Jump to content

KNac

Members
  • Posts

    588
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by KNac

  1. That seems like an easy (well, we don't really know how easy but let's hope) and elegant soplution (not demanding on computers, as 1 or two more action spots for LOS won't be killing anyone; ok multiply for whatever squads, but then people who ahve problems just play smaller scenarios), not only that, it would open up more possibilities on squads formations and positioning (like wider spacing between squad memeber, instead all the guys in 8 meters grid).

    About assault... that's a good question! I don0't know for sure, but I think the moving guys can't fire, so only the guys in the original action spot do shoot. But I'm almost sure the assaulting men can be shoot even if enemies do not have LOS to the original action spot. Some testing requiered?

  2. This was wirtten in other threads:

    thewood:

    We can expect that squad members can be shot without any possibility of LOS to the enemy?
    me:
    Again, NO. If there is no LOS, there is no LOF. LOF is tracked per each unit (per soldier in temas/squads). Some bizarre behaviour may happen in case in squads which are split , I don't mean split on teams, squads which are moving and occupe various positions, you may refeer to this case maybe? In this case you can observe the icon is in the middle of the line you can trace from one extrem of the squad to the other, that's the action spot as per game LOS calculations, but as each element of the squad is one or other action spot, they can get fire from the enemy even if as per game mechancis they don't have LOS from action spot to action spot.
    Ok after thinking about this one more second, I think I was wrong. Cause as I said: if there is no LOS, tehre is no LOF!

    So even if part of your soldiers in the squad occupe other action spot, enemies can't shoot em if they do not have LOS on your unit action spot.

    This makes sense for example if you check the 'Urban Ops' thread in Tactics & Strategy. Eventually two soldiers will cross to the action spot in the corner, but neither em or the enmy can't shoot at them until the full squad occupes the corner action spot. Crappy ASCII:

    Y - enemy squad

    X - your squad

    x - individual soldiers of your squad

    1)-----| Y No LOS

    _____|

    X

    2)-----| Y

    _____|

    X x

    No LOS even for the individual soldiers which have passed the corner and should have LOS: hence no LOF

    3)-----| Y

    _____|

    -----> Xx

    Full LOS and LOF; when the cnter of your squad (icon) appeirs on the action spot, THEN, and only then there is positive LOS and LOF

  3. sandy,

    Much less fun, maybe (for you BTW, that's a personal matter).

    Saying CMx2 is just better in "graphic representation, an improved editor, and a slightly better artillery interface" is bull****, and these are not minor things anyway.

    AI need more tunning, but is mroe complex than CMx1. Pathfinding the same. As for LOF/LOS, most weird stuff is due to bugs, and the times issues happen due toengine are minor, however, is more detailed than CMx1 (grids were 20x20m if I recall right, and do I have to remember you that infantry firing was totally abstracted?!).

    It's more realistic and hence more frustrating, but frustation comes along sometimes due to ugs and not polished stuff (infantry model, tacAI), that's right; we're not there yet, this game was released prematurelly. I hold my statement than in 6 months since the release (IMO which should had been the release date), this should be good enough (and defo, at least the engine, much better than CMx1).

    Seriouslly, you people should try battles in eviorenments were bugs are not highlighted, try ie. Red on Red in a big map with moderate-small forces maps with not intensive-MOUT enviorenment (more like country/mountain/etc.).

    thewood,

    LOS is checked both ways, if one unit in an action spot and can see the other, the other way around is true too.

    here were my answers to your question in the other thread in case you missed.

    I think the anwers may be:

    </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> We can expect area fire to snap to the action point regardless of LOS to a portion of the 8 x 8 grid?

    Yes, don't have much of a problem with this as long as we don't see weird stuff like shooting through berns or whatever. Any ground or object feature should stop the fire if it's between center of action spot and LOF.

    We can expect fire to deviate from staright line to hit the action point?
    No, shouldn't happen, if so is a bug (I suppose you are refeering to area fire cause in ALL other instances LOF is tracked directly, not to the center of the action spot). Units can or can't fire to an action spot, if they CAN they fire to the center of the spot. If some object denies LOF to the center of action spot then they will shoot agains the object (ie. a wall)

    We can expect that squad members can be shot without any possibility of LOS to the enemy?
    Again, NO. If there is no LOS, there is no LOF. LOF is tracked per each unit (per soldier in temas/squads). Some bizarre behaviour may happen in case in squads which are split , I don't mean split on teams, squads which are moving and occupe various positions, you may refeer to this case maybe? In this case you can observe the icon is in the middle of the line you can trace from one extrem of the squad to the other, that's the action spot as per game LOS calculations, but as each element of the squad is one or other action spot, they can get fire from the enemy even if as per game mechancis they don't have LOS from action spot to action spot.

    Here is from where most of this weird stuff come IMO, one possible way toa void this is use teams as much as you can, this is split squads. This is a pain in the ass, as adds unnecessary micro and sometimes reduces firepower, effectiviness or whatever. But in MOUT or envioremnments with narrow LOS places, the weirdness may be exponential, so using teams, in current state, is not a bad idea at all.</font>

  4. @ thewood,

    I think the anwers may be:

    We can expect area fire to snap to the action point regardless of LOS to a portion of the 8 x 8 grid?
    Yes, don't have much of a problem with this as long as we don't see weird stuff like shooting through berns or whatever. Any ground or object feature should stop the fire if it's between center of action spot and LOF.

    We can expect fire to deviate from staright line to hit the action point?
    No, shouldn't happen, if so is a bug (I suppose you are refeering to area fire cause in ALL other instances LOF is tracked directly, not to the center of the action spot). Units can or can't fire to an action spot, if they CAN they fire to the center of the spot. If some object denies LOF to the center of action spot then they will shoot agains the object (ie. a wall)

    We can expect that squad members can be shot without any possibility of LOS to the enemy?
    Again, NO. If there is no LOS, there is no LOF. LOF is tracked per each unit (per soldier in temas/squads). Some bizarre behaviour may happen in case in squads which are split , I don't mean split on teams, squads which are moving and occupe various positions, you may refeer to this case maybe? In this case you can observe the icon is in the middle of the line you can trace from one extrem of the squad to the other, that's the action spot as per game LOS calculations, but as each element of the squad is one or other action spot, they can get fire from the enemy even if as per game mechancis they don't have LOS from action spot to action spot.

    Here is from where most of this weird stuff come IMO, one possible way toa void this is use teams as much as you can, this is split squads. This is a pain in the ass, as adds unnecessary micro and sometimes reduces firepower, effectiviness or whatever. But in MOUT or envioremnments with narrow LOS places, the weirdness may be exponential, so using teams, in current state, is not a bad idea at all.

  5. I'm totally ignorant from a techncial point of view, but ie. Supreme Commander, an RTS which can have up to 1000 units per side (or more in the future as computers get better), and up to 8 players does have replays, maps are up to 81x81km. honestly players to run 81x81 w/ highest unit limit and 8 player games are few (quadcores & 8800s), but game is not optimized for vairous cores computers (very few applications are, I hope developers start to update on this, including CMSF).

    Don't know how movement does work though, if it's vectory based or uses a grid system (and which resolution). But keeping track of units like movement from X to Y (being grid coordinates) facing Z (orientation), projectiles and events (unit J roots a time 00:00:00, unit I fires weapon A at time 01:00:00, unit K receives damage and is knocked out), while seems a big amount of raw data, is not impossible for nowadays computers. You don't have to keep data of each calculation, just the result which is finally translated to images.

    Again, I say I'm totally ignorant, but does not seem impossible to made, but very down on the list.

  6. Keep the thread alive, becoming a classic fast haha.

    Lurker,

    The logical steeps would be: updates on the engine are patched into the former game, be these either improvements of existing features, fixes or new additions. Addons are just extensions of content: new units, scenarios, campaings or whatever.

    When we move to next iterance of the engine (WWII West ETO game), updating of CMSF it's stopped, and the same process is repeated again (core game, then addons, and all the changes to the engine are available via patches to the core game).

    Logic is nto followed a lot of times, specially be greedy companies. We have seen a shift in the industry towards this. BUT in current BF situation (BAD realease) it would be suicidal to go for the money and just add improvements to the addons. That would certainly get on my nerves and I would stop supporting them (ie. buying their games, or buying directly and instead buyin em at Play.com for €8 :D ).

    So... it's all up to them. Other thing is they feel the game is finished enough as it is (1.04) and stop improving the game, and I'm not speaking about bugs, but game features. I wouldn't blame them, but having to wait for WWII to see the game engine improve would be disgusting.

  7. lol good one peleprodigy

    seriously, i think there are problems with rendering code, but there are serious problems with the 8800. so there are two separate issues that make the game performance lower than it should.

    thwe rendering stuff, seems to have been improved for 1.04, sow e all shoudl experince better performance with the patch BUT as for the 8800 problems, that may take a while to be fixed, cause I trust BF when they say it's a lot in hands of nvidia. there is a second possibility though, with new rendering code in place, these 8800 issues may niot happen anymore.

    well let's wait for 1.04 (i hope iots released this week)

  8. Lurker don't worry, the game will be improved farther. With tat comment I think they mean the game now is bug-free enough, but that does not mean a lot of features will be improved over time. Compare CMBO 1.0 to CMAK last version.

    This is a work in progress, which will never be finished, but at soem point it will be excelllent nevertheless, not perfect, but good enough smile.gif

    Think that CMSF will be improved until a new game is launched, that means that it will be improved while we get addons/expansion packs, aas is the core game.

    1.05 may be what 1.0 should have been, bug wise and with features working more or less as them should. But beyond that issues like TacAI, infantry combat model and pathfinding will be improved anyway.

  9. Well there are two things here about performance:

    1) game rendering code, optimization is poor overall. there is a special problem with terrain rendering, this seems to have been fixed for 1.04 though so we all should experience better performance with the patch

    2) the 8800 have a problem obviously, interaction between hardware and drivers and/or sioftware. we don't know, but the problem is there.

    this is obvious, i can egt higher FPS with same setting with my far ifnerior 3d card than a 8800. but at the same time the performance is lower than it should be specially with void maps with highlight the problem with terrain rendering.

    my advice: wait for the patches and better drivers, eventually all this will be fixed.

  10. Originally posted by Phillip Culliton:

    The argument that there wasn't enough programming time is starting to get my goat as well. The TacAI would have been finished in the given timeframe if they had hired another programmer who could have allowed one or the other to work on the TacAI. This much I surmise from BFC's pronouncements regarding the TacAI-completion timeframe -- an extra dev for 2 years would have done more than the trick.

    Argue about "not enough time" all you want -- BFC (or Charles at least) knew at some point in the past three years that they wouldn't have enough time prior to release. BFC chose not to take on the talent to get the game done in time. An extra month or two of Charles' time would not have cut it, so even the "Paradox made them do it!" argument goes out the window.

    Instead the people who ponied up for the game go without for a year while the one programmer they have on staff works overtime to fix complex issues. "Not enough programmer time" == a deliberate decision by BFC.

    This reflects BFC's release strategy, and there's nothing "hard" about it. TacAI is fundamental enough to get done well if you dedicate enough development time to it. And BFC did not. They planned for their decision and probably even post-release scheduled for it.

    This is unfair. First, they are developing the game from their own budget, 4 years w/o an income is hard. While I agree they should add an other programmer to the team, hiring one cost money, the better the more money it cost. So we don't know the financial state of the company for them to be able to do this. While initially, in the long run that would be the best, maybe at the moment wasn't a possivle option.

    Second, programmers need time to learn the code, and for them to be effective. Also when you do stuff yourself you don't have to invest any time organizing with others to work out stuff. That detracts a lot of time, so while adding an other single programmer to the team would help, again in the long haul, that wouldn't be inmediate and would take time. You have to organize, distribute work and be constantly informed about what the other programmer is doing and what. A change in one piece of the code could make an other piece totally worthless. SO is not magic, it needs time and has it's pros and cons. Not to say, finding the correct programmer which would be helpfull may not be as easy as we could think.

    I doubt BF is in a position that could hire more than 1 programmer, there is were things would be interesting, but hiring a single programmer would be more troublesome than helpfull maybe, at least initially. With some luck, now that they have more income with the game eventually they will be able to increase the development team, but maybe they just don't want.

  11. LOL

    My results (GeForce 6800 GS 256MB VRAM):

    - your settings

    from default position w/o units: 32 FPS

    from default position with units: 22 FPS

    with units camera key 9 (top view): 15 FPS (with or w/o action not real difference)

    - changing textures to "balanced"

    from default position w/o units: 50 FPS

    My card has only 256 MB of RAM that's why tried with lower texture setting, anyway the difference is too big I think anyway, but I don't know my card texture filling specs but only one texture, there is a problem there finally for rendering. I hope 1.04 does improve it.

    [ September 23, 2007, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: KNac ]

×
×
  • Create New...