Tanks interiors

[Punky]

Hello,

There will be Tank interiors modeled ?

[ActionScripter]

Originally posted by Pnuky:

There will be Tank interiors modeled ?

No.


Edit: since this thread is still getting traffic and comments almost a year later, let me lay out some explanation in the pinned post and hopefully stop the hot takes rolling in.

The short answer is that we believe the main focus during gameplay should be on the optics, including periscopes and commander sights in the future. Interior modeling would be a massive waste of resources for the sake of allowing players to look around at an interior for a few seconds.

Longer answers:

- We're aware that there are other games with tank interiors.
- We're aware that some people want tank interiors.
- Vehicle interiors take dozens to hundreds of hours to research and model, per interior.
- Interiors would mean we'd have to pay professional hard surface artists for all those hours and take them away from other, likely more important, work for the duration.
- We're aware that "the modding community" could make interiors.
- We're not interested in trying to vet community submitted models or attempt to make them match our art standards and style.
- The game will not always only have gunner's sight and exterior views as choices. In the future, we will introduce better observation views, such as the commander's cupola periscopes and independent optics. When crew are buttoned up, they will be able to view their surroundings through these means. The "interior" visible from these views will likely be a dark void. Crew station implementation (see the roadmap[gunnerheatpc.com]) will likely coincide with this.
- If you are accustomed to a full detail "cockpit view" in simulator games, we hope you'll be open-minded and try our hybrid approach. If this is a dealbreaker, you are free to play a game that better suits your tastes.

I hope this clears things up.

[Makko]

To elaborate a bit, it's been discussed a lot and the problem is that to do quality interiors it takes a surprisingly big amount of work, and 99% of the time you as a player are not looking around the interior, but looking out your sight or periscope.

It could be done, but it would take a lot of man hours away from the rest of the game for something most people wouldn't really care about and would make the rest of the game worse as a consequence.

For a small team with limited resources it just isn't a justifiable use of their time when you compare it to the all other things they could add in with the same work.

[Voidhunger]

I dissagree, IL2 team is also small and they have made interiors to all tanks.
Minimum is the Comander and driver.
Seriously, if you are making something realistic, you must have interiors, without it its Warthunder or similar games. I will never buy tank sim without interiors.

Just do 2 tanks with fully modeled interiors, damage model and strong singleplayer campaign.
No need to have dozens of tanks.

[Gerd]

Originally posted by Voidhunger:

I dissagree, IL2 team is also small and they have made interiors to all tanks.
Minimum is the Comander and driver.
Seriously, if you are making something realistic, you must have interiors, without it its Warthunder or similar games. I will never buy tank sim without interiors.

Just do 2 tanks with fully modeled interiors, damage model and strong singleplayer campaign.
No need to have dozens of tanks.

Well, that's how opinions diverge. I'm glad the game doesn't have interior views. In my opinion, the development is going in the right direction, I have always been waiting for such a game.

I wouldn't buy the game if it was too arcadey or simulation heavy. The game nails just the right balancing act between arcade and simulation.

[Bobby]

Steel Fury Kharkov 1942 models very nice interiors inc lighting and animated crew.
Steel Armour: Blaze of War models the best interiors inc crew (that can be injured and/or killed) -along with correct internal labelling, moving breech, shells in racks etc. Along with full going to the stow position and looking up and out of hatches.
Shame.
I will still follow this to see how it develops

[Gerd]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Steel Fury Kharkov 1942 models very nice interiors inc lighting and animated crew.
Steel Armour: Blaze of War models the best interiors inc crew (that can be injured and/or killed) -along with correct internal labelling, moving breech, shells in racks etc. Along with full going to the stow position and looking up and out of hatches.
Shame.
I will still follow this to see how it develops

The games you list have one thing in common. They are insanely bulky and awkward to use. There are tons of keyboard commands that you have to remember and you have to constantly switch between positions in the tank.

For most of the people, including me, those games aren't fun to play, because they're to bulky to use. I understand that such games have a small fan base, but most players are just put off.

Gunner, HEAT, PC! is going in exactly the right direction. Simple and straightforward operation and realism only where it makes sense and is fun to play.

It's the same in the military flight sim genre. Today, there are only hardcore simulations like DCS, or full arcade style games like Ace Combat. There's nothing in between.

Those games are missing what made the 90s flight sims so fun: the right mix between realism and gameplay. 90s games were so much better than anything today.

[Bobby]

Steel fury isn’t complicated at all. It’s the same F1-F# for driver - commander. Insert/delete for views and b&n to change ammo type. X/C to change reticule brightnesses. F8 for map. Backspace to zoom in. And a few customary keys to suit yourself inc vectors to show what hit you or the enemy, what penetrated, ricochet and calibre.
The thing is you can play this *without* ever seeing the inside of the tank if you so wish! The choice is yours.
You are 100% correct though as you are from my era of the 90’s Jane’s ,DID, Microprose, Empire/Rowan,DI. Remembering a million keys was fun back then. Less tv,no mobiles.

The thing I love though about SF and SABOW is the ballistics is mental! AP richochets off frontal armour climbing miles into the sky, HEAT gives a satisfactory ‘thump’ and explosion. Of course there’s ground troops which actively work with the tank platoon and engage entrenched troops, AT guns. There’s a healthy mix between all these games. I haven’t the time nor effort to play things with a million key strokes, but SF and SABOW are quite easily manageable.
I want realism more than keys, if HEAT doesn’t model round damage, then I will be disappointed. Not every round fired penetrates, nor ‘kills’ a tank or crew.

Think of it like playing a flight sim. If it didn’t have a cockpit, then it wouldn’t be a flight sim. Regardless if you didn’t do anything in that said cockpit. Mouse pans look left/right over wings padlock target. Etc.
In these tank sims you have hatches to open and look out, you mouse pan (if you want) to see your crew and working breech/loader. You can open slit guards or close them and look through periscope views in the heat of battle. If your hatch is open, the enemy can lob grenades into your tank. It’s total brilliant fun and unlimited replayability. To be hatched-up is immersive as hell! To hear rounds richochet off your tank while your in this steel box really hits home what these guys went through in WW2 and later. If I look in my tank - with a press of ‘insert’ I can see if my crew is wounded and incapacitated. I can then switch immediately to his position-ie, loader,gunner. And keep going.
You are looking too deep into the complexity of these though. Unlike a flight sim there’s just a few basic buttons. What’s added though is the ability to mount/dismount troops with one button, put a waypoint on the map, with one mouse click and the rest is up to you and your tank. The other tanks/vehicles and troops will act like real, without your input.
For example drag a waypoint to an AT emplacement and slow or stop your tank and the AI troops will engage the unprotected enemy mounting it and then you can kill MG nests that threaten your troops. It’s just brilliant fun! Hundreds of missions dozens of tanks and unlimited replay.

[Voidhunger]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Steel fury isn’t complicated at all. It’s the same F1-F# for driver - commander. Insert/delete for views and b&n to change ammo type. X/C to change reticule brightnesses. F8 for map. Backspace to zoom in. And a few customary keys to suit yourself inc vectors to show what hit you or the enemy, what penetrated, ricochet and calibre.
The thing is you can play this *without* ever seeing the inside of the tank if you so wish! The choice is yours.
You are 100% correct though as you are from my era of the 90’s Jane’s ,DID, Microprose, Empire/Rowan,DI. Remembering a million keys was fun back then. Less tv,no mobiles.

The thing I love though about SF and SABOW is the ballistics is mental! AP richochets off frontal armour climbing miles into the sky, HEAT gives a satisfactory ‘thump’ and explosion. Of course there’s ground troops which actively work with the tank platoon and engage entrenched troops, AT guns. There’s a healthy mix between all these games. I haven’t the time nor effort to play things with a million key strokes, but SF and SABOW are quite easily manageable.
I want realism more than keys, if HEAT doesn’t model round damage, then I will be disappointed. Not every round fired penetrates, nor ‘kills’ a tank or crew.

Think of it like playing a flight sim. If it didn’t have a cockpit, then it wouldn’t be a flight sim. Regardless if you didn’t do anything in that said cockpit. Mouse pans look left/right over wings padlock target. Etc.
In these tank sims you have hatches to open and look out, you mouse pan (if you want) to see your crew and working breech/loader. You can open slit guards or close them and look through periscope views in the heat of battle. If your hatch is open, the enemy can lob grenades into your tank. It’s total brilliant fun and unlimited replayability. To be hatched-up is immersive as hell! To hear rounds richochet off your tank while your in this steel box really hits home what these guys went through in WW2 and later. If I look in my tank - with a press of ‘insert’ I can see if my crew is wounded and incapacitated. I can then switch immediately to his position-ie, loader,gunner. And keep going.
You are looking too deep into the complexity of these though. Unlike a flight sim there’s just a few basic buttons. What’s added though is the ability to mount/dismount troops with one button, put a waypoint on the map, with one mouse click and the rest is up to you and your tank. The other tanks/vehicles and troops will act like real, without your input.
For example drag a waypoint to an AT emplacement and slow or stop your tank and the AI troops will engage the unprotected enemy mounting it and then you can kill MG nests that threaten your troops. It’s just brilliant fun! Hundreds of missions dozens of tanks and unlimited replay.

+1

[Baylock]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Think of it like playing a flight sim. If it didn’t have a cockpit, then it wouldn’t be a flight sim. Regardless if you didn’t do anything in that said cockpit. Mouse pans look left/right over wings padlock target. Etc.

Hard, hard disagree here. It's a very nice element of flight sims, one we've grown accustomed to. But the simulation is in the math behind the flight model. The cockpit view is a concept of immersion but is, in fact, entirely optional. It allows for greater simulation by allowing the handling of functions manually within the cockpit, but again is not required.

Tank internal views is far, far less required. The primary concerns are accurate internal compartment modelling for damage location and type purposes. Internal views, once again, enhance immersion but are even less important than a plane cockpit. These elements are best left to game that are also about simulating crew, and such games tend to hard simulators, that priority realism over fun, and thus endear themselves to very niche audiences- and as mentioned by another user, take much longer due to all this modelling, which brings its own host of possible bugs to fix.

Both of those games you mentioned are also older, and belong to an era of game development just before what I'd call the modern era of incredibly low patience for release schedules (and to a lesser extent, learning how to play them). From a practical standpoint even not considering anything else about the game, ditching interiors as a requirement from the get-go immensely speeds development up, helping GHPC survive in this hellishly impatient era. (Which is always ironic to me, as someone with ADHD that is far and away more patient than neurotypicals are these days)

And with that in mind we can take your own words: "The thing is you can play this *without* ever seeing the inside of the tank if you so wish! The choice is yours."

And offer the counterpoint of "If it's optional, and it is a long process that hamstrings development, the lack of it is not a detriment to the majority of players since it is not a requirement of the medium."

Given the dev response was a firm no, it's unlikely but all the same, the potential is there post-release for interiors to be on the docket. (it would likely depend entirely on popularity- WoWS added subs despite for most of its existence the answer to 'subs? was a hard no, and Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought has recently been spotted with a submarine counter on the campaign level, indicating a possible move towards them from their former stance)

[Bobby]

Of course it's a dev's choice, but it's also mine and others. I played the HEAT demo and found it quite strange (yes it's early) but switching from an external top tank view to Gunner reticule was quite disorientating. I also found switching weapons clunky -in the games i played, the left mouse fires and right mouse fires coax. or Spacebar fires and Q fires coax. I don't know if these will be config? I can't play with those.
There's also no front tank indicator -which internal views give and also gives the player more situational awareness in the heat of battle.
Also how on earth can you input range to a target if you don't get a 'call from the commander'? I found myself just manually aiming the gun over targets and guessing. Will this be addressed? It played like an arcade game BattleZone 98/incoming (it has space tanks exactly like the views in this for eg. just a gun on the end.
It's got potential but sims have lots options and not having the ability to 'cover' your tank 360 is quite narrow in the game-play dept. It's not got a long attention if it doesn't fill gaps.
I hope it does.
The other thing which has me watching this is 'infantry' If there's M113's and BMPs etc are they going to have troops deployed on the battlezone? If not why bother with them.
In the demo, they 'charge' off headlong into suicide against MBT, why??? They contain no infantry and race ahead of you and by the time you and your tank(s) get there they are already getting engaged.
Anyway, we take on board criticism as players and hope the dev's do and try and address these imbalances between tank sim/game/arcade shooter. We're not asking for the world.

[Baylock]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

I played the HEAT demo and found it quite strange (yes it's early) but switching from an external top tank view to Gunner reticule was quite disorientating.

I'm guessing you have never particularly played many FPS' or other games in that vein, where switching to a full scope has historically been done in a snap for much of the genre's life, which would make this second nature. I could only ever see snap view switching being disorienting to someone who has exclusively played immersion-based simulations, and not games. (Not knocking them, but to each their own.)

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

I also found switching weapons clunky -in the games i played, the left mouse fires and right mouse fires coax. or Spacebar fires and Q fires coax. I don't know if these will be config? I can't play with those.

Square brackets for weapon swapping is a bit clunky but you can change that in Input -> Adjust Controls -> Vehicle tab. The controls feel messy across the board but I also haven't done sim games in awhile and it's likely just adjustment time, the only bit that truly feels like pure wonk is hold and drag to aim, which feels unnatural with a mouse. I feel like disallowing mouse DPS to affect aim would be fine, and coupling that to RMB as a toggle between gun aim and headlook modes. That'd be the only overt change I'd ever like to see thus far, the controls themselves are adjustable naturally.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

There's also no front tank indicator -which internal views give and also gives the player more situational awareness in the heat of battle.[/quote]

Um, what's this then, if not an indicator of where the gun and hull are pointing relative to each other?[cdn.discordapp.com]

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Also how on earth can you input range to a target if you don't get a 'call from the commander'? I found myself just manually aiming the gun over targets and guessing. Will this be addressed? It played like an arcade game BattleZone 98/incoming (it has space tanks exactly like the views in this for eg. just a gun on the end.

I suggest looking at the GHPC site- the VERY FIRST thing I did was look at how to use every single tank, which shows exactly how to rangefind in the absense of a laser rangefinder- the soviets tanks in particular have a nice stadiametric rangefinder built into the sight itself. The M60A3 unfortunately only has a laser rangefinder (E) for this purpose.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

It's got potential but sims have lots options and not having the ability to 'cover' your tank 360 is quite narrow in the game-play dept. It's not got a long attention if it doesn't fill gaps.

What do you mean by "Cover your tank 360"?

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Anyway, we take on board criticism as players and hope the dev's do and try and address these imbalances between tank sim/game/arcade shooter. We're not asking for the world.

Addressing imbalances between tank sim/game/arcade shooter? GHPC was not advertised as a straight tank sim, but a blend between a hard sim and the more arcade-y feeling of, say, War Thunder, likely for the purposes of gameplay over the fun-killing properties of overrealism. There's a point at which player criticism may be well-intentioned, but a failure to grasp the intended scope of the game renders it very much not constructive criticism, even if it isn't actively hostile or rude. It's simply not relevant to the stated end goal of the project.

[Baylock]

Just to preface this, it's much easier if you reply using quote blocks
i.e. I use "{ quote=Bobby the Zebra;4408466785405044778 }{ /quote }" to quote you

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Big issue. In FPS the body (yours) doesn’t keep moving with momentum when you come off the AWSD keys, however the tank happily trundles along driverless when you switch to gunner view and some bright spark made the gun barrel go up and down with the same movement keys as driving it! AWSD.

Uh? The turret is moved in the public GHPC demo by holding RMB and moving the mouse. If you've switched it to WASD for turret movement, that's a PBCAK issue since you know that's how the tank drives.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

So when I jump to gunner, I want to tell the AI driver to stop! How?

Method 1: Stop holding movement keys. Natural consequence.
Method 2: Don't turn on cruise control in the first place, then follow Method 1. Natural consequence.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

This is bonafide gameplay issues.

Either you're on some ancient demo version or you've changed the controls yourself and have blamed it on the devs, and in either case, this is not a dev issue. I can reproduce neither of these scenarios on Public build 20220206. There is, as far as I have ever seen, only an AI driver if you set waypoints. You're in full control of gunnery and driving. This isn't SA:BW.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Lase with E key, I thought it was a toggle. It should have explained that.

Toggle? You press E and it lases, and holds that distance until you lase again. It functionally is a toggle. If you mean "It should have explained it is not 'toggle to actively lase 24/7' then it does! The control does not state "Toggle Active Lase" and thus is easily construed to be exactly what it says on the tin.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Here’s another clever one from SABOW. While in the T-62, using mouse -as I said- controls gun and optic view. Pressing the middle mouse button while aiming at target -still using the mouse- enables instant lase of the target and range input into the FCR. Steam doesn’t like F.C.r Then fire with space bar and the left mouse fires coax. Right mouse follows target, without lagging. Rolling mouse wheel changes range input manually. Depending on what sight you use.

Haven't tried it myself but as MWheel Up and MWheel Down are two separate controls registered by any sane operating system, you should simply be able to rebind manual range control to that. I will reiterate, however, that I can confirm as of public build 20220206 that the mouse controls turret movement via press-and-hold RMB while moving mouse. Lase in the M1P and M60A3 also dumps lase data directly into the fire control system and automatically adjusts aimpoint to that range. These are explained on the website in full.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

In the M60, tank commander (F7) has the coincidence range finder, which combines accuracy with speed in determining range. Look in sights - V key, switch to the range finder - Z and C, look closer - Backspace. Switch to partial or full control of fire from the commander's place (marked icon) - key 5. By rotating the mouse wheel or by pressing Insert and Delete keys (hold Shift for larger steps) merge two target images, the range to the target will be determined automatically.

Won't comment on control salad because SA:BW is not GHPC and thus how SA:BW works is utterly irrelevant to GHPC. However, in GHPC there does appear to be a control to activate commander hunter killer mode, although I'm not sure if this is fully implemented or I've just never figure it out properly.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

As for my ‘360’ statement, I meant the tank crew (whether they exist in the demo?) don’t give you a 360 degrees awareness of possible threats.

Ah, makes sense but then again, GHPC is not being billed as a full on tank simulator, hence the third person view. It is made with a specific blend of realism and gameplay that avoids the trope of Realism Is Not Fun as much as possible, do remember this. You're also not in the tank and thus, if your unit dies, you do not die- and this is the most massive breach of immersion you can get, so this line of discussion is dead in the water.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

The text lower left of screen is minute! I couldn’t even read it. Wrong colour, wrong position and too much info. Same for top right? Something was going on there also but couldn’t read it.

Looks pretty clear to me.[cdn.discordapp.com] Though I will say that the top right being red (not shown) doesn't mesh with a lot of backgrounds. (The top right is what your shot penetrated, btw)

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

One thing to remember. Regardless of what you are saying about being simple - it’s not. Gunner HEAT. Is still modelling ballistics and requires you to lase/lead and input range. So to omit basic driving,gunner,commander positions in GHEAT could easily have been done. The game has tremendous potential, but could be ruined by its ‘arcade’ references.

Well I regret to inform you that this appears to be the intended direction of the game. A comparison to WoT is horrifically misleading as WoT utilizes an HP system and a heavily edited and simplified armour layout. A few arcade elements that are designed to eliminate anti-fun overrealism do not make GHPC, WoT, full stop.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Then they go “there’s no MP” and the interest goes out the window.

There is MP. It's just not here yet, as GHPC is still in alpha. Anyone saying this comes off as the kind of people who buy into Star Citizen and complain about features that are coming for release but they don't like yet they had all the time in the world to research. It's just sheer ignorance either out of genuine laziness or a deliberate attempt to make the game out as something it is not. I'll repeat myself: GHPC is very assuredly planned to have MP. We just live in an era of impatient CoD kiddies who don't grasp what an alpha or demo actually is.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

Just you have a better control and view from your tank in those games.

Subjective.

Originally posted by Bobby the Zebra:

In the campaign in SABOW your crew can repair tracks, if the crew is incapacitated and the driver is still alive, he will try and drive the tank back to safety releasing smoke. So that the tank can be (attempted) repaired and ready for the next phase of the campaign/battle.

SA:BW is a completed game. GHPC is not. Comparing these two like this is disingenuous at best, even if you mean well. This is what I mean when I talk about living in an era of CoD kiddo impatience. [/quote]

[Bobby]

You know, i've been away from my PC for a while and i've just found out that i had two conflicts within the default settings -My HOTAS and Gamepad where causing control issues....
SO i take this moment to wholeheartedly apologise for sound and acting like a complete and utter arsehole in this thread. Once i removed the controllers and used keyboard and mouse *then* set up my controls the game worked perfectly! So, once again i apologise.

This is now bloody good fun!!

[Baylock]

Originally posted by Bobby:

You know, i've been away from my PC for a while and i've just found out that i had two conflicts within the default settings -My HOTAS and Gamepad where causing control issues....
SO i take this moment to wholeheartedly apologise for sound and acting like a complete and utter arsehole in this thread. Once i removed the controllers and used keyboard and mouse *then* set up my controls the game worked perfectly! So, once again i apologise.

This is now bloody good fun!!

Ha, that'll do it- lotta games wonk out like this, that would explain a LOT xD

[Bobby]

Originally posted by Alzeid Baylock:

Originally posted by Bobby:

You know, i've been away from my PC for a while and i've just found out that i had two conflicts within the default settings -My HOTAS and Gamepad where causing control issues....
SO i take this moment to wholeheartedly apologise for sound and acting like a complete and utter arsehole in this thread. Once i removed the controllers and used keyboard and mouse *then* set up my controls the game worked perfectly! So, once again i apologise.

This is now bloody good fun!!

Ha, that'll do it- lotta games wonk out like this, that would explain a LOT xD

Sorry once again.
You know there’s some really nice touches in this. I moved up to a ‘dead’ M113 and realised weight was modelled as well - shoving it took real engine power! Then to top it off I fired a point blank ♥♥♥♥ at it and promptly damaged my main gun!! It wouldn’t fire after that.
Nice touches 👏
The other one was another kill but with a ‘slow burn’ and I slowly drove up to it and heard the small calibre ammo cooking off - popping and banging. That was really acoustically well done.
Yep, it’s definitely on my wishlist now

Cheers