The Physics of Pilums and Dogs

[DemonArchangel]

I saw a dude getting thrown up into the air by an elephant in a screenshot, so i'm wondering about the physics/details in RTW.

The following questions are for players who want relatively good detail in their games

*Will arrows remain stuck in the ground/in their victims upon making impact?

*Will dead bodies still be treated with the same physics as living ones, so that corpses just don't become sprites on the ground?

* Will pilums bend and stick out of shields?

* Will dogs be shown knocking people down and tearing out their throats?

* Will stabs and slashes make holes in people? (there should be BLOOD in RTW)

* Will artillery shells actually follow REAL physics instead of simply creating sprites on the ground?

[Spino]

Missiles (arrows, pilae, etc.) Sticking in the Ground and/or People - Arrows and other missiles sticking out of the ground isn't such a big deal. CA could treat them like dead bodies and have lots of really simplified 3d missiles jutting out of the terrain but what would be the point other than adding eye candy most people won't notice during the middle of a huge battle? It is conceivable this could have a detrimental effect on performance if enough arrows are fired during a battle. You could set a limit to counter this or even have old missiles fade away after a set period of time but why bother? Rendering arrows and missiles sticking out of people is a much taller order. I don't know the nature of the RTW engine but it may not be able to handle the kind of 'on the fly' skeletal changes this would require. If this is the case then CA would have to pre-render several different wounded 3d figures for every soldier in the game in order to depict pierced arrows, javelins, pilae, etc. A very time consuming process. It would be much easier for CA to create wound textures or 'skins' for the soldiers but when it comes down to it I don't think the RTW engine even takes into account wounded men; they're either healthy and animated or dead and static. In effect you would be asking CA to render hundreds of different types of dead bodies just so the engine can accurately depict each man's death.

Stab & Slash Wounds and other Nastiness - See above answer. Wound textures (a.k.a 'pain skins' ) would be much easier to depict but if the RTW engine only tracks the living (100% health) and the dead (0% health) then pain skins, however cool they may be, would never be used on living soldiers.

Dead Body Physics - Allowing dead bodies to become a tangible part of the terrain sounds like a tall order. This might negatively affect the AI's pathfinding abilities and during a massive battle soldiers amidst a pile of dead bodies could wind up behaving very strangely. Each soldier would seek out his own path to keep formation and if you pile enough dead bodies up some living soldiers might get trapped or get stuck in annoying little mazes of bodies. I suppose the presence of dead bodies could exert a movement penalty but anything else is asking for trouble. I would sooner have CA look into creating deployable battlefield obstacles than worry about the effect of the dead on the battlefield.

Mean Doggie Throat Ripping Animations - Not a bad idea but I think CA has already gone with a generic 'doggie lunge' attack move as seen in one of the bigger RTW video clips out on the net.

Improved Artillery 'Shell' Physics- It's probably been implemented already. I think it's safe to say we can expect better behavior from artillery missiles in RTW than what we saw in MTW or STW.

I suppose CA could implement all this stuff but then we actually would need a super PC to run RTW at a smooth framerate. I would sooner have CA divert more time and resources into improving the AI or user interface than bothering with little details like those you mentioned. Maybe when the Total War series reaches the 5th or 6th installment many of those requests will be fulfilled but right now that's asking alot of CA and the average gamer's pc.

[Kraxis]

I basically agree with Spino.

But I would not mind arrows sticking out of the ground. As said it would likely not take much time to create. And as such it loos very interesting to me. It would be cool to see where you have had a major archerduel, and arrows sticking out of bodies is not important, you can see the arrows in the ground and bodied among them. That would lead to an optical illusion of arrows sticking out of the bodies if looked at from 'afar', if done properly, if not we can still see they died from archery.
So go on that one.

The rest I don't really care about. Dead bodies and making them problematic, yes good enough but only as long as there are other problems. Make the AI ignore bodies for its pathfinding and give them a slowing factor.

Blood in RTW is not that important for me, and gore is certainly not. A bloodpool after a man has died is perfectly ok and enough for me, maybe a pool that will grow larger as more men are killed.

[DemonArchangel]

Yea, i hope to see a gladius eviscerate someone.