FIX UNIT MOVEMENT!

[Zangeeph]

Start up a game. Now tell a unit to move around (ideally on a flat space) and observe. You will quickly notice something truly bizarre about the way all units move. All units move at angles which are multiples of 45 and nothing else. That's right. Even if you send a unit to move 30 degrees in a given direction it will not move at that angle. It will move at a combination of 0 degrees and 45 degrees to get there in a very awkward, ugly way. This MUST be fixed immediately. It makes controlling units clumsy and unpleasant. It makes units bump into each other 10 times more often than they should. Because for example, if you have 20 units in a row and send them to go into another location, instead of each going at their own angle to get there, they all use a combination of 0 degrees and 45 degrees to get there.

[Beherith]

Its how the pathing system works. Either fix it yourself, or learn to love it. (enable cheats and press alt+b ingame...)

Case closed.

[Johannes]

system = {
pathFinderSystem = 1,
},

into modrules.lua changes this. But I guess it's still buggier than the normal system, and the current big pathing issues still mostly remain.

[Ares]

I have only noticed the samson behaving strangely: sometimes it prefers to drive donuts than remain still and in large groups it stands out quite a bit.

Regardless, the new pathing is amazing - its the biggest recent improvement to BA.

[Jazcash]

Regardless, the new pathing is amazing - its the biggest recent improvement to BA.

-_-

[Zangeeph]

Its how the pathing system works. Either fix it yourself, or learn to love it. (enable cheats and press alt+b ingame...)

Case closed.

The pathing system is a complete and utter failure. It is broken. One should be ashamed to be the author of such code. Why on Earth would I learn to love something which is clearly dysfunctional?

The effects of this bug is huge. It makes it impossible to control your units properly. The whole point of BA is to build units then send them to the enemy's base to kill them. If units don't move how you tell them to move there's no point in playing.

To be honest I'm having a hard time figuring out why it works this way. You'd have to start off by designing it in a broken way. Instead of the simple "turn to face waypoint then move forward" it's "walk at an angle divisible by 45".

Looking at the state of BA, it seems that implementing a proper path finding system is well beyond the reach of the developers. If my guess of how it currently works is correct, I suggest a quick fix - decrease the 'increments' it calculates the path in from 45 to as low as you can get them (without causing too much CPU usage) eg to 4.5. That way units would move more naturally when you give them a location to move to.

[smoth]

I like how you make assumptions about implementation call the code terrible. Yet, you do not offer an alternative, do not offer to fix and most importantly have not read the code.

ps: here is how you really defined bugs:

Bug implies broken code.

This is a works as designed thing.

Ex: assuming we have 8 directional movement only. Moving NOT in one of the 8 directions would be a bug. If we do have an 8-directional thing going on, then the unit is moving in one of the 8 directions, it is working as designed.

Considering you fail to understand that this is the design you have an issue with and not a bug: your code review based on assumptions is entirely worthless.

[Beherith]

Zangeeph, I am only going to say this once, but insulting the developers of the engine or the mod developers will not achieve anything.

smoth said everything else that needed to be said.

[Zangeeph]

Considering you fail to understand that this is the design you have an issue with and not a bug: your code review based on assumptions is entirely worthless.

I'm aware that it was put in by deisgn hence I said "You'd have to start off by designing it in a broken way". There's no reason to get into an argument about the semantics of the word "bug".

Now what's worth talking about is the lack of talented developers. Total Annihilation was a beautiful game. It actually won many game of the year awards. Now what the Spring developers did was take that game and drag it through the mud. We're now left with a game that has so few players that it's a struggle to get enough people to play a game.

Perhaps a contribution to this was that people writing code for the game were too focused on irrelevant features in the form of widgets. You need to get the fundamentals right first before adding in lots of unnecessary features and worrying about game balance. The way units move right now isn't right. It doesn't work. It is SNAFU. It boggles the mind that people continue to ignore this huge problem.

User was warned for this and the previous post.

[Jazcash]

Why is this guy not perma banned from the forums and lobby server yet?
Backseat moderation

[Johannes]

I don't have a problem with people writing their opinion even if it might hurt someones feelings, but this is pointless subject considering the exact thing being asked for here is just currently being developed and YOU CAN ALREADY USE/TEST IT

system = {
pathFinderSystem = 1,
},

into modrules.lua changes this

FFS

[Jazcash]

I don't have a problem with people writing their opinion even if it might hurt someones feelings

Good thing we have this then.

[Kloot]

So whose smurf are you?

Total Annihilation was a beautiful game. It actually won many game of the year awards.

Sure. It also had cycle-limited pathfinding so large games became completely unplayable with anything but mass aircraft spam that took 15 years to be found & removed from the disassembled binary, and the same 45-degree axial unit movement you so loathe in Spring (as well as pretty much every other RTS engine in history). ggnorektxbai