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Here's a comparison of SC pathing vs war3 pathing. From watching gameplay vids, it SEEMS to me, that units are using war3 style pathing, except clumping together more heavily. Someone who went to Blizzcon can confirm this.
Edit: Seems like some people can't read, so I'm going to emphasize this very important point with some bold italic underlining: THE FORMATION BUTTON IN WARCRAFT 3 CHANGES THE PATHFINDING SO THAT YOUR SELECTION MOVES AT THE SPEED OF THE SLOWEST UNIT. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH UNITS GETTING CLUMPED UP INTO A NICE LOOK GRID, AND THERE IS NO WAY TO DISABLE THIS ASPECT OF THE WAR3 PATHING!!!
SC pathing: units move parallel to each other, unless they're going down a ramp or something else is obstructing their path, or the formation is outside of the "magical boxes".
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc2.jpg)
It's a little inaccurate at times, but it generally gets the right idea.
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc4.jpg)
(edit) If the units are outside of the magic boxes, they all converge on a single point, regardless of whether or not the point is inside or outside of the unit formation.
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc9.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc10.jpg)
War pathing: units fall into a nice looking box
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_war1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_war2.jpg)
Oh no! All that time I spent setting up a nice little formation to protect my archmage was completely wasted.
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_war3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_war4.jpg)
It doesn't matter if they are tightly packed or spread out, they still fall into the same spread box formation. You might also want to take note that the position of the box is dependent on the direction you clicked the command in.
This box may look nice, but it has huge implications on unit formations, in other words, you can't set one up! Toggling the formation button does nothing - that sets it so that a group of units moves at the same speed as the slowest unit.
Someone from Blizzcon can probably answer this. I've noticed big units like siege tanks tripping up as they try to rotate around each other, instead of moving parallel to one another so they wouldn't have to get around each other. It also seems like no matter what the player does, marines travel in huge boxy clusters.
That box may LOOK nice, but it plays horrible, and out of all of the features that you can argue newbie up war3, this is by far the biggest one. The most optimal pathing formation is one where all your units move parallel to each other - refer to 1,000 vods of players setting up zergling surrounds, moving perfectly set up zealot walls to charge tank lines and block zerglings from hitting your templar, and deliberately calculated tank formations. With war3 style pathing, these formations would immediately be broken up in a single move command.
I don't understand why anyone else hasn't brought this up but me, and whenever I posted about it during war3 beta, I got ignored. This is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and we need to make a lot of noise about it to get this fixed as soon as possible.
Unlike a lot of other comments about war3 in this forum, this is not a blind "war3=noob" flame, it's a serious issue that's gone without discussion.
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Try adding a dragoon or templar to that first photo and see if it's just because they walk at different speeds.
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On August 15 2007 15:11 5HITCOMBO wrote:
Try adding a dragoon or templar to that first photo and see if it's just because they walk at different speeds. In the second photo I'm only commanding footmen around, but I'll go check it out
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I remember that there was a scattered option on War3. In fact, I believe you have it selected, and I have no idea why your units still get into position.
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On August 15 2007 15:13 Axsynthe wrote:
I remember that there was a scattered option on War3. In fact, I believe you have it selected, and I have no idea why your units still get into position. Addressed it. Having formations on moves your units at the speed of the slowest unit in the selection.
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Having two different units in your group doesn't seem to have any effect.
However, the pathing may take an extra few seconds to get sorted out in its final formation if a slower unit is blocking a faster one. I can't exactly screenshot this, but it happened to me here.
I also forgot about the "magical boxes" - if the group of units is a certain distance apart, then they converge on a single point.
Personally i feel that the best UI setting for the "magical boxes" would be to define them as a box bounded around your current selection - anything inside the box converges, anything outside the box goes parallel.
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CA10827 Posts
yeah, i really agree. when i saw the rines and reapers running around i was like "wow they'd get owned by storm" since they clump together so much.
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On August 15 2007 15:41 LosingID8 wrote:
yeah, i really agree. when i saw the rines and reapers running around i was like "wow they'd get owned by storm" since they clump together so much.
Haha^^..
I totally agree with the topic starter. Pathing and unitmovement is one of the biggest, maybe the biggest deal in an RTS.
I mean - all graphics and good gameplay ideas don't help anything when you can't control your units you like want to.
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Yeah you're probably right. It definately should be like in SC1. But as we know, nothing is final yet, and maybe Blizzard considered this as a minor issue (not important for their demos/presentations -> include WC3 pathing and leave it untouched for now) which they can change later on.
They were in a hurry to make a playable version for Blizzcon, and people first want to see the graphics, units and so on, so I guess that this was low priority but will be changed before release.
A neat thing maybe would be an option to set different formations (e.g. horizontal row, vertical row, clump together, spread, keep this formation [SC1]).
But it's good that you made this thread... this is one easily overlooked but important issue.
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Don't get into a fit about path finding stuff you guys see so far.
Blizzard is really working on pathing issues to the best of their abilities and I have no doubts that they'll pull through.
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On August 15 2007 17:01 MYM.Testie wrote:
Don't get into a fit about path finding stuff you guys see so far.
Blizzard is really working on pathing issues to the best of their abilities and I have no doubts that they'll pull through. I'm mostly getting into a fit because I couldn't convince anyone in war3 beta that the pathfinding system was inferior to SC just because it automatically moved ranged units to the back ranks ;_;
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Germany1302 Posts
You are probably right, but it's still valid to post such things. It's one thing to have faith in Blizzard to do things right (which I have), but if everyone would simply rely on that faith and noone would post his thoughts and ideas anymore I'm pretty sure Sc2 will not be as good as it could be. We know Blizzard listens to us and they do it for a reason.
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Pathfinding should be fixed. But no auto-formations.
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they should keep pathfinding same as sc1 and have no "stupid" pathfinding units , for example: goliaths
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CA10827 Posts
On August 15 2007 17:41 x_woof_x wrote:
they should keep pathfinding same as sc1 and have no "stupid" pathfinding units , for example: goliaths we terran users have no right to complain when protoss have the dragoon
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This is really interesting, I knew how units moved in starcraft but never knew how it worked in warcraft 3. Definatly something someone at blizzard should pay attention to.
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Warcraft 3's set pathing is toggleable btw. You can click one of those buttons by the minimap to have freeform pathing.
Just another example of a UI change that makes it easier for the masses but allows the pros to show off skills. The UI change is intended for noobs to have easier control their army of varying speeds (so your catapults don't lag behind your main army, in SC that was be your vultures not moving too far ahead of your tanks.)
But a pro would have precise control over his units anyways and not need such a feature.
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...and this is exactly the difference between pros and n00bs!
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Path finding is problematic especially in a 3D environment, this is why games like counter strike uses nodes on the map to help bots navigate around because its an extremely difficult task to do. it requires more computations to process where a unit can and can not go in 3D space and how it gets there, in SC it was a relational 2D block algorithm. Where the square the unit occupies is non walk able by other units, simple and works great... for 2D
WC3 being 3D used invisible 3D bounding boxes to help a unit know its place in 3D space, so it could move accordingly over the different height terrain the issue there is that the bounding box could rotate with the unit and if it would touch another unit's bounding box then it would want to separate itself because as pointed out with the tank example spinning around - if they were too clumped together then any rotation of this invisible box would cause a 'hit' to trigger and the unit would have to recalculate how it should move to get to its destination and possibly spin around in frustration when the box just touches slightly. The way around this (how players get surrounds on heros) is to constantly tell units you want it to go HERE and constantly issue the order, slowly the path becomes clear for the unit and it will move as intended.
SC2 is going to focus on height which raises more issues like how does a unit like the colossus find its way around a group of units to move up a cliff? Could it step over them? all or some? Step on them? Then what if another colossus was blocking its path from the top of the cliff, does it wait, move around? What about when the group moves together how does it move in relation to the group? There are many issues for blizzard to consider when programming how a unit interacts with its surroundings.
I'm not convinced we'll see an exact SC1 type pathing due to the nature of the environment but like everyone else I do hope a similar approach could be worked out as WC3 was somewhat annoying having to constantly issue orders to get the units where you wanted them.
I hope this post has pointed out some of the issues blizzard will be considering behind the scenes.
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On August 15 2007 20:18 FlyingHamsta wrote:
Warcraft 3's set pathing is toggleable btw. You can click one of those buttons by the minimap to have freeform pathing.
Just another example of a UI change that makes it easier for the masses but allows the pros to show off skills. The UI change is intended for noobs to have easier control their army of varying speeds (so your catapults don't lag behind your main army, in SC that was be your vultures not moving too far ahead of your tanks.)
But a pro would have precise control over his units anyways and not need such a feature.
did you even read the post? this is exactly the problem, it was NOT toggleable in wc3 and they had stupid pathing (possibly because of the 3-D environment)
i would find this disturbing if it occurred in SC2 as it didn't matter quite as much in wc3 (more time spent watching units and less units to control meant pros were better able to constantly micro their armies)
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wc3 patthing is not like that. You have an option to turn off formation so any unit moves at their speed, that's what pros use and it feels much nice than 2d sc, actually is one of the reasons i stopped playing brood war the pathing is so outdated, in w3 is much smootly.
But yea i dont' want my marines to walk in a formation, i want them to move like I WANT.
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I guess it would be useful to have a few toggles:
auto-formation
auto-walk speed
none
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They definitely should use magic boxes and related pathing as close to SC1 as possible. It just feels more natural, is easier to control, and allows for small adjustments, etc.
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Maybe custom formations? You create an formation and you press a button to "lock" the units in that position?
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On August 15 2007 15:41 LosingID8 wrote:
yeah, i really agree. when i saw the rines and reapers running around i was like "wow they'd get owned by storm" since they clump together so much.
funny coincedence that storm has been nerfed. Could it be that AoE is getting nerfed because they got rid of magical boxes?
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On August 15 2007 23:18 flabortaster wrote:
Maybe custom formations? You create an formation and you press a button to "lock" the units in that position?
what happens then if you have a vertical line of marines and then they come to a horizontal swarm of lings? would you prefer they stood locked in a stright line where maybe the top few are out of reach to fire and stand there idle or move foward to arch so that all of them could open fire ? There is a fine line between wanting a unit to do what you want exactly and wanting a unit to be sensible in a given situation.
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Hm, this thread makes an excellent point that we'll have to wait and see about. I sure hope Blizzard tries to remain faithful to SC's original pathfinding in this respect, if at all possible.
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There were some definite pathing issues at Blizzcon (maynard workers going retarded for example), but I'm sure balancing/testing will fix most of these.
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Um, the autoformation wasnt in sc2 demo as we all saw, they clumped up no matter what trying to get as close as possible to the poiint you clicked, not going into the wc3 formation.
But anyhow, the pathfinding is much better in wc3, and in sc2 as we saw. If you ordered your units to attack something around a corner in sc they would go in a line and get obliterated since its the worst formation ever, while in wc3 you can toggle for them to wait for each other giving them a much better formation than sc, and now in sc2 they can even push each other if someone is in the way meaning that there will be no pathing issues with your units blocking each other.
However, what you are talking about isnt pathing issues, its formation issues. In sc you had a semi formation system were the units kept their old formation unless something intervened with it, but the formation wouldnt hold for battles or for any obstacles wich meant that it was very micro dependant and less macro dependant, while the wc3 one is a good overall formation that is quite tight but not tight enough to be aoe targets and its kept throughout any obstacles and airunits followed the ground units, this is very good for macro but less for micro.
But here anything is good, as long as they have a formation movement toggle so that your units move in unison im happy, using it for a guardian/hydra combo would be neat since then the guardians wouldnt rush out were the hydras cant follow.
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The unit formation is a toggle option in Wc3. Most people turn it off because of what your reasons are. You just didn't turn it off.
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Look at his screenshots people, it's quite obvious if you look at the formation toggle it's set to OFF
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On August 15 2007 17:01 MYM.Testie wrote:
Don't get into a fit about path finding stuff you guys see so far.
Blizzard is really working on pathing issues to the best of their abilities and I have no doubts that they'll pull through. I said that a couple years ago when I started playing about the reaver bugs.
Don't hold your breath.
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rpf is like the been there done that guy, he's always right about everything and he's already done everything/done what you're suggesting/done it better/done it more/one-upped you, and if you disagree then by God you're unAmerican and don't believe in difference of opinion. Just wait for it, he'll sarcastically apologize and then swear at me for being of inferior intellect.
As to the OP, this is a great point. It never even occurred to me, actually. I did notice that there was an incredible amount of clumping in gameplay videos though and thought it looked really ugly.
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On August 16 2007 01:11 SoleSteeler wrote:
Look at his screenshots people, it's quite obvious if you look at the formation toggle it's set to OFF
It's also obvious if they read the OP, but I guess reading is hard, too 
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On August 16 2007 00:27 Klockan3 wrote:
snippage--
and now in sc2 they can even push each other if someone is in the way meaning that there will be no pathing issues with your units blocking each other.
I'm worried about this. At what point do they move out of the way or just go around? 5 units, walk around, 6 units go through? Or is it dependent on temporary formation? Or hit collisions? It should be really clear and consistent to the player.
Sounds like it'll be "automatic" and therefore unpredictable behavior, which is just as annoying as the unpredictable behavior of bad pathing.
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On August 16 2007 04:02 Blacklizard wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2007 00:27 Klockan3 wrote:
snippage--
and now in sc2 they can even push each other if someone is in the way meaning that there will be no pathing issues with your units blocking each other.
I'm worried about this. At what point do they move out of the way or just go around? 5 units, walk around, 6 units go through? Or is it dependent on temporary formation? Or hit collisions? It should be really clear and consistent to the player. Sounds like it'll be "automatic" and therefore unpredictable behavior, which is just as annoying as the unpredictable behavior of bad pathing.
I've played a lot of War3 and it never seemed to bother me... Very easy to get used to, I've never heard of players, noob, mediocre or pro, saying that they lost a game because of this pathing 'problem'. There were some pathing bugs throughout war3's life though (units stopping for no reason), not talking about those.
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On August 15 2007 17:41 LosingID8 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2007 17:41 x_woof_x wrote:
they should keep pathfinding same as sc1 and have no "stupid" pathfinding units , for example: goliaths we terran users have no right to complain when protoss have the dragoon
hey, i can control goons pretty well
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This is a very valid OP. I can't add anything, but agree with it, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard is aware, and listening.
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On August 15 2007 23:45 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2007 15:41 LosingID8 wrote:
yeah, i really agree. when i saw the rines and reapers running around i was like "wow they'd get owned by storm" since they clump together so much. funny coincedence that storm has been nerfed. Could it be that AoE is getting nerfed because they got rid of magical boxes? That's what I think happened. I strongly believe a lot of the AOE nerfing done late in war3 development (they put max damage caps on all AOE spells) could have been easily avoided if they fixed the pathfinding instead.
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On August 15 2007 21:34 aka_star wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Path finding is problematic especially in a 3D environment, this is why games like counter strike uses nodes on the map to help bots navigate around because its an extremely difficult task to do. it requires more computations to process where a unit can and can not go in 3D space and how it gets there, in SC it was a relational 2D block algorithm. Where the square the unit occupies is non walk able by other units, simple and works great... for 2D
WC3 being 3D used invisible 3D bounding boxes to help a unit know its place in 3D space, so it could move accordingly over the different height terrain the issue there is that the bounding box could rotate with the unit and if it would touch another unit's bounding box then it would want to separate itself because as pointed out with the tank example spinning around - if they were too clumped together then any rotation of this invisible box would cause a 'hit' to trigger and the unit would have to recalculate how it should move to get to its destination and possibly spin around in frustration when the box just touches slightly. The way around this (how players get surrounds on heros) is to constantly tell units you want it to go HERE and constantly issue the order, slowly the path becomes clear for the unit and it will move as intended.
SC2 is going to focus on height which raises more issues like how does a unit like the colossus find its way around a group of units to move up a cliff? Could it step over them? all or some? Step on them? Then what if another colossus was blocking its path from the top of the cliff, does it wait, move around? What about when the group moves together how does it move in relation to the group? There are many issues for blizzard to consider when programming how a unit interacts with its surroundings.
I'm not convinced we'll see an exact SC1 type pathing due to the nature of the environment but like everyone else I do hope a similar approach could be worked out as WC3 was somewhat annoying having to constantly issue orders to get the units where you wanted them.
I hope this post has pointed out some of the issues blizzard will be considering behind the scenes. Is that really how it worked? I don't think it did, because you couldn't design a map where 2 ground units could possibly coexist on the same z axis. I'm fairly certain the 3d aspects of war3's gameplay are purely aesthetic
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One of the main reasons why I hated war 3.
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ok, first of all i am pretty sure that this will be very closely overlooked until release, i am confident that pathfinding, formations will be superb as in all blizzard games. you must understand that wc3 is very different from broodwar, controling wise. that you cant put up a "formation" in wc3 does not make the game newbie up at all (well you can toggle it on, but dont do that, its crap), wc3 just plays different, there is no use for formations, like it is in broodwar for closing ramps and so on.. the pathfinding is excellent in wc3, they fixed all the bugs and about the aoe nerf cause of the "pathfinding", thats not true, it simply got nerfed cause it was way too good and made heros even more important then they allready were. hope my english is understandable, dont use it much atm^
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okay I'm going to go edit the OP now ;_;
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Actually dude, you can disable the option in warcraft 3 where the group moves at the pace of hte slowest unit, i forgot which key you were supposed to click though. Let me find the manual.
edit:it should be under "bypassing formations" about 3/4 down the page. You have to hold alt when giving commands. Hmm i think this can even remove the fixed formation the units go into, I'll try to test it later.
http://www.battle.net/war3/basics/specialcommands.shtml
EDIT2: lolololo sry for posting wrong link
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Wow, this is a really valid post. I was surprised. I always KNEW something bugged me with warcraft 3's unit movement, but I never could figure it out explicitly.
Good job for bringing this potential problem out so that blizzard can be aware of it, if they aren't already aware.
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On August 16 2007 09:34 crazie-penguin wrote:Actually dude, you can disable the option in warcraft 3 where the group moves at the pace of hte slowest unit, i forgot which key you were supposed to click though. Let me find the manual. edit:it should be under "bypassing formations" about 3/4 down the page. You have to hold alt when giving commands. Hmm i think this can even remove the fixed formation the units go into, I'll try to test it later. http://teamliquid.net/forum/edit.php?message_edit_keuze=change&bericht_id=45&topic_id=57970¤tpage=3
link doesn't work 
i got a
Do not try to edit other people's messages.
Your ip '___' and nickname ___ are reported to the administrator
err nvm
i thought you were giving the link as to how to bypass the formations
still an interesting error message, haven't seen one of those before
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omfg i posted wrong link xD ROFL
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
wow OMG MY IP GOT REPORTED HELPPP
but thats an interesting part of TL XD ahha
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
I wonder why Warcraft 3 didn't use the same "magic boxes" as SC? Although the formation would break up a bit en route, the units would eventually try to end up in the same formation that they were originally in.
The original post doesn't do a good job of explaining how Warcraft 3 handles this, in my opinion (I've never played Warcraft 3, by the way). Does it try to assign its own formation to the units? If the AI players did that then that would be fine, but I wouldn't want the computer trying to determine my unit formations for me: I would want it to simply maintain whichever formation I had originally.
The only problem I had with the magic boxes was that sometimes they weren't big enough. E.g. if you spread 12 units (e.g. dragoons) out in a long line, they would exceed the size of the box. I wonder: now that we have processors that are more than 30x faster compared to the days of SC1, maybe it would be worth it to implement a slower but smarter algorithm for deciding whether to keep a group of units in the same formation (taking in to account the fact that it would have to work with groups much larger than 12, of course).
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OMFG HES RIGHT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT PLZ SOMEONE
and i mean that....someone really needs to make sure somehow they keep the same "physics"
they had in sc, else NO GOOD, RIOT GEAR
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Maybe you should post this in the battle.net forum. So Blizzard can say something about it!
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On August 15 2007 17:41 LosingID8 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2007 17:41 x_woof_x wrote:
they should keep pathfinding same as sc1 and have no "stupid" pathfinding units , for example: goliaths we terran users have no right to complain when protoss have the dragoon
Thank you. That was very kind.
SC1 unit path finding should definitely at least be an 'option' in the game. Keep fancy formation if you want to, but have the options open.
I also like a "lock" position function where you can set up a formation grid and lock it in place so it keeps that formation. It is not auto-formation, but a locked formation that might add greately into gameplay.
FOr instance, you can lock 5 scvs around a marine and attack with that formation grid. Or a wall of medics. The possibilities!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc5.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc6.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc7.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://zanno.oddwebsite.com/pathing_sc8.jpg)
