Zer and I, among others were playing a random 2max game of Proving Grounds earlier. Zer then said something about losing because of lame trow actions, and I just asumed that it was Zer's post excuse!
Then, we went to unranked to try out the "bug" and it is definately repeatable. When you "shadow" a unit, and let it follow, as the person with the lead unit is manuvering, the "shadowing" unit, does messed up pathfinding things. Some not so extreme, but some horrible, as you'll see in the Clash test. (between 4:00 and 3:20 I believe)
I don't know if we're just "nitpicking" but this happend with a heron as well, and I'm asuming with all melee units. I don't know if it's a "major" deal, but with a tourny with more than 1,000 in gameplay cashout, it wouldn't be very nice to lose it because of a "bug".
*I'm* using PC running XP. Not sure what he was using.
sounds similar to how tracking went in 1.4.2 or .3 or whatever.
was totally easy to fake out a pursuer, as they were tagetting a good distance along the projected path of your unit. switch angle a little bit and the persuer needs to change even more (in many cases) to hit that new vector in the time it would take to close the distance.
quite easy to force the persuer to spend most of its time turning.... hope its not back.
I've watched the films that Shinco and Zer have put together. Firstly I'll describe in detail what's going on so we're clear on what I'm seeing. If its something else then please let me know.
The following diagram illustrates the behaviour...
What's happening is that Myth updates the pathfinding for a unit - where its destination is and what obstacles there are - this happens every two to three seconds for each unit. So when a unit is tracking another, there's this gap in which its unaware of changes in that unit's direction, causing a lag in which it can go off at a strange tangent.
We can see this at work in 2 sets of screenshots I took from one of the films, where Shinc's 2 blue trow are chasing Zer's black trow.
In this one, Zer's trow jinks hard to the left. One of Shinc's trow starts to adjust course and because of the sharpness of the change, actually stops to turn. Meanwhile Zer changes direction again but its a while before the turning blue trow becomes aware
of it.
The next example shows both of Shinc's trow being fooled. Zer fakes to the right, and they both adjust course to follow. He immediately goes left & the two trow walk on for another two seconds before they realize that the black trow has hoodwinked them.
This behaviour is caused by Myth 2 trying to make chasing units "cut off" their opponents. They try to cut the corner to go to where the target unit is going, making them turn harder & more dramatically. To make it happen though the chased player has to sharply zig-zag just as the chasing unit's time for pathfinding update occurs, else the zig-zag is ignored or the chaser cuts the corner and you lose ground. To a TFLer it looks especially weird as in TFL there's no attempt to head off the unit, hence this stuff doesn't happen at all.
Now if this is the problem you're pointing out, and I do say "if", then it happened the same way when I replayed the films in both 1.4.4 and 1.3. In both the films go OOS and the behaviour because less obvious (as the timing was off due to OOS), however it was still there and clear to see, especially in the 2nd film where the turning was most exaggerated.
Now if my explanation is lacking in some way then please tell me so. I spent a good 4 hours on these films last night & if there is a bug I really want to understand and fix it.
The solution to this, should one be required, is to reduce the degree to which a unit tries to head off the enemy that its chasing. So instead of walking to the place it thinks the target is going, it goes in a direction halfway between the target's destination and the target's current location. So you'd get some leading but not as much, and hence much less craziness when the target zigzags. But make no mistake - this would be a new gameplay change, not a fix to anything we've done. Also, there won't be another public beta as the next release is the final one, so to ask me to implement it would be taking a considerable risk.
In other news, we found a method of reducing "trow magic dirt", where a trow or other unit can't walk away from attackers despite being apparently clear to do so. It won't eradicate it entirely or stop trow being trapped by a more thorough encirclement, but it will help the worst cases of the bug.
so are you saying that trows and other melee units have always behaved like that? no one has used any zig-zag method in 5 years of mything cause it generally has never worked. now shinco and zer feel there's something different in the first game they try the patch.
the pathfinding has been worse for a while, i don't remember what patch changed it anymore. no matter how you say that films play the same in 1.3, there has got to be a reason for the fact that many players have started to hate using the trow lately cause of all the weird shit it pulls out. and of course it's not just the trow, my melee keep running past enemy artillery after i've clicked them like never before and so on.
things are starting to get sad cause nowadays i don't know if i sucked or if the game played different than usual when i die
i'm the best myther ever so at least at some point i did know how units respond but now i don't anymore!!!
What's happening is that Myth updates the pathfinding for a unit - where its destination is and what obstacles there are - this happens every two to three seconds for each unit. So when a unit is tracking another, there's this gap in which its unaware of changes in that unit's direction, causing a lag in which it can go off at a strange tangent.
2-3 seconds seems like an awefully long time to update pathfinding ?? Does it *have* to be that long apart ? or will shortening the time signifigantly(sp?) change game play ??
Personally I cant recall ever trying to chase down units by direct clicking them until I though my unit was close enough to strike, ie I would click a ground location and try to cut off units myself until in range, however seems to me that the Pathfinding for chasing direct clicked enemies should be a bit more *smart* about it.
Just this nOObs $0.02 worth. ;o)[/color]
"Do you want to be healed now? Or would you prefer to bleed to death so I can try my hand at resurrection?"
the more i play now... i notice like if u rush a duff for example then.. in the moment u click attack its like ur warriors start to run around it in some gay kinda way using amaizngly long time before they r actually able to kill it... pathfinding is without a doubt changed..
I'd have to back acheron and shinco up on this one...I was playing a game with some myrk Gs and zerks were chasing it....Wasnt Raid...but It had Gs...anyhow...I was leading with the giant and the zerks were chasing me quite closely...I zig zagged in an attempt to shake em...and sure enough, I dodge one way and they keep running that way after i switch....I whippped around and pegged em in the side, taking out about 9 units....it was sweet, but the accomplishment seemed ill after realizing that it wasnt normal play :/ IIRC now it was on the Giants version of Smells.
