Battlezone Universe

PB2 will need to have a balance-and-physics patch made for it by the community.

While beta testing, I made a lot of tweaks to the physics to get the ships back to 1.2 behavior and they seemed to work very well, but then I ran out of energy and interest, so just to let you know that it is possible.

I also made a bunch of other adjustments which I may release in the form of a variant or two or whatever once I feel better.

Also, one of the known issues is the stuttering of targeted/objectified units past 249 meters.

Smoothing of units is made adjustable in the Gameprefs.ini file.

"once I feel better"

is that because your sick or RL issues? Well whatever it is, GL with it.

Anyhow, I thought you were practically done with it, oh well I guess not. How far did you get?

Concussion from hitting the back of my head on the ice while walking around the side of the house (ice from the downspot under the snow), plus a kidney infection/possible stone(s).  Been faling asleep a lot/fuzzy-headed from the concussion and on Cipro for the infection.  Need to have a root canal next week too.

Anyways, I got pretty far with all the stuff I was working on.  Just need to sort it all out and package it is all.

Variant(s) will have different types of commandable soldiers (Infantry, Grenadiers, Rocketeers, Anti-Tank, Snipers, Saboteurs), much better AI, physics, weapons, etc.

Be awhile though.

Ouch!!!  Hope you are feeling better.

The first thing needed is a set of instructions on physics adjustments.

Where and what amounts are practical.

A lot of users need convincing a 1.2 physics Recycler Variant is possible.

A search of the readme and changelog only hints at stuff most people can not understand.

Plus if there is an instruction set for vehicle physics I have not been able to find it.

The biggest number of BZ2 fans could be brought into the realm of 1.3 this way.

Why just vehicle physics anyway? Why not be able to create a moontype  light gravity environment with blanket adjustments in the map editor? 
A low gravity environment would sure test the skill many a player.

You ehm... really shouldn't be sitting behind your pc with a concussion.

DS: I think that'd require you to change every single odf there is :P
or, of course, one could write a program that looks through all the files for say, jumpheight (whatever that line is called) and multiplies whatever value it is set at with a given number. Not something I'm able to code though. Actually I can't code a thing.
And not to forget, explosions would look different too, and maybe bio-metal would be floating around insted of staying on the ground.

EDIT. And you'll have to redo pilot animations! Although they do walk funny already...

Gravity has been brought up time and time again, and isn't changeable due to the number of things that reference it.

Believe me, if it were easy to do it would have been done.  Nathan was extremely generous when it came to giving us control over previously hardcoded values. 

He would have if he could have, but asking him to rewrite the engine would have been a bit much.

-Av-

if by by biggest number of bz2 fans you mean random 1.3 nubs then yes some sort of readme stating the obvious could get them in this patch.

otherwise it just sounds like an anti-anti fly patch people moaned over when the first public release was out, ill probably be happy with pb2 Stock, others seriously wont care, and 1.2'ers wont switch, same as always.

A great deal of the frustration 1.2 players probably felt over the physics was NOT knowing what they could adjust and what they couldn't.  The Modders understand the mechanics but not necessarily the issues, and the 1.2'ers understand the issues but not the mechanics of it.

It'll take some reasonable, civil communication between the two in order for a physics Recycler variant to be released.  A modder to mod, and testers to test, stick with it, and report reliably what needs changing.

It's up to the Community to make that happen...

-Av-

Real easy to increase/decrease gravity.  I have it in my variant somewheres.

Care to say how?

I think he's using a combination of setAltitude/alphaTrack/alphaDamp to get a gravity "feel".

Oh, I thought he found some variable and got really confused.

The "vets" are pissed off about physics changes, and now they demand *more*? Doesn't seem consistent to me.

-- GSH

I'm just guessing Spawn, I could be totally wrong. It does seem the most logical way to "change" gravity.

Quote from: GSH on March 02, 2006, 07:46:32 PM
The "vets" are pissed off about physics changes, and now they demand *more*? Doesn't seem consistent to me.

-- GSH

*sigh* If your responding to Scout, may I suggest saving your breath. Every time he comes here as of late, he has not really had anything worth reading (just the usual BZ2 can't do this or BZ2 can't do that...but game "X" can).

They want it to be like 1.2 ideally, though they know that can't happen so they just want something slightly closer.

Just went and looked.  I used mass and alphaDamp/alphaTrack.  Using those, I could make a ST unmoveable or make an Assault Tank bounce around like a beach ball.

Quote from: Spawn on March 02, 2006, 07:21:53 PM
Care to say how?

hehe,...that assault tank thing is fun, ive done it :)

Ok so gravity is not practical no biggie.

So what about some kind of instructions for adjusting physics, instead of Red Devil not so informative comments.

Quote from: GSH on March 02, 2006, 07:46:32 PM
The "vets" are pissed off about physics changes, and now they demand *more*? Doesn't seem consistent to me.

-- GSH

I could have said a lot more about this but for the time being let's just call it uncalled for.

Hi,

I am perfectly comfortable with the behavior of 1.3. As far as I am concerned there is no need to go back to anything. I know my opinion is not important for your decision wether to create a patch or not. But I am not sure if there are that many out there who really want to use this?

Quote from: Avatar on March 02, 2006, 03:24:16 PM
Gravity has been brought up time and time again, and isn't changeable due to the number of things that reference it.

Believe me, if it were easy to do it would have been done.  Nathan was extremely generous when it came to giving us control over previously hardcoded values. 

He would have if he could have, but asking him to rewrite the engine would have been a bit much.

-Av-

I have an idea to "change gravity".

Change the scale of everything on the map. Bigger maps and bigger objects would simulate lower gravity, and vise versa.

Why wouldn't RD's mass work? :P (as that's basically all that gravity really is)

@RD, go back to bed you've got a concussion. I don't wanna see you around for a week and a half :P

Mass is more for being...budge-able.  The others are for bounciness.

There's also the new ODF entires from GSH for tracked vehicles which really help with tracked vehicle tracking and can make them bouncy or not bouncy.

[TrackedVehicleClass]
NormalTrackFactor = 0.0 // may need to be > 0 for some of the other params to take effect
pitchThrust = 0.0
rollSteer = 0.0
alphaTrack = 0.0

alphaDampX = 0.0
alphaDampZ = 0.0

COLLISION_RAISE =  0.5
SUSPENSION_MIN = -0.2
SUSPENSION_MAX = 0.3
SPRING_FACTOR = 2.0 // minimum value: 0.01
DAMPING_FACTOR = 2.0   // 2.0 = critical damped, minimum value: 0.01
TREAD_STATIC_FRICTION = 1.5



Thanks, I'm feeling better lately.  Still have the kidney thing going on though.  Going in for an IP scan next week.

Hopefully its nothing serious.

And mass is much different from gravity.  You don't see plates sticking to you, do you?

can pilots die if they fall from a certain height? i wanna be able to do that so badly.

heh, then everytime you respwn, you die.... how dumb.

No. Simply because they do not accelerate past a certain point when falling straight down. It is only when falling straight down at full speed that you get damaged.

Quote from: Spawn on March 03, 2006, 11:35:17 PM
And mass is much different from gravity. You don't see plates sticking to you, do you?

If I am not mistaken every object excersizes a pulling force on another object (gravity) relative to mass and distance... so yes it is different but very closely related.

Quote from: Total Oblivion Omnis on March 03, 2006, 10:18:02 PM

I have an idea to "change gravity".

Change the scale of everything on the map. Bigger maps and bigger objects would simulate lower gravity, and vise versa.

That's what Sloar did with 'Epic', right down to expanding the grid size...  larger scale doesn't make it feel like lesser gravity...

Quote from: SpawnAnd mass is much different from gravity.  You don't see plates sticking to you, do you?

Um...  aren't they supposed to?  Maybe I should cut down on cheezits...  :)

-Av-

Back to point 1....Great idea, I hope you get input from the MP strat players for this..because(from what I've seen posted) most of the MP strat community has basically passed on 1.3.

This idea certianly seems like the right way to approach it... but you'll need to appraoach it with their input. Otherwise, they'll be "left out" and inspite of best intentions, it will be strike 3 for 1.3.

Best of luck.

By the way, 1.3 MPI- as I play it alone alone, is fun.

I'll be staying out of that meatgrinder, thanks.  :D

 It is, but you learn so much in the process, even you you lose a few fingers in the process.   :|

I definitely got tangled up in a lot of the physics debates during the early development of the 1.3 patch.  I busted the hover physics pretty badly before getting it back to something better than it started, and that cost me a lot of goodwill from the community and wasted several weeks of my time.  The current version seems to be holding up well, and Nathan's been exporting a lot of formerly-constant values and fixing things left, right, and center.  The last 1/3 of the changelog is all Nathan, all the time.

He sure has done a lot of great work, that's for sure.  :-)  You too.

The thing I've learned about BZ2 is that players are really passionate about it and tend to let their feelings get in the way, ala, "That man touched my BAAABY!"

They just need to realize that things are done in an attempt at improving things and that it's more of an art than a science and that it takes a lot of sketches to get a finished painting.

Quote from: GSH on March 02, 2006, 07:46:32 PM
The "vets" are pissed off about physics changes, and now they demand *more*? Doesn't seem consistent to me.

-- GSH

I'm sorry, but I have to correct this.

From start, even when 1.3pb1 was in the works, we have commented about the physics, and we've always said the same consistent thing: Ships are too sluggish and hard to handle, make them more like they are in 1.2.

appel, I'm curious, have you tried 1.3PB2 yet? :)

...and any idea where PF is?

Quote from: BZZERKER on March 05, 2006, 06:48:46 PM
appel, I curious, have yiou tried 1.3PB2 yet? :)

...and any idea where PF is?

Yes, I've tested it.

I must say I like the graphics, the game looks great (when using full graphics). Most AI has been improved, but there is still that problem with the turrets; they sometimes don't have a clue what to shoot at, and they are easily killed by circling around them. For MPI and single player I'd say the game is great.

But as I play multiplayer only I can't see I'm as impressed.
- I never use full graphics in multiplayer, for higher framerate, and the graphics look really blurry, or weird.
- Ship handling is still too sluggish, and trying to maneuver is a total annoyance.
- Terrain bumping I don't like.
- When trying to move forward fast in a scout you end up on your nose, and you bump on the ground like you're a box made of steel coating.
- Dogfighting in multiplayer is bizzarre... you don't know where the ship is, even though you have the 'T'-arget lock on him... he just smoothly moves around...and hitting the enemy player directly with any weapon does no damage. Chasing someone down is impossible because of this. Don't get me wrong, warping is bad in 1.2, but at least in 1.2 I can get the true position of the ship by using 'T' button...and most of us can predict where the player will warp to.


There also seems to be a problem with the AI units, when I tell it to attack a target up a hill, they sometimes get stuck on the hill. (here i told those units to attack that rat up there)
(http://www.private.is/arni/1.3mess.JPG)

Just what I was expecting. Very thorough, concise report.

Pay attention ppl, what appel just posted is one of the best ways to report bugs and problems. If you come in here with an attitude (much like Opp did with pb1) you only make things hard on yourself.

Some of those things cropped up in release candidates version of the beta but somehow slipped through.

Yes, very well said, appel.

The confusion when attacking turrets is probably due to the radar damping they have been given so they can ambush better.  Try telling the units to go to a spot instead and they will be ambushed and will defend themselves.

Uh, Red, appel is talking about being able to kill turrets too easily by circle strafing them. Unfortunately because of the improved AI, making them spin around faster makes them like ZST turrets, I gather. Although they can't aim up.

Appels observations are just the sort of comments you would  have recieved all along if he/they/we had been given a fair opportunity to be heard and those opinions COULD have helped greatly.

But, that ship has sailed  at this point.  I encourage everyone to approach it the way Appel did...But whether GSH has the inclination or energy to fix things is up to him.

Ken understandably seems to have closed his end of things up (deservedly so) But maybe the modders or community members can fix things..that I'd love to see, but I don't know if you can all get at the necessary values to do that.

I can get them pretty close.  It's the fine tuning where more input is needed.  DM/Stratters use the physics more than I do, so we would need precise input like, "Needs 10% more reverse." or "Needs 5% more strafe."

Using set distances is a good thing to use too.  For example, to guage lift, I would hit the "e" key and see how high it went compared to the height of a light pole, then I would see how it rose over the top of a cliff after a run up it. Stuff like that.

There's 129 vehicle entries, so it's no small matter.

Asking for easy numbers like that won't work, there is no scale for "feel" of ships.  If they knew that they wanted 10% more straff, then they could do it themselves.

I've been testing the scout for a while now, and I'm thinking that it maneuvers ok. But there is one thing that I just can't get over, that's bumping on the ground, hills etc. Even if we managed to make a new physics for 1.3 ships so they handle EXACTLY like in 1.2, it wouldn't be the same because of that bumping on the ground.

When we're maneuvering and playing, we are doing it fast, we need speed, high velocity turning, going up hills and stuff. This ground-bumping really hinders all that, it reduces our speed and dulls our maneuvers.

I'm actually thinking that there are only 2 things that keep me away from playing 1.3:
1. This ground-bumping.
2. Multiplayer smooth-warping of units.

Ground bumping is pretty easy to adjust.  Problem with adjusting things though is that adjusting one setting usually affects oterh settings.  That's where the tediousness of adjusting things comes into play.

Quote from: Red Devil on March 06, 2006, 12:39:47 AM
Ground bumping is pretty easy to adjust.  Problem with adjusting things though is that adjusting one setting usually affects oterh settings.  That's where the tediousness of adjusting things comes into play.

So, does that mean ground-bumping can be changed in 1.3pb2? How?

With the groundElasticity mentioned by Sapwn and by adjusting the shocks.

Quote from: Red Devil on March 06, 2006, 12:58:17 AM
With the groundElasticity mentioned by Sapwn and by adjusting the shocks.

I guess this requires ODF modifications?

Oh yeah.