On Rome Total War and "Realism"

[Eldroy]

Hi.

I have been watching a couple of videos of Rome Total War, Time Commanders and ........... LotR Battle for Middle Earth.

The thing that almost immediately strikes me, is that in Total War all units in a group seem to be in sync with each other. Spears sway the same way, the tails and heads of horses are synced, there is almost no indication that there are actual individuals in the group.

In LotR the unit movement seems more chaotic...... I think that is the way to go, giving a more realistic feeling to the game......... the idle units also do some moves independet from each other.

I know that the unit count in LotR is much lower, but can we expect some more chaos in the finished version of Rome TW?

Whats your opinion?

BTW. I'm sure RTW will be a great game regardless of minor faults.

[Count Fudgula]

As far as I know, LotR War of the Ring is based on Warcraft III's engine, so the individual soldiers are just that, individuals, not part of a unit so they're not going to march together one way or another.

I kinda like my troops to march in unison and not running all over the shop. When they do engage, it does get quite chaotic as things stand with MTW. I'm sure RTW will only enhance this.

Making the troops look a bit different from one another, especially the barbarians (big moustache, little moustache etc.) would be good. I saw a thing on the making of LotR The Two Towers where they were explaining how they got the CGI Uruk Hai armies to look so good. They showed a unit of Uruk's who were all identical marching together and it did look a bit odd. They then put the Uruk's through a tool which changed the length of their arms and legs and so on. This meant that the Uruk's were all still trying to go at the same speed to get to the same place, but now the different gaits caused by the slightly different sizes made them really come to life. I'm not expecting this level of uniqueness from RTW (lack of a budget of hundreds of millions of kablammos could be a major factor), but a few minor differences would be nice to see.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

Welcome to the forums Eldroy.

The in sync units make it look less realistic. I guess that the large number of men on the field is (also) responsible for the need to sync it.

Moving in sync is one thing, men in one unit also look quite similar. Same problem: you can make two different models, but hardware won't like 10,000 different ones. You can interchange parts. Instead of a red pants and a blue pants unit in the same barbarian army, you mix red and blue pants in the two units. Same for haircolor, extra sidearms, scars, size. This will also consume some resources, but the stuff is already there, so instead of modelling each individual soldier you give them/some a short 'attribute list':

-beard no
-facescar yes
-hair bald
-sidearm sword
-pants red
-mansize large

Compare the first title, Shogun totalwar, to the 'second', Medieval Totalwar. Each men in STW units looked the same. In MTW men in units have different sizes. In STW men were neatly lined up in units, MTW also makes some less ordered ones.

I haven't seen all TC movies, but I thought to see some differences between the early and the later ones. This may also depend on the type of unit. The first was a barbarian unit, quite sync and identical to my taste. The later was a Macedonian pikeunit, those looked great. The length of the pike probably makes it more appearant that individuals are doing different things, I also saw some close fights with a sword in such units. I hope that those were pikemen who dropped/lost their spear.

My guess is that the creators are aware of it and are trying things to remove the 'sync'. The large number of units doesn't make this an easy task, you need nifty tricks and they have to work in the big picture (what use are natural units if it increases the number of crashes?).

[TosaInu]

And hello Count Fudgula. That's a nice thing LOTR did there. First person shooters use the different dressing. There are a couple of models but there seem to be more because of extra details like a moustache or helmet.

[Ludens]

Quote[/b] (Eldroy @ Jan. 22 2004,11:50)]Spears sway the same way, the tails and heads of horses are synced.

IIRC correctly, one of the issues that CA has already adressed or is going to adress in the next six months, is the synchronous movements of units.
In the first episodes of TC this was indeed terrible, but in the later I didn't notice it anymore (I might have overlooked it though). CA was going to add asynchronous movements for groups (in their E3 2003 promotion video this can already be seen, but not all the things in that video will be included in the game).

Giving all the soldiers individual graphics will require enormous amounts of CPU/GPU power, given the size of the battles in RTW, so I sincerely hope this will NOT be included.

[Eldroy]

Quote[/b] (Count Fudgula @ Jan. 22 2004,08:34)]As far as I know, LotR War of the Ring is based on Warcraft III's engine, so

Hey.

Just wanted to add that LotR Battle for Middle Earth is based on the C&C Generals engine.

As for what I read here, this is going to be a hell of a game....... I sure look forward to it

[TosaInu]

Quote[/b] (Ludens @ Jan. 22 2004,08:07)]Giving all the soldiers individual graphics will require enormous amounts of CPU/GPU power, given the size of the battles in RTW, so I sincerely hope this will NOT be included.

Indeed, but if a certain graphic is there, a yes/no toggle for individual soldiers may be doable without hurting CPU/GPU (too) much.

[Eldroy]

Quote[/b] (Count Fudgula @ Jan. 22 2004,08:34)] I saw a thing on the making of LotR The Two Towers where they were explaining how they got the CGI Uruk Hai armies to look so good. They showed a unit of Uruk's who were all identical marching together and it did look a bit odd. They then put the Uruk's through a tool which changed the length of their arms and legs and so on. This meant that the Uruk's were all still trying to go at the same speed to get to the same place, but now the different gaits caused by the slightly different sizes made them really come to life. I'm not expecting this level of uniqueness from RTW (lack of a budget of hundreds of millions of kablammos could be a major factor), but a few minor differences would be nice to see.

I saw that one too, and it would indeed be the ultimate wet dream, to play that as a game..... to clearify matters, I did not mean the units to go all rambling about.

Just some minor de sync so that it doesnt seem like Caesar just woke up in the Matrix with agent Smith.

No seriously...... its just a detail, but it would be cool if they managed to do something about it.

[Count Fudgula]

Hi TosaInu, thanks for the welcome

Having more graphics options is a great idea. Some flight sims implement this really well, as they traditionally come out before the equipment needed to run them to their fullest is what most of the customers have available to them (or can afford).

I'd get very upset if I found that I had to do a major upgrade on my PC to get RTW running at all, so I think lots of options for stuff to include and exclude would be good.