[POLL] Corpse Removal Option

[thankforpieOfficial]

Just now, Stan` said:

You realise that's what they do right now, right ?just more than a minute

i didnt play in ages, how could i remember

anything shorter than a minute feels unnatural though

[OptimusShepard]

27 minutes ago, thankforpieOfficial said:

i didnt play in ages, how could i remember

anything shorter than a minute feels unnatural though

You wont notice it, if you chose a limit higher than 100 corpses. If you don't overdo, you will notice a performance improvement anyway 

Edited March 4, 2021 by OptimusShepard

[vladislavbelov]

59 minutes ago, OptimusShepard said:

The pathfinder can have a big performance impact to the game, but the renderer is bigger.

It depends on your camera position. If you're not looking at a battle then pathfinder is more expensive.

[nwtour]

29 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

If you're not looking at a battle

Excellent Plan for Victory

[vladislavbelov]

9 minutes ago, nwtour said:

Excellent Plan for Victory

I have the famous habit: I never look at explosions and battles x)

If answering seriously, for me to make renderer slow locally I need to put all units together on screen. But it rarely happens, more than 50% of all units are spreaded all over a map.

[OptimusShepard]

Hm, nearly a half of the players seems to prefer on/off. But what is meant here? Does "Off" mean zero corpses, or does "Off" mean a fixed limit of corpses, e.g. 100?

[hyperion]

2 hours ago, OptimusShepard said:

Hm, nearly a half of the players seems to prefer on/off. But what is meant here? Does "Off" mean zero corpses, or does "Off" mean a fixed limit of corpses, e.g. 100?

It's indeed not well defined here, but you can think of it as either normal decay or no corpses on the ground at all. Meaning the removal of a single corpse (decay animation) isn't randomized but behaves consistently.

Why fixed number of corpses can match on/off is probably because there are already people used to it due to autociv. Guess otherwise the bias would be even stronger towards on/off.

[nani]

To be honest, people that choose off/on wouldn't choose it again if they would try to play with it. Having corpses, at least the most recent, is crucial to know what units you lost, especially at the beginning of the match where rushes and small attacks take place. Also it doesn't make any sense, you can just set corpse limit to 0 and have both options, all games have this, since forever, is a basic optimization, is not hard at all to implement, gives more fps and after all you can change it to whatever you want. What's so hard to understand?

[hyperion]

Setting it to 0 in autociv prevents death animation as well.

 

On 04/03/2021 at 11:38 AM, hyperion said:

There could also be sort of a best of both, ie. the corpses only enter the FIFO after the death animation was played fully.

[vladislavbelov]

6 hours ago, nani said:

Also it doesn't make any sense, you can just set corpse limit to 0 and have both options, all games have this, since forever, is a basic optimization, is not hard at all to implement, gives more fps and after all you can change it to whatever you want.

I feel a biasing in your opinion. Having intermediate numbers means inconsistent visual effect: you can't predict which unit will disappear. So your "crucial to know what units you lost" doesn't work always, only when you have no continuous battles or you have the pretty high setting.

In our code it requires workaround to implement that. Also there is a better in terms of performance solution: showing 2D icons instead of "heavy" units.

[nani]

6 hours ago, vladislavbelov said:

I feel a biasing in your opinion. Having intermediate numbers means inconsistent visual effect: you can't predict which unit will disappear. So your "crucial to know what units you lost" doesn't work always, only when you have no continuous battles or you have the pretty high setting.

In our code it requires workaround to implement that. Also there is a better in terms of performance solution: showing 2D icons instead of "heavy" units.

But people want to see the corpses not 2d icons. What's is worse than inconsistent visual effects is playing with literally 1 fps when there are big armies fights. :L

Edited March 6, 2021 by nani

[nani]

@vladislavbelov

Edited March 6, 2021 by nani

[vladislavbelov]

11 minutes ago, nani said:

But people want to see the corpses not 2d icons.

It seems you're contradicting to yourself. Firstly you said "crucial to know what units you lost", which I understand as it's important to you (as other competition oriented players) to react timely on that. Now you say "But people want to see the corpses not 2d icons.". 2D icons is the fastest way in terms of performance to know about all units, not only about last X. But now your prefer visual style over competition.

 

[nani]

30 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

It seems you're contradicting to yourself. Firstly you said "crucial to know what units you lost", which I understand as it's important to you (as other competition oriented players) to react timely on that. Now you say "But people want to see the corpses not 2d icons.". 2D icons is the fastest way in terms of performance to know about all units, not only about last X. But now your prefer visual style over competition.

 

So how would these 2d icons look like (you can do some photoshop demo so I can get an idea)

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 04/03/2021 at 3:56 PM, vladislavbelov said:

I have the famous habit: I never look at explosions and battles x)

If answering seriously, for me to make renderer slow locally I need to put all units together on screen. But it rarely happens, more than 50% of all units are spreaded all over a map.

I hate when the building foundation suddenly explode and collapse.

Whereas the building hadn't even started construction.

[Grapjas]

I think it's at least important that invisible bodies get deleted (not sure if this only happens in atlas)

Here's topside view;

vs bottom side view 

[vladislavbelov]

On 07/03/2021 at 3:36 AM, nani said:

So how would these 2d icons look like (you can do some photoshop demo so I can get an idea)

Blinking selections on minimap and terrain on the icon hover, and red icon with skeleton in bottom right.

[vladislavbelov]

On 09/03/2021 at 5:16 PM, Grapjas said:

I think it's at least important that invisible bodies get deleted (not sure if this only happens in atlas)

Look at them when terrain has maximum passable slope.

[Sturm]

Hello guys. What would be the feasibility of adding a generic animation (perhaps with 3-4 small variations in shape and size) for "disintegrating effect" of the corpses? A 20-30 second timer could run from the time of the death, for example, and then an animation would be applied, as a decomposing corpse. Something simple, maybe the Thanos disintegration style of the Avengers movie.

Edited March 10, 2021 by Sturm

[Sturm]

This topic reminds me of the original Golden Axe eletronic game, when we were still playing in the arcades. Long time ago.   Almost inside 0 a.D. time frame, lol. In that game, the bodies of defeated enemies were petrified on the ground. Due to insufficient memory, this feature was removed from the Genesis / Mega Drive port.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Sturm

[nani]

3 hours ago, vladislavbelov said:

Blinking selections on minimap and terrain on the icon hover, and red icon with skeleton in bottom right.

Problems it solves:
  - No corpses
Problems it adds:
  - Blinking in the minimap would be clutter and hard to notice (very small)
  - Blinking circle in the ground would be out of place and would still not tell you what kind of unit died
  - Would be uglier than some random corpses disappearing and the least realistic option

[vladislavbelov]

I see you just want to add the feature

21 minutes ago, nani said:

Problems it solves:
  - No corpses
Problems it adds:
  - Blinking in the minimap would be clutter and hard to notice (very small)
  - Blinking circle in the ground would be out of place and would still not tell you what kind of unit died
  - Would be uglier than some random corpses disappearing and the least realistic option

It depends how you look at it.

Problem it solves:

- No ugly corpses disappearing

- See all lost units instead of few

- Much more visible (because colored) than corpses to detected lost units (circles can be drawn using unit icon)

Problems it adds:

- Nothing

 

[nifa]

or only show the helmets? Less gpu intensive, less violent, easy to count..

Or maybe other props like sword/shield?

I just don't know what to do with the units without those things

[OptimusShepard]

If I look to the survey, I think we need a compromise. People like @nani, me and some others see the greate chance to improve the performance by a not realy noticeable visual impact. Be able to chose a number means the complete choise for everyone.

But I totaly understand the other faction who say that they only want to have a on/off switch because of complexity. There are people who have difficulties chosing the right options.

So I want to suggest a drop down menu. Three options. One for corpses off, called "performance optimised". One for corpses on, called "quality optimised", and one option with a corpse limit of 100 called "balanced".

Edited March 11, 2021 by OptimusShepard

[vladislavbelov]

8 hours ago, OptimusShepard said:

But I totaly understand the other faction who say that they only want to have a on/off switch because of complexity. There are people who have difficulties chosing the right options.

I suppose you didn't get the point of the only on/off.