EPTBroodwar and Starcraft 2 - Pathing - Page 10
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Alexj
Ukraine440 Posts
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Stratos
Czech Republic6104 Posts
On September 20 2013 22:39 Freakling wrote: Your overall conclusions are sound, but your descriptions of how terrain, path finding, unit orientation and collision boxes work and interact in SC1 is just plain wrong. Your analysis of how the tiles (or grids, as you call them) of the terrain interact with units is. well, just utterly wrong. Units do not "try to sit on top of a tile" as you claim. All that "bobbing around" of units is just because one collision box gets in the way of another. And those pictures are just bad and totally improper to explain anything about the structural basics of pathfinding in BW. Here's another picture, directly from SCMDraft (map editor), displaying the important aspects much better: green: terrain tiles grey: sub-tiles (these are the relevant ones for pathing; each tile is made up of 4x4 of them) red: collision boxes of the units. For ground units (except workers with mining command) these are not allow to overlap under normal circumstances, and if they ever do, resolving that becomes highest priority action for the moving algorithm, before any other action. This is why worker drills can disrupt units from attacking. greyed out areas: unwalkable sub-tiles, collision boxes of ground units are not allowed to overlap with these under normal circumstances, resolving terrain collision has priority even over resolving unit collision (although it is possible to transition unit collision into terrain collision, as demonstrated in the Blue Storm video). ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/x32pIHu.jpg) As you can see from that picture alone, there is no difference at all between Dragoons, Vultures, Goliaths and Siege Tanks. they all have the exact same collision box and thus behave identical as far as pathfinding goes. So why does one need to micro them (and against them) differently? - Because of other differences like: - unit orientation: vultures always point in a certain direction, to have them ready to fire one must make sure they face the direction of the target. That's why they work best with patrol micro (patrol basically gives them a direction order on top of an attack order), dragoons on the other hand have no orientation, so they are always ready to fire and can be microed by hold position. Tanks are kind of in between, in that they are basically two units in one, one chassis and one turret, each with an orientation of its own. The chassis is facing into the moving direction, but the turret can still rotate freely and stay locked on a target in reach, thus resulting in an overall unit behaviour that is closer to that of the dragoon than the vulture. Goliaths also feature a turret, but a less mobile one that can only rotate a small angle, thus requiring the whole unit to be aimed at a target to attack - attack animation: A dragoon has to stand still for a while to "cough up" that lightball of his and giving it any new order before the projectile is launched will disrupt the attack, Vultures on the other hand fire instantly, if facing the target, and thus can keep moving constantly. Tanks and Goliaths also pretty much fire instantly. - unit speed and acceleration: units don't just stop when ordered to do so, but have a short phase of deceleration. This is relevant when using fast firing, fast moving units like vultures, because it means that they can fire while still moving and just keep moving, when given another move command right after the attack (also important for muta and shuttle micro, for example) - rate of attack: Goliaths pretty much fire one attack after another in rather short succession (not quite like Corsairs, but still...), whereas Vultures, Dragoons and Tanks have really long attack cooldowns, which is why the latter three are much better, or at least easier, to attack-move-micro. - projectile type: Goliaths (vs. ground) and Tanks do not have projectiles, their shots hit almost instantly. Vultures and Dragoons (or Goliaths vs. air), however, fire projectiles that only apply damage once they hit the target. This means that their attacks can be dodged by "removing" the target, like loading it into a transport or bunker, it also means that they are more prone to land overkills, i.e. fire more projectiles at a target than would be required to kill it (tanks do this too, however, especially in siege mode.). Huh  I guess I'll have to wait for Sayle to sum this all up for mea few times maybe then a few more in every future cast | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Freakling
Germany1529 Posts
On September 20 2013 23:02 forumtext wrote: Two huge patches that completely changes the meta game. Where do you get this from, there have been a lot of smaller and even bigger adjustments over time, as well as a lot of bug fixes/workarounds for most of the really broken stuff (like CC slide or tanks under buildings), but overall there was just one total change of meta game, which was the publication of BW which introduced a whole bunch of new units, including many backbones of today's unit composition like medics, Corsairs or Lurkers. [quoteBalanced by map makers.[/quote] This is just basic evolution, though. With the meta game approaching a state of "perfection", concepts that kept the game racially imbalanced just died out over time. On September 21 2013 00:18 nimdil wrote: As much as I enjoyed the read I have to say you didn't quite deliver the punch. Whether by accident or by design bw on some levels offer superior depth compared to sc2 and frisbees are in no way less superior to baseball balls if they were created by messy accident. You simply cannot expect a game developer to try reproducing something basically just incredibly messy and disfunctional in a new game, only because the predecessor happened to be played professionally on such a high level that using and overcoming what are basically just bugs and glitches became the defining benchmarks of their performance. And they even introduced certain aspects of it, like muta stacking and worker drilling, into SC2. The fun fact is that we needed sc2 to discover what makes bw so demanding game and what should be thanked for for it's beauty. Not really. As a mapmaker I have been well aware of the pain in the arse that BW pathfinding is on basically any level of the game, from basic economics to large scale combat. Yea it's crappy path finding but flying Frisbees are still more fun to watch Which is why so many more people are watching fisbee on TV than baseball... Wait. I got a nagging feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with this stance. Sit tight. I'll notify you as soon as I have figured out what it is... | ||
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Boundz(DarKo)
5311 Posts
5 for bw 5 for drone block | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players. | ||
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packrat386
United States5077 Posts
"Great Blog! I definitely think that SC2 pathfinding needs to be changed." Did you guys even read it? | ||
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Rococo
United States331 Posts
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lolfail9001
Russian Federation40190 Posts
On September 21 2013 03:48 Grumbels wrote: I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players. Brb looking for maps first OSLs were played on and comparing it to Tving's OSL maps :D | ||
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Pursuit_
United States1330 Posts
I do want to say though that there are certain units / situations in SC2 that give off that same feeling for me. Workers, Marines, Reapers, Zerglings, Roaches, ect all have properties that make me feel like I can do more with them than I should be able to sometimes. Especially with workers, using mineral walking + hold position, I've been able to win fights I never should have been able to under normal circumstances. Starcraft 2 does have at least a little bit of magic in it, it's just a much less potent variation. | ||
Falling
Canada11347 Posts
On September 21 2013 03:48 Grumbels wrote: I am not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if maps in brood war became progressively more difficult in terms of dealing with pathfinding issues to challenge the players. Actually I would think quite the opposite. As map-makers increased their craft, they would have a better understanding on how to make maps that allow good army movement rather than so clogged you need to go air or so open that there are not terrain features. How difficult the pathing is, is an easy measurement on how favoured Terran mech will be. And in that way, map-making is a balancing tool. Now you do get weird maps like Blue Storm where they make use of the different sizes of the units to create more windy paths for the larger units, but that's not exactly the same thing. Perhaps my all time favourite post by Nightmarjaroo on mapmaking for BW. [Guide] Map Making There's a section on pathing, but the important thing is that BW mapmakers are concerned with good flow of armies. It's very easy to make stupid blocks to mess with pathfinding. (Just make a ramp with stacked Sprite, units sprite Temples near a common choke and see the fun you get as units don't recognize Sprites as blocks.) It would make for difficult pathfinding, but it would not make a good map. | ||
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Pontius Pirate
United States1557 Posts
Applying a 30% speed nerf to units running up ramps can make ramps significantly harder to break for the attacker, particularly if armored units received a different nerf than light units. Think a full 50%. Imagine stimmed Marauders only being able to charge up a ramp at 1.6875 speed, while their stimmed Marine buddies bump into them and get in their way at 2.3625. Perhaps couple this with a flat 30% speed boost to units running down a ramp, or at least to rolling Banelings and wheeled units like the Hellion. It would be scary to charge up a creep-covered ramp where you risk running into Banelings rolling down at you at just barely under 5 speed. You'd have to keep your sluggish Marauders in front and split the crap out of your Marines, or find a different way around, or just use different tech to break the position. As he mentioned, Blink is a gorgeously-designed spell that allows for many different degrees of expression of control. There has always been a spell with a similar role in zerg play, in burrow. However, due to burrowing taking a third of a second for Roaches, and even longer for everything else, it's quite risky to attempt it, to say nothing of a terran opponent using scan to partially negate the effects. Giving burrowed units a naturally lower target priority (maybe only a decrease of 1 would be needed) would force the opponent to focus fire all the more, as well as additional buffs to burrowed units (such as armor) to increase the likelihood of them surviving to unburrow and rejoin the engagement again. And needless to say, burrowing and unburrowing times would have to be decreased. Changing the Colossus' attack to have greater start-up lag, and to not hit all of the units in its path at once, would give opposing players a chance to micro out of the beams' path. It would also encourage protoss players to stutter their Colossi so that not all of them are firing at once, or at very similar locations; anything to make it harder to micro out of is the goal for the protoss player. Colossi micro is certainly not unheard of already, but this would make their control all the more significant in medium-sized engagements. While the Colossus would itself remain a deathball unit, it would be a bit of an anti-deathball unit too, at least as far as the opponent could be concerned. There are so many ways for SC2 to encourage unit micro and mid-battle positioning that are largely untapped. The game certainly does not have to be BW2 for it to emulate many of the factors that leg to BW being such a fun spectator sport. Bad pathfinding that makes the game unfun to play is not necessary to make a great viewer experience. | ||
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Pontius Pirate
United States1557 Posts
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Freakling
Germany1529 Posts
On September 21 2013 05:16 Falling wrote: Actually I would think quite the opposite. As map-makers increased their craft, they would have a better understanding on how to make maps that allow good army movement rather than so clogged you need to go air or so open that there is not terrain features. How difficult the pathing is, is an easy measurement on how favoured Terran mech will be. And in that way, map-making is a balancing tool. Now you do get weird maps like Blue Storm where they make use of the different sizes of the units to create more windy paths for the larger units, but that's not exactly the same thing. Perhaps my all time favourite post by Nightmarjaroo on mapmaking for BW. [Guide] Map Making There's a section on pathing, but the important thing is that BW mapmakers are concerned with good flow of armies. It's very easy to make stupid blocks to mess with pathfinding. (Just make a ramp with stacked Sprite, units sprited Temples near a common choke and see the fun you get as units don't recognize Sprites as blocks.) It would make for difficult pathfinding, but it would not make a good map. Pretty much this! | ||
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Garmer
1286 Posts
On September 19 2013 08:40 Thieving Magpie wrote: The units in Broodwar were not better designed than the units in Starcraft 2. i don't agree with this part but whatever... nice blog anyway | ||
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Coffeeling
Finland250 Posts
On September 20 2013 12:33 decemberscalm wrote: Saying that you need BW pathing for a lot of micro things you could do in BW is downright false. Moving shots for the vulture, archon, drone. SC2 is physically hardcoded to NOT let you do that with ground units. Me and Maverick use an insane work around to do it. Air units? Most air units are tweaked so moving shot isn't very effective or rewarding. There is even a bug Lalush just found where if air units are slightly overlapping they will go to a dead stop. You see this often with vikings. The air units themselves have no qualms with the inefficiencies of ground pathing. They way they are set up in BW encourages air dancing and micro. SC2 not so much. Now lets see, dragoons and how they must stand in place to take a shot. This adds in some really nicely paced micro. Sure it is just stutter stepping but the degree of difficulty in it is amped up. + Show Spoiler + Zealots vs hydras. Hydralisks would have to stand in place to get a shot off, just like the zealot had to. Of course a zealot had to stand still long enough to attack, so if a hydralisk was retreating he couldn't get a shot off. This led to absolutely beautiful micro between both parties and had absolutely NOTHING to do with pathing. Yes, both SC2 and BW are entirely different games due to many differences, but pathing isn't some huge barrier, blizzard literally did not look into how each unit in BW had a degree of weight and different control. Compare a vulture to a marine. The vulture accelerated, and flew across the terrain. And then the marine was obviously more grounded with instant acceleration. Compare this to SC2 marine hellion. Hellions turn on a dime, acelerate on a dime, decelerate on a dime. If you look carefully you will see just how much attention blizz payed to how units actually moved and fought in BW. A tank would keep tracking its target in BW. All it took to shoot was a stop or attack command. In SC2 a tank quickly swivels its turret to the default position even in the middle of combat. Same with the immortal. In BW a marine would ready its gun, fire, lower its weapon, and then start moving. In SC2 a marine will ready its gun, fire (you can immediately order a move command) and it will start moving despite it looking like it is shooting all of his allies. Its this sort of inattention to micro detail that has a huge impact on the game. In BW most weapons have a period in which the unit must complete their attack animation before being able to move again. This is literally non existant in sc2, the field to modify this does not exist. Moving shots? Bugged, and implemented poorly compared to the beautiful mutalisk dancing we saw in BW. Even then, the worst offender is probably the insane movement speed sc2 units have compared to BW. That itself hurts melee micro much more worse than any improvement in pathing. It isn't just pathfinding. Yes they are different games, but blizzard downright didn't pay very much attention to the small details that made BW micro so amazing. These are very important points, I think. Since I abandoned Starcraft due to disgust with how Blizzard was handling the game I started playing fighting games. And one of the more striking things about them is that they are games of commitment. In an FPS you can move and shoot at the same time. But in a fighting game doing a move nails you in place, vulnerable. You put out a hitbox in some part of the screen, but that's it. It immediately makes positioning important. It was that style of positioning-oriented play that I saw in the Dragoon fight in the Magpie's blog post. A slower form is found in positioning a fighting game character or deploying siege tanks. The other thing is the sheer binary quality of SC2's engagements. A constant dance is great, but the DPS is so absurd, the area control abilities like FFs so crushing - they're literally the ability to unilaterally say that some brilliant position your opponent has taken is now actually atrocious. It's horrible to watch, and spits on everything the game feels like it should be about. If you watch some high-level match of Smash, you can see how it is a similar constant dance while remaining mobile that happens pre-fight in SC2 (something that's impossible with Street Fighter characters or Dragoons, their version is a bit more stilted). But in Starcraft terms, they're spamming Storms, or dancing just around the edge of tank range. There's no ability to say that what you did is actually now invalid - everything has a counter but those counters need reads, you need to know what the opponent was going to do. You can punish bad positioning, but not just look and reactionarily rape him. And most of all? It's not all over in one shot, so there's time to dance. | ||
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Jaaaaasper
United States10225 Posts
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Eatme
Switzerland3919 Posts
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DinoToss
Poland507 Posts
On September 21 2013 07:57 Jaaaaasper wrote: I'm not saying its better or worse, but starcraft2 doesn't feel like the successor to bw, it feels like a new series. I think I wouldn't have the issues with it as a game if it was just a new series. I'm not one to judge better or worse, but it just feels so different, and when the first game was as good at bw was, different is bad in a sequel. That being said this is a great blog, despite my disagreement over bw units not being better designed. Almost every unit in BW is interesting, barring scouts and staple flying units(wraith/muta), which are straightforward. Some people may think anachronistically, but... BW devs were the one who actually came up with marine + medic, MECH idea (catapults? artillary etc, thats the biggest close relation you've seen in RTS), scourge, vulture reaver, dark archon, DT, detectors, ghost +nuke etc. Some emerged from playstyles some of the utility increased with "bad pathfinding", but all of them wouldn't work without their hardcoded aspects. I think the idea of detector vs stealth unit is still to my thinking the best idea anyone ever put in RTS in terms of unit roles. And BW to this day has probably the most in depth detector/stealth unit graph (didnt check). detector: mine observer overlord spore scan spells+splash(being pedantic) Stealthed: DT wraith lurker ghost kinda arbiter observer mine The last one two is imo brilliant, a detector/killer that is stealthed. Now give 1 race detector in flying supply and other with maphack. Madness. Ah and i forgot about an actual assymetrical race design, you cannot describe in words how weird it was to play first mission as zerg after playing games Dune2/C&C95/RA/TA/KKND/WAR2 (all before SC1 i believe) this was assymetry as its core, *click on eggs* "eeeewww, gross". Credits where its due, devs did their job. | ||
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ClarenceSc
Germany5 Posts
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