Spring RTS Engine

Well, as we don't actually know for certain what the cause is, we can't say what the real problem is after all. Though considering what FLOZi said, the only real problem with collision spheres would be the auto-generated ones (like smoth showed you, and which exist in mods too).

However, the real problem would be the hit detection for LOS (laser) type weapons, possibly with other weapon types too (probably not the beam lasers though, but that's just a hunch). With a small collision sphere and a fast weapon, the checked iterations might be too far apart for the collision to be detected, thus going straight through a unit. So if the gap between an iteration (because of the speed) gets large enough to allow the collision sphere inbetween, then this bug will happen. This is still only the theory about it though, might not even be true!

Finally, I think we have managed to get to a conclusion on the whole missing thing, so I hope I don't need to defend my position that it is possible anymore. Good luck with getting more specific data about it though for you who have the time for it.

<Edit: Oh, and I can't spell either>

Sorry for the bump, but its relevant data for the hit detection system.

.s3o units have the exact same collision detection problems as .3do models.

The only real difference is that you can adjust the collision sphere of s3o units, which can help to a certain extent, but will either result in 1) funky weapon explosions far away from the unit/units in groups taking splash damage from weapons with zero AoE, or 2) no real improvement, since they fit the model closely.

To test this, I used the s3o models from this mod - I just packed the weapons from the mod I'm working on into this, and played around with them. Same issues consistantly seen.

Some proof:



In case anyone is confused, those lasers are incoming fire.



I make this bump because the collision detection at small scales *really really* needs help. I'm having a bloody hard time balancing infantry when 25% of the time a few of them from one group or the other will be invulnerable to small arms fire, just because they're standing in a magic spot. Basically, whenever a unit is in one of these spots, all of these very fast lasers (weapon velocity: 900) pass straight through the model, as seen in the above shots. I'm even working with slightly larger models than the ones seen above.

I've tried using 3do projectiles, s3o model infantry, different types of weapons (default spring blob vs laser), and the problems still occur. The only surefire way to fix it is to 1) scale up the models by a factor of 2, effectively breaking our weapons scale (which is big as it is) and making maps seem quite small or 2) slow the speed of the weapons way down, but then we get a 'matrix' effect.

Please - if its possible at all, hit detection at these kinds of scales needs some loving attention from someone who can help.

yeah, if you make them beam lasers they will work but sadly it seems there is a sweet spot.

This might be because the shot is "passing through" the unit before the next engine update (which is every 1/60th of a second, or 33 milliseconds). Rephrased, the shot is on one side of the unit in one engine "frame", and when it checks its position in the next "frame" its on the other side, but in neither frame was it whithin the unit's collision sphere to trigger a hit detection.

To test this, you might try collision sphere that is larger by some easily determined factor, then firing a weapon that moves at an appropriately faster speed factor at it and looking for these "sweet spots". Or maybe going all out and making the weapon insanely fast and seeing if it will go through krogoths. Also, you might try calculating how many "elmos" the shot travels per frame, and how many "elmos" the unit is.

This might be as simple as checking if its position is such that it would have passed through a unit, but that might not be simple at all (a bit of mentally pseudocoding at this point and I get the feeling it could be rather slow, at least with my first idea of accomplishing this).

smoth wrote:yeah, if you make them beam lasers they will work but sadly it seems there is a sweet spot.

Wow, was that an admission that really, I was indeed, correct all along?

Thought not.

(And no I'm not stalking you, get over yourself)

not really that I was wrong. I was told that the unit wouldn't work. When give a beam weapon they worked just fine.

I made this version specifically to highlight the area that is bad. This particular mod exists as a test to see if they fix the tiny unit issue.