7 replies to this topic

[Tarmack]

This is a repost of something I talked about on the general forums and again during the Alpha test.  I'd like to get more tester feedback on the idea.

I had a curious question about Hawken that I was unable to find an answer to anywhere.  I guess this may fall under the guise of a suggestion but thought it could garner some good discussion.

Hawken is different from the mech games that have been released to date.  Mechwarrior games were awesome but ultimately quite slow compared to the usual FPS genre.  Hawken appears to be in the mid-range between mechwarrior and FPS games for speed which gives it an exciting to watch feel that I'm not sure has been in a mech game before.  Mechwarrior was fun to play, but not as much fun to watch.

So as someone who quite enjoys the e-sports movement (MLG stream this weekend, whoot) and does some youtubing myself, I was curious about how feature rich the spectator mode was.

More specifically.  Is the spectator mode mentioned in several videos available to players.  Does it involve free movement and have basic flight for top down view_  Is there any functionality relating to the recording of replays for viewing later.  

It is in my view the first mech game that has the potential to do very well in the e-sports scene.  But it does need to have some tools available to casters in order for that to happen.  You do have some pretty heavy financial backing from the guys who pushed League Of Legends, so it seemed an appropriate topic for discussion.  That and I'd love to be able to properly cast Hawken ladders with all the right tools.

P.S  If the spectator mode is available as I've described I would like to suggest a few features.  

GUI to select mechs without direct sight.
Mech status Screen overlay (displaying loadout, damage, etc) in game during a match.
Highlighting (perhaps a red outline visible through terrain while in Spectator)
Preset "jump points" where the spectator can free float, or hop to a top down view, etc.

[Tezkat]

As of the most recent beta, observer features are not yet in any publicly playable build. (For that matter, custom games and grouping are not really in the game yet unless you count trying to manually get on the same server in a list.) Hopefully we'll get to see them in Closed Beta 2...

The upcoming spectator and cinematic modes should have most of the features you mentioned and more. And if they don't, we can whine until they get added. That's what beta is for.

[Tarmack]

*grins*  I like it.  Actually, is there a written source of info relating to what they're shooting to do_  or are we relying mostly on hope because of the LOL connection_

[Tezkat]

Written_ I don't think so... There haven't been a whole lot of recent written interviews with the devs (though we've seen the business folks in the news a bit due to the $18 million financing round a few days ago).

At the moment, the most recent detailed source of information regarding the spectator interface specifically is the the series of interviews Khang Le gave on the World Cyber Games NYCC stream.

A few of the things they've claimed to be working on...

Display settings optimized for unit visibility and such in eSports
Third person follow cams with fast player switching
Hotkeyed camera saves over hotspot locations
Full map views enhanced with things like heatmap overlays
Cinematic director features with neat camera effects and replay features built in


I'm really looking forward to how they implement it all. We've had a taste of what well thought out spectator interfaces for shooter games can look like in Firefall. (Read: Devs, go try out Firefall PvP and steal their spectator toys.)

[Tarmack]

Thanks very much for the link Tezkat.  I'd not seen those interviews.

[Subdivision]

The more features and advanced toys the better in my opinion. Very excited to watch this game as much as play it. Anything to make any free-flying cam's as smooth as possible would be great. I know they wouldn't get used too much as you want to follow players in the action but there's nothing worse than a jumpy observer watching a game

[DarkPulse]

Needless to say, if I can record my own demos of matches and then play them back later for recording, I would be a very, very happy camper. It would mean I could "record" a match with no performance hit (unlike now where I have to reduce my FPS to 30 FPS), and could get kills from a variety of angles, etc.

I just hope that in this case, they allow us a choice of both third-person, out-of-cockpit view and first-person, in-cockpit view. I'd like to see what the enemy sees in his final unfortunate moments.

[Tarmack]

DarkPulse, on November 02 2012 - 05:58 AM, said:

Needless to say, if I can record my own demos of matches and then play them back later for recording, I would be a very, very happy camper. It would mean I could "record" a match with no performance hit (unlike now where I have to reduce my FPS to 30 FPS), and could get kills from a variety of angles, etc.

I would be very curious to see how they could implement this.  If it was done similar to how Starcraft replays are done, that would be stellar.