Non-Physical Cover System

[Evil4Zerggin]

A non-physical cover system (that is, not based on engine physics). To use, define features as providing cover using customParams cover_strength > 1 and cover_radius > 0. Damage to mobile non-flying units is reduced by a factor of the best cover_strength they are within. Requires UnitPreDamaged callin, new in 0.79.
Be sure to enable the gadget and widget if you want to use them.


The rifleman in the background is taking less damage than the rifleman in the foreground due to cover.

Gadget:
http://spring1944.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... _cover.lua

Display Widget:
http://spring1944.svn.sourceforge.net/v ... radius.lua

VERY crude right now, especially where optimization is concerned, so you may want to hold off on obvious suggestions.

[hoijui]

nice! :D
i see you further and further approaching a certain other game :D

[imbaczek]

yeah, but it only makes sense.

[Neddie]

Considering the only WWII RTS besides this he and I have ever played is Hearts Of Iron II, we'd have no idea.

[hoijui]

really??!
the game i mean is: Company of Hereos
i was so sure that this was one of the favourite games of all S44 devs!

@imbaczek
it surely makes sense, i see nothing bad in this.. i like it!

[Otherside]

yeh this reminds me of CoH and DoW2 cover system i.e made of win

[KDR_11k]

But is it directional? I.e. will an attack from the rear side of the cover hit at full strength?

[thesleepless]

cool, this is one of the things i liked most in dawn of war 2. troops automatically running towards cover when attacked could be cool... but i suspect a bit more difficult. i'm sure you could do it with lua.

[imbaczek]

you could, but it won't be efficient unfortunately. these kinds of things are best done in the engine.

[Evil4Zerggin]

But is it directional? I.e. will an attack from the rear side of the cover hit at full strength?

Not ATM, I may consider something like that although it might be tricky to keep performance under control.

[imbaczek]

a simple dot product should be enough - once a unit is in cover, you should know the direction cover is in, and you always know the direction of hits. updating cover every N frames intead of every frame would make it feasible IMHO.

[Evil4Zerggin]

I suppose I was more concerned about the possibility of multiple cover, although now that I think of it, it shouldn't be too bad in practice as long as we're reasonable about cover ranges.

[KDR_11k]

But is it directional? I.e. will an attack from the rear side of the cover hit at full strength?

Not ATM, I may consider something like that although it might be tricky to keep performance under control.

It might work to simply modify the flankingbonus settings (I think we can do that now? Lurker?) to give the unit cover instead of the current damage reduction, that way it's also easier to micro and you can assume the unit will take cover so that its front is protected.

[lurker]

Yay, finally the fact that it's a unit setting instead of a unitdef setting will come in handy!

You'll have to use getunitcobvalue, as I didn't make any lua bindings at the time. I suppose I'll make some now.

I also need to make it use explosion location now that that's more accurate.

[SpikedHelmet]

I've not played CoH ever either. Infact the only WW2 RTS game I can think of having played is one of the old, old, pixel-based Close Combat series (I believe A Bridge Too Far, and then only the demo). Which is where I personally get most of my inspiration from, except I'm in no way shape or form involved with anything other than modelling and texturing so such inspiration is completely wasted. Well, that and a couple of good WW2 FPS games.

Cover is a natural extension of the realism we've strived to create. Solid-slug shells that slow down and do less damage the further they travel, accurate-ish armour directional relations, suppression and pinning, etc, all came out of our own asses.

[FLOZi]

I've played CoH, and I think Nemo has as well. But yeah, everything CoH-like that's in S44 we wanted to do ourselves anyway.

Dunno why I didn't think of this. Then again it wasn't so trivial before the new callin.

edit: we should also use this to replace the currently rather not at all working tank-fear-shield system.

[Nemo]

I've not played CoH, but played Close Combat ABTF a fair bit.

This is going to be an exciting change once we refine it.

[kburts]

this is soo stronghold crusader, i remember back in the time when i thought the roofs of towers made you guys invincible.

no, they just gave them a temparaly health boost of about 10* so if you ran your guys in and out of towers, for some reason they'd heal

[Argh]

Yeah, the PreDamage callin greatly helped me speed up my version of NoSelfPwn, too, by removing some checks.

Might want to look at that, if you're using the one from CA (and it hasn't already been fixed).