Some ideas

[Axel2003]

This example modern self-propelled howitzer

049050052055049049.jpg

[Olrox]

Well, a strategy game requires more than making the units similar to what their real counterparts are. Because you see things from a bird's view 90% of the time or so, you need to be able to distinguish units efficiently, or you'll be commanding units that you don't know the qualities at a glance.

In fact, it is a real challenge to produce models that can fulfill the necessary roles of a good design for a RTS game unit. Because you have to place everything on balance, and Warzone happens to be a bit more challenging than the usual judgement of quality.

Basically, we must mantain a good aesthetical quality for the model, otherwise people just won't like them - aesthetics are important, sure of it, and speaking of a game, it turns out to be simply crucial. But also, it is very important that the model have a good functionality. It must be efficient in what regards identifying specific models and easily relating those with a set of qualities, otherwise the player will be stuck with a bunch of pretty units that, he doesn't know, what are capable of.

Warzone's graphic engine is outdated and restricted in several ways, therefore models can't have too much geometric details, otherwise they will potentially slow down the game, cause lag or something like that, on any computer - no matter how powerful it is, as it is a limitation of the engine itself. I myself tested that already, and even though we want and are able to make more detailed models, we are stuck with some challenging limits.

To measure all of that and produce something balanced is an intricate proccess, anyone who did so already in a true way knows that. Producing artistical content for a game requires skill, or the results will be bad most of those three aspects I've mentioned - it is unavoidable. If it is skillfully made, it can still be unbalanced if the proper attention wasn't given to the three needs, in this case it will be good from one or two sides, but unnefective and frustrating from the other side.

Now, to assemble this jigsaw, what I mean is: If we produce models that truly resemble real units, we will fail on the aspect of distinctiveness, as real units are often even designed to be hard to identify, and that's really not important in most real situations. And, we are limited to a certain ammount of detail to our models, therefore we must use most of what we can to make the models distinctive, while preserving the aesthetical qualities in a good level - making it more similar to real units is really secondary, because Warzone 2100 isn't a War Simulator. A good example of a War Simulator is "Joint Task Force", by Sierra Entertainment: there you can find details that are specifically made to simulate aspects of war, offering entertainment for those fond of heavy military equipment and strategies, rather than those fond of blowing things up fast and being outright clever (rather than *wise*, mostly).

Warzone is a fast-paced "Real-Time Strategical Action" game rather than a true Real-Time War Strategy Simulator, which makes the developers, I believe, choose certain aspects and qualities to be prior to other ones, and one of those chosen prime need is the efficiency of the models, in what gives respect to distinguish certain units from different ones. Making units more similar to real ones won't help or will even harm this purpose, so that's not a true priority while designing models for Warzone - at least for those who agree with all those logical necessities of the genre which the game truly belongs to.

I hope that this all makes sense, and that you can understand what I've tried to say will all that
This is my opinion, and I may very well be wrong - but I believe I'm not, otherwise I wouldn't put an effort into writing a complete explanation

Anyway - it's nice to see new ideas, don't feel disencouraged just because some of them can be rejected, as it happens all the time to everyone, I can assure you by personal experience
The nice thing about presenting ideas and earning negative answers, be them right or wrong, is that you have the opportunity to think another way, and that can either show that you were on the right path after all, if the answer was wrong, or show you the right path, if it was right.

But enough philosophy

~Olrox

(P.S.: For those who are wondering, I'm getting back to my feet from that trouble with my ISP. My unread posts page still has 3 pages and I feel lazy to read everything everytime I look at it, so I'm doing it slowly )

[Zarel]

Warzone is a fast-paced "Real-Time Strategical Action" game rather than a true Real-Time War Strategy Simulator, which makes the developers, I believe, choose certain aspects and qualities to be prior to other ones, and one of those chosen prime need is the efficiency of the models, in what gives respect to distinguish certain units from different ones. Making units more similar to real ones won't help or will even harm this purpose, so that's not a true priority while designing models for Warzone - at least for those who agree with all those logical necessities of the genre which the game truly belongs to.

This, this, a thousand times this.

The first priority is making it easy to tell what a unit is.

[Axel]

Thanks for your good critics (truly unreasonable) But i know about all things about which you talking ( i tryed do that by myself but there are many tech problems with convertation and pieslicer don want work ) And i offer "little bit" and meant modify only form, аnd so on... i know about that when increase detalysation increase problems!!! notice, i dont talking about details in models, only forms!!