Projectile physics?
NeoRussia
Join Date: 2012-08-04 Member: 154743Members
Join Date: 2012-08-04 Member: 154743Members
I was wondering if there is going to be an improvement of projectile physics any time soon. GLs are really terrible, they bounce off randomly out of the air and who knows where they will land after you shoot them or if they will just fall to the ground and explode in your face. Most of the time the grenade will clip into your own model so you can't move forward while firing, and don't even start with using it on a jetpack. Gorge spit I'm pretty sure is a projectile too, and it doesn't even do damage half the time even though you are shooting at a marine standing still.
Comments
nades and bile bomb aren't really 'direct hitters', but spit is often ridiculous where you can't hit someone 3 inches away. it feels totally broken, and i think gorge would be a LOT more effective in combat if it was more consistent.
if i was to take a wild guess as to why it's terribad, it would be that the spit has an incredibly small collision radius which is further augmented by 'meh' interpolation, latency and packet loss. i'm comparing it to tf2, where the projectile collision radius is gigantic.
it would also be nice to see a more clear 'spit' projectile in the air, rather than a random sprite that only seems visible about 10% of the time.
TF2 has separate hitboxes for projectiles, it's mainly the netcode that's the issue with NS2 I think. Even though grenades look to be serverside they still end up hitting objects that were there a few seconds ago. An easy temporary fix would be making grenades go through marines but it wouldn't fix it still being random with geometry and direct hits, and it might create more problems with how you can fire through teammates.
Yeah, yeah that really could turn into a bucket of unfair hurt for some oni.
As for spit, a lot changes when a weapon goes from being a hit trace, which is essentially a one time calculation, to an actual in game object, which involves per frame processing. Slow moving projectiles are especially difficult to hit with in games, because it typically means they occupy only their model space at any one time, whereas a rapid moving projectile, like a bullet in BF3 for example, occupies the entire area between its location at t=0 and at t=1. I think, simply for playability, it would be worth increasing spits projectile speed and reducing its damage accordingly. At the moment the spit projectile doesn't travel much faster than a grenades initial speed.
As for spit, a lot changes when a weapon goes from being a hit trace, which is essentially a one time calculation, to an actual in game object, which involves per frame processing. Slow moving projectiles are especially difficult to hit with in games, because it typically means they occupy only their model space at any one time, whereas a rapid moving projectile, like a bullet in BF3 for example, occupies the entire area between its location at t=0 and at t=1. I think, simply for playability, it would be worth increasing spits projectile speed and reducing its damage accordingly. At the moment the spit projectile doesn't travel much faster than a grenades initial speed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the spit projectile needs to be visible, then it might be possible to learn... right now it's just trial and error every time.
It's a general problem with alien vision and anything that is translucent, they become very hard to see (bile, spit, cloaked aliens and structures).
just tested it... the visible projectile is pretty clear [outside alien vision] - but it's totally out of sync, it seems like the visible projectile is client-side but the impact is server side.
that's super confusing - i think the visible projectile should be server side too. i'm pretty sure bile bomb visible projectile is server side (and grenade launcher).
but indeed - really need those things you mentioned more obvious in alien vision, it's almost impossible to see them.
I have no problems of using projectile based weapons with slow moving speeds... It's actually sometimes easier and more handy than hitscans.
As said, problem is... my accuracy of using spit on moving targets is probably close to 5% of maybe less... If I ever hit something moving with the gorge's spit, I feel like a winner and I can die happy.
I wouldn't mind actually trying to see if hitscan spit would work with 25-40% lower damage due to easier use - as temporary fix for TOTALLY BROKEN feature.
Gorge spit is so horrible I'll actually close with a Marine just so I can use heal mist instead. At least spray hits, and if the Marine is bad enough it buys time for my Hydra's to shoot him in the back long enough to kill him.
Spit misses stationary structures while I'm moving. That is simply useless for a moving target. I think it might be useless for a reason though, as it does a pretty good visual impair if you hit. The fact it never hits kind of negates that use though.
If you gorge rush, spit is useful as it becomes a team-wide shotgun. Even in that situation, heal spray is better though.
If I have to shoot a far marine, I don't aim anymore. I shoot randomly.
I feel like my hit ratio is higher :D
As of now, the learning curve for spit is this:
<img src="http://demo.activemath.org/ActiveMath2/LeAM_calculusPics/ConstantMapR.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Nades, oh God yes, I would love to be able to bounce them behind corners, just seeing them obey logic a little better would make you feel a whole lot more comfortable, instead of nervously eyeing the grenade trying to figure out if it's gonna attack me or not.