DFD: 914 vs. 392, 283 vs. 602

[AlexB]

DFD: Daily Feature Deathmatch

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The Cruel Fight For Implementation

This is a Daily Feature Deathmatch post. If you are unfamiliar with the background of this event, please read the announcement and the schedule.

Fight 1

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[0000914] it will be ok to add a coeficient of accuarcy as default to the unit type and also an option to change it for a specific unit vs. [0000392] DestroyAnim / Explosion / DebrisAnims Override

Fight 2

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[0000283] Allow upgradable cloaking towers like gap generators vs. [0000602] TurretDecompressFramesOn Tanks!

By the end of the 48 hour period, two of these issues will be suspended, while the other two move on to the next round.
Remember that the coders will not take part in the discussion, so make your arguments complete, concise and convincing - when it's over, it's over.

Part of that is clearly marking what outcome you support for which issue.
There should be no ambiguity in the issue you're talking about, and it should be clear what outcome you support. Feel free to put your stance in bold, and use simple terminology like "kill #69" or "I want #42 to survive".
A decision will be made either way, so a lack of discussion will not cause all issues to live.

Be friendly, be civil, be logical.
You are allowed to try to deconstruct the arguments of those arguing against your candidate, but remember that they don't make the call - there is really no point in getting personal.

The discussion should be contained in this thread, argumentations elsewhere will be ignored, but you are allowed to transfer and adapt points made elsewhere in the past.

We want a good, clean fight.
Let's get it on!

End: ~ 19:00, 19.07.2010.

[Lt Albrecht]

914 makes sense if you squint at it funnily, but really all it does is randomly hits 0 with varying frequencies...
392 is a cheap hack for cellspread temporal and I can't really think of anything else to use it for

283 would probably be used in one or two mods, but isn't really a wide ranging thing.
602 would make things easier for a few bits of graphical mojo

Out of this lot I'd chose 283 and 392...

[MRMIdAS]

out of 2 weird issues [0000392] seems to be slightly better.

[0000283] Bigger range based on excess power is a great idea, shouldn't be overly hard to implement.

[¥R M0dd€r]

Fight1:
[0000914] in my opinion is useless
[0000392] open many new possibilities, but if this weapon should be a fake temporal, then it must also shut down the other building/unit deathweapon, if it have.
Support 392

Fight2:
[0000283] Cloak Generators are so laggy, unless they get some kind of fix that remove the lag, I dont want to see any feature to them.
Can someone explain why transparent lag so mutch in this game?
[0000602] Can someone explain this? I dont understand what this does

[reaperrr]

Fight 1:
The title of 914 doesn't seem to make sense, but the actual request behind it does. If you think about it, it's incredibly unlogical that inaccurate weapons are just as inaccurate against a huge battle fortress as they are against a small soldier. With this, you could actually make cannons very accurate against tanks but inaccurate vs. infantry (like in C&C1), and you would no longer have to use lower versus values to "simulate" inaccuracy vs. infantry. I really like this request.
392 on the other hand, well maybe it's my lack of imagination but asides from that one scenario in the description, I don't think it's very useful.
So my vote clearly goes:
Kill #392
Support #914

Fight 2:
I don't really care that much, but #283 would only benefit mods that use the cloak generator, and as was mentioned already until the cloak generator lag is fixed not many will do that.
#602 would be a nice visual enhancement for turreted/barreled voxel units. Especially TurretRecoil for vehicle voxels would be nice, and I think this would see more widespread usage than #283.

Kill #283
Support #602

[Beowulf]

Kill #914. It feels like another, more complicated 'warhead' system. I don't really see the point to it. Mix it with the Random Damage request and the traditional warhead system and you're pretty much there. As said, kill #914.

I support #392 in that is proposes a new idea. I like the idea of forcing certain things for various weapons. It's a good idea.

For the second one, I really don't care which one wins so I abstain my vote on it.

[Darkstorm]

Fight 1

Issue 1 has a few clarity issues here.

Issue 1: The reporter for this issues is asking to have tags to control the inaccuracy of a weapon. Which has its uses, just not enough uses, inaccurate=yes seems to be fine in making weapons inaccurate to the correct degree. It seems to be based on the cruiser's (from RA1) inaccuracy, range and inaccuracy seems to be directly related, though this is from what I can remember about the MO battleship.

Issue 2: Now this is asking for warheads to define how EVERYTHING dies. This can be used to make a cellspread temporal effect, or Tesla blast out of tank when dead, or a frozen tank shatter. So it has a few uses, and more than issue 1 in my opinion. However, it does need to include a tag to control the overwriting dead weapons, so your demo truck will still explode at a electric jolt but not when erased from time by a chrono missile.

Support: [0000392] DestroyAnim / Explosion / DebrisAnims Override
Kill: [0000914] it will be ok to add a coeficient of accuarcy as default to the unit type and also an option to change it for a specific unit

Fight 2

Issue 1: Now the super stealth generator idea is crazy, the thing that makes it crazy is LAG. Stealth generators are limited to a small radius in mods because the game wasn't build to have stealth generators, and thus has little support for them. Thus, the idea of increasing the radius with this logic seems useless, it would only be a small amount and a waste of time. Modders just wouldn't have any need for it.

Issue 2: Issue 2 has a lot more value however, it allows vehicles to use the same recoil logic of the Grand Cannon.

Support: [0000602] TurretDecompressFramesOn Tanks!
Kill: [0000283] Allow upgradable cloaking towers like gap generators

[Black Shadow 750]

Honestly, I've never noticed any lag whilst playing with cloak generators, even when I cloaked half a map at one point I noticed no slowdown. I mean, on old computers obviously. I once tried to run it on a computer so slow I could train 5 G.Is before the barracks built up and that didn't work, but since I got a newer computer I haven't had any problems at all (newer = Windows 98 FYI). And with this current computer, nadda, not a thing. So what is this "Epic lag" everyone keeps refering to and is it at all gamebreaking??

[reaperrr]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I've got the impression some people don't really understand what #914 is about (not all that suprising since both the title and the explanation by the requester are rather confusing and complicated), so I'll try to explain it a bit clearer just in case.

It basically requests a tag to control "how easy am I to hit" for units, as opposed to "how inaccurate am I" for weapons.

This is a sensible request in my opinion, because with the current system an inaccurate weapon shows the same level of inaccuracy against every target (unless it's a building that's bigger than 1x1, of course).

If you think about it, that's totally unrealistic. let's say you have an inaccurate weapon that can miss the targeted point by up to two meters. Is that enough to miss a soldier? Sure. Is that enough to miss a terror drone? Yeah. Is that enough to miss a tank that measures 2x3x7 meters? Um, well yeah, but chances of missing it are much lower. Is that enough to miss a giant battle fortress 5 meters high, 10 meters wide and 20 meters long? Or an enormous Aircraft carrier? Uhh... not really.

But to the RA2/YR engine, they ARE all the same. The game only cares how far away from the center point of the unit/infantry the impact happened, aspects like size are not considered at all.

So the request is a tag like this:
HitChanceMultiplier=fp
This controls the probability of being hit by an inaccurate projectile. The BallisticScatter of the attacking inaccurate weapon is divided by that value, so 2.0 would cut the inaccuracy in half, 0.5 would double it.

This way, you could make huge units much easier to hit than infantry for example. This would allow for a more realistic and fine-grained "hitablility" control.


Mind you, it won't mean the end of the world to me if this issue dies, it's just that I don't like to see an issue die only because half of the voters didn't even fully understand the basic idea behind it.

Which has its uses, just not enough uses, inaccurate=yes seems to be fine in making weapons inaccurate to the correct degree.

I disagree, more fine-grained control over inaccuracy is incredibly useful in my eyes. The fact that BallisticScatter is a global value has been giving me headaches for ages, I'm really glad that one is already assigned. I only hope it won't take until 1.0, but I'm going off-topic here so I'll stop now.

[WoRmINaToR]

Well, I understand the logic reaperr, but having a bullet spread a LESSER distance because it's firing at a bigger target is also unrealistic (but so is this game, so whatever). Since all tanks/ships only logically occupy the very center lepton of their cell for CellSpread calculation (as opposed to the entire cell) I can see why this might be wanted. However finding some way to implement this would be insane. Finding a way to have the game access the properties of a different technotype and have a specific property of that technotype change the way a fired projectile (from a different technotype) behaves sounds like dreamwork to me, there just seems to be no realistic way that this possibly could be implemented. I'm not sure if there is even a possible way for the game to determine exactly what object (technotype) is being targeted by a weapon/unit.

Besides, I never liked the inaccuracy system, it was far too much of a hassle because of having to mix CellSpread into the logic which always complicates things (particularly when buildings are involved). If you use the already requested Random Damage and then tweak versus accordingly you will get a nearly identical logic to this, minus needing to use CellSpread and the ability to randomly hit other targets than the intended one.

As for forcing DestroyAnims, this seems interesting and I might end up using it one day, but it's not a deal breaker and certainly not important. I'd almost like to say kill both.

But since that won't happen I might as well support the somewhat more useful feature, and that is #392.


For fight 2, I have to agree with most everyone else here, cloak towers really won't be widely used until we can find some way to fix the lag that comes from making SHPs transparent.

And I would probably use TurretCompressFrames etc. on every single tank I have that uses barrels, if this was implemented for tanks. This would be a really awesome logic, I really like the idea!

That said, I support issue #602

[reaperrr]

Well, I understand the logic reaperr, but having a bullet spread a LESSER distance because it's firing at a bigger target is also unrealistic (but so is this game, so whatever).

I know. In this form this feature request is probably too flawed, but the basic idea behind it is something worth pursuing IMO, we just need to find a saner implementation.

[RandomNutjob]

Ok thought would join in as have a lot of interest in Ares and certain issues so here goes:

Fight 1 - I'll go for 914 purely because makes logical sense and imo is more useful

Fight 2 - Am torn as I'd like the realism of turret compression but would appreciate the cloak "lag" sorted and behaviour to mirror "gap" so can expand field via extra power so 283 takes the edge

[Black Shadow 750]

[size=medium][b]Issue 1: Now the super stealth generator idea is crazy, the thing that makes it crazy is LAG. Stealth generators are limited to a small radius in mods because the game wasn't build to have stealth generators, and thus has little support for them. Thus, the idea of increasing the radius with this logic seems useless, it would only be a small amount and a waste of time. Modders just wouldn't have any need for it.

For fight 2, I have to agree with most everyone else here, cloak towers really won't be widely used until we can find some way to fix the lag that comes from making SHPs transparent.

I ask yet again, if this lag is so immense... How come I've never experienced it? Is it really that IMMENSE or is it just blown out of the water exaggeration. MO has no lag problems. Well, no mods at all have had lag problems for me unless I've had like, 200 units on the screen, all moving.

[RandomNutjob]

Just quick question, if 602 is "resolved" does that mean 283 gets a by to next stage?

[WoRmINaToR]

not necessarily. If you read the issue, the "resolved" status is there purely out of confusion. This should be sorted out soon.

@Black Shadow: Have you ever tried cloaking an entire base (your base, and I mean lots of buildings, not just a few)? How about this, have you ever watched an entire base blow up (like someone quit) and did you ever experience even minor lag then?

See, the lag spawns from poor drawing code with relation to SHP transparency. Most explosion animations in the stock game use transparency (i.e. a base exploding), and cloak generators also use transparency, both of which should lag noticeably no matter how powerful your PC is.

Maybe if you are running a single core 50 GHz processor with 10 to the fifth GBs of RAM and a HDD with 100,000,000 RPMs you wouldn't notice anything, but most normal computers do

just out of curiosity, what ARE your computer's specs?

and TBH, even if the lag is fixed, it's really questionable just how many people would want the Super Cloak Radius, considering how few people actually use the Super Gap Radius to begin with.