Pathfinding & Crowd Simulation

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

[Perzival12]

What are you suggesting here?

[Obelix]

I totally got off my cellphone when watching this video. Thank you very much for sharing this interesting piece, @wowgetoffyourcellphone!

With upcoming questions on pathfinding issues (e.g. #8506), the 11:45 minutes long video 'RTS Pathfinding Explained (and Why It Feels So Good When It Works)' by YouTube channel PlayZeroSpace gives inspiration, what could be the scope of the further development.

Quote from the video description:

Quote

In this video, I’m breaking down how RTS pathfinding and crowd simulation work together - and why it’s one of the hardest problems in real-time strategy games.

 

[ffm2]

The video was nice to watch. But this one is less nice to watch:

With this one can capture way faster buildings because the units don't need to surround the building but can just capture in a cluster.

Normal behavior without formation:

 

With no override setting + formation capture:

 

This is especially annoying if you carefully block the building and only have a small part of it exposed. Or 2 players are in one base and can capture within some seconds a cc.

[Atrik]

 

 

More organic formation movements for 0AD! 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Those are very good improvements indeed.

[Atrik]

Would be nice along with some charging mechanics.

Edited March 24 by Atrik

[Arup]

8 hours ago, Atrik said:

 

Would be nice along with some charging mechanics.

I know you have OCD for formations,I just can't prove it

that aside, this is a very smooth very nice movement of formations. I have a stigma against using formations mainly because of (obviously) that "dumb troops keep going ahead and die" bit also because the formations are feel so,so SO un-smooth

this is also historically accurate,as one of the main points of wedge formation is that the one ahead will be the captain, and the ones behind simply need to follow his lead and move exactly as he does, therefore being almost instantaneous "command orders" of that era

[Perzival12]

6 hours ago, Arup said:

I know you have OCD for formations,I just can't prove it

that aside, this is a very smooth very nice movement of formations. I have a stigma against using formations mainly because of (obviously) that "dumb troops keep going ahead and die" bit also because the formations are feel so,so SO un-smooth

this is also historically accurate,as one of the main points of wedge formation is that the one ahead will be the captain, and the ones behind simply need to follow his lead and move exactly as he does, therefore being almost instantaneous "command orders" of that era

About formations, I almost never use them because when you order your soldiers to attack the formation automatically disbands, no matter how far away the enemy is. It would be nice to either:

A: make it so that formations must be manually disbanded, otherwise they fight in formation (at least some formations should work like this, like the Phalanx)

B: units stay in formation until an enemy is in sight, then they disband (not historically accurate for most formations, like the Phalanx).

 

[Deicide4u]

I use formations only to group my army better before the attack. Note that there are some serious bugs with formations. If you add an unit that is very far away, the entire formation stops and waits for that unit to get near. Also, if you attack move with the formation active, only some of your units will move in to attack.

[AlexHerbert]

15 hours ago, Atrik said:

 

Would be nice along with some charging mechanics.

That looks very well

[Atrik]

5 hours ago, Perzival12 said:

make it so that formations must be manually disbanded

It's buggy but there is a setting for this to happen.
Options > Game Session > Formation control > No override

[Perzival12]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

It's buggy but there is a setting for this to happen.
Options > Game Session > Formation control > No override

I tested that, while units stay in formation as they walk, they still break formation when they attack. It would be nice if they rigidly kept at least the Phalanx, as that’s more historically accurate than walking in the phalanx and then breaking formation.

[Stan`]

Yeah but it's not implemented