MoH executive producer says games "can" be too authentic
Medal of Honor's executive producer, Greg Goodrich, has posted a piece over on the game's official blog talking about authenticity, and how game mechanics and feature can become "too authentic and ruin the experience".
In the post, Goodrich revealed that when developing the game, the team would sometime try ot take into account one too many things that would have ruined the game experience.
"We’ve spent a great deal of time working on the sniping mechanic in our game. At times during our development, we would reach a point where we took into account too many things and the experience quickly deteriorated," he wrote. "So we would take a step back and approach it from a different direction.
"Here is an example. For one of our sniping encounters, focused on the art of sending a very personal message at an extreme range, we started by first selecting the optic. We then chose the rings, reticle and turret configuration for this particular optic. We ultimately decided upon a variable 5.5-22x50 with a Mil-Dot reticle and 1/10 Mil-Radian turrets.
"The fine details of angular Mils can be confusing, but basically Mil-Dots serve two purposes, range estimation and trajectory correction. The horizontal and vertical marks (or dots) on the reticle are used for range estimation and the vertical marks are used for bullet drop compensation. A well trained shooter will also use the horizontal marks to compensate for bullet drift due to wind.
"One Mil angle is approximately 3.6 inches at 100 yards. A 6 foot tall man is 72 inches. At 100 yards he would appear to be 20 Mils tall. At 1000 yards, he would be 2 Mils tall. To determine the distance to a target of known size: (Distance in yards) = 1000 / 36 x (Object size in inches) / Mils.
"To determine the size of a target at a known distance: (Object size in inches) = 36 / 1000 x (Distance in yards) x Mils. Knowing these relationships, in conjunction with the external ballistics of a loaded projectile, a trained shooter can dial in his glass pretty quickly and make an effective shot.
"Yes, it is accurate and it is authentic, but when you place a controller in the hand of most gamers, they instinctively think one thing. If I place the crosshairs on a target and pull the trigger, I will destroy the target. Doing math, estimating holdovers or adjusting turrets for windage or elevation isn’t something they bargained for".
Bet you never thought math would be involved when reading this did you? Sorry to have tricked you like that.
The full thing can be read through here, and it is very interesting indeed despite the math.
Medal of Honor has no exact release date yet, but will be made available for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
We've also been promised cool toys and a demo.