FromSoft's singular mech game Chromehounds is back online | Hacker News Reader

FromSoft's singular mech game Chromehounds is back online

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Cool! But also MechWarrior Online is very good in this space.

One difficulty with games like this is fairness in the netcode, since a minor adjustment in projectile position or timing could be the difference between doing nothing or instantly killing (mech rotation to spread armour in-between shots is a mechanic - mechs have around 12 separate hitboxes that are metered separately). It took MWO a looong time to accomodate pings from all over the world playing together, but last time I played it felt flawless, or at least my hits on others hit where I landed them, and other people hitting me didn’t seem unfair.

Did you read this? I think that you might be surprised.

Chromehounds gameplay seems a lot better than MWO, imo.

Fromsoftware's mech PVP also tends to be relatively fast-paced; Armored Core 4 in particular is so fast that it's hard to envision a "fair" fight on any latency above 50ms: https://youtu.be/w-ceX0HNBPU

the Armored Core series defined my expectations for mech games. There aren't many games outside the series that live up to what I remember from those games.

I agree, though I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that Titanfall raised the bar further. TF1 felt like playing DOTA in first-person, and TF2 felt like if Quake and Battlefield raised a baby they hid from the world. I never thought to myself "man, Armored Core needs more infantry instead of MTs" but Titanfall made me question that. Foot soldiers feel dangerous, watching other players jump around your mech for a maneuvering advantage was like swatting bees away. Respawn managed to emphasize the aspects of combined-arms combat while keeping things tactically light and balanced enough that any one player can take down another player's mech.

All that said - Armored Core embodies the platonic ideal of the "mech game" much better than TF ever did. It also typically boasted the better story, for what little that's worth. From has a talent for avoiding obvious tropes which snaps me out of the "Ace Combat briefing" stupor I feel listening to cutscenes in most arcade games.

Oh, I really liked TF2. Haven't tried multiplayer, but the single player game was great.

Gotta love TF2's gimmick levels. I won't spoil all of them, because I think Respawn deserves all the respect they can get for the Cause and Effect chapter. But I will happily share footage of the mesmerizing house factory level in the mission Into the Abyss for anyone unfamiliar: https://youtu.be/oOaHzR7jnJ0?t=420

We may never get a shooter campaign level that tops fighting robots on a prefab assembly line...

Wow, that's pretty cool. The terrain, buildings and slow projectiles are giving me real Starsiege Tribes flashbacks.

Didn't know there was a mechwarrior online game. Is this like the tactical MW2 type sim combat?

It's a free to play game (with online purchases available, ect) where there are a large variety of mechs you can play and modify as well as different skill trees that you can customize. There are various modes of play, but quickplay is 12 vs 12 (sorted by skill level, mech weight).

It's been online for over 10 years. Definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of Mechwarrior games (I have no affiliation with them whatsoever).

https://mwomercs.com/

Graphics aside, MW2 remains the reference IMO. Newer sims are somewhat... Meh. But if you're willing to play turn by turn, the Harebrained Scheme's Battletech (2018) is excellent.

In addition to the PvP oriented MWO, there's also Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries and Mechwarrior 5 Clans which are co-op oriented and have some pretty good mods.

>Cool! But also MechWarrior Online is very good in this space.

I really fell out of love with that game. It was a much better game in beta, with knockdowns and inverse kinematics. When it went live they promised so much but what we got was years of crazy balance changes and weird side games.

Does anyone have any resources on Netcode, its a really interesting problem I haven't had any first hand exposure to from the engineering side.

I remember running the class with the giant radar dish on top to keep the comms up, running skirmishes till the wee hours of the morning. Definitely biased but I agree it was such a cool game.

The three-sided conflicts and aesthetics of the civilizations also felt a bit ahead of their time, with the NATO-like, Eastern Bloc, and the Middle East civs.

Though to be fair, before Chromehounds was Armored Core, so it's not like FromSoft's mecha pedigree is that obscure.

It’s also a game that you just can’t play with people online because they would cheat, especially regarding communications. There’s a lot of really fun games systems like the way it did comms that just don’t work in an online world sadly.

There's an interesting digression in the article itself here on the question about even if Sega had kept footing the server bill a bit longer if the game would have survived the Xbox Live's Party Chat which opened up just a few months later. It's an interesting question. Was it that much of a game technically unique to those few months in the 360's lifecycle that it lived in where 360 multiplayer game players were expected to have ubiquitous voice chat support but only in ways that were game controllable?

This new community is building itself on Discord, so the knowledge that players have access to ubiquitous Discord voice chat is a given going in. I've got a feeling that as the open source effort builds voice chat capabilities (this article suggests supporting Xbox Live Voice Chat isn't currently available in the emulator that this open source server relies on) the Community as a whole will try to work towards arrangements for avoiding out-of-game comms to recreate the original feel. That's probably a hard task in general scale (cheaters will always exist), but bans can matter in a small community and maybe they'll have just enough enforcement tools.

Thinking about this project in particular from the technical side, Discord could even be an asset to the community like that. As an armchair engineer taking a glance at this project from a distance, one interesting way to bootstrap an emulated, not-quite-fully-Open-Source Xbox Live Voice alternative would be by automating Discord Voice Channels. If you did that Discord itself might help maintain the invariant that users are only in one voice channel at a time, and admins have visual ways to see that in the Discord interface in addition to whatever automation tooling/bots are built to moderate the game voice comms flow.

I've seen fun games make use of interesting automation of Discord voice comms. There's also a "TTRPG" designed for Discord channels called "This Discord Has Ghosts In It" [1] that makes fun use of channel permissions to set play areas and define game classes/roles.

[1] https://willjobst.itch.io/ghosts

Glances at my Steel Battalion controller- “uhh anyone got any more of those super fans that wanna code something up…”

The best mech game that I have yet to see replicated is the first virtual on.

Somehow the mechanics were just right that you could pull off these rocket power side dashes to do these incredible dodges.

Not even armored core was able to imitate that effect.

> armored core huh not even armored For answer ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NOVvZunHRs

https://youtu.be/8W1uwaNNR04?si=i0szM3hNmSVmXGJP

I feel like I’m piloting an mech and dodging actual projectiles

The one you shared feels like a flight simulator.

I'd love a remake or a Chromehounds 2 on Xbox/PlayStation. I played it on the 360 but before I had online, so only in single player, but still loved it.

I felt the same way, which is why I made M.A.V. but it's PC only.

okay so are these slidey armored core mechs or stompy battletech mechs? I've discovered recently that I have a strong preference for the latter. There's just something about the time it takes for a 40 ton walking tank to meander into the sights of my dual PPCs pointed right at its ferro-fibrous armored knees.

This is such a wild and heartfelt resurrection.

I played a bit of warrobots a few years back. Before I knew what pay to play meant..

Of course, Chromehounds! The one and only prequel to Chromelords.

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