1869_Flame wrote:

QUOTE:
if i recall correct, even the game "knights and merchants" already took height of terrain in account.
this game was made in 1998 :ch:

Age of Empires was released in '97 and it took into account height differences.

+1

1869_Flame wrote:

QUOTE:
skyehawk wrote:

QUOTE:
Range should definitely be improved with height. I am not one who does a lot of technical detail work, but in the general sense, this should be a given. If it is not, I believe the developers will react to concerns raised about it.

today, i have been unpacking some of the SH3 core/source files, getting a nice look into the rules of the game, and the terrain programming files too.

its seems NOWHERE in the files there is anything about terrain height.

looking into these core/source files i realize that it will problebly be a hell of a job to even get it in at the state the game is already in now.

i would be really happy if someone of FF would say into our face within a week from now: will it get in YES or NO

if no? well you made it, you officially got the game intelligence of Red-alert back into a game. there the terrain was also made with .bmp/jpg files (atleast red-alert did not had that many bugs) and even a game like "knights and merchants" made in 1998 beat you with intellect of gravity and strategy.

to be honest, do do have a little bit of hope there will be a yes (although i know for sure a dev wont even be answering here)

so i gonne wait for that "big-O-November-patch" and see if that brings the basic laws of nature (and RTS-gaming)
after that i'll write my review, so im still hoping they can make the best out of it..

So in your opinion this cant be patched into the game? What about the strong walls on/off feature will that be hard to implement?

mmm
i dont know if height can be patched, it might can, but will take a lot of effort.
im in serious doubt if FF wanst to do this, judging at the communication about this subject.



About walls, looking into the Core files, they can easy be made stronger.
you can easy change the hitpoints of the wall, and modify the damage done by siege weapons.

its the same as the footsoldiers attacking walls, i guess i can change damage values from 1 to 0.1 to make it take way longer for normal soldiers to take down stone walls.
imo it should be disabled, but i dont know if i set it to 0 if it will still be able to attack the wall, but dont do damage.

i guess next weekend i will see if i have some time to do this little modding (but will continue that in a new topic)

so, dear firefly.
is this issue been fixed yet ?

You don't need to ask, its not been fixed. Since the AI does not exist it can't handle height modifiers, for that to work you need to link terrain height data to the AI (or else your own troops couldn't handle it either), as they never made an AI, they never figured to do this.

If you plan your game with only fully scripted AI you do not want height modifiers, because it'd just create another flaw in the whole idea to script an RTS AI like this (hole in wall - just with height bonus ,p)

in that case im not wasting time to re-install SH3 again

Signed. Firefly, please add range bonus based on terrain height difference for ranged attacks!

We still need that range modifier, Firefly.

thinking of the code sh3 uses, i do think such a thing wont be impossible,

so why do i think that?

the terrain is made out of a triangulation, so that are all surfaces, that get generated in between points.
these point all have an x,y,z value. How else would the application be able to know how to make the surfaces and the triangulation to make the terrain.

so, if it has the z value, it can put this into some nice calculation.
after all, it wont be linear, the relation between height and arrow distance.
this would probably be some hyperbolic function.

so i guess, just thinking about how the code probably be, this should be possible in the game.

you might want to dim down how much point it uses for these calculation to keep the performance still optimal (so it will use only a grid dim / 2 of the terrain grid)
and instead of making an exact hyperbolic function, you might want to dim it down to some arrays.

but im still waiting for a reaction from FF on this thread,
so far they keep ignoring this one, although this is a very important element in this RTS game imo.

Please, Firefly, add this in as soon as possible. In addition to making artificial bonuses (like the ones currently in in towers and walls) unnecessary, this will also make high ground advantageous like in real life and add greatly to military strategy.