Are we there yet?

[SKELLEN]

I remember reading an article on game physics years ago and what game innovations of tomorrow would bring, but one in particular still sticks with me today for good reason - I'm still not seeing it surprisingly, or maybe it's here already?

What am I referring to - good question, as the term for this procedure escapes me (forgive me), but if you look on most vidoegames today you will see it in some shape or form. An arm protruding through a wall, characters walking through each other, I even watched a video of Shock Force with a Syrian pickup truck halfway through a building.

I'm very curios to know what BFC's stance on this procedure with regard to pyhsics is, has it been considered, is it not possible as yet, or would it require a CMX3/CMX4?

Anybody here have any knowledge of this and care to share with the community?

[Holman]

You mean "clipping"?

It would be great to eliminate, but its game effect is nil.

[molotov_billy]

Anything that's animation driven will have these types of things going on. The more complex an object is (for example, a human figure), the harder it is to prevent these types of things. If you've got a bunch of animations with all kinds of appendages going every which way, its fairly impossible to catch all cases where something would clip into something else. Simpler objects, like vehicles, are easier to fix. If you're trying to physically simulate something that is also being animated, the results end up looking just as strange as the clipping itself. An arm would be folded backwards to prevent it clipping through a door, etc.

The smaller stuff that happens more often - an arm clipping through a wall, a head poking out of an ICV during dismount animations - is incredibly work intensive to fix, and shouldn't be expected in a game like this. You might see less of it in, say, a first person shooter, where your view is much closer to the action and these things become glaring issues. But in an RTS where you're generally viewing the action from 100 feet in the air - just doesn't matter as much, and not worth the time.

In short, it isn't a technology that you can just plug in - it's just a matter of solving things case-by-case.

[SKELLEN]

Originally posted by Martyr:

You mean "clipping"?

It would be great to eliminate, but its game effect is nil.

One could argue that game graphics have nil game effect but people still want eye candy. :confused:

[Dennis50]

Regards,

Gunz

[thewood]

Is the LOS passing through ridges clipping or something more inherent to CMSF.

[Becket]

Originally posted by thewood:

Is the LOS passing through ridges clipping or something more inherent to CMSF.

No. Last week, playing World of Warcraft, a monster that was below the world was plinking me with ranged attacks.

[Hawkmek]

The LOS thing is killing me! Or rather killing my digital troops.

When I pull up behind a building how do I know if it will provide cover? It may or may not. Very frustrating to try and maneuver safely thru terrain when the game probably just sees it as a pool table.

[Dennis50]

Let me be perfectly clear ...I seem to have plenty of eye candy ..and the game play is got me ..and I seem to be having fun ..getting my arse smeared in the dirt but I'm old, ok? These new fangled weapons and all has got me stymied. But I'm having a gawd dang good time with it so far. Some of the guys are already puttin out some good scenarios and I'll be darn if this ain't the bees knees. Just you'n wait ..cause this here thing is a gonna get a whole lot better'n that you can shake a stick at.

Regards,

Gunz

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by thewood:

Is the LOS passing through ridges clipping or something more inherent to CMSF.

I'm sure it has to do with the simplification of some type of system - either the terrain itself, or the squad. Obviously, computers have come leaps and bounds since CM was first out, but there are still limitations.

My assumption is either that the terrain is being simplified to reduce calculations, or the squad itself is being simplified to a simple box in terms of LOS and LOF. I assume that if you can see one part of the squad, you can see the whole thing.

LOS and LOF going through simple objects like walls and buildings seems like a bug, though. I hope that one gets fixed.

[thewood]

Originally posted by Hawkmek:

The LOS thing is killing me! Or rather killing my digital troops.

When I pull up behind a building how do I know if it will provide cover? It may or may not. Very frustrating to try and maneuver safely thru terrain when the game probably just sees it as a pool table.

To me that is the my exact complaint about LOS. We just don't know what the boundaries are. The AI seems to know exactly where LOS/LOF is and isn't. This throws a wrench into the entire concept of reducing abstraction in CMSF from what it was in CM. It seems to me that the scale of the abstraction in CM was matched in most aspects of the game. In CMSF, the level of abstraction for different parts is at a different scale. Eg, the soldiers are individually modeled, but the terrain is still somewhat abstracted.