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ill start off by saying, after searching for various terms relating to this search i didnt find anything relevant to what i actually want to convey but ive read several posts on the contrary to what i believe.
So there has been numerous countless issues with unit pathing in sc2, people complaining about gateways trapping units between pylons, units getting stuck in places they should, workers taking an extensively long path to get to minerals or a geyser.
yet i still found nothing relating to how STUPID the broodwar unit pathing is,i played wc3 before sc2 and had not played sc1 (bw wasnt out when i had sc1) since i got my very first pc with its fantastic 2gb hard drive and 1.2ghz processor, with a whopping 128mb of ram.
i digress, unit pathing i feel is such an important issue in sc2 that they scrapped the system totally from broodwar, clogging on ramps/bridges/chokes means you lose units on broodwar, as your units will for some reason try to find the longest way around the map when there is a single other unit blocking them (even when its your own units!)
i have a feeling im going to have alot of people telling me to stfu because of this post, and alot of people saying l2p, yes, i agree my unit control isnt the best it could be on broodwar but i never really considered getting units up and down ramps a big part of the micro-management.
on the other hand my unit control in sc2 is (id like to think) above average, dont get me wrong, i dont have a gripe with the entire bw control system, i actually appreciate watching good players even more now that i know what it entails to even move your units around the map.
really the topic i started this off with is simple, why have i seen so many complaints reflecting onto the pathing system on sc2, i know it has its flaws, but compared to broodwar its come a long LONG way,
of course there is always going to be the bw purists who dislike the pathing system in sc2 for no real reason other than its different
so with all that said my final thought and possibly a question to you all is, what do you make of the intelligent pathing systems in place in sc2 as opposed to broodwar?
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broodwar isn't a better game than sc2 but the way things worked out with how bad alot of features are (12 unit selection limit, tons of bugs that greatly increased the skillcap, unit pathing being so bad etc) due to the fact the game was made 50 years ago, it's amazing to watch/play and requires ungodly amounts of skill. If you're not ready to guide your dragoons every step of the way on anything that isn't a completely open field then too bad, because for the people who can do it while still managing everything else it's extremely rewarding. I would not call SC2 "dumbed down", and the best player still wins 95% of the time in SC2, just like BW, but due to the massive interface improvements (which are great, and i'm not bashing them) it's no doubt a far easier game than broodwar. Using skill to get around the archaic interface, pathing issues etc are the reasons BW is such a great game and thats why we're able to watch korean players in total awe.
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On June 09 2010 22:54 faction123 wrote:
broodwar isn't a better game than sc2 but the way things worked out with how bad alot of features are (12 unit selection limit, tons of bugs that greatly increased the skillcap, unit pathing being so bad etc) due to the fact the game was made 50 years ago, it's amazing to watch/play and requires ungodly amounts of skill. If you're not ready to guide your dragoons every step of the way on anything that isn't a completely open field then too bad, because for the people who can do it while still managing everything else it's extremely rewarding. I would not call SC2 "dumbed down", and the best player still wins 95% of the time in SC2, just like BW, but due to the massive interface improvements (which are great, and i'm not bashing them) it's no doubt a far easier game than broodwar. Using skill to get around the archaic interface, pathing issues etc are the reasons BW is such a great game and thats why we're able to watch korean players in total awe.
this.
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The only reason units in BW dont clump is because they occupy a 2D space with a set amount of pixels instead of a 3d space hence limiting the amount of stuff that can pass through in a certain time. If you think they don't clump, play TvP with bio against HT and see what happens. The other problem with the 2d engine is that only a certain amount of pixels can go through the ramp which is a certain amount of pixels, causing really weird pathing for large units with a large amount of pixels. The pathing is completely weird, that also allows for wall ins for T, and forge FE's for protoss to prevent ling runbys through really awkward looking stuff. It's the 2d interface more than the AI pathing imo. But again remember that SC2 ramps are much larger too than BW ramps, goons won't have the same problems with a python ramp in comparison to let's say a Luna ramp because it's much larger.
Honestly though, proper rally points will solve all your problems for BW, unless you are playing on sin peaks, but then you have to be skilled to play that anyways.
I really don't like the clumping movement of SC2, but that's only due to 3d unit design, for small units in BW(lings,rines) clump just as bad, you just dont notice it as much because the resolution is lower and they take up a much larger in game space due to the 2d interface.
Edit: Just remember because of that clunky 2d interface with huge units you get the epic mid-late game battles that take up screens, storms that cover entire screens, protoss engaging seige tank lines that take up a quarter of the map. Units being larger makes the game and the battles feel a lot more epic, BW 200/200 battles were much more awesome to look at in comparison to SC2 200/200 battles(see Idra vs Ra on metropolis).
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Simply increasing the bounding box sizes for the units would reduce clumping in SC2.
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I'd say the main reason people don't complain very much is that old BW players (especially those who still favor the game over SC2) tend to enjoy the insane amount of babysitting you need to be doing in the game.
And I have to admit I definitely belong in that group; SC2 is just so user friendly it disgusts me.
That being said the game is of course very competitive and the better player usually wins but I think the "skills" what will allow future SC2 progamers to get ahead are gonna be very different from the ones needed in BW.
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It's more than just the magic box mechanic. Say you have a group of 12 lings. (BW) Even though they easily fit inside the magic box, yhey will spread out into a single-file line if you just give them a single move command.
BW units are all very finicky about having enough space around them, and if you want have baller micro, you have to be mindful of that. The SC2 pathing engine implements a few things that make big changes to the way units move, mainly that each unit predicts the path of other units, and will alter their own path to make more room for the others. This makes controlling and splitting up small groups less important.
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yeah lol the unit pathing is better in SC2 but that's a part of what makes BW more fun to play , when you dodge lurkers or spread your marines and make manual arcs and so on...It's a part of what's fun in battle ,not just charging and casting a few spells then retreating with your massive ball(wich you can do in Bw too if you've got the mechanichs to actually control your army decently)
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On June 09 2010 23:13 samachking wrote:
The only reason units in BW dont clump is because they occupy a 2D space with a set amount of pixels instead of a 3d space hence limiting the amount of stuff that can pass through in a certain time. If you think they don't clump, play TvP with bio against HT and see what happens. The other problem with the 2d engine is that only a certain amount of pixels can go through the ramp which is a certain amount of pixels, causing really weird pathing for large units with a large amount of pixels. The pathing is completely weird, that also allows for wall ins for T, and forge FE's for protoss to prevent ling runbys through really awkward looking stuff. It's the 2d interface more than the AI pathing imo. But again remember that SC2 ramps are much larger too than BW ramps, goons won't have the same problems with a python ramp in comparison to let's say a Luna ramp because it's much larger.
Honestly though, proper rally points will solve all your problems for BW, unless you are playing on sin peaks, but then you have to be skilled to play that anyways.
I really don't like the clumping movement of SC2, but that's only due to 3d unit design, for small units in BW(lings,rines) clump just as bad, you just dont notice it as much because the resolution is lower and they take up a much larger in game space due to the 2d interface.
Edit: Just remember because of that clunky 2d interface with huge units you get the epic mid-late game battles that take up screens, storms that cover entire screens, protoss engaging seige tank lines that take up a quarter of the map. Units being larger makes the game and the battles feel a lot more epic, BW 200/200 battles were much more awesome to look at in comparison to SC2 200/200 battles(see Idra vs Ra on metropolis).
fantastic post, very well thought out and supremely informative, id never really given much thought to the 2d engine having alot to do with unit pathing, similar to the way you can hide small units (workers/rines/lings/blings) behind buildings in sc2 without them being at all visable (due to the 3d engine).
i much prefer the BW forum on TL as there is hardened vets of the game, as opposed to all the newbies (such as my self) that sc2 attracted.
sometimes i feel sorry for the mods when i think of the huge influx of visitors and spam posts they have had to take on due to sc2 making RTS a mainstream genre once again.
either way its super nice to have everybodys input in a topic i feel strongly about, and as mentioned in the post i quoted (a topic i covered very breifly in the OP) the crazy unit pathing makes for brilliant games in BW.
also one other thing, DROPSHIPS! i find them to be alot more micro intensive than in sc2 due to the improved AI of the dropship, in bw it will drop 3-4rines and still have half a load due to it not actually moving to drop the others in open space, where as the drop ships in sc2 will physically force units out of the way to unload them
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tl;dr (all). Do you think that getting a 200/200 army up a ramp in 4 seconds like in sc2 is better then?
User was temp banned for this post.
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If you think thats cool, watch some pro games (TvT's) where they unload 6+ seperate moving dropships completely in 5 seconds.
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On June 10 2010 00:32 eth3real wrote:
tl;dr (all). Do you think that getting a 200/200 army up a ramp in 4 seconds like in sc2 is better then?
if you had actually bothered to read the OP you wouldnt be asking stupid questions like that, why bother posting on this thread at all?
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On June 10 2010 00:33 D-Lite wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2010 00:32 eth3real wrote:
tl;dr (all). Do you think that getting a 200/200 army up a ramp in 4 seconds like in sc2 is better then? if you had actually bothered to read the OP you wouldnt be asking stupid questions like that, why bother posting on this thread at all?
Read it and I don't know why you called my question stupid because you didn't adress anything remotely like it in the OP.
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On June 10 2010 00:33 D-Lite wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2010 00:32 eth3real wrote:
tl;dr (all). Do you think that getting a 200/200 army up a ramp in 4 seconds like in sc2 is better then? if you had actually bothered to read the OP you wouldnt be asking stupid questions like that, why bother posting on this thread at all?
But you complained about that...
The ramp is suppose to be a strategic location that you defend. You would never a-move up a ramp in sc1 because stuff would glitch out and you would lose units. That's part of the strategy of BW
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It's not that we don't want improved unit pathing, its that the ramp is no longer a very strategic point on the map. As long as you can see up the ramp, it provides almost no strategic positioning.
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No body addresses it because everyone is used to it. But ya.. Ramps suck.
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After going back to BW since playing WoL, it amazes me how unbelievably frustrating BW is. Yea, it takes significantly more skill (solely due to an absolutely terrible UI by today's standards), but it's all just frustrating crap that makes me want to gouge out by eyeballs - I really don't see how people enjoy telling their Dragoon to walk across a bridge and then watching it walk literally in the opposite direction. I for one am glad that the archaic crap is gone - it leaves more room for skill to develop based on actual strategy/doing things instead of managing a terrible UI. Granted, WoL isn't there yet and definitely doesn't take as much skill as BW, but games need to evolve and not rely on meticulous, boring tasks in order to have a higher skill ceiling. WoL is (trying to) take us in that direction.
But you complained about that...
The ramp is suppose to be a strategic location that you defend. You would never a-move up a ramp in sc1 because stuff would glitch out and you would lose units. That's part of the strategy of BW
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It's not that we don't want improved unit pathing, its that the ramp is no longer a very strategic point on the map. As long as you can see up the ramp, it provides almost no strategic positioning.
That isn't the issue at all. The issue is that in terms of game mechanics is it isn't nearly as destructive to A-move up a ramp - due to high ground advantage being much smaller than in BW, you can't punish people for trying to go up ramps as much. It has very little to do with the pathing. That "strategy" was just an incredibly annoying side-effect of the pathing.
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I don't have anything to add to the topic since I think the posters before me have already provided very good reasons, but I'd just like to point out the maturity of the posts in this thread. Now I remember what I'm missing out on in the SC2 forums with all those Internet winners over there T_T
Oh, I would like to point out that the pathing in SC1 exaggerated the mobility discrepancies between the races. I loved it 
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ill leave it at this, its pretty clear people think im complaining about something when i actually stated in the OP im not complaining about anything at all, just high lighting an issue a bw newbie such as my self has noticed, and why there really isnt that much information on it.
id just like to say thanks to the people who input relevant information and provided theorys/answers
and id like to say to the ignorant few, please read posts before you jump in with your 2 cents
and yeah faction123, drop ship play is something i really admire in broodwar by pro's, it amazes me how they can act so fast and so controlled
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On June 09 2010 23:13 samachking wrote:
The only reason units in BW dont clump is because they occupy a 2D space with a set amount of pixels instead of a 3d space hence limiting the amount of stuff that can pass through in a certain time. This is 100% wrong, the colision detection in sc2 is just as 2d as in BW. SC2 is a 2d game displayed in 3 dimensions, the gameplay is still 100% 2d.
The pathfinding logic used in sc2 is exactly the same as the one used in BW. Which is also exactly the same used of pretty much any other game that ever existed. Pathfinding is a very known science that any average computer science student knows of. There aren't much new tricks to how it's made in the last decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinding
The pathing in WC3 and SC2 only feels smoother than the one in BW because the calculations are done faster. Pathfinding is a very CPU intensive process and it's what games spend most of their processing time doing. Since at the time BW launched the computers were slower, if Blizzard pushed too much into the pathfinding the game would slow down. So they simply made units look for new paths less often and used less "pixels" (known as threads) to calculate paths. So computers of 10 years ago wouldn't crash.
In SC2 and WC3, since computers are now faster, Blizzard just made units recalculate more often and use more threads to calculate it. Since now computers can handle it. Other than that, the system is exactly the same. The only difference between BW and SC2 pathing is that SC2 is faster. Nothing else. All those dragoons getting blocked in ramps are just symptoms of units not re-calculating their paths more often into smaller threads.
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EPT
magic box
