Client Map Scrolling

UniTY

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ALL,

Just curious: In all these years has anybody who's been developing MIR clients try any type of smooth scrolling of the map itself? [Edit: Clarifying: By map I mean everything that moves as you move. The game world.) I get it, characters/mobs/etc are just multiple images and we'll never get any decent smooth motion unless somebody redraws everything/we move on to a true 3D model based gameplay.. but the map scrolling smoothly would definitely make the game seem more.. modern...right?

I just wonder if we can escape this jerky movement that is MIR.. it's like a constant 10 FPS game.

Thanks :)
 
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Breezer

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Yes,actually started this ages ago but never put any Map Editing tools with it....idea was to have maps testable with/ without player.

just to clarify, Crystal Mir is smoother and images on the map do not flash as they did on delphinium and creatino a camera class that moves across the map is fairly easy to achieve.
 
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mir2pion

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Breezer you use tech terms that I don't understand but I was curious about exactly the same thing years ago, that when you move about mir maps, which typically means running, the graphics (map background) redraw in jerky way. One stops noticing it once you get immersed in the game, true, still if that could be smoothed out, given today's computers are miles better than what we had in 2001 and internet also much better.

I still remember what put me off mir3 when it came in 2003 (?), I logged on and didn't like much bigger size of items as you see them in char panel for example, or in bag. They looked like badly resized, not looking cute and nice as on mir2. Also chars in game seemed bigger on the map, that all was a factor why mir3 never got my heart and to this day I am pure mir2 player. They lost me there and then, due to other things about mir3 but oversized clumsy looking item and char graphics played role I remember to this day.
 

Hazuki

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Checkout wemade mir3, that is soooooooooooooo smooth :)

-edit-

[video=youtube;4oB26T0zJOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oB26T0zJOI[/video]
 

Binary

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The map moves along with the character, 6 frames for each movement, so it progresses 1/6th of the distance (coords) travelled 6 times.

You can smooth this out but when you create a disconnect between character and map things look very dodgy. USA mir was like this when it first launched and it was so unpopular that they had to revert back.
 

Tai

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Checkout wemade mir3, that is soooooooooooooo smooth :)

-edit-

[video=youtube;4oB26T0zJOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oB26T0zJOI[/video]

I wish we had this :'(

The map moves along with the character, 6 frames for each movement, so it progresses 1/6th of the distance (coords) travelled 6 times.

You can smooth this out but when you create a disconnect between character and map things look very dodgy. USA mir was like this when it first launched and it was so unpopular that they had to revert back.

The gliding effect!
 

mir2pion

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When USA mir started, that was simply horrible movement. Don't see how anybody can or could defend it or like it.

But you don't get smooth motion even on tv, when camera swings around, all background blurs, same as in all videos. But you always get some bozo saying we have all the computing power we might ever need. But reality is all media is really #$%^&, computers, tvs, brodacast of any kind, internet, all low quality 'VHS'.
 

Cleopatra

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That LOM3 video does not show the smooth map scrolling Unity is on about.

I've seen videos of it before implemented on Mir2 (korean videos) but can't find them at the moment. The same effect was used in mobile Mir2, seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aekN1KQJbYE

To be honest I think it looks quite bad.

What we really need is for someone to hack the server files for Mir4, get it translated etc.
Running through BugCaves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W-I4QQpZHM
ZumaTemple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_YRD0HpKdQ
Mines PVP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw1ylsbZgnA
 

mir2pion

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BC not looking too impressive quality wise, ZT looks much better, in Mines the whole screens jerks in pvp. Weird are those interruptions whenever you walk through door when the game has to load in buffer. Probably it all looks better in real play than in those youtube videos.

Mobile version, just :kiwi-fruit:
 

Cleopatra

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It certainly doesn't look perfect, but it looks closer to that original Mir gameplay than anything else I've watched/played. The videos are terrible quality and no doubt it'd look much better ingame.

What I think is great is seeing the original visions from 15+ years ago being brought back to life, for instance how they wanted Bug Cave to look back when they originally did the artwork, compared to now, where they can realise that vision better.
 

UniTY

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Thanks for the information guys. I was just curious.

That LOM3 video does not show the smooth map scrolling Unity is on about.

I've seen videos of it before implemented on Mir2 (korean videos) but can't find them at the moment. The same effect was used in mobile Mir2, seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aekN1KQJbYE

To be honest I think it looks quite bad.

What we really need is for someone to hack the server files for Mir4, get it translated etc.
Running through BugCaves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W-I4QQpZHM
ZumaTemple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_YRD0HpKdQ
Mines PVP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw1ylsbZgnA


Huge fan of those 3D videos. Exactly the direction I would hope to see MIR go.
Edit: After watching more.. man I wish we could somehow get that. It's beautiful. Would love to see what outside areas looked like as opposed to just caves.

Edit2: Found some outdoor stuff. Tempted to pick up a Chinese account and give it a spin.

[video=youtube;fP5afl4fo1s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP5afl4fo1s[/video]
 
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mir2pion

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What I think is great is seeing the original visions from 15+ years ago being brought back to life, for instance how they wanted Bug Cave to look back when they originally did the artwork, compared to now, where they can realise that vision better.

I get what you saying but mir as we played it in 2001 was developed some years before that (people developing mir2 might have been ~25 to 30yrs old in ~ 1995 when mir2 might have started to take shape?) and anyway I doubt very much the original development core staff is still active in this regard. Even when we still played euro GN mir the patch with BDD PI PB was likely done by new blood at wemade, the original development team likely shifted to mir3 by then and mir3 was their vision of the mir future as mir2 was not supposed to survive that.

Off hand I don't know of precedent that one version of game lived beside the new one, basically branching off having its own life, or almost own life (since many mir3 idea percoalated to mir2 I think). But not being expert on these things, I can well see others here correcting me.

Who is developing this 3D? Chinese I suppose who got the licence or something partly like that? I recall there having been disputes in past and I think Chinese 'legally stole' at least some part of mir rights? Is Wemade now completely out of the fray? I doubt it.
All I can say mir catching on in China probably saved mir universe and if we are lucky this 3D mir might one day come to us too.
 
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MiloFoxburr

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Thanks for the information guys. I was just curious.




Huge fan of those 3D videos. Exactly the direction I would hope to see MIR go.
Edit: After watching more.. man I wish we could somehow get that. It's beautiful. Would love to see what outside areas looked like as opposed to just caves.

Edit2: Found some outdoor stuff. Tempted to pick up a Chinese account and give it a spin.

[video=youtube;fP5afl4fo1s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP5afl4fo1s[/video]

I have an account that I played for a bit, it's Mir in 3D but with a lot of P2W elements apparently. You also need to pay for game time though it's pretty cheap. I have 60 hours and paid about 8 euro for that + another 8 euro or so for the account

Can't help but think the private server community would do a better job with the files than Shanda themselves did :/
 

Cleopatra

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Ahh Milo, please hook me up, will give you the money you paid. Been trying to get an account for ages, it's easy enough to get a fake chinese ID but it's the phone number that's hard, they have to ring or text you to verify your account, right? At least it was like that when I tried before.
 

UniTY

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Can't help but think the private server community would do a better job with the files than Shanda themselves did :/

Milo :) I would agree.. but based on how many servers I've seen with "Donate to Win" features I'm afraid it would end up exactly like Shanda.

Maybe one day we'll have someone that played MIR who is a guru in game development and wants to start a pet project that'll extract/rip model data from Shanda's version and construct something new :) Probably no chance of that happening, though.
 
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MiloFoxburr

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Milo :) I would agree.. but based on how many servers I've seen with "Donate to Win" features I'm afraid it would end up exactly like Shanda.

Maybe one day we'll have someone that played MIR who is a guru in game development and wants to start a pet project that'll extract/rip model data from Shanda's version and construct something new :) Probably no chance of that happening, though.

I think those servers will exist no matter what is done, there would be enough decent servers to balance it out

I've been keeping an eye on various Chinese forums to see if they've made any effort to create private servers but they're either keeping it very close to their chests or not bothering. The client is UE3 based so it shouldn't be too difficult to extract files from it if someone has knowledge with Unreal Engine

@rory I bought an account from these guys http://www.newgameway.com/product.php?gid=213 I see they're charging $16 now so that might include game time. When I got bought account from them originally I had to send them a mail for game time and they had it all sorted within a few hours. They handled all the activation stuff with a Chinese Number and what not and the account is still working now after buying it back in January

Didn't really notice any lag when I played and it's straight forward enough if you've any knowledge of Mir and Google Translate on your phone
 

Cleopatra

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Cheers Milo, have spent the $16 (£12.50) for my account, just waiting for activation now. Mind blown at the Google Translate app's photo translation feature, that's awesome!