Turning animation?

[dicsoupcan]

Yesterday i had no internet, so since i could not nag players online in the remake i thought hey let's play a skirmish map on tpr and crush the ai for fun. While i was playing on across the desert i was noticing a variety of differences between the remake and tpr like how builders in tpr are less efficient and they need food faster then the remake (honestly that surprised me since i thought the values were set exact the same. but that is not what i wanted to talk about.

When i started to make an army and started commanding them smomething was odd about them. and after a split second i figured it out, or at least i thought i had it figured out. I shut down tpr and started the remake to confirm this and i was right. the turning animations for soldiers are way smoother then in the remake. If i am able to record tpr i shall make a small comparison video, but i shall explain it the best way i can.

In tpr when you ask your soldiers to turn around in 180 degrees (using right mouse, not the turn left/right buttons) they actually turned like a person would do in real life. When i tried the same thing in the remake they just immediatly stood at the direction i ordered them to stand in.

I know it is something minor but i found it funny and i wondered if this has been overlooked, or that this has not been implemented for a reason. ^^

[Lewin]

We became aware of this difference recently, long after we designed and implemented the unit movement code. Implementing it now would be a lot of work, and I don't think there's much gain for it.

In fact, it might be frustrating in multiplayer. If you ask your units to walk 180 degrees from the way they are facing it will take them 4 frames before they start moving (3 turning frames, then on the 4th frame they start walking). That's 400ms (0.4 seconds), which is quite a long time when you want your archers to run away from approaching knights. To me it looks "laggy" in TPR (like the people are robots: BEEP *turn* BEEP *turn* BEEP *turn* BEEP *start walking*), but maybe I'm just used to the Remake now

I'm interested to hear other people's opinions.

[Ben]

Very good find, Disco.

However, after reading what Lewin has posted, I'm not interesting in the implementation of a very hard piece of work that makes gameplay worse, but more realistic.

[Siegfried]

The animations are all that we see from the game. It's not so important that it's 'realistic', but it is important that it looks smooth and therefore it's pleasant to watch the game.

So implement the smooth turn. Just like you implemented the blending on corn growth, smooth shadows etc.

[dicsoupcan]

Oh i was actually just wondering why it has never bene noticed beforee or that it has bene noticed but nothing has bene done with it. If i have to think of positive and negative effects that it can have is thatthe only positive effetc would be a sort of fix to the shoot and go back glitch. but i agree this can probably not be compensated by all the downsides it has

[Ben]

To me, it is more pleasant to have a smooth gameplay. I say that the developers don't need to spend their precious time on such a minute problem.

[Siegfried]

It's just a decision whether they want this feature to behave like in TPR.

If it would be about minor problems they'd finally stop working on multiplayer (because it works properly) and focus on singleplayer (because AI does not work properly). Just sayin'

[Lewin]

I wouldn't be as opposed to the idea if we had more control over the turning speed. Because KaM updates 10 times per second the minimum amount of time a 180 degree turn can take is 0.4 seconds, and I think that looks too slow/clunky (I don't think it looks realistic like it does in modern 3D RTS games where units turn around quickly and smoothly).

EDIT:

If it would be about minor problems they'd finally stop working on multiplayer (because it works properly) and focus on singleplayer (because AI does not work properly). Just sayin'

Every release we've been working on the AI, but it's slow and sometimes frustrating work and neither of us know much about AI coding. It's not much fun to work on something exclusively. Krom has already put huge amounts of work into the AI for this release, but it's a big area and not a lot shows for it.

[Siegfried]

@Lewin: no offense intended.

I really see the improvement on the AI. Actually, it happens quite regularly that the AI takes some flags in my game mode that I have a hard time to fight back. That's impressive.

The AI was just meant as a showcase, because with the lack of military operations the AI is not finished yet, whereas the multiplayer is finished.
Which of course does not mean that there is nothing left to polish.

[Lewin]

@Lewin: no offense intended.

And no offence was taken, I just wanted to explain our side of the story and show that we have been putting time into it
Glad to hear the AI is challenging you economy wise at least!

[Shadaoe]

About the AI, I just looked at how tha AI does in this release on TVoD2, and I must say it is much better than before !
There are still some problems with finding the iron (which is because of the map layout), but for the AI who find iron, it now takes them around 1h50m to have a finished city (not building anymore) while it took up to 3 hours before (!!).
There are still problems like the AI not recruiting again the dead citizens but really, it was greatly improved !

[pawel95]

About the AI, I just looked at how tha AI does in this release on TVoD2, and I must say it is much better than before !

Haha I must say: They do better than some "Noobs"/Beginner