definitive proof that animations are a result of computer calculations.

[Carl]

ot realy. Get a unit of Musketeer and turn them off Fire at will and then give the enemy 2 units of Swordsmen.

Wait till the rear unit is in range and fire at them and then whatch as not one round hits the rear unit and it's all the front unit that drops dead despite it being miles in front, and thus not subject to the area of effect thing you mentioned.

In addittion theirs the point of non-working animations. iof it was pure calculation then a non-working animation would have no effect. the kill would still happen regardless of weather or not the animation played out, (trust me i've seen it with Necron in DoW:DC where some firing animations are out of sequance with the calculations that determine kills). Since their is never a kill if the animation dosen't play out and actually hit some collission detection has to be taking place their.

If your going to use collission detection of the suffictication that missile units would likliy require to get the observed efects you might as well outright dispence with calculation and use collission detection.

Likewise collission detection dosen't need massive processer power as both HW1 and HW2 used it. Indeed HW1 used nothing else, it's accurracy really WAS determined by weather or nmot a projectile hit. You could edit things in the files (track rates and fire cones), to produce more acurrate results but the end effect was the same. And HW1 was made in 1999, they where still on P3 back then I think.

[Foz]

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.

Battlefield calculations and autocalc are entirely separate entities. You can see this because bugged and weird-acting units on the battlefied like 2H axe guys and pikes work just fine in autocalc even before you patch anything.

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.

...

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).

Watch your archers at work some more. Often one or two will fall behind the group in firing, and you can distinctly see the arrow come off of that one guy's bow and make it's entire flight. I don't think there's any question that arrows are being drawn and tracked independently of each other in the game.

As for collision detection being horribly processor intensive, I don't think it's the case. As we can see arrows being drawn in the scene already, distinct and independent of one another, there's no question that the mechanism to track and draw them is already in place. Adding to that some simple collision detection is a very miniscule amount of calculation when compared to how much has to be done to draw even one man onto the battlefield and calculate his battle AI. In fact, collision detection for all arrows in the air at once in a huge battle may not be as processor-intensive as everything involved with making one man be on the battlefield in this game. It's just some simple number crunching, nothing complicated to a computer, and compared to the absolutely enormous number of MFLOPS current processors are capable of, is honestly not even a minor annoyance to the processor.

Zenicetus: Yes, I can track an individual arrow from loosing to impact, as long as it's not being fired at high angle (At which point they go higher than the camera can follow). I always see arrows stick in the ground right where they hit.

Heck, I can even see individual musket balls in flight, if I pause the game at the right moment.

This has been my experience too.

[x-dANGEr]

I simply think it is wrong. Or, if not, then the game is really deep!

Why? You can grab a unit of Horse Archers, makes another Archers unit fire at it. By simply, running with the Horse Archers a certain direction when the Archers release their volley, you will evade most of their arrows (You won't see any arrows heat seeking your folks). And, when as soon as the second volley is released, you run the opposite way, you will evade most if not all of the arrows again.. Explain that!

(If what you say is proven true, the simple answer would be that the game's engine calculations are deep. Which contradicts what a lot of vets say about it)

[antisocialmunky]

I doubt that the game calculate by the real time position of the arrow except for animation purposes and impact. There's no need to since medieval men didn't use Zepplins, you just need to know where and when it will land and a few other things, More likely, when an arrow impacts, it calls a command that checks if a unit's hitbox is over spot and then applies the arrow's angle and the unit's direction to figure out what defense values to apply. That's a simple version of what I would do. Even then, you could calculate the point of impact and time of impact, with parabolic arcs so you don't even need the arrow to return where it will hit.

Guy.ShootArrow() creates an instance of arrow.
If (Arrow.ImpactsGround()) then check BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[] and then check if BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[].ArrayOfIndividualMen[] is .
If it is, then call ApplyArrowDamage(Arrow, BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[].ArrayOfIndividualMen[])

Or something.

[Blademun]

Heres a vid of a poor guy getting shot by about a hundred arrows at once: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oID=1717879354

[clairvaux]

Heres a vid of a poor guy getting shot by about a hundred arrows at once: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oID=1717879354

HOLY COW THAT WAS AMAZING!

[pat the magnificent]

little question here, what the hell difference does it make if arrows have individual flight paths calculated or not?

proving that arrows do something by no means prove that melee attacks do the same thing.

[antisocialmunky]

@video: I remember making them one with the force in MTW except it took whole quivers of half a stack and a crap unit pinning the bastards.

@pat: Well it is calculated for the animation. I'm guessing you're asking about checking along the arrow's flight path for collision. The main thing is efficiency. If you checked whether an arrow hits a man then it would take however many checks performed a second and multiply it with the flight time and the amount of arrows to get roughly the total amount of checks. This is inefficient since the only time you care about the arrow is if it hits a person or the ground. Its faster to just figure out when and where the arrow will end up at rather than seeing if it has hit anything yet. It's a few dozen calculations rather than hundreds or thousands of checks per second from a cloud of arrows.

[Foz]

I doubt that the game calculate by the real time position of the arrow except for animation purposes and impact. There's no need to since medieval men didn't use Zepplins, you just need to know where and when it will land and a few other things, More likely, when an arrow impacts, it calls a command that checks if a unit's hitbox is over spot and then applies the arrow's angle and the unit's direction to figure out what defense values to apply. That's a simple version of what I would do. Even then, you could calculate the point of impact and time of impact, with parabolic arcs so you don't even need the arrow to return where it will hit.

Guy.ShootArrow() creates an instance of arrow.
If (Arrow.ImpactsGround()) then check BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[] and then check if BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[].ArrayOfIndividualMen[] is .
If it is, then call ApplyArrowDamage(Arrow, BigArrayOfUnitsInZone[].ArrayOfIndividualMen[])

Or something.

This sounds like it's along the correct lines. It can't actually be using the test for when the arrow hits the ground, as some line-drive arrow trajectories would be calculated as hitting the ground way behind the man that ought to be getting hit. However if no unit is taller than say 10 feet, checking above that height can be entirely avoided, which helps a lot.

We also already know that the game calculates a firing trajectory based on what is in the way, so we can assume that if a man's hitbox is intersecting the arrow flight path, the game already knows about it since that level of collision detection (with the flight path, since it has to be preplotted) is already necessary to path the arrows correctly (avoiding the FF kills of RTW due to archers shooting their front row in the back of the head, as well as walls and trees and all manner of other things). That is to say, the game can see everything that intersects the flight path since it must to plot an unobstructed arrow path, and it will just choose to ignore men that do so on the downward portion of flight as they are targets. That being the case, all that remains is to see if something (it can only be a man at this point since the game plots around everything else) intersects the flight path during flight. If not, the arrow obviously falls harmlessly to the ground. If so, then you could check to see if the man still obstructs the flight path when his position is reached by the arrow, at which point he'd be hit. It should likewise be easy to tell when something closer gets in the way, at which point you'd track that man until he is no longer in the way, or the arrow reaches his position and he is hit.

Note that I'm not saying this is what the game is doing, or even speculating that, I'm just laying down a framework so people can have a better idea what could be going on, as few people probably have much knowledge about hit detection or what it might entail.

[dopp]

Melee and missile might be two separate systems. Melee might play animations based on combat results, as this makes more sense. Projectiles, on the other hand, might use a realistic physics engine to determine hits. If this is not the case, then why were there so many friendly fire issues in RTW? Archers could shoot their own front rankers in the back if the angle was too low. Onagers could demolish their own siege towers if they got in the way.

[Sentinel]

I find it difficult to believe that each arrow is individually targeted and tracked to its victim. It seems over-complicated and unnecessary.

Carls scenario using musketeers is interesting. Since these weapons are very inaccurate it is likely that when the bullets reach the first unit, at lest half of them would miss. If they were individually tracked they would then go on to there intended target, the second unit. But he saw no casualties in the second unit.
If the first unit was targeted, what is to stop the “missed” bullets continuing on to cause casualties in the second unit? Or third or forth until they reached there range limit.

If a group of archers was firing from behind a castellated wall then every other archer would have to use a high trajectory whilst the rest could fire low through the gaps.

Isn’t it more likely that the developers compromised and only tracked / targeted one projectile, but displayed the graphic of “one flock of arrows” in flight? This could explain why, when its trajectory is blocked by another enemy unit, that one takes the damage and none of the projectiles gets through to the intended target.

[Zenicetus]

Watch your archers at work some more. Often one or two will fall behind the group in firing, and you can distinctly see the arrow come off of that one guy's bow and make it's entire flight. I don't think there's any question that arrows are being drawn and tracked independently of each other in the game.

Right, I see the firing of the arrows and I see them in flight. It's the final point of impact in a soldier from an arrow in flight (i.e. not magically appearing in their chest out of nowhere) that I'm not seeing, and that I think the computer may be "faking". I'll run some tests later tonight, and see if I can see what y'all are seeing on the impact side.

As for collision detection being horribly processor intensive, I don't think it's the case. As we can see arrows being drawn in the scene already, distinct and independent of one another, there's no question that the mechanism to track and draw them is already in place.

Hmmm... maybe, but I think I remember reading a post here from someone quoting CA to the effect that the game doesn't do full collision detection. I'll see if I can dig it up.