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Hover Movement

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11 years ago
Alot of units have a NEED to first start moving in the facing direction before they can turn.

That is cool for Cars and also for anyBots because it "makes sence". Additionaly most bots are small egnouth to just bypass this with ease.

But shouldnt Hovers be able to move in any direction at any time they wish?
And wouldnt it be better if spiders could rotate toward ~80% towards their next destinationPathPoint before they start to move?

With this fix we could reduce the problem where especially hovers must ram a bulding 20 times before they can go around.

So basicly:
Make all hover units into turrets,
remove their movement,
attach them to ghost units with their respective movement,
give ghost units instant turn rate.
+1 / -0


11 years ago
On solution:

1) Since 92.0 there is an unitdef tag that allows specifically this, making the "ghost unit" approach unnecessary.
2) Even if this was really needed for 91.0, it's easier to do with an animation script.

I have no thoughts on necessity, but i think scrubbers are already quite devastating without being able to do 180-degree turns, so they'd require additional rebalance.

They also still crit even while their gun was buffed.
+1 / -0
11 years ago
Didn't XTA use to have strafing hovers like... 4 years ago? These were done through script, and also had some cool features like banking when turning.
+2 / -0
Unfortunately the unit still needs to turn to move, the script just turns it back.

So all this means is that the whole unit is a turret. The primary thing this does is make it impossible to determine the direction the unit is -actually- facing. Which is, um, really bad.

Physically, it is no different than just having a turret on a unit with a very fast turn rate. Basically all our bots behave this way, and frankly it makes them less interesting (it removes the physical mechanics of having a turning circle). Worse, if the unit turns -really- fast (nigh-instantaneous direction-change for the purposes of movement) the turret (IE the whole model) is going to lag behind and waggle around, you get this on the warrior and a lot of other units, you've probably seen it.

There might be a way to set the models direction independent of the unit facing itself (I suspect so) but that's still basically a bot.

More interesting is a unit that takes time to get up to maximum velocity, and then when it turns needs to accelerate in the other direction- it cannot convert momentum in one direction into momentum in another direction simply by turning (If you've ever rolled a car you know this is basically how they work anyway and that turning is a lie). This is how gunships operate, when you turn them they slowly accelerate back in the other direction. Hovers doing this would actually be something interesting and more worthwhile (Though, it may not actually turn out well or create good micro or mechanics).
+1 / -0


11 years ago
quote:
when you turn them they slowly accelerate back in the other direction.

I might be experiencing some perception error, but to me always seemed that gunships started accelerating immediately at full power.

When they stopped doing so in 94.1.1+git, that was filed as a bug.
+0 / -0

11 years ago
Set a gunship, like the Banshee, to have 0.01 turnrate, 0.01 brakerate, and 1 turnrate (Or 10,000 turnrate, it doesn't matter).

You'll see the direction the gunship faces has basically nothing to do with it's acceleration or movement. When you give an order perpendicular to the current velocity of the banshee you'll see it slowly swing around as it continues to drift in it's current direction of thrust- whether it has 1 turnrate or 10k.

When you give a gunship a movement order behind it, you'll see it does not turn around so much as slowly decelerate then accelerate again in the direction of movement.

Try again with an acceleration of like 20 and you'll see that it reverses almost instantly, you can see this especially in the attack hover behaviour: when it changes directions, it snaps around the other way. It looks and behaves a lot more like a Starcraft unit.
+0 / -0
I'm just saying that i haven't noticed them accelerate slower or faster depending on where they face. I.e, that from what i've seen, the movement is completely decoupled from heading.

I'll run a bit of experiments though.
+0 / -0
That's what I said.

They accelerate and decelerate when they change direction (I used the word 'Turn' here, by that I do not mean changing facing i mean changing heading). They do not accelerate faster or slower depending on where they FACE, but depending on their current HEADING and MOMENTUM, IE their current velocity.
+0 / -0


11 years ago
Heading has no effect on their movement.
+0 / -0
Hovers should be able to instantly change direction without turning, like in rl.

Buildings is a problem of all units, especially cons and commanders who get permastuck trying to pass between winds or something.
+0 / -2

11 years ago
Right well then there is some confusion in terminology.

What do you call the direction that the unit is accelerating towards? The direction of intended travel? Because I know what you mean, heading is 'get_curr_heading' which I'm here calling facing. But what is the other thing? The direction of travel?

Also lol like in real life:
+0 / -0


11 years ago
Movement direction? Direction? Velocity?
+0 / -0
Oh, i'll rephrase then.

"Magnitude of a gunship's acceleration in Spring is not dependant on unit's orientation in space, nor is it dependant on angle or magnitude of its current movement vector. Turning and accelerating are completely orthogonal for gunships".

You might be confusing speed and acceleration though. Scalar speed will take a dip as unit starts accelerating to its new destination when destination behind current speed vector. Then speed will increase to maximum as it passes the zero speed and thrusts back. Acceleration is constant at all those points, scalar speed takes a dip, and vector speed goes from +1 to -1 compared to old motion vector.

You can get a pretty good feel of that if you play with FPS'ing gunships a bit.

+0 / -0

11 years ago
No, it is not the velocity. The velocity is what keeps it drifting according to it's current momentum when you tell it to change direction (and it's not just direction but 'change in' direction).
+0 / -0


11 years ago
Yes velocity is the worst of those terms for what you describe. As far as movement is concerned the unit doesn't have a heading so I'd just call the direction it moves in (the direction of the velocity) 'direction'.
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