Armoury

[alexbo]

Don't worry I don't mind trying new stuff. It's only still a sketch.

Just to make this clear. I work with Unvanquisehd to "simulate" a concept artist job in the industry. So please ask for as a many things you want from me. I want to make the best concepts possible and want to have as realistic as possible a work experience. So unless you push me to make poorer designs I probably won't refuse to rework concepts.

I'l also ask you. Can I put "slots" for armour and gear on one side and ammo+guns on an adjacent side?

[Gireen]

Its maybe good to get more in the detail how the armory will work.

Weapons and items are teleported into it.
How do Humans get them? I read somewhere that the armory teleports it onto the user.
With square footprint usable from every side in the same way.
Every Human will stand for a while next to it and switches instant his weapon when he buys.

The old armory doesn't show any weapons or moving parts, just a green box standing around.
Can't we have something more dynamic? Is it possible to place Weapon models ingame inside the armory and give them the same effect buildings have while constructing? Then the Armoy could have a big window where players see weapon teleporting into local storages.
Is it possible to let a blue lightspot point from the armory to a human while using it? This way it looks like the interface it projected into the faces.
Can we show the buy process like: Old weapon flashes up disappears and a light ball from the armory let the new weapon glow up.

In such a case a armory would have lenses or a sphere in the center.
Imagine this 3D Pinter in human height. Centered in the glas cube a sphere with holograms of every accessible weapon around it, glowing up from time to time.

Just a idea.

[alexbo]

Interesting points. Perhaps I should wait before going too far with my new model.

[alexbo]

Viech, should the Armoury literally have doors, or some way to open to distribute objects, or will it just beam the weapon to the character? Or Should it just have a screen to interact with it?

[Viech]

The old Armoury wasn't interactive at all. You would get into a magic range and could then buy stuff which would immediately be added to your inventory and display at your body. I think for both gameplay reasons and implementational effort we will keep it like this. This means that the player will never really interact with the Armoury. However, it is possible to fake an interaction by

• playing one generic animation and/or sound whenever a player buys anything.

• showing a particle effect at the player and/or the Armoury, illustrating the beaming process.

• drawing some energy beam between Armoury and buyer.

Note that in all these cases it isn't relevant what the player buys and it will even work when multiple players use it at the same time. In the 3D printer example, a player would get in reach and use the buy menu or a keybinding to quickly buy three items. The Armoury would then play the generic printing animation once (it starts when the first item is bought and will ignore the other two buy actions since there's already an animation running) and there might also be some beaming effect such as a small ball of light being fired at the player at the end of the (short) animation or something like that.

If you add a screen to the Armoury be aware that it will most likely be eye candy with no interactivity. However, in case we get ingame-UI support in the future (think of Doom 3, where you had these screens everywhere and your crosshair turned into a mice whenever you were close to one) we can probably put such a UI on the screen and it would serve as a third option for buying stuff, potentially displaying the same buy menu that would usually just open in the middle of the player's screen. But that's not really in reach for now.

So, to answer your question in short, the Armoury should beam stuff onto the player but it may have moving parts that will play a generic animation whenever it does so. I also like the idea of having it resemble some sort of futuristic industrial 3D printer/teleporter where stuff isn't stored but created on the fly.

[alexbo]

So the armoury could have a sort of indentation where the object is beamed and an animation would just flash in that hole/indentation (imagine a large ice cube distributor and, where you'd put your glass, is where the weapon would appear)?

[Viech]

Yes, something like that.

I guess it would be best if some element blocks (reduces) the vision into such a hole though. Maybe some teleportation/print head on a rail in front of the glow effect. It could also be behind some sort of glass. The animation could look like an inkjet moving quickly from one side to the other and back.

Maybe we can also replace the shader on the relevant entity (as soon as it appears on the player) with some teleportation effect so that it really looks like it is beamed onto the player.

[alexbo]

It's still very basic but I want to know if the basic idea is ok. ANd if you got ideas to had details let me know.

[Viech]

Yes, I think this works.

Regarding details, on the left side you could add some fancy teleportation thingy such as the round artifact on gavlig's old take on the Armoury:

On the front side, you could either make the window bigger or just draw the outlines of a bigger chamber (big enough to contain the upper half of a body armor). It could look like some sort of maintenance door with the window in the middle of it. Alternatively you could add another console with screen below the window where more detailed settings can be made (the window should move up a bit in that case).

Remember that side and front should have about equal width.

[alexbo]

Is that a better start?