ant222

No units can... What is the entrance to the base? - the whole perimeter. Say nine turrets and forty wall blocks. That is many times (10-20 ?) more expensive and labour-intensive (and long!) to build (at least, in reality; I don't know how it'll be in D2TM)! The player may lack resources and time sufficient to accomplish such a solid fortification work. A mobile armoured train has a better efficiency/price ratio. Motionless walls and huge turrets are much easier targets for the enemy gunners than a mobile train, although a train has weeker armor. An idea: not the train, but the motorized armoured carriage, two game cells (is it possible?) in the length. These were used in 1917-1920 and during the Great War by the Russians.

I have not played this game. With the current D2TM this system simply won't use its capacities at full: the AI must be able to manuever; the damage system must be more realistic...

[pre] COMBAT SYSTEM FOR A REAL-TIME STRATEGY {if you have troubles with viewing this in the browser, use Notepad. I still can't make use of the tag.} Preface Don't faint away at once! I am rather sure you'll find too complicated. But many significant simplifications are POSSIBLE and they will be added. But in order to understand how it works you should read this anyway. This part deals with firing at vehicles from guns (non-bullet), other types of fire will be modelled by means of MINOR changes. I. Needed values. 1. What characteristics a unit should have. a) The velocity vector. b)C1, C2, C3, C4, S - constants. <will be later> 2. Derivation of some needed values. a) The target position relative to the firer. We'll store it as a radius vector of the target: Rft^ = {Tx - Fx, Ty - Fy}, Where Fx, Fy, Tx and Ty are the coordinates of the firer and the target. b) Tangential target size. It is the 'visible' target size. Lt = (Tl*cos(R^, V^) + Tw*sin(R^, V^)), where Tl and Tw are the length and width of the target; (R^, V^) is the angle between vectors R^ and V^. cos(R^, V^) = (R^ * V^)/(|R^| * |V^|) sin(R^, V^) = sqrt(1 - (cos(R^, V^))^2) c) Angular size of the target. alfa = Lt/|R^|, where |R^| is the absolute value of vector R^. Actually, alfa = sin(Lt/|R^|), but for low angles we can use this approximation. d) Target's velocity relative to the firer. Vtf^ = Vt^ - Vf^, where Vt^ and Vf^ are the target's and the firer's velocities. e) Target's tangential velocity, scalar value. Vtf_tau = Proj(Vtf^, tau^), tau^: (tau^ * Rft^) = 0, (A^ * B^) = Ax*Bx +Ay*By - scalar product. Derivation of tau^. 1) if Rftx <> 0 then

ROFL too. It's not a visual drawback. What is a square-based game? That is a game where the surface is divided into squares. It is done for the simplicity of pathfinding, working with graphics, e. t. c. But if we see that in four directions a unit travels at speed V, and in the remaining four directions at a speed equal to 1,41 times V, it not only

Have all the Dune-2 units been mentioned in the books? One cell per carriage, 3-6 carriages per train. Each carriage has gfx like a single vehicle. Thus, trains will be able to smoothly pass turns and assume arbutrary direction along the rail road. Fortunately, in the Dune-2 style iso engine units in adjacent cells do not hide one another. I seems practicable, although some propblems will be met. It would be easier on the hex grid... Yes, trains are bond to rail roads which, in turn, are attached to rock plateaus. This makes thains rarely useful units. I think it is not only a drawback but also an advantage: exotic units add interest to the game. Furthermore, every time your base doesn't occupy a whole plateau, a rail road may be built along the perimeter so that a train

Yes, and simplicity has consequences. I named them for chess. For D2TM there will be/are consequences making the gameplay of a comparable (with chess) abstractedness. Chess lacks random factor: the gameplay is controlled by a number strict rules. Every given action in every given situation always leads to the same result unambiguously defined by the rules - no random factor. As to predictability, I meant: too high, not total. And an RTS should have a lesser predictability. Modern chess rather symbolizes a real battle. There is no correspondense between how people fignt in action and how pieces 'eat' enemy pieces.

...only if they initially were the same distance away from the goal point. The speed being the same, the same distance will be passed for the same time. The time needed to pass a distance is directly proportional to the distance. At the picture we have a right isosceles triangle fromed by two siege tanks and their destination point. The left tank needs to move along the triange's leg, and the right - along its hypotenuse. The times needed to pass these distances must be in the ratio of the lengths of the distances: t1/t2 = l1/l2 Accodring to Pithagoras theorem, (l1/l2) in our case equals 1/sqrt(2). Thus, different distances must require different times to pass at the same speed. In Jagged Allianse a diagonal movement is 1,5 times "longer" (requires 1,5 times more action points) than that along the cells. The reason is simple: 1,5 ~ sqrt(2). Another example. Circle is a figure containing all points located the same distance (radius) from a given point (center). For a certain amount of time, a unit should be able to get to any point if a circle of a radius equal to the product of the unit's speed by the given time. Currently, in D2TM, this property belongs to a square rather then to a circle. Of course, in a cell-based game it is impossible to have an ideal circle, but it mustn'be a square nevertheless... You have forgotten another goal: good looking gameplay. When two tanks are motionless and firing at each other by turn it looks very monotonously and boringly. Here I quote myself:

I proposed similar high-level orders for Fremen in reply #14 in the thread

Me too. And what? If all unit types were available in every mission they would become usual and no as interesting as rare special units. The Palace was available only in the two latest missions in Dune-2, as I remember. Every campaign may have 1-2 mission(s) with armoured trains. As to the Dune atmosphere, I don't find them unsuitable for it. And I agree to Flibble's last post.

As I said, they may patrol round bases. And there may be long moutain ridges (quite rare on Dune, which makes them strategically important) suitable for rails, allowing for the use of armoured trains as high range transport and battle units. Rail transport will be much fatser than sand vehicles, with 10-15 times higher tonnage, and much less expensive than carryalls.

Hmm. In this case everything will look smaller. Too small. I'll have to by a 17'' monitor instead of my 15"... for the linear size to be the same. AFAIK, the clone is planned to be made. But why do need a clone?

Tunnels may be dwelled in rocks. Rails may be layd on plateaus. Armoured artillery trains would serve as highly mobile and though powerfull artillery battaries, being a new unit class. Armoured trains were very widely used by the Red and the White during the cvil war in Russia in the conditions of vast open spaces and lack of a continuous front line - resembling those for Dune-2. At least, they may patrol around bases. But, in general, I agree to MrFlibble: new technologies should fit (more or less) into the Dune universe in order to preserve the excelent atmosphere of the original game.

AFAIK, Stefan is planning to add the global mode so that the player not only conducts battles (missions) but also controls all the operations of his house on Arrakis. I suggest that it be organised like in Xcom. In battle-mode day/night cycle has a normal (period of 2-8 min) speed, but in the global mode time speed can vary depending on the player needs. If VR (or, rather, visibility) doesn't depend on time of day (to a different degrees for different units) there will be no difference in day and night tactics. But that would be very good, adding another time factor and diversity to the gameplay. As to obstacles, they are good too. In the original Dune-2 all terrain is plain (no covers) which reduses strategy and tactics to monotonous and primitive actions. There are no 'keys' there except for two bases and spicefields. Of course, you did ;) And that is appreciated.

On my Celeron 700 (11.5x60) I have about 22 fps (when in-game) at 800x600 (D2TM-Bene). I am interested in the following. You plan to switch

The link you have provided refers to http://imageshack.us/, so I had to copy the link caption and paste into the adress bar to view the screenshot. To post images, use what ImagesHack gives as

Lol. This is how it looks on my PC: ScreenShot But when I am on the "Post reply" page posts are written an very small font. Do you mean small characters on the "Post reply" page? Is it possible to make the preformatted style font larger? Of course, they are. Thanks to them, we know: most modern RTS use similar visibility systems. But that in no way means D2TM must have such a system too. If we invent a better system, why not implement it? After an observation has been made we should decide: "Is it good for us?". And if we haven't seen anything better than some idea in the game X, why not derive it from that game? In a word:

[pre]As to limited viewangle, I agree with you. As I wrote above, for this improvement not to be a drawback units must be much smarter than now in D2TM and in D2 so that they can use their fov correctly.

A little note on clonning Dune-2 Nema Fakei wrote: And that is not right. I am sure that turret vehicles (battle and siege tanks) do shoot when moving. For example, if you give a tank the odrer to attack a unit. Your tank sets course to the enemy and, on the way, drives past another enemy unit which is located quite close to the way of your tank. In this case the tank will point it's turret at the encountered enemy and shoot

Do you use your observation about RTS games as an argument against innovations? I don't know any RTS with my visibility system too. That is reasonable: developers rarely draw their attention to game systems. Once they have a suitable system for a game, they won't change it. It is easier to derive the system from an earlier game and, by a few corrections, fit it in the new game than to develop a new original system. As a result, the original Dune-2 system (visibility and combat engines) is still used in most modern RTS with minor changes or with no changes at all. Popov and Marconi didn't ask how wireless comunication was possible, when the whole world used telephone... King's Bounty (all parts), Heroes of Might and Magick 1,2,3 - all have almost the same system. Warlords 1,2,3 Xcom 1,2 CPU load haven't been a reason against this improvement for at least 5-8 years already. They strenuously improve graphics so that new games run only on the newest hardware, but can't limit viewangle in an RTS? I think there is another motive. This particular improvement in Dune-2 would spoil the gameplay because units are not smart enough to correctly take this limitation into account. As a result the task to constantly monitor units orientation will fall upon the player and make the gameplay more annoying (micromanagement - as Nema Fakey calls it). Thus, this change will necesserily cause the need for other changes, including one very hard to implement: good units AI. And, after this is implemented, the gameplay will not be improved, but, rather, it will be a totally different gameplay. This implies a hard work and the risk for the game to be commerically non-profitable. If you really don't know how it can be done then try to write more specifically: what difficulties/drawbacks/contradictions do you see in my visibility system (or, rather, a draft posted on the forum)? What do you think can not be implemented? Shall I describe something in more detail?

I'd propose to assume that these devices are not good enough to be independent of whether and lighting conditions at all, so that visibility does depend (to different degrees in different units) on the latters. Radars are useless in ground units. They may have laser range finders, passive and active infrared visors, colour filters (for example, to cut off ultraviolet light, to reduce the blinding brightness...). Periscopes may be used by armoured vehicles instead of vision slits, and by infantry in order to safely look from behind the cover. All these devices seem impotent in the face of a sandstorm, but I'm not sure about infrared. Why at nignt should visibility be reduced nevertheless? Well, maybe because infrared visors don't give as high resolution and high range as human eye (armed with some optics). Yes, and in the proposed visibility system there are many other factors which prevent objects from revealing (as limited VR in the classical system). I thought about a kind of natural relief in D2TM, but I nothing good came to my mind. Natural relief would be: mountains, sand-dunes, ... Sand-dunes should be very slightly sloping, as distinct from mountains and rocks. I don't know how to implement it in an isometric game. We'll have to perform calculations of visibility in 3d. Is it worth thinking about it? What about my other proposals in the two previous posts? EDIT: One of main distinctions of my visibility system from the classical one is the fact that in my system large non-camouflaged objects (a harvester) will be seen from higher ditances than small and well-camouflaged (lying light infantry) and another disticntion is that it will take more time to spot the latters than the formers, other conditions being equal.

On visibility In the proposal of mister Flibble visibility range (VR) is the strict border between what a unit can see (within the circle of a radius equal to the VR) and what it can't see. And it should depend on the lightning conditions (differently for diffeent units). I think this can be improved is several ways. Let A have a VR of 7 and B of 8 cells. If B can shoot at a distance 8 cells, it can be located somewhere at this distance from A and fire at it with impunity. That should not happen. It may be corrected by adding the possibility for units to detect (more or less precisely) the direction to the firer, only if the latter reveals itself by taking a shot, and move in this direction until the enemy is seen. Anyway this interpretation of VR seems too primitive if compared to what happens in reality. My visibility is restricted only by obstacles and lighting conditions, not by a strict VR. But I can't see objects of angular size less than a certain value. So, the angular size is one of the factors of the spotting capability. Another factor is contrast: how sharply the object stands out against the background. This deals with camouflage. A third factor is time: a badly visible thing requires more time to be marked. A fourth factor is motion. Moving objects are more noticable than motionless. And here we need the tangential speed constituent. Given the first, second and fourth factors, we can determine the probability of spotting the object for a certain amount of time. Here I mean the time during which the object has been in the spotter's field of view. Every units should have two vision characteristics. The first - responsible for the time factor (how attentive the unit is). The second - for the optical capabilities of the unit (the other factors). And for every object to be spotted the four factors should be calculated. The only factor non-obvious to calculate is the camouflage. So I propose to preset this value for every unit for every terrain type. Here I haven't given a precise algorithm of calculating visibility, but if this proposal is found useful, I'll invent it. The same concerns all my proposals. On the astronomical day length Another problem I see is the solar day length in D2TM (in real-time units). Of course, it is impossible to set it equal to real Arrakis day length, so what do you think it should equal to? I propose to measure the average battle lenth and choose the day length so that 2-3 (or do you think this must be higher?) astronomical days will pack in one battle. Of course, until we measure this time, the value in question should be set by guess-work. A new unit class I think that missile launchers in Dune-2 by their properties (range, rate of fire) rather resemble artillery. A missile laucner should have a higher range, higher covering range of the missiles (not one cell as in Dune-2), much lower rate of fire and a higher cost. So I propose to replace missile launchers by self propelled guns and add more appropriate missile launchers. May be this will be the only unit class with limited ammo? Two missiles and, then, reload at the base. They will conduct indirect fire with the help of gunlayers (trikes, scouts (light infantry)). The only problem I see is that it will be too easy to inflict a serious damage on the enemy base. How can it be sovled? This proposal (as well as some mine) will make it more difficult to keep control over your forces. I am afraid, should we continue in this way, it will be necessary to turn D2TM into a TBS ;). Of course, it should be tested before. All proposals have to load the CPU rather than the player so the game doesn't become infected by clickomania.

As to fog of war, I mean the following. Everything a unit can see may be divided into: 1. Landscape features (dunes, rocks,...) //Once discovered, should be always visible 2. Units //Only visible when your units or radar station reveal them. 3. Buildings // hmmm... Maybe like paragraph #1? IMHO, this should be satisfied all day round, with the exception that the possibility of spotting something should highly (and differently for various units) depend on the lightning conditions (and, of course on the spotter and the object to be spotted). The night is a friend for fremen with their tactics and capabilities. As to highly mechanised forces of Harkonnen, darkness will hinder their sighting and control capabilities: only in the presence of good lightning their gunners will be able to spot enemies at high distances, effectively aim and engage them. Overlightning may be treated more easily (optical filters) than lack of light, so for hi-tech forces the day is more friendly, but, of course, not perfect. So, the fremen-harkonnen confrontation will be very interesting when projected on the day/night cycle. I think, in your proposal sandstorms will look too tily (consisting of many small tiles) wich would be not very good for such large objects. They shouldn't reveal their cellular (tile) structure. Small seamless tiles will not be the cure. Of course, it may be difficult to implement... And yes, shifting sands would be very good. Now I am leaving for the sunny banks of the Oka river. I'll be back on Sunday evening. See you later.

Another suggestions release. I thought them out at night. Sand storms are a good idea, but they should look not like a 1-cell or a 4-ceel whirl, but like a big formless cloud of chaotically moving sand with some whirls in it. It will breake radio communication, make units get lost and loose control. And a very powerful storms will write off infantrymen and materiel. First that comes to my mind is snadows: they should change their length and direction as Canopus passes across the sky. This Microsoft-style mentat seems bad to me. It will be very uncomfortable to have a mentat consultation on-line (with the game running). As to me, I'll always press 'Pause' when adressing my mentat in this case... In the good old Dune-2, when I was tired of fast decision making and very fast clicking to realise that decisions, I always made a visit to the mentat. Another probable improvement is unit selection. In the current D2TM you can select a single unit by clicking on it or several units with a rectangle frame. I propose to add two new ways to select units: 1. Ctrl+click - to allow for selecting multiple units by clicking on them (like files in MS Windows). 2. Custom selection. Like Lasso tool in Photoshop, so that you can select units in any 1-connected reginon (not only rectangular). After adding these, every time you need to give one common order to multuiple units, you won' have to make several selecton and give several equal orders, just one selection (of any form) and one order. High-level fremen control. In the original D2, when playing for the Atreides, you couldn't control fremen. I propose to make it possible to give them some general orders such as: 1. Assult on the enemy base, 2. Guard (a) selected space field(s) 3. Hold a place. 4. Patrol. 5. Guard your base 6. Collect spice (?) 7. ... The possibility to give such orders may depend on fremen motivation (Dune-1). Fremen control over sand worms. A must have for D2TM (I know it is implemented in D2SD, but I haven't seen it). Since when driven by a fremen the sand worm is fully above the surface, it's more vulnerable to fire weapons (not almost immortal like in Dune-2). And there should be only a few of fremen capable of driving a worm, and the process of capturing a Shai-Khulud should also take a while...

I am sorry, but you are highly recommended not to read only

Thanks, Stefan. Thas was proposed by MrFlibble (I misspelled your nick, sorry) (as the day/night cycle itself) several posts above with a reference to War Diary. I find this toggling fog of war on/off feature very unnatural. I meant nothing of the kind.