EPTBut I think we usually remember how "good" is when we are able to master "hard" things in order to make them work. It feels like "magic" because it was really something special behind any scenario.
Broodwar and Starcraft 2 - Pathing - Page 4
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Sogetsu
514 Posts
But I think we usually remember how "good" is when we are able to master "hard" things in order to make them work. It feels like "magic" because it was really something special behind any scenario. | ||
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csikos27
United States135 Posts
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R3DT1D3
285 Posts
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n.DieJokes
United States3443 Posts
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sudete
Singapore3054 Posts
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
When I re-watch BW VODs today I often notice how slow players were at re-inforcing attacks. And how zerg players many times would not be attackign with their entire armies. Often a huge chunk of it would stand idle with all the newly hatched units. I keep thinking: "If this was SC2 UI and pathing, the defending player would die to the reinforcements". You start to realize how hard it is to actually recreate BW-like gameplay in a different, more modern, engine. Especially for a game that shares a lot of the design parameters of its predecessor (200 supply cap, roughly the same size maps, roughly the same income rates and many of the same units). What the designers of SC2 did well I think was to make the game more fast paced. Because to attain the same level of depth in a mechanically less challening game -- you must introduce something in order to put players under more stress. But where they botched SC2's design I think was in uncritically copying all those other design parameters from Brood War while simultaneously changing the pace of the game. They changed the economy. They changed how fast the economy developed. They changed pathing. They made the game feel more fast paced. They made all these changes, but they made them without putting any real thought as to whether they would still fit within a 200 supply game or within the same size/scale map designs. There's a lot of untapped potential in SC2. Even with its current pathing. In that I very much include the microability of units. Just last week I realized a peculiar quirk of how Blizzard have designed air units in SC2. Air units will only glide if they are perfectly separated when ordered to fire! If they in any way overlap (in their separation radius, that thing that repels them from clumping together), all the units that overlap will come to an immediate halt when ordered to fire! The most evident way of spotting this phenomenon in pro games is in viking micro vs colossus. When players fire backwards with 4-6 perfectly separated vikings, they will keep their gliding motion while firing. But when the vikings are clumped before firing, they just halt at a stand still and fire. De-stacking is made to take precedence over gliding in SC2 engine. If this was just an isolated example of lack of attention to detail I'd be more accepting of Blizzard. But really it's a pattern in SC2's entire design. | ||
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robm
United States56 Posts
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
Pathing finding is only a small part of the story. For one, unit design between the two games are so staggeringly different. HP creep, super mobile base destroyers, cliff walking, complete lack of turn rate, attack start up time, standing in place to finish your attack animation, gliding shots on the drone, archon. What comes most to my mind is how excellent units are in SC2 are at base busting. Immortals, marauders, roaches, and banelings come to mind. In BW you wanted to get a siege tank into postion, or a defiler (fragile and easily sniped, hive tech). Spot the difference. + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3YgB1Qo.jpg) What is easier to break into a base with? + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AJGAv8T.jpg) Next we come to some fundamental decisions. Take a look at Z. Would you ever see SC2 zerg building a nydus canal to transport units for defence? No, you just a-move some super speed lings and mutas anywhere you want as long as you have creep spread. Fundamental difference in defence strategies + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B5CfA1u.jpg) What about general base layouts? SC2 bases are defended by jockeying your army and make sure he isn't able to attack any of your bases when your army isn't there to intercept. What encourages things like storm drops more? What encourages just a-moving a few zealots? + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PwACTFc.jpg) The pathfinding only tells a small story. It does play a big part, I'm not saying it doesn't. It helps with things like dps density (how much damage you can deal in a given area). It is much less punishing to fight the edge of another army due to this. More room for micro as well. I could go into the incredible unit physics differences in BW and how SC2 units all just behave the same (which I believe Day9's rant hints more towards) but it would be so much easier to do a vod on it, and I've worked sooooo hard at bringing these sorts of differences in the Starbow mod. To at least give you a very brief example. Compare zealots vs roaches to zealots vs hydras in BW. How much micro is there in both of these examples? In sc2 you simply kite backwards, the zealots have no input given to them to make them more effective. Now compare this to Zealots and hydras in BW. Lets assume we have sc2 pathing. If you are doing it correctly you probably are doing something more akin to blink micro for the hydras, while manually targetting weak units (or switching targets for zealots that are chasing hydras running away forever). Both sides are HEAVILY encouraged to make a wide flank, for ease of micro is to counter the opponents ability to outmaneuver you. This micro is similar to that awkward phase at the start of a tvp, 2 marines vs 1 zealot, except played out in a grander scale with much more micro required. This is my primary example for how BW units could simply bump up their effectiveness by being manually controlled. These fights could go either way depending on how well they are micro'ed. Is there really a difference in roach micro between pro's? Blizz changed the fundamental nature of how melee vs ranged units work in Starcraft. In bw you had speedzealots. A slow hydralisk being pulled backwards would never get hit by that speedzealot. You would need to actually micro to kill it. In sc2, ranged units that are slower than a melee unit WILL get hit 100% of the time, constantly. They cannot retreat. So blizz did things like, make the zealot slower but give it charge so it at least hits some of the time. But does that encourage micro or nullify it? Now imagine a pack of speedlings trying to chase a probe. In BW they will never kill the probe unless the probe runs towards the lings. The player must actually micro the lings to run past it, then confirm the kill. Of course the probe can juke that sort of attempt and get away. Now SC2? The probe will die, 100% of the time. No micro is required for either players. Lings can get a tiny bit more effective, but really, the probe will die it is only a small matter of time. Fundamental differences in how attacks work between SC2 and BW, not pathing. Sorry, I should probably do a vod on a lot of these differences because it is a lot easier to show than explain via text. I leave you with something to think about. SC2 and BW in terms of map size are actually 1:1 matched. But SC2 units travel at MUCH faster rates than BW. This is why you saw a general trend towards bigger and bigger maps in sc2. You'd see 128x128 maps in BW. SC2? 168x168. Even with this difference in scale BW units STILL move roughly 10% slower in relation to rush distances. This is not including creep spread, or units like the ling having their speed buffed. | ||
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Kylo55
Poland64 Posts
 been long time since reddit gave me sth at this level of awesomenes | ||
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tissue
Malaysia441 Posts
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Demicore
France503 Posts
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ejozl
Denmark3400 Posts
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DinoToss
Poland507 Posts
Boxer was also known to glitch things crazy, the amazing usage of mine glitch to "push" vultures through small chokes, barrack landings to glitch dragoons, medic walls etc. *Bisu loves forcefields; ) I slightly don't like forceful neutral statements, yes BW and SC2 is orange and apples, but saying This and That is faulty or archaic just to offset massive advantageous statements you made before about this mechanic for BW is forcefully trying to neutralize your article. The faultiness of something is debatable, when we argue that it's the faultiness that is the cause of its awesomeness. And archaic? Chess are archaic and we marvel at this word, despite it being archaic if we set a convenient comparison bar. still 5/5 because you brought many good points. | ||
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TheButtonmen
Canada1401 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
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dinosrwar
1290 Posts
On September 19 2013 09:30 Falling wrote: Very cool blog. One thing I would say is that I do recognize that many things that existed in BW were not by intentional design. I had actually asked Patrick Wyatt on his blog on this point and he described it as "emergent behaviour"- things like vulture control. And at one point in time I had hoped SC2 would have taken the concept of the emergent behaviour and build it intentionally into the unit pathing rather than trying to recreate the mess of code that created it in the first place. Learn from the principle rather than the execution. Because it's true. I do enjoy the fighting game, button combo aspect of BW and can't really find it in any other RTS. I 100% agree that difficulty getting up ramps was one of the key things that created defenders advantage. Between that and miss-chance, breaking an encamped army on the cliffs is brutal. I miss the regularity of 3+ base play thanks to the power of defensive positions. How many SC2 games are true back and forths like in BW? Too many 1 to 2 engagement decides everything after watching 20 minutes of macro. Sigh. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
Design wise, almost all the Broodwar units are A-Move units and in comparison are much less dynamic and much less interesting than the SC2 units they are matched with. I don't think this is true either. | ||
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lolfail9001
Russian Federation40190 Posts
On September 20 2013 04:32 dinosrwar wrote: I miss the regularity of 3+ base play thanks to the power of defensive positions. How many SC2 games are true back and forths like in BW? Too many 1 to 2 engagement decides everything after watching 20 minutes of macro. Sigh. Depends on match-up. Also, i for one do not admire units that go full retard on first possible obstacle, even if it makes for back and forth games (especially considering i have seen a serious level of throw by T in one of those 'comeback' ZvTs. And, tbh 1-2 engagements only really decide the outcome of TvP due to nature of toss ball and due to that are prepostured with at the least 2-3 minutes of positioning. Also, it is not BW, you need much less than 20 minutes to max out :D (i believe even in Bw you could max out on 3 base at ~15 minutes as T). | ||
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lolfail9001
Russian Federation40190 Posts
On September 20 2013 04:35 Grumbels wrote: I think it's silly to use the example of Jaedong blocking his ramp deliberately (only to forget about it) and then use that as an example of the pathfinding. If you're going to wall off your ramp in SC2 the units will have the exact same behavior. Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On September 20 2013 04:40 lolfail9001 wrote: Where he blocked his ramp? all he did is robotic a-moves to whereever he wanted. Screenshot just showed what it ended up with. Jaedong blocked his ramp with drones on hold position or something like that. Point is that the ramp was blocked, so it's not surprising that the units couldn't move past, it has nothing to do with pathfinding. | ||
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