Damage and projectiles - FAO programmers

[Pureon]

Are any of the following currently possible:

1) Projectile hit animation

Once a projectile hits the target an animation and sound effect is played.

Case: Rock thrower hits ground/structure creating shrapnel

2) Unit death damage

When a unit is destroyed the destruction causes damage to nearby units.

Case: Iberian Fire ship

3) Delayed damage

The projectile hits the target/ground and only causes damage a few seconds later.

Case: Grenades

4) Continuous damage after hit detection

A projectile produces damage for a short period once it has landed/hit the target?

Case: Ballista fires burning rock that continues to cause fire damage once it has landed

[zoot]

2, 3 and 4 are relatively easy to do JS side. 1 probably requires C++ changes.

[historic_bruno]

Also the projectile hit animation needs some thought on how to make it efficient while appearing random and believable, I don't think it should use the skeletal animations currently supported by the game. Need more detail on how exactly it would look: will it be a generic shrapnel explosion or specific to each target, will the target need to show the damage accordingly at the spot it was hit, and it might help to see some examples in other games.

[Zaggy1024]

Shrapnel or debris?

Also, it would be cool if the debris could take a section of the building's texture it hits as its texture.

Edit: But having debris appear when a projectile hits a building would probably require some kind of bounding box to detect hits, because otherwise the projectile would go straight through the building.

[Pureon]

2, 3 and 4 are relatively easy to do JS side.

That's good to hear. Now to find someone to make it happen

Also the projectile hit animation needs some thought on how to make it efficient while appearing random and believable, I don't think it should use the skeletal animations currently supported by the game. Need more detail on how exactly it would look: will it be a generic shrapnel explosion or specific to each target, will the target need to show the damage accordingly at the spot it was hit, and it might help to see some examples in other games.

As nice as it may be, I wasn't thinking of something like this:

It should be possible to create some decent enough looking shrapnel/debris using the particle system we have, although I haven't spent too much time working with it.

[historic_bruno]

Sweet vid I think the particle system would need some tweaking or additional effects added to achieve what you're looking for, in particular, I'm not sure if it supports a burst or explosion effect yet. Keep in kind that the "particles" will always be simply textures facing the camera, and not like bits of 3D shrapnel flying through the air. Maybe it's possible to approximate damage that way, but it's difficult to get my head around how it would be done... Anyone know if shaders could accomplish shrapnel-like effects and how much effort it would be?

And even if we don't go as far as in that video, we do need to show structure damage somehow...

[zoot]

Yeah, I think particles can do 'dust plume' effects at best.

[historic_bruno]

Yeah, I think particles can do 'dust plume' effects at best.

Never underestimate what an artist can do with even rudimentary tools I've seen particle systems do amazing things, somewhat more advanced than 0 A.D.'s system, but particles nonetheless. Not sure I've seen the type of effect Pureon is wanting in this topic, and they're very inefficient, we should probably limit how much we rely on particles, there will be many such damage effects rendered during sieges.

[zoot]

I wonder how particles are so inefficient - seems paradoxical that 3D polygons would be cheaper than simple sprites?

Edited April 8, 2013 by zoot

[Mythos_Ruler]

The sound effect upon collision is implemented already (see: archers). Just throwing that out there. IMHO, this could be a little more robust, i.e, instead of the collision sound being set in the shooter (the archer) it should be set in the target. So, a building's template would say something like <collision_arrow> and <collision_rock>, etc. Wooden structures can have different collision sounds than stone structures this way. And heavily armored soldiers different arrow collision sounds than dudes wearing a t-shirt.

[Pureon]

Even a few dust particles being created on projectile impact, accompanied by a sound effect, will be enough for now.

The sound effect upon collision is implemented already (see: archers). Just throwing that out there.

The 'attack_impact' soundgroup, that's very useful

[Zaggy1024]

Perhaps to make us able to have a lot of particles without too much worry about performance, when the number of particles goes above a certain amount, particles are chosen at random and removed? That way, it'll hopefully look okay even when particles start getting removed. (It doesn't look very good when you just delete the oldest particles, because then you can easily see particle trails start to disappear, which is UGLY)

[historic_bruno]

The sound effect upon collision is implemented already (see: archers). Just throwing that out there. IMHO, this could be a little more robust, i.e, instead of the collision sound being set in the shooter (the archer) it should be set in the target. So, a building's template would say something like <collision_arrow> and <collision_rock>, etc. Wooden structures can have different collision sounds than stone structures this way. And heavily armored soldiers different arrow collision sounds than dudes wearing a t-shirt.

If that's something you want, make a Trac ticket for it The same goes for the other requests in the topic, and they could likely be given the "simple" keyword. We have lots of potential programmers at the moment looking for intro tasks, so the more simple tasks we have to chose from, the better.

[Pureon]

If that's something you want, make a Trac ticket for it The same goes for the other requests in the topic, and they could likely be given the "simple" keyword. We have lots of potential programmers at the moment looking for intro tasks, so the more simple tasks we have to chose from, the better.

Great, I'll do that today

[Mythos_Ruler]

Even a few dust particles being created on projectile impact, accompanied by a sound effect, will be enough for now.

Yep, Age of Mythology did this. It was somewhat effective and would look good until...

The 'attack_impact' soundgroup, that's very useful

Yep, I was thinking more soundgroups, like "impact_arrow" and "impact_stone" and "impact_ram" etc. Taking the impact sound call from the shooting entity (archer, catapult) and putting the call into the entity being impacted. A catapult stone hitting a wooden building (like a Mauryan mill) would sound different than it hitting a stone fortress or stone wall.

[Pedro Falcão]

Attack sounds list in Warcraft 3's object editor

EDIT: I'd post Starcraft's too, but then i realized every unit has its own set of sounds, since every unit has a different attack.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Pedro Falcão

[Pureon]

Adding soundgroups for different hit materials is a good idea.

Yep, Age of Mythology did this. It was somewhat effective and would look good until...

Glad you like the idea. I've mentioned dust particles in the ticket I created for it.