Ohh I remember something thats really confusing: Sometimes if you move through PG you don't get phased to the next portal but come out in the same room.
No grenade whip? I really hope the changes buff them at least. They're hardly useful out of 6v6 n is pricey even then. Are gls getting any changes?
If we were to make balance changes, you would see it in Trello.
Force me to go to trello... how dare you I shall take another gander.
Looked, didn't find it, so I guess that's a 'no' or 'not in the near future'. Maybe my iPad is having issues with the website and i can't view everything...
Has anyone looked, or is anyone looking, into the invalid collision rep error message that occurs very frequently (coinciding with bites-that-should-have-hit missing and so on)?
I don't know if that comes under any of the things on Trello - I looked through but couldn't find it there.
No grenade whip? I really hope the changes buff them at least. They're hardly useful out of 6v6 n is pricey even then. Are gls getting any changes?
If we were to make balance changes, you would see it in Trello.
Force me to go to trello... how dare you I shall take another gander.
Looked, didn't find it, so I guess that's a 'no' or 'not in the near future'. Maybe my iPad is having issues with the website and i can't view everything...
not really sure what you're looking for. this is the only whip-related change listed:
No grenade whip? I really hope the changes buff them at least. They're hardly useful out of 6v6 n is pricey even then. Are gls getting any changes?
If we were to make balance changes, you would see it in Trello.
Force me to go to trello... how dare you I shall take another gander.
Looked, didn't find it, so I guess that's a 'no' or 'not in the near future'. Maybe my iPad is having issues with the website and i can't view everything...
not really sure what you're looking for. this is the only whip-related change listed:
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
The original Whip code had some insane level of requirements (3 different kinds of attack + commander selected entity target or ground target, and bombard only on direct commander control because ... ) ... so it ended up being huge and complex ( a bit of goldplated howitzer bombard code didn't help any - mea culpa in that case :-))
As playtesting progressed, it was realized that commanders didn't want to have that much detail work, so all the commander targeting was removed. Then the grenade whack was removed ... so the requirements just dropped.
There was always complaints about the whip not working properly too, so we finally decided just to rip out the dead code paths and simplify it so we could see what was going on.
In working with the new simplified whip, we finally managed to understand WHY whips sometimes slapped but didn't hit anything.
It was a combination of the whip animation and limitations of the animation engine. You set an attackYaw (direction of attack relative to the facing of the whip) and trigger the slap or bombard attack, then sit and wait until the animation generates a "hit" tag for the lua code to grab and do the actual damage.
Now, you might think it would be a good idea for the whip to follow his target continuously, so the animation actually tracks towards the moving target and when the actual slap occurs, it hits the target accurately.
Turns out if you try that, you will hit a limitation of the animation engine. The actual slap/bombard animation is built out of multiple sub-animations for different attackYaws ... and if you change the attackYaw during the animation so that the original animation isn't active when it comes time for the "hit" tag to be generated, ... it's not.
No hit tag generated, no lua code triggered, no damage; just a whip flailing uselessly.
The new whip code is very much simpler and takes great care in NOT changing the attack yaw until after the hit tag has been generated.
It is also improved in that bombarding no longer locks up the whip for the full 5.35seconds - it will be able to use the slap attack while waiting to regenerate that bombard ball.
@matso thanks for the relatively depthy explanation, I love reading about codefixes and i'm sure other people do too! I can feel it rekindling my ancient love for programming/mapping/modding, and I'm sure it will generate enthusiasm in other people reading too
Here's another question for the oh so awesome CDT guys. Is there any chance of refining and integrating the Pregame Plus mod into the official game?
I think it's not only a wonderful tool for rookies to practice with lifeforms, jetpacks, weapons, etc. It also helps alleviate the boredom of waiting for people to join teams. (it also makes seeding servers much more enjoyable)
@Benson I'm sure once the whip code has been cleaned up, if there is enough community support maybe a modder will try to implement it in an un-broken and fun way. If that's possible at all, who knows where it could lead from there. As with any feature! Right, @SamusDroid ?
@Benson I'm sure once the whip code has been cleaned up, if there is enough community support maybe a modder will try to implement it in an un-broken and fun way. If that's possible at all, who knows where it could lead from there. As with any feature! Right, @SamusDroid ?
Whipping grenades back will never work without engine changes
Here's another question for the oh so awesome CDT guys. Is there any chance of refining and integrating the Pregame Plus mod into the official game?
I think it's not only a wonderful tool for rookies to practice with lifeforms, jetpacks, weapons, etc. It also helps alleviate the boredom of waiting for people to join teams. (it also makes seeding servers much more enjoyable)
Quoted for emphasis. The reason whips have been lackluster and ineffective in the last few live builds isn't so much that they're under tuned but rather that they were almost completely broken. We couldn't get the whip fixes in on time for 266, but now that they're working much better they will definitely mess you up if you don't pay attention.
There's a number of technical changes that we expect to affect balance generally in 267, and it's something we're going to be keeping a very close eye on for 268. The whip changes are the most obvious, but there are others.
Quoted for emphasis. The reason whips have been lackluster and ineffective in the last few live builds isn't so much that they're under tuned but rather that they were almost completely broken. We couldn't get the whip fixes in on time for 266, but now that they're working much better they will definitely mess you up if you don't pay attention.
There's a number of technical changes that we expect to affect balance generally in 267, and it's something we're going to be keeping a very close eye on for 268. The whip changes are the most obvious, but there are others.
Is it multithreaded and server rate increasing performance and perceived smoothness making marines OP?!?
Quoted for emphasis. The reason whips have been lackluster and ineffective in the last few live builds isn't so much that they're under tuned but rather that they were almost completely broken. We couldn't get the whip fixes in on time for 266, but now that they're working much better they will definitely mess you up if you don't pay attention.
There's a number of technical changes that we expect to affect balance generally in 267, and it's something we're going to be keeping a very close eye on for 268. The whip changes are the most obvious, but there are others.
Is it multithreaded and server rate increasing performance and perceived smoothness making marines OP?!?
Needs more testing, but possibly. You definitely don't get to trick yourself into thinking you escaped while dying around corners anymore. We haven't done enough testing yet, and what we have done is on a rather powerful machine with a lot of available bandwidth.
Comments
ANNOUNCING THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TEAM - PLEASE TELL US EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THIS GAME AND WE'LL FIX IT BY NEXT PATCH, PROMISE
Fixed :P
Or just add the server to your steam favorites ...
Add 1 to the port number, the port is after the colon " : "
Also, will there be details on the whip changes in the clogcast? (mostly wanna know if grenade smack is comming back
P.S. Very glad to see all those engine improvements got in for this patch!
Grenade smack is never ever coming back. It's simplifying Whips.
Thanks for the confirmation
No it's not. We have been in lockdown for like 2 weeks now
If we were to make balance changes, you would see it in Trello.
Force me to go to trello... how dare you
Looked, didn't find it, so I guess that's a 'no' or 'not in the near future'. Maybe my iPad is having issues with the website and i can't view everything...
I don't know if that comes under any of the things on Trello - I looked through but couldn't find it there.
not really sure what you're looking for. this is the only whip-related change listed:
https://trello.com/c/Dr3GJfz6/336-bug-fix-whips-patch-5947
in theory it should improve viability of whips.
I was talking about gl changes, I understand the whip is being reworked but no grenade knock-back.
As playtesting progressed, it was realized that commanders didn't want to have that much detail work, so all the commander targeting was removed. Then the grenade whack was removed ... so the requirements just dropped.
There was always complaints about the whip not working properly too, so we finally decided just to rip out the dead code paths and simplify it so we could see what was going on.
In working with the new simplified whip, we finally managed to understand WHY whips sometimes slapped but didn't hit anything.
It was a combination of the whip animation and limitations of the animation engine. You set an attackYaw (direction of attack relative to the facing of the whip) and trigger the slap or bombard attack, then sit and wait until the animation generates a "hit" tag for the lua code to grab and do the actual damage.
Now, you might think it would be a good idea for the whip to follow his target continuously, so the animation actually tracks towards the moving target and when the actual slap occurs, it hits the target accurately.
Turns out if you try that, you will hit a limitation of the animation engine. The actual slap/bombard animation is built out of multiple sub-animations for different attackYaws ... and if you change the attackYaw during the animation so that the original animation isn't active when it comes time for the "hit" tag to be generated, ... it's not.
No hit tag generated, no lua code triggered, no damage; just a whip flailing uselessly.
The new whip code is very much simpler and takes great care in NOT changing the attack yaw until after the hit tag has been generated.
It is also improved in that bombarding no longer locks up the whip for the full 5.35seconds - it will be able to use the slap attack while waiting to regenerate that bombard ball.
The result will slap you silly.
I think it's not only a wonderful tool for rookies to practice with lifeforms, jetpacks, weapons, etc. It also helps alleviate the boredom of waiting for people to join teams. (it also makes seeding servers much more enjoyable)
Whipping grenades back will never work without engine changes
The chance of this happening is very very small.
There's a number of technical changes that we expect to affect balance generally in 267, and it's something we're going to be keeping a very close eye on for 268. The whip changes are the most obvious, but there are others.
Is it multithreaded and server rate increasing performance and perceived smoothness making marines OP?!?