definitive proof that animations are a result of computer calculations.

[PaulTa]

first off, sorry about the long title.

Ok, I don't have screenshots but I do believe that this can be recreated by anyone interested.

I was sieging a village, which has all of those weirdly placed road ways, and I was firing upon the sallying defenders with my Khazaks. While the enemy unit of viking raiders were walking along the road, my HA were firing upwards as if they were directly behind another unit to compensate for the buildings. Nothing new and amazing, until the unit of raiders got to a point where they were no longer behind buildings. The arrows, mid air, changed direction by about forty degrees and shot straight towards the raiders. I repeat, the arrows changed direction mid-air.

The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that the computer generates the attack and then the animations are a result of those generations. If the animation determined the kill, there would be absolutely no reason for the sudden change in direction for the arrows.

I know that I don't have screenshots, but my finger wasn't exactly on the printscreen button since I wasn't expecting it to happen. I'm sure that the scenario can indeed be recreated though.

[OMGLAZERS]

If I wasn't at my university's lab right now, i'd be testing this.

I've heard of people changing the shield stat into the negative and suddenly, they're seeing animations of people deflecting blows with the shields; which would probably mean longer and mutual destruction melees between equal units.

I never believed that animations determined damage.

I think the animation is relative to the random generation of the attack; whatever. Then, the animation is played out.

For an animation's point of contact to then translate into numbers is just silly and neigh impossible to be done on this scale (so far).

[Zenicetus]

Man, I want me some of them heat-seeking arrows!

I never believed the animations "drove" the combat results either. That would assume the game is doing collision detection for every object, which isn't likely, considering how big the armies can get, and the fact that we don't see more significant CPU crunching when doubling the army size.

[PaulTa]

Well I remember that there was a bit of a debate on this earlier, and I thought that my "experience" was pretty interesting. Heat seeking arrows are definitely something you share with the community. :P (I guess this is the early precursor to Russian Nikita rockets )

This information might also be of some help to modders who might of been unsure as to how MTW2 calculated casualties on the battlefield.

Now that I think about it, computer generated casualties with graphical reflections of said generations would have to be the way to go anyways, in regards to auto-calcing battles.

[Musashi]

I believe the game chooses a target for each arrow, randomly generates target deviation, and then runs the animation. The arrows will curve in mid flight to reach their target point relative to the enemy unit, but it does seem to do collision detection vs soldiers who aren't the intended target but get in the path of the arrow.

The definitive test for this would be to have a unit of archers fire on a unit of infantry, and after the volley is loosed, run a unit of cav into the unit of infantry and see if any of the cavalry get hit. If they do, it's doing collision detection.

[PaulTa]

Not a bad idea. I think I'll test it.

The order to the cav needs to be issued after the arrows have been fired though so that the computer doesn't generate the cavalry actually being there.

[PaulTa]

I believe the game chooses a target for each arrow, randomly generates target deviation, and then runs the animation. The arrows will curve in mid flight to reach their target point relative to the enemy unit, but it does seem to do collision detection vs soldiers who aren't the intended target but get in the path of the arrow.

I don't know about "target for each arrow" though. If you look at it from a programming standpoint, wouldn't it be more efficient to have the computer generate casualties on a per unit basis and then have the graphics do their voodoo?

If you consider it in terms of auto-calcing, and how the devs could program the game to also be semi-accurate in the auto-calc, it doesn't seem to add up that each individual arrow is tested for.

[Zenicetus]

I believe the game chooses a target for each arrow, randomly generates target deviation, and then runs the animation. The arrows will curve in mid flight to reach their target point relative to the enemy unit, but it does seem to do collision detection vs soldiers who aren't the intended target but get in the path of the arrow.

Have you been able to visually track an arrow in flight, all the way to landing in an individual soldier's chest? The last time I took a close look at this, it seemed like the game just shows a generic hail of arrows that disappear before they actually hit anything. When soldiers are hit but not killed, you get that brief blood spray without actually seeing an arrow landing. When they're killed, an arrow pops out of their chest and they fall down, but I don't actually see it landing there. At least that's what I think I was seeing... and it would be consistent with animations being generated without collision detection. I'll have to take a closer look. Maybe I just wasn't getting a smooth enough frame rate to see the full arrow trajectory, although I think I'm running at about 20fps according to FRAPS. That should be enough.

Artillery file does seem to "carry through" all the way to final impact, and the game does apply an area effect to whatever soldiers are standing there. It's possible the game is handling arrow fire differently, to conserve CPU cycles.

The definitive test for this would be to have a unit of archers fire on a unit of infantry, and after the volley is loosed, run a unit of cav into the unit of infantry and see if any of the cavalry get hit. If they do, it's doing collision detection.

Not necessarily... the game may be calculating area effects instead. In other words, if a unit is standing at the targeted coordinates when the volley arrives, then x number of soldiers will show the "hit by arrow" animation with the blood spray, without actually calculating individual arrow trajectories and collision detection. And this could apply to more than one unit occupying that space. That would be a much less CPU-intensive way to handle it.

I could be wrong... I'd just be shocked if this game is actually doing collision-detection for so many independent objects at once (at huge size setting).

[Foz]

Actually, while this is definitive proof of something, it is not definitive proof of what you claim.

What your arrow behavior shows is not that the animation is generated based on the determination of the kill, but that the flight path of the arrow was changed when the higher trajectory was no longer required: i.e. that missile pathing is dynamic as opposed to static, and able to change in mid-flight. This in fact has NO bearing whatsoever on whether or not the missile's path of flight is being dictated by a determined kill or miss, or whether it is determining the kill or miss. So what I'm saying is that the missiles didn't change path because they were predetermined to be kills or misses, they did so because the conditions forcing their higher flight path changed. While this is weird, it has no relevance to whether collision detection is used in combat, or the animations stem from the battle calcs.

It remains as likely that your path-altered missiles are having collision tests run on them as it is that they are simply representing calculations.

[Musashi]

PaulTa: It's unlikely that Autocalc is even that in depth. Much more likely that it's a pure numbers game that never even takes into account field position or anything like that.

[Aedile Rich]

The arrows, mid air, changed direction by about forty degrees and shot straight towards the raiders. I repeat, the arrows changed direction mid-air.

The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that...

... it was windy?


Thank you. I'll be here all week.