to tell you but we are probably not going to change this very soon. It is possible - But for that we need to make a lot more animations. Making animations takes rather long and is quite expensive, which is why we avoided it for now. Implementing them also takes a lot of time.
However, this does not mean that we are never going to change it (I would love to) but for now it is going to stay as it is. We will see about these animations again once we have been greenlit, so just stay tuned for updates. We will change it eventually, but I can not tell you when.

Otherwise I agree with you Brock. Having a distinction between 'realistic' and 'deathmatch' or 'competitive' an 'casual' or 'Line' and 'Skirmish' however you want to name the divide is going to be important.

[James Brock]

Some of those diagrams looked a bit iffy to me but of course they're yank drill from the civil war. I'd be careful using those pictures. The secure arms and shoulder arms look good though.

This is what Olafson on the topic of animations so we'll just have to wait and see.

Hey guys.

I like the idea personally, I would really love to see some proper shoulder arms in the game, but there are a few problems.
About a year ago we had a shoulder arms animation, just like you requested. It looked great when standing still, but as soon as the player would move, switch weapons, go into melee mode or aim the weapon would twerk around and do all kinds of crazy stuff.
Reason for that is the engine we are developing on. It has no (direct) internal support for weapons as we use them. That caused the weapon to twerk around when going from one animation to another. We tried various solutions (or so we thought) but in the end we had to go with an animation that does not cause this problem. This is why the musket idle animation looks how it looks like today.

So I am sorry to tell you but we are probably not going to change this very soon. It is possible - But for that we need to make a lot more animations. Making animations takes rather long and is quite expensive, which is why we avoided it for now. Implementing them also takes a lot of time.
However, this does not mean that we are never going to change it (I would love to) but for now it is going to stay as it is. We will see about these animations again once we have been greenlit, so just stay tuned for updates. We will change it eventually, but I can not tell you when.

Otherwise I agree with you Brock. Having a distinction between 'realistic' and 'deathmatch' or 'competitive' an 'casual' or 'Line' and 'Skirmish' however you want to name the divide is going to be important.

Thanks Titus, I really appreciate it. About the pictures used; they were the only ones that looked good that I could use, of course I dont own the pictures.
I really hope when the funds come out from release they will hire a Animator, for everything. Tbh there is so many Animations possible in a game like this it could really speed development along  .

[James Brock]

Small, Bump. More opinions welcome   

[Irahi]

It would be nice if u make such a topic regarding to cav mechanics.

[James Brock]

It would be nice if u make such a topic regarding to cav mechanics.

Oh, I will be you can be sure about that 

[SwydeBarca]

That topic is pretty old, but I'm going to comment anyway because I have nothing better to do.

I really like the idea of skirmish vs line mode. It's just another form of the hardcore mode, but I really support the idea of having an easier mode for beginnings and a more realistic mode for history nerds.

I also really like the audio footage of artillery. In my opinion, whenever a cannon is fired you should hear the sound. Even if you're on the other side of the map, you should at least hear a faint thump like in the video. Would work really well with naval too.

Speaking of naval: For classes here we all want, Ranker, Private, Cpl, Sjt, SjtMaj, Ens, Lt, Cpt, Maj for each regiment so all uniforms would incorporate this. (hopefully).
What about naval ranks?

[James Brock]

Speaking of naval: For classes here we all want, Ranker, Private, Cpl, Sjt, SjtMaj, Ens, Lt, Cpt, Maj for each regiment so all uniforms would incorporate this. (hopefully).
What about naval ranks?

IKR. 

[GovernerPancake]

Speaking of naval: For classes here we all want, Ranker, Private, Cpl, Sjt, SjtMaj, Ens, Lt, Cpt, Maj for each regiment so all uniforms would incorporate this. (hopefully).
What about naval ranks?

IKR. 

Isn't there a small issue of all regiments not keeping up with this? I've been in a lot of NW regiments and even though some have been the same nation, their rank structures have varied in line infantry from Pvt, Pfc, Kgm, Gren to things like Chosenman, Fusilier, and ofc in France CplFo and all that. Wouldn't it get confusing if a UK regiment had Cpl as an NCO then French regiment had Cpl as enlisted, yet they shared the same insignia? Just a curiosity.