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Title: Zero-K: All Welcome
Host: CZrankSpringiee
Game version: Zero-K v1.4.5.0
Engine version: 100.0
Battle ID: 413572
Started: 8 years ago
Duration: 95 seconds
Players: 4
Bots: False
Mission: False
Rating: Casual
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Team 1
Chance of victory: 48.4%

CHrankAdminDeinFreund
PLrankFailer
Team 2
Chance of victory: 51.6%

FRrankHelwor
EErankNorthChileanG
Spectators
USrankAdminCarRepairer
DErankChesti
CZrankSpringiee
snoke

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So current LOS behaviour is fully intentional?


The red circle shows the range of my commander, but he can see neither the defender nor the llt that is shooting at him. Otherwise he and the buoy would be shooting at them.

You can see that the ground below the defender/llt is out of LOS, which is perfectly fine. Still, the com should be able to see the defense peeking over the hill - it's just 2 arms length from his face and he doesn't even think about shooting back!

Unless this can be fixed properly (raycast for all objects in LOS range) I'm for wallhacks over "realism".
+2 / -0
8 years ago
tilt the camera, that hill is much steeper than it appears on your picture.

Once the looking unit had died, there is indeed no LOS over the hill's edge at the towers.


LOS mechanics sometimes suck, but this case was relatively mild.


I think problem is also with ghost unit shapes.
You had already scouted the missile tower, then lost LOS, so a ghost-shape of turret is made visible:
From ghost shape the player can clearly see the enemy and the enemy is a immobile unit.


If one takes over play with cheats, one sees the Commander could indeed have shot at the turret from there:

It is conflict:
The player sees something (enemy position) but the units do not see it and do not react to it.
+1 / -0
8 years ago
Blame the spots that are responsible for unit being detectable. They are very low currently. One would thi.k that meta of half dug hlts have thout the devs something, but apparently not, if they tose inly the point of hlt. Time to half dig some defenders, llts, ddms etc.
+0 / -0
quote:
DErank[2up]knorke

Once the looking unit had died, there is indeed no LOS over the hill's edge at the towers.


Why is there no LOS when the towers are shooting at me? Towers shoot in a straight line. So towers shooting at me \implies line of sight exists. Something has to be miscalculated here.

quote:

LOS mechanics sometimes suck, but this case was relatively mild.

My com died!

[Spoiler]
+0 / -0
quote:
Why is there no LOS when the towers are shooting at me? Towers shoot in a straight line. So towers shooting at me \implies line of sight exists. Something has to be miscalculated here.

Not quite. Just like being able to see someone and being able to shoot someone in an FPS are different things (unless you're scoped). It's not really relevant for the issue here, but the argument doesn't work (or relies on improperly defined terms).

Other than that, it's unfortunately how the mechanics work. In order for your com to "see" a unit, he needs to have LOS to the ground around it (which he didn't have). The LLT could still see you because his LOS-emit-point (his "eye") is further above the ground.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
Why isn't it just that if you can see any part of it, and your weapon can reach it, you can shoot it? Is it an intentional limitation? Because I've never felt like I could take advantage of this deliberately (outside of semi-burying my stingers), and it always feels fiddly when it does occur. Like a bug. It's not intuitive and I'm still having difficulty understanding it. You can shoot at radar dots without seeing the area around their feet?
+0 / -0
quote:
Unless this can be fixed properly (raycast for all objects in LOS range) I'm for wallhacks over "realism".

There is supposed to be a "wallhack" where shooting inside unit's sight radius (that is, in its AirLos) will reveal the shooter (unless they're Spectre). If this doesn't happen (Defender is not revealed when shooting a commander while commander close enough), then that's a bug because the gadget is not working (possibly broken engine side?)

It would be useful if you could confirm the problem.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
What if the wallhack gave vision over buildings which have been ghosted in addition to shooting units?
+0 / -0
Wallhack is supposed to reveal buildings which shoot.

Do you mean like out-of-los ghosted statics?
+0 / -0

8 years ago
quote:
Is it an intentional limitation?


The current LOS algorithm is 2D in essence, the calculation is very simple:
If you have a clear view of 5 elmos or lower above ground - that tile is visible.
That means that if my vision is blocked so I can only see 10 elmos above the ground in a specific tile, all units there will be invisible even if they are skyscraper sized.

This issue is very difficult to solve for technical reasons. A visible/non-visible tile system is far easier to calculate and implement than a system where you also have to remember the minimum visible height in each tile.
[Spoiler]

tl;dr: Spring LoS is 2D, making it 2.5D is both complex and performance heavy.
+2 / -0
quote:
If you have a clear view of 5 elmos or lower above ground - that tile is visible.

Can this constant 5 be easily made reasonably Lua configurable, per-tile? Sight recalculation would only have to happen if the limit was lowered.

If not, can there be a global toggle between using oceanfloor vs surface for water LoS? Currently it uses oceanfloor which causes very degenerate cases like this (red boat can't see green one)
+0 / -0
quote:
Can this constant 5 be easily made reasonably Lua configurable

Not easily.

quote:
boat stuff

I'm happy to say that this issue has already been fixed in latest dev engine.
Organise testing if you want to see 102 released.
+2 / -0
quote:
EErankAdminAnarchid

There is supposed to be a "wallhack" where shooting inside unit's sight radius (that is, in its AirLos) will reveal the shooter (unless they're Spectre). If this doesn't happen (Defender is not revealed when shooting a commander while commander close enough), then that's a bug because the gadget is not working (possibly broken engine side?)


I have seen this wallhack working, but it did not do so in this game. The llt seen in the first image is not visible to my com, even though he is in sight distance and shooting at him. Is AirLOS working properly?

Still, even if it was working, this isn't good enough. Imagine an enemy constructor sitting on the hill slowly building a stinger or even ddm while my units can't do anything but wait to get shot before being able to shoot back. This leads to RPS breaking behaviour in some cases where riots are "cloaked" by terrain without any chance for skirmishers to counter them.
+0 / -0


8 years ago
You are mistaken, I see no bug. The cliff-reveal in that replay is working correctly. I think your commander can see the LLT in the screenshot in the OP.
  • The Commander has just shot, it is still reloading.
  • The LLT and Defender have only just started shooting so they were not visible/
  • The Buoy is probably too far away regardless.
  • You must be able to see the LLT and Defender because I know there are other units on that hill which you cannot see. Therefore this screenshot is taken without fullview.

LoS has a known horizontal offset problem in the current engine. This exacerbates cliff issues from half of the directions. Dev engine fixes this and does a whole bunch of other, unspecified, changes which seem to fix some other things too. It seems to have higher cliff visibility.

I think the dev engine system with the cliff-reveal gadget is a good solution. There will be some cliff cases but:
  • It is infeasible to fix cliff cases.
  • A fix to cliff cases would introduce inconsistency to the LoS system.
In the current system type of system, if a square of the terrain is dark then you know that any non-shooting unit could be inhabiting that square. If we took the more realistic approach of pairwise raytraces for all units then black squares would lose their precise meaning. The added clarity may make the simple system superior, given reduced edge cases and the cliff-reveal to handle remaining cases.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
I rewatched the game with specfullview and have to agree, the widget is working as intended. Sorry for the misinformation.

This means the defender was invisible except for when it was bursting(=invincible) and I didnt have any chance to stop Helwor from building the lotus in front of me either(because I can't see it until it is built).

Would be fair if Defender would at least "uncloak" for the whole of his reload cycle.

But as we're probably going to keep using the ground-based LOS system I'll just avoid maps like this with extreme hills. Theoretically such a LOS approximation would only work if all weapons fired from ground level.
+0 / -0


8 years ago
quote:
Would be fair if Defender would at least "uncloak" for the whole of his reload cycle.
No, that would be an inconsistency in the cliff-reveal rules. Everything is revealed for about a second iirc.

Is there anything wrong with this behaviour? It is clearly communicated via the LoS map and creates some extra terrain importance.
+0 / -0
It strengthens defenses even more while I prefer aggressive and dynamic gameplay. So it's a design decision. Both uncloak for one second and uncloak for one reload cycle seem understandable to me.

There's nothing "wrong" with current behaviour.
+0 / -0
Skasi
quote:
There's nothing "wrong" with current behaviour.

I think there definitely is a problem. Otherwise this discussion would not have started. Line-of-sight being very quirky is one of many Spring mechanics that could use a lot of polish because in their current form they can create a lot of frustration. Players should never have a "valid reason" to feel rage towards how the game works (or doesn't work).

Game mechanics that are unexpected and annoying without being a real (competitive) feature should not exist. When I say "real feature" I mean things like sneaky Skuttles/Scythes, Rockos kiting Outlaw forever, etc. which can be annoying to some players, but were designed around this and add something to the game.
+0 / -0
yea I rewatched several times the replay (putting camera horizontally)and I agree with DF, this doesnt make sense, the llts are only visible once they start shooting, not when they are built. they seems to pop out of nowhere once they are rdy to shoot.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
I just found another more obvious example in this replay
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/414517

in the third minute at the middle of the map, this half build defender is not visible for the north team, look at the very little hill (not even can be called a hill) that cover it, dat ridiculous.
+0 / -0