Topic: Gamma LoS issue

Just a heads-up for everyone: I got some reports that a certain gamma base is near invulnerable, more specifically it can only be shot from a few specific positions.

After some testing it looks like there is a problem with line of sight calculations if you are lower than the base of the building that you're shooting. So lone buildings on the top of hills may exhibit this problem.

We're still trying to find out the reason for this, I just wanted to put this out so everyone is aware.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

wait? after how many years of reports that gamma buildings have their LoS target right on the ground or sometimes even below ground you realise that??

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Re: Gamma LoS issue

Buddy, old pal Dev Zoom:  Tux told this to you, drew a picture and then posted it on the forums.

And should I remind you, you did a 2d/3D changed that took down Bergers Island.  If you change this mechanic, please CLEARLY EXPLAIN WHAT YOUR CHANGING AND HOW IT EFFECTS GAMMA BASES.  I'll be damned if we put months into building something so it can be changed overnight.  The base in question is not invulnerable, it just has the finest gamma players who have actually successfully dropped defended Gammas and collectively built the base.  Also I had not hand in building.

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4 (edited by Naismith 2016-06-15 23:23:45)

Re: Gamma LoS issue

what are you talking about Zoom, all T3 Gamma bases are invulnerable because there is no way to siege a base with anything less then 40 people on the field. Even then it falls flat on it's face if there's 1 dedicated defender online micromanaging connections.

The cool starship-troopers idea of assault bots running the turret gauntlet just isn't something that happens in reality. In reality, everyone gets in Seth Mk2's with 6 range extenders and snipes turrets for 2-3 hours hoping nobody comes online and flicks the boosters on. Or wastes 5 hours trying to shoot at turrets being repped by X repnodes because someone is online.

NOTE:

If whatever you're gonna change is gonna invalidate existing base designs, then you decon and move all their assets to the closest Alpha station. I don't care whose outpost it is, nobody deserves to have their assets welped because their base design got invalidated overnight by a patch. Everyone who built a Gamma base put in hours and hours of time into it.

P.P.S.

Ville, I told you so. big_smile

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Naismith wrote:

what are you talking about Zoom, all T3 Gamma bases are invulnerable because there is no way to siege a base with anything less then 40 people on the field. Even then it falls flat on it's face if there's 1 dedicated defender online micromanaging connections.

The cool starship-troopers idea of assault bots running the turret gauntlet just isn't something that happens in reality. In reality, everyone gets in Seth Mk2's with 6 range extenders and snipes turrets for 2-3 hours hoping nobody comes online and flicks the boosters on. Or wastes 5 hours trying to shoot at turrets being repped by X repnodes because someone is online.

NOTE:

If whatever you're gonna change is gonna invalidate existing base designs, then you decon and move all their assets to the closest Alpha station. I don't care whose outpost it is, nobody deserves to have their assets welped because their base design got invalidated overnight by a patch. Everyone who built a Gamma base put in hours and hours of time into it.

P.P.S.

Ville, I told you so. big_smile

I know....

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Re: Gamma LoS issue

You guys keep talking about a perceived idea that you can't get past turrets on a hill in assaults because you die.

I'm talking about a bug where you try to shoot ANY building from below and you get a "shot blocked" message when there is nothing apparent that could block it.

Two completely different things...

7 (edited by Ville 2016-06-16 10:58:44)

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Not trying to be rude Zoom, but Avatar Creations has a reputation for taking something simple to fix and completely *** up everything. 

Hell at this point I'm expecting the turrets to get "balanced" where they shoot at each other and not enemy players.  While using a million Energy every 5 seconds.

Then it gets fixed two months later and the players aren't reimbursed anything for trying to power a base that sucks up 5 energy fields an hour, while they continually try to defend their bases.

That's your track record ATM.  "Oh heads up" turn into "btw good luck on beta testing features".

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Re: Gamma LoS issue

DEV Zoom wrote:

You guys keep talking about a perceived idea that you can't get past turrets on a hill in assaults because you die.

I'm talking about a bug where you try to shoot ANY building from below and you get a "shot blocked" message when there is nothing apparent that could block it.

Two completely different things...

I know they're two completely different things, but I vividly remember another completely unrelated change in terraforming, a simple 2D/3D fix suddenly invalidating 99% of base designs in-game overnight and leaving players with their assets hanging in the wind with useless undefendable bases.

I personally have no stakes in it because I've vowed never to build a Gamma base again after that incident. But if whatever change you make is gonna impact the players in a similar fashion, just despawn their stuff and move their assets to Alpha for them. Most of the people who have bases aren't even playing your game anymore, they just log in to dump fuel in the reactors every so often.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Anyone who builds anything on gamma is pants on head ***. The arbitrary no notice (or even notification sometimes) mechanics changes and crazy amount of bugs and 'features' makes gamma unplayable for anything other than a base and handful of turrets.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Gamma LoS issue

lol, syndics next great plan to get rid of the gamma bases of other corps with zero own effort... now he wants the DEVs to move them away.

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11 (edited by Obi Wan Kenobi 2016-06-16 21:31:13)

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Naismith wrote:

I personally have no stakes in it because I've vowed never to build a Gamma base again after that incident. But if whatever change you make is gonna impact the players in a similar fashion, just despawn their stuff and move their assets to Alpha for them. Most of the people who have bases aren't even playing your game anymore, they just log in to dump fuel in the reactors every so often.

Jita wrote:

Anyone who builds anything on gamma is pants on head ***. The arbitrary no notice (or even notification sometimes) mechanics changes and crazy amount of bugs and 'features' makes gamma unplayable for anything other than a base and handful of turrets.


You guys seem to be having similar thoughts on the usefulness of Gamma.... Well thats it were all doomed now. Thanks a lot Zoom roll lol

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks tongue

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ? tongue

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Gamma should be completely scrapped.

This was one of the nails, that killed this game.  Too much too soon, with little understanding what they want.

I am Perpetuum.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Gamma is one of the things that make this game better than similar games.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Goffer wrote:

Gamma is one of the things that make this game better than similar games.

Only on the paper.

I speak broken English.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Perpetuum wrote:

Gamma should be completely scrapped.

This was one of the nails, that killed this game.  Too much too soon, with little understanding what they want.

Actually Gamma with the old terraforming was really fun. World building was entertaining and one of the few end game solo activities that you could do. Also a great nic sink. Once they removed that and epriton gamma became pointless.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Sure, the release just happens to coniside with quite a few of the terrible choices that were made.

This wasn't thought out in the long term.  Terraforming was part of the problem, and was a no brainer unlimited terra was going to be bad...bad...bad.  World building is a gimmicky idea that is nothing more then that, a idea.  Give the parties the illusion of power through other means, and leave the true world building to set guidelines.
Slap on the epriton and you Truly start to see the panic.

Not only should this be scrapped, it should be completely ran from.

We have entire sides vowing not to build, couldn't agree more.  Rules changing, bugs going untouched, player bases seeing whats going wrong, and zero changes.

Meh.

I am Perpetuum.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Gamma would have been fine if there was a bigger dev team who was willing to refine the concept after it was introduced. But I guess that would be true for the whole game to hmm

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks tongue

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ? tongue

Re: Gamma LoS issue

Update: we have found the source of the problem and it will be fixed in the next patch.

The problem was that shots were actually blocked by the building's own blockings, when firing from a steep enough angle from either below or above. This happened because when you're firing at a building, LoS is calculated by drawing a virtual 3D line between the center of the building and the source of the shot. The actual point of the hit is determined by subtracting the building radius from the length of that line. The bug was that this effectively resulted in a small spherical hitbox inside the building instead of the intended cylindrical shape, which practically made it impossible to hit the building from anywhere else than the sides.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

nice find wink

now... how much would it stress your server if those LOS-blocked shots would actually deal damage, like they do to plants?
I won't accept a "impossible to implement", as you are already confirmed that the "hit" is already registered and can be tracked.

disclaimer - i am not saying you should implement this, as there are two game-breaking issues i can think of right away if you did.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
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Re: Gamma LoS issue

Annihilator:
This is fairly different compared to plants. Buildings are separate objects placed on the ground, and combat against them is more like robot combat. Whereas plants are not really objects, but sort of an "extension" of a ground tile, where we know that it's a plant because the tile underneath it says so, so we can damage it when the blocking column on the tile is hit. For buildings this would only be possible if all the tiles underneath is would hold the information that there is a building above.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

i understand that much of the difference between plants and buildings

to clarify your other post:
a building in perpetuum consists of:
1. a 3D mesh placed at a single tile, always orthogonal to the world xy plane (grey)
2. a LoS target vector (yellow), with a spherical LoS offset
3. an invisible, plant-like terrain override that makes those 3D meshes have a LoS blocking hitbox (light blue)

http://i.imgur.com/FLDF9nF.jpg

and you will change the spherical ofset into a cylindrical one

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Re: Gamma LoS issue

All that, but blocking is handled on a separate level. Every plant and structure, be it functional or decorational (rocks too), has a tile-based blocking layout made up of columns of different heights, which are placed down automatically when the plant or structure is placed on the ground (and removed when it dies). These are simple tile-data (one height value) much like tile blocks which prevent you stepping there, but tile blocks are 2d, and blockheights (as we call them) are meant for height-based blocks. (These were the ones blocking the shots against gamma buildings because they overreached the spherical hitbox at the top and bottom.)

How it looks in the dev client.

It probably sounds way too complex for what it's meant to do, but it's a legacy of the tile system.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

So the sphere defined the area where stopped bullets would be considered hitting that building but it would not itself stop bullets.

I do wonder what the "game-breaking things could be" but it sounds a lot like it woudl end up working a lot like the plants. Edge-cases what I think might cause trouble would be to lock something other than the building, fire a shot and have it still collide with a building. Sometimes missile and etc can be seen to launch somewhere far-off and if with tricky targeting they could be consistently be made fly beyond their max range and hit stuff that migth be bad.

Re: Gamma LoS issue

DEV Zoom wrote:

All that, but blocking is handled on a separate level. Every plant and structure, be it functional or decorational (rocks too), has a tile-based blocking layout made up of columns of different heights, which are placed down automatically when the plant or structure is placed on the ground (and removed when it dies). These are simple tile-data (one height value) much like tile blocks which prevent you stepping there, but tile blocks are 2d, and blockheights (as we call them) are meant for height-based blocks. (These were the ones blocking the shots against gamma buildings because they overreached the spherical hitbox at the top and bottom.)

How it looks in the dev client.

It probably sounds way too complex for what it's meant to do, but it's a legacy of the tile system.

That looks visually awesome.

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Re: Gamma LoS issue

god damn,
how many years have i been waiting to get a screenshot of that visualisation again... i mean, last time i had access to the dev client was like 5 or 6 years ago...

Rolafan - short version first: locktime and detection

slightly longer version:
as we all know, if you lock a target, it will see you, and it can lock you
as we all know, to shoot gamma buildings, you need to overcome ECM and Supression from ewar turrets.
so we all know, if you we could damage gamma buildings just like plants, targeting a ground tile (instant lock) behind it, the game for the three guys building sandcastles would be broken.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
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