Did someone say improved ship movement?

[maroder]

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I actually think they would bend to the outside of the turn. But cool nonetheless! 

[alre]

yes, a ship that magically has wind always coming from its back will indeed bend to the outside when turning, for what it's worth.

but anyway, I love the U turn movement, tell me more about it! what do you think about applying it to other entities too, like rams, chariots, formations, cavalry?

[nani]

6 hours ago, maroder said:

 

Why the rotation can't be smooth , doesn't pyrogenesis interpolate rotations?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

57 minutes ago, alre said:

cavalry

That would be awesome in some instances like cinematics, but I worry about how they would move around during a melee fight. I think a few mechanics to allude to the momentum and speed of cavalry would be nice, but we would need to keep in mind the balance and practicality of them in game. 

Perhaps add cavalry acceleration and once they are faster than 10 m/s they do wider turns like what we see with the boats here.

I guess the best way to start would be to add some cavalry acceleration and see what is the next most practical/ logical step.

I think cavalry acceleration would be a good way to nerf cavalry, especially champions that are able to disengage so easily and avoid losses. With cavalry acceleration, a player using spears to defend would have more opportunities to counter them.

champions discussion here by @Dizaka

 

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@maroder its funny right now people are mad at AoE 4 for having the same ship movement mechanics as AoE2 lol.

[ChronA]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I actually think they would bend to the outside of the turn.

Agreed that the banking during the turns looks wrong right now, but otherwise this is incredibly cool. I hope it can make it into a future alpha. Naval gameplay seems like its more of a placeholder right now, so maybe concerns about gameplay implications won't be too much impediment. 

How do other games handle pathing for units with wide turning radii? Only one that comes to mind for me right now is Zero-K. There I believe rotational and forward movement are disconnected. So if a tank, rover, or ship hits an obstruction it will stop moving along the component normal to the obstruction, while retaining its tangential velocity, and continuing to smoothly turn the whole time. It looks kind of stupid in action but I guess it plays well for them.

[Freagarach]

4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think cavalry acceleration would be a good way to nerf cavalry

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3200

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

That would be awesome in some instances like cinematics, but I worry about how they would move around during a melee fight. I think a few mechanics to allude to the momentum and speed of cavalry would be nice, but we would need to keep in mind the balance and practicality of them in game. 

Perhaps add cavalry acceleration and once they are faster than 10 m/s they do wider turns like what we see with the boats here.

I guess the best way to start would be to add some cavalry acceleration and see what is the next most practical/ logical step.

I think cavalry acceleration would be a good way to nerf cavalry, especially champions that are able to disengage so easily and avoid losses. With cavalry acceleration, a player using spears to defend would have more opportunities to counter them.

 

I think adding more realistic unit movement, such as cavalry wheeling and such, would need to be left for any potential battalion implementation, IMHO. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 hours ago, maroder said:

a

One thing I just noticed (and the Greek Dock has this too), is that the reflection of underneath the dock betrays that there is no geometry there. It's pretty noticeable here. All it would take to fix would be to put a simple plane facing down at the water under the dock mesh. @Stan`

[Stan`]

It's a bit more than an a plane, but I'll add it to my long list of things to do.

[Ceres]

@maroder How can you place 2 red target crosses with each redirection? I understand that by shift-clicking one can queue one target/position after another, but it looks in your video that both targets/positions are kept in sync somehow automagically. Is this new, or am I simply missing some basic functionality of 0 A.D.? ()

Apart from my question: It looks really very nice! However, I just wonder, whether the ships should not rather bend to the outside of their curve (instead of the inside)? E.g. at sec. 25, the right ship turns to the left, while first bending to the outward, then to the inward side. But I'm no expert in sailing.

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Ceres

[maroder]

7 minutes ago, Ceres said:

How can you place 2 red target crosses with each redirection? I

look here https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/master/binaries/data/mods/public/gui/text/tips/freehand_position.txt

right-click and drag

[Ceres]

Oh, cool! Thanks a lot!

[maroder]

@all

mh, yes I guess the boats should lean toward the outside.

And yes I would really like to see this behavior with acceleration and a turn radius for boats (and maybe other units), but unfortunately this is just a hack to get the discussion started. Nothing that can be actually used at the moment.

[alre]

8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

we would need to keep in mind the balance and practicality of them in game. 

I would rather nerf cavalry giving them wide turns than slow acceleration, but it's hard to say without trying.Anyway, I hope that would make cavalry only stronger in the open, which is realistic and adds strategic depth.

[alre]

35 minutes ago, maroder said:

@all

mh, yes I guess the boats should lean toward the outside.

And yes I would really like to see this behavior with acceleration and a turn radius for boats (and maybe other units), but unfortunately this is just a hack to get the discussion started. Nothing that can be actually used at the moment.

come on! we all love it! tell us more, what are the current issues, how can we help? 

[wraitii]

For what it's worth, my opinion is that this will never work  Looks cool nonetheless.

IMO there are a few basic problems:

- If you want 'realistic' ship movement, you either need to have only rowing ships, or some notion of wind. Players do not want to have to care about that, and some maps could be basically unplayable if ships aren't able to go sufficiently into the wind (which, as square-sails, they might not).

- If you don't want fully realistic movement, you would still need some sense of inertia: acceleration, stoppage, turn-rate. This is a rather complex problem, but it's made worse by the sheer size of ships. They are already completely unusable, so making them more awkward is not the move.
Part of the problem is that our maps are much, much too small. You'd need to make them at least 10 times bigger. The engine can't support it, unfortunately.

- The simplest solution is to make ships 'AoE2 like', which seems to be the direction AoE4 takes (haven't played the beta), and I'm not surprised. Basically all RTS of this specific sub-genres have done that.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Bfme2's ships were a nice middle ground.

[Ceres]

What are AoE2 and Bfme2 alike in this regard? Speaking about 0 A.D.: Why do we have to think about full realism, i.e. incl. cross sailing, wind direction, etc.? Can't we "only" have ships turning around nicely? I understand, of course, that there are lots of naval maps and maps with rivers where the passages are too narrow to cope with such ship movement, but maybe there could be a compromise solution for this, too (without need to change the maps, hopefully)? Sorry if I am too optimistic - it's because of my ignorance of the coding skills etc. "under the hood".

[alre]

If it was for me, I'd make all ships move by rowing. That's how naval warfare was done in the mediterranenan, and that's also how ships would move up into rivers. However, it would still be a stretch to say that this would be a totally realistic solution: oceanic gallic ships relied mostly on wind and sails, fishing vessels also generally did.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, alre said:

I would rather nerf cavalry giving them wide turns than slow acceleration, but it's hard to say without trying.Anyway, I hope that would make cavalry only stronger in the open, which is realistic and adds strategic depth.

Dude perhaps you could lure cavalry to a place where its too tight for them to turn at their faster speed, and surprise them with spearmen.

The main reason I was in support of cav having regular unit movement (no wide turns) at speeds below 10 m/s was for fear of them getting stuck, and because they would behave weird in battles. Physically, wide turns are caused by having more speed, but for gameplay consistency it is better to have turns be either wide or “pinpoint” like in 0ad now.
 

I feel some mild acceleration would be ok where it is just enough to make a difference in gameplay but not so much to be annoying.

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Dasaavawar]

On 13/09/2021 at 12:15 PM, maroder said:

 

Really fresh stuff. Congratulations. Now, I just have some questions.

1. Can the boats approach each other? Do they collide or just juxtapose each other as in the current ship movement? How does it works in bounded water bodies (like narrow rivers)? Can the ships go backwards in case that is required? That would bring more realism.

2. Have you tried to do this with medium and big ships? Do you think it would be possible to reduce (an small fraction) of their respective health points in case they just collide at high speed? Maybe that second thing would fit better with a 'fast' speed option for those ships.

I encourage you to check the rest of missing features for the advanced ship movement in the 'gameplay feature status'.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameplayFeatureStatus

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/940

[maroder]

35 minutes ago, Dasaavawar said:

Now, I just have some questions.

To answer these questions:

At the moment the ships can only do exactly what you see in the video and nothing else. It is just a hack that looks nice.

With enough time and knowledge you can implement anything, but I made this just to start a discussion

Edited September 15, 2021 by maroder