skeletons and unit balance

[Monkwarrior]

My problem is that fs_swordsman for example, has 6 different attack animations that all have a different number of frames associated with them. So the speed with which the unit attacks is variable depending on which animations the unit uses and how the game selects which one to use..

e.g. say fs_swordsman has the following animation times in frames for the attack animations. 20,22,24,26,28, and 30.

If it randomly selects an attack animation for each attack, then we can say the average animation time for an attack is 25 frames and asjust the delay accordingly. However, we have no idea if it actually *is* random. Center attacks may be more common than high or low ones.

Yes, that's true. And it is difficult for us to get a deeper insight without knowledge about the mechanism used by the engine to select the animation in each moment.

[wlesmana]

If you checked descr_skeletons.txt and made an excel comparison of each skeleton (like I did hehehe) then you'd see that the only thing that's different in animation between fs_slow_whatever and fs_whatever is the running animation. That is it. One single animation. Just like the fast and semi-fast ones. They walk the same, but run at different speeds.

So it might be something to do with the skeleton and not the animation.

I have noticed one thing with fs_slow_whatever: when a unit is routing and getting killed, the model shrunk. Yes, you heard that right, it shrinks. It's like the skeleton is collapsing inward. It changes back to normal for the "falling on ground dying" part of the animation though. But the death-hit animation, they do the weird inward shrinking thing.

My conclusion is fs_slow_whatever is inherently flawed. CA probably used a newer CAS to export the new animation speeds and they're not agreeing with the older ones or the engine. So that might be affecting their kill-ratio.

[Aradan]

Yah, the semi_fast/fast and slow/normal pairs have everything but the running speed in common. I determined that earlier today by extensive testing (very stupid way to go) too. Thx for the scientific confirmation though, wles. :)

So that might be affecting their kill-ratio.

Tests so far show that slow_ and normal units with identical stats fight to a perfect tie, assuming of course that none of them will do the fall back/charge again thingy. I believe that when equal in morale, only the unit with slower running animation will try to regroup this way.

And I seem to remember that the dagger animations were the ones that won out against fast spears hands down when testing (I adjusted lethality to compenstate).

Nope... Daggers are actually the slowest animations (attack_speed-wise). Spears are the fastest I think, along with 2h_berserkers.

Balance:
Slow animation = long animation time; needs short delay
Quick animation = short animation time; needs long delay

So min_delay is time elapsed between one animation end and the next's beginning.
But then what's the point of naming it min_delay? Naming it just "delay" would suit it better, since it's a fixed value added to animation duration and not a minimum something. I know the reasoning sounds stupid, but everything is there for a reason and so is "min_".
Assuming that's indeed the case, then why CA had every unit's min_delay set to 25 and then Gerome comes forth and says that this was done so that units are more balanced?? Adding a fixed amount to varied values only helps balance (and only by a tiny bit) if it is much bigger than them, so the percentage of value-difference in the overall time is small. And I don't think 25 frames is that a big value... Setting min_delay high for fast units and low for slow ones would do the job much better obviously, if it works as described above and CA wanted to achieve better balance...

Assuming that min_delay is the difference between an animation's start and the next animation's start, then if the average of a unit's atttack animation times' is close to 25 (which I think it's the case), setting min_delay to 25 would partly balance the game, in that faster animations would take place within the min_delay's margins and with the added time would last exactly 25 frames and slower ones would be finished a short while afterwards, eliminating some part of the big difference between slow and fast attacks.

Am I making any sense at all? If I'm missing a critical part of the picture, can anyone more knowledgeable on that matter tell me what it is?
thx

RDN

[xerex]

Yeah, we discovered that fs_slow_whatever is the same as fs_whatever, fs_semi_fast_whatever, etc a few days ago throught extensive testing. I tried comparing animation to animation but my head started to hurt :)

but what we are having trouble with is the difference between skeletons for different weapons (for example: fs_dagger and fs_spearman).

We make the units clones of each other except for the skeleton and suddenly fs_dagger gets obliterated. If we give them the same skeleton or just differ the speed of the skeleton, we get, as expected, 50% victories and 50% losses for both units. And I don't think it is JUST the animation speed of the attacks. Because according to Jerome,

"as the animation influence was largely eliminated from actual fought battles through the use of time-to-next-attack penalties"

Thus, setting all min_delays to 25 as CA did *should* make two skeletons of different types equivalent, but again, extensive testing has showed that while they are closer than before, they are still not equal.

It is my current belief (though I readily admit I have no proof) that the impact deltas of the attack animations as defined in skeleton.txt somehow determine the range of the attacks. This gives a combat edge to units with large impact delta-zs, like spearmen and to a lesser extent, 2handed. Units with smaller delta-zs, like dagger, are at a disadvantage even if their attack animations are *supposedly* normalized to 2.5 seconds between attacks.

Wles..you haven't figured out a trick for editing the impact frame of an animation without compiling skeleton.txt have you? Our mumakil's impact frame needs editing :)

I don't know what to say about the shrinking thing. If there is a combat effect due to that, we haven't detected it empirically yet as fs_swordsman and fs_slow_swordsman appear equal once battle is joined.

[xerex]

@aradan

actually, if you just go by animation speeds, then fs_2handed is the fastest with an average animation time of 21 frames (1.05 seconds). Spearmen come in at 25 and swordsman are 23.3333. Just averaging them may be totally wrong since we don't know how animations are selected, but its the best we can do atm. The largets normal attack animation I have found in vanilla is 38 frames (1.9 seconds). So, if min_delay is the time between the beginnings of attacks (as it should be), then anything over 20 should work. Hence, the value of 25 CA chose.

But, in terms of tests, an fs_spearman clone with 0 min_delay beats any other clone unit with a different skeleton leading one to believe, based on testing, that fs_spearman animations are the fastest.

This means that either averaging is a very very wrong and the game uses some other method to select animations or, as I suggested above, the impact deltas of the weapons are having an *impact* on combat...hahhahah...sorry..that was horrible.

[Aradan]

Just a quick thought. Unlikely as it may sounds, is it possible that min_delay is harcoded? to 31/32 or whatever the highest vanilla attack-animation duration is?

[xerex]

thats easy to test...give one unit min_delay =50, the other min_delay=0 and see what happens :).

Whenever ever I take min_delay up really high, my battles slow to a crawl, so I think the parameter definitely does something to attack speed, but how *exactly* it works is very mysterious.

[Aradan]

The most horrible thing will be if you are right and impact deltas have *such* a great effect... How the heck are modders supposed to achieve balance if everything from scale to animation has an immediate effect on actual combat results??

Regarding this highly unlikely theory about a min_delay limit and the relating test, I have no doubt the unit with min_delay 50 will terribly lose. But perhaps the game automatically makes every min_delay over 31 equal to 31, if there's a limit and 31 is it of course... The differences can be very subtle some times :)

I guess a great deal of testing is the answer to this, as to many other matters too... So I'll just shut up and go test...

[xerex]

I don't think there is a maximum. I started a battle with min_delay 5000 about 30 minutes ago. It is still going on maximum speed. I think somebody might have died a while ago..but I am not sure. I have been reading the silmarillion :)