Trow magic dirt - Results of analysing films

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iron
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Post by iron »

All the instances I've seen so far have the same behaviour I first saw in Nitro's film. The trow is told to move away from a bunch of krids but retargets on them instead, hence it goes nowhere.

The reason this happens is not that the trow is responding to being hit, but that it has a very wide radius which makes it bump into the krids as it tries to move, even if its not directly facing the krids. Btw I've verified this by recording in fine detail exactly what is happening with the trow to a log file - there's no guesswork here.

Bumping into an enemy of the type you last targetted while moving will make your unit retarget onto it - this is the way Myth has always been, from 1.0 of TFL through to Myth 3. If I change it then there'll be drastic flow-on effects throughout the game.

I'm not ruling out there being other causes of "Trow Magic Dirt", I'm just saying that in the cases that I've seen in films this has been what's happened.

I know some will say "yeah, report bugs to Magma and they just ignore you and say its not a bug". This may well be a bug, but if so its one designed by Bungie and not something that we can change.

So given that, the least I can do is point out some alternatives to what happens should your trow start to suffer "magic dirt". The behaviour only happens if your trow has previously been told to attack a unit of the type its getting stuck against, so here's some alternatives for rescuing your trow...

1. Hitting spacebar will wipe its memory of that attack command, so if you quickly space then click to move you may be able to get the trow out of there.

2. Drag-face the trow so its looking directly away from the krids before you tell it to move, thus minimizing its chances of bumping them.

3. Possibly the best method would be to quickly click on an enemy of a different type and then tell your trow to move. This should make it impossible for it to auto onto the krids (or whatever's attacking it), even if it bumps them.
...playing as long5hot on War Thunder
igmo
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Post by igmo »

your contention is that this has always happened and players are just now noticing it?

i'm no trow guy, but have never needed to go to such elaborate measures as you indicate to kick and run. i consider it unlikely that i have never previoulsy kicked and ran from a dense group of targets.

for what its worth, i have an ingame film of this that i could mail in (bugtracker didnt take my upload.) if you want it, let me know an addy.
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Post by igmo »

saw your comment on bugtracker - mailed film
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Post by ducky »

hmm... I did a test shortly after the film that I sent in where i tried to escape dirt by spacebarring (in the middle of a dirt-moonwalking escape attempt) and moving, though it didn't work. I'll test those 3 methods and put up a film on udoghl (especially if none of them work).

i'll call it "dirtescapes" or something
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iron
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Post by iron »

As I said igmo, "I'm not ruling out there being other causes of Trow Magic Dirt, I'm just saying that in the cases that I've seen in films this has been what's happened." Please don't misunderstand me here.

Also I should mention there was a pathfinding issue that Jengizu pointed out that could well have an affect on this bug. And hopefully your film arrives - I haven't got it yet :\




Edited By iron on 1084284854
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Post by ducky »

Ok iron, I just got the chance to test this with igmo and here is what we found:

Dirt trapping trow with ghols (to make it easier to try escape methods), we found that neither "space-barring" or "gesture-clicking" were successfully able to unstick the trow. However, targeting another type of unit and then running, and "cheer-interrupting" were successful.

The film (dirtescape) is on HL in the myth bug film uploads. Hope it helps.

Oh yes, and I think we tested whether or not you could trap a trow w/o kicking... and come to think of it, I think we might have managed to do it by targetting a unit, running, but getting dirt-trapped. If this sounds like it might mean something, do tell and I'll upload that film too (I believe that was in the previous test with myrks, which was too much of a hassle trying to determine whether or not escape methods worked).
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