Brood War Unit Pathing - Page 2

On June 10 2010 02:05 Misrah wrote:
for those players thinking that the tremendous amount of skill needed to play BW is figuring out unit pathing- your wrong.

SCBW has a less sophisticated than SC2 or other newer rts, but to say that unit pathing defines BW is grossly inaccurate. Doing so is an extremely obtuse view of the game imo.

On June 09 2010 22:46 D-Lite wrote:
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.

On June 10 2010 01:47 VIB wrote:
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.

On June 10 2010 00:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:
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.

On June 10 2010 07:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:


If you tell a bunch of Dragoons to move across a small bridge, some will inevitably walk the opposite direction for a certain amount of time because they tried to find a new path due to the fact that other Dragoons block their path. They'll walk a different direction for a certain amount of time before turning around again and actually walking across the bridge. It's the same with ramps and small chokes.

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.

On June 10 2010 08:41 Stratos_speAr wrote:


The problem is that the thing that causes the game to require more skill is simply old and outdated programming that's frustrating. It's a terrible design philosophy to have to rely on archaic UI's in order to force the skill ceiling higher. Games should be evolving to make the skill ceiling raise with deeper strategic thinking and more interesting and complicated tasks. It shouldn't rely on bugs and a crappy UI.

On June 10 2010 08:54 Severedevil wrote:
It's hard for a large group to move through a narrow passage, and often requires someone directing the flow of traffic if you want it to happen quickly. I dunno why it's unfair and 'outdated programming' for the game to reflect that truth.

On June 10 2010 07:44 cloudica wrote:


Not true - flowfield pathing is pretty new and only recent games use it (SupCom may have been the first - please correct me if I'm wrong). That didn't exist back in 1998. Like you say - it wouldn't be possible on decade old computers.

This demonstrates the difference pretty well:
+ Show Spoiler +

Pathing feels different in SC2 because it's done differently. Collision detection is only a small part of it; collision avoidance has a higher priority when it comes to pathing (Brood War basically didn't have any ).

If you tried this in brood war you would be waiting for a very long time:
+ Show Spoiler +

On June 10 2010 04:47 samachking wrote:


Thanks for the correction and really informative post ^__^. I felt the pathing was similar in both games, but I thought it was due to the 2d spacing rather than the computer calculating pathways, thanks for the correction, I guess this makes sense. But again units in BW still felt like they clumped less( despite clumping i.e moving unseiged tanks) in comparison to SC2 units because they took up more space in general, but I guess pathways work for both, but it's messed up at BW ramps or weird places due to pathfinding I suppose.