Ishtvan

Haha, I started writing that before you posted Springheel, but if that's the case... why not just use magic? IMO it's MORE believable to use magic (in a world that has it), than to try to shove an unrealistic 'scientific' explanation down someone's throat.

** Here comes the Science!! ** The problem I have with realistic rope arrow is the added mass of all that rope to the arrow. A heavier arrow, when shot from the same bow, will not fly nearly as far as your basic broadhead. If you don't believe me, here's the physics explanation below: [Physics Explanation - Skip this if you already understand why this is] The bow can only impart so much kinetic energy to the arrow. In the most simple model, think of the bow a system of several springs. The most kinetic energy it can impart to the arrow is equal to the potential energy of the springs when the bow is fully drawn (in reality it will impart a little less, due to friction losses, etc). Okay, so we've got some number in mind for the most kinetic energy the bow can impart to the arrow. Now as some of you may remember from high school physics, the kinetic energy of the arrow is 1/2*mass*veloctiy^2. Set this equal to the max potential energy of the bow when fully drawn. max potential (bow) = 1/2*mass*velocity^2 (arrow). Solve for v: initial velocity = sqrt (2 * max potential / mass ). [1] Since the max potential is always the same for a given bow, you can see that increasing the mass of the arrow decreases the arrow's initial velocity when fired from the bow. [End explanation] Now, think about how long a rope you need to climb up 5 stories (~50 ft / 15 m). How much do you think that rope weighs per unit length? With MODERN polymer materials, I got some numbers from this climbing rope company site: http://www.yatesgear.com/climbing/wallropes/ . It weighs 55-77 g / meter. So for a 5 story rope, total modern rope weight = 15 m * {55-77 g/m} = 0.825 - 1.16 kg Now for MODERN broadheads, "Minimum arrow weight was determined to be 25 grams." [ref: http://www.bagjakt.org/study_eng.htm ] So now we have enough information to calculate the fractional decrease in speed when going from a broadhead to "broadhead + rope" Plug everything into [eq 1] : velocity_ropeArrow / velocity_broadhead = sqrt( 0.025 [kg] / (0.025 + rope_mass [kg] ) velocity_ropeArrow / velocity_broad = 0.17 (based on lightest modern rope) velocity_ropeArrow / velocity_broad = 0.14 (based on heaviest modern rope) Conclusion With MODERN materials, adding 5 stories of rope to an arrow will decrease the initial arrow velocity (and therefore how far it can travel) to 14%-17% of a broadhead's initial velocity! This means shooting a rope arrow from a shortbow would be like shooting one of those NERF bow and arrows, compared to the broadhead. There's no chance in hell that you'd be able to shoot that 5 stories up (maybe with the Bow Upgrade ) This analysis didn't even consider the heavier tip you would need to anchor on to things. Also, all the numbers used were for MODERN materials. Polymer ropes, aluminum/graphite epoxy composite arrows, etc. Rope arrows would fly even worse using the technology they had in medieval or even Victorian times. I guess you could make up something about using "spidersilk" rope or some crap like that... but at that point, might as well use magic. Supplemental Info I found this, which might settle some debate: Arrow Flight Simulator program More detailed article on bow physics, including the effects of heavier/lighter arrows (w/ typos because it was translated from Italian?)

I heard you guys saying that Riddick had an awesome hand-to-hand combat system. Can anyone elaborate on that?

I'm voting for magic also. That explains how the rope always falls just the right amount, and how the arrow launches it. I suppos it _COULD_ be a very thin thread with a high tensile strength, but then it would probably cut thru your hands when you tried to climb it. Also, this would have to be something naturally occuring (like spidersilk) or made by magic. I don't think we want to give our world the technology to create carbon nanotube fibers... WE can't even do that yet.

As a random sidenote, the T3 video reminded me that when we texture our arrow model, we should probably use black or gray or dark red or blue... something dark for the fletching, as opposed to T3's day-glo green.

I think what Springheel just said is it helps when you're moving and shooting quickly. Olympic archers have all the time in the world (I think.. maybe there's a timed shoot event, I dunno). But maybe if you're trying to fire off an arrow at someone that's running at you with a sword, some of these 'combat shooting' techniques come into play?

I like that one too Darkness Falls. My only gripe would be it looks like it might limit peripheral vision. That's a good idea with the pointy top identifier. However, do players really need to tell that it's un bj-able from all angles? I would think they'd just have to take a look at the back of it when they're thinking about going in for the KO.

I like that idea of overlapping sheets of metal being an indicator that you can't BJ. For that reason, I like 4, 3 and 5. I also think 2 is great for aesthetic reasons... looks very T2 mechanist.

Question: Could someone explain why the tilt in the bow while firing is more realistic? (I'm really not trying to be an ass, I just want to know, 'cause I've been taught basic archery before and was never told to do this. Is it an advanced thing?) I remember hearing it's so the arrow doesn't fly off to the left side (assuming right-handedness) when you don't have a place to rest it on the bow, right? I thought if you had a good draw and supported it with your left hand properly, that wouldn't happen, but maybe this is for 'speed' shooting or something?

I think we need a "thumbs up" emoticon, so that we can eloquently express our approval. Until then, imagine a thumbs up emoticon here.

Your kung fu style may be able to defeat Garrett's style, but CAN IT DEFEAT MINE??!!!11

Lets start out by assuming that the AI and sound source are separated by at least a few rooms and hallways. So if I understand right, you're saying it's probably okay to use the ray propagation model (1/|r - r_0|^2) for sound propagation to AI over long distances? Trying to model the propagatin of the diffuse field also adds in the complication that sound would be propagating thru several rooms with different reverb characteristics, and if sound is anything like light (that I do know a bit about), there would be geometry-dependent coupling losses going from room to room. Is that coupling loss what you were modeling with the 1 / (const * number of portals) equation? In reality each portal would have a different coupling loss based on geometry right? As for propagating sounds to the player, we don't have that much choice in that matter, other than you guys using soundshaders and stuff. The soundengine that generates sound for players is something we don't have access to in the code. (of course we can do some faking of things by placing new emitters, but that's low priority on my list right now)

True, I'll keep that in mind. Also, IMO it's NOT more realistic what they did in T3, because despite your footsteps being softer while creeping and crawling, it still makes a lot of noise rustling your clothes and gear. I'd like to see someone duckwalk while crouched and not make a lot of rustling noise.

I didn't mean you need exact technical specs for it, just a general idea of what it does (for YOURSELF, you don't need to make this absolutely clear to people looking at it, if they figure out the general idea, kudos to them, if not it adds to the mystery). Having an idea of what it does also means that different moving parts will work together in a more believable fashion, even if it's just on a subconscious level to people looking at it. When I see for example in T1 the energy connecting streetlamps, I think "Cool, that's how they power the streetlamps, with some sort of magic energy I don't understand" When I see electricity arcing between two points that are close together on the same machine with no apparent explanation and no other moving gauges, etc, I think "Wow, this looks like a fake setpiece from a 50's Frankenstein movie" [sorry if that sounds harsh] So that's why I was just saying that IMO it helps to have some vague idea for why the energy needs to go between two points that are close together. You don't have to go into detail, or know HOW it works, just WHY it might want to do that.

Thanks a lot mrD and SaxMeister, that info is very helpful! I realise that for sound to the player we might have to artificially pump up the volume for stuff like carpet so the player actually hears it and get some feedback about what they're walking on. But when we shift to the volumes the AI hears, it would be cool if we could use more realistic volumes for this sound, so that if a carpet sound is, in reality very soft and could barely be heard when going from player's foot to ear, an AI should not be able to hear it 10 ft away, you know what I mean? mrD : Yeah, the dB scale is logarithmic. I'm thinking we should not use this fact until doing the AI hearing check tho. It's easy to do propagation calculations in dB because you can just multiply stuff, you don't need the exponential in there all the time. But then in the AI code, once it heard a volume in dB (call it V_db) you could calculate an "equivalent loudness" of Constant*exp[ V_db ] , and use that to calculate how likely it is that the guard will notice the sound. Does that make sense? Sound environments for AI prop: Also, here's the scheme I'm thinking of to customize AI sound loss: The current design for AI sound system works by propagating thru areas and portals. It doesn't actually calculate bounces off of walls, etc. So when travelling thru each area, sound will have a default loss multiplier of 1 (loss in dB per unit distance). Say you want to make an area have more or less loss (to reflect an area being filled with lossy materials, or a very "echoey" area filled with very acoustically reflective materials (like a flat stone hallway) that would actually "guide" the sound with very little loss. Possible solution: You add in an invisible entity (called sndPropArea or something like that) somewhere within the area, and set the loss multiplier on it. Then when sound is propagated thru the area, it applies the loss multiplier to the total loss thru the area. For lossy rooms, multiplier would be greater than 1, for echoey rooms, less than 1. Does that sound feasible to mappers and sound people?

Aesthetically, I approve. It would be cool if the gauges fluctuated in time with the beam fluctuating. As an electrical engineer, I want some concept for why it needs an energy beam going a short distance from point to point on the same machine? Nothing really detailed, just a general explanation. Maybe it's measuring some property of the air inbetween, like humidity, or measuring the air quality to make sure there are no toxic gasses present, or measuring magic field fluctuations that we cannot comprehend, etc. It could have one of those big red "alarm lights" on it to reflect this. If this were in a "test lab" it could be a piece of R&D equipment to test a communication system. I say a test because it's just going such a short distance. If you had the beam starting out on one side kind've wide and narrowing down on the other side, it could be a coupler to couple the energy from one guide down to another guide or guides. This would make sense as a component of the energy transfer system, kind've like a transformer in your house. If you had the beam come in from one point on the left and split to multiple points on the right (or vice versa), it could be a multiplexer or demultiplexer (that's a device that takes several communication signals going along on one channel and splits it into several channels to go to the right locations, or the reverse). Finally, I guess it could be some sort of horizontal antenna that's setting up an AC field to transmit signals in freespace. The energy beam could be the air ionizing around the field (although this would mean the antenna is starting to short out and not very efficient... oh well )

Hi guys, Eventually, I will need input on realistic values for sound propagation. In order of priority, here's what I'll need: -Data on the human hearing threshold for impulse sounds -How loud (in dB) is the max volume caused by typical walking footsteps when you're standing right next to them? How about jogging footsteps, sprinting footsteps? How about on different surfaces (carpet, floor)? Then I'll also need values for jumping up and down and dropping stuff. If you have time to do some measurements with a sound meter that resembles the human ear frequency response, that would be awesome. (I realise that a lot of these you guys have already made a lot of these into SFX files. I could simply measure the rms or peak-peak volume from those, but I'm not sure if they're normalized to their real-life volumes. That is, do we make some SFX, like stepping on carpet, louder than it actually is to make sure the player hears it?) -Loss per unit length when going thru various materials (metal door, wood door, etc). I can probably look these up in a table (actually, the reference site I posted in sound programming has values for loss thru materials for a few frequency ranges, so I'll probably just use the mid-range losses and see if it sounds realistic). Finally, I want to make sure I'm using realistic formulae. Doom3 uses quadratic falloff (1/r^2), which I believe models geometric spreading of spherical sound waves in free space. Sound waves confined to a cyllindrical tube falloff as (1/r) if I remember right. Which is more accurate for propagating thru typical indoor spaces (rooms, hallways?). Also, I assume this gives sound in dB, that is : sound( r_0 + r ) [ in dB] = sound( r_0 ) * 1/( |r|^2 ) [in dB] (for free space sound starting at vector r_0 and propagating to vector r). Also, for later on, for a room that absorbs a lot of sound energy upon reflection from the walls/floor/ceiling (eg, a carpeted room). If you had to account for this by multiplying by an additional loss per unit length, [dB / m ] what do you think this value would be for various lossy materials on the floor/wall/ceiling? (eg, carpet, wood panneling, tapestry lined wall). Any help is appreciated, and again there's no hurry, I'm still writing the code framework, and tweaking values to reflect reality will be the last step.

Wow, I always laughed at others who misspelled 'Garrett,' but now it seems I've committed that crime myself. Everyone was too polite to point it out I guess.

I like it. Nice and light armor.

Haha, or you enjoy going back to look at "Classic" 'You know you're playing too much Thief when...' threads from years back.

Are we going to have a "thrust" or point attack animation for swords? I know the broadsword was not really used this way, but it always seemed odd in T1/T2 that the shortsword was ony used for slashing. I don't know much about medieval shortswords, but if you consider the roman Gladius, despite what you saw in Gladiator, it was primarily used for stabbing/point attacks (of course it has an edge too for slashing). [Reference: Some guy's paper from a class at UNC ] Of course I don't know how we'd implement controls for specific attacks with the sword (maybe something like what they did in Ultima/Daggerfall/Morrowind, with holding down the attack button and moving your mouse a certain way doing different attack (overhand, diagonal slash, point thrust). I guess this is another one of those things that's more trouble than it's worth and will wait 'till after the first milestone though.

Met his doom?? I don't think so for an elite guard. That'd be when he dropped his halberd, drew the shortsword and stuck you. Or parried your strike with his vambraces then punched you in the face repeatedly... these guys don't mess around.

I guess now that I think about it, that might be a lot to code. What I'm trying to say is, if I were a player, I would be pissed off it halberds clipped thru walls and hit me. That leads me to say either implement them realistically or not at all. If that means putting them off 'till the next release, then so be it.

Would it be more realistic tho to actually apply a long, cyllindrical clip model to it (shouldn't be TOO hard right? if we're already doing it for swords?), then if the AI DO end up hitting the walls a lot, this will be their cue to drop the halberd and whip out the shortsword? [edit - we can also make them choose between attacks, overhead slash, diagonal slash, piercing. If they hit walls with one, switch to the other attack. We're probably going to need to do multiple attacks for swords anyway. Also, someone posted a tutorial for multiple attacks on Doom3world.org http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=8291 despite the name, it's not about pressing a button to alternate fire your weapon, it's more about alernative attacks.] Personally I'd be pissed off if an AI hit me with a halberd when we were both in a 2ftx2ft closet ]

I guess for indoors any 1 handed weapon + buckler with spikes would do. I just don't think of 2 handed weapons when I think of combat in extremely close quarters.