Speed scaling

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » June 21st, 2004, 6:08 pm

I think a troll should take the same amount of (real) time to move 5 hexes as a Gryphon Rider takes to move 9 hexes. Also I think units with charge attacks shuld move twice as fast when attacking.

Circon · Post by **Circon** » June 21st, 2004, 8:37 pm

*blinks*
*blinks again*
Uh, what? Trolls move 5 hexes/turn and Gryphon riders move 9 hexes/turn. They both take one turn. What are you asking about?
*drinks !oCCW*

Post by **Dave** » June 21st, 2004, 8:49 pm

Circon wrote:*blinks*
*blinks again*
Uh, what? Trolls move 5 hexes/turn and Gryphon riders move 9 hexes/turn. They both take one turn. What are you asking about?
*drinks !oCCW*

I think he means that at least in non-accelerated mode, the time it takes for the unit movement animation to take place should be proportional to the unit's speed.

I've thought of this before, and think it's a reasonable idea, although would be kinda difficult to do nicely as well as keep things running at a reasonable pace and not make everyone want to use accelerated mode.

David

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 30th, 2004, 3:41 pm

*Bringing this up again*

Dave wrote:I think he means that at least in non-accelerated mode, the time it takes for the unit movement animation to take place should be proportional to the unit's speed.

I've thought of this before, and think it's a reasonable idea, although would be kinda difficult to do nicely as well as keep things running at a reasonable pace and not make everyone want to use accelerated mode.

David

I'm not sure you're thinking of the same thing I am.... If every unit takes, say, 1 second to go however far it can, then why should everyone want to use accelerated mode?

For instance, a Troll can go five hexes a turn. It would take 1/5 of a second to move into grassland, 2/5 to enter mountains, etc. On the other hand, a Gryphon Rider would take 1/9 of a second to go through any terrain. (Or 1/10 if it was Quick.)

Post by **Darth Fool** » July 30th, 2004, 4:25 pm

I think this is a good idea since it fits the principle that in-game effects should have a noticable visible effect so that non-expert players (and even some experts) can learn how the rules work in a more intuitive fashion.

Invisible Philosopher · July 30th, 2004, 5:09 pm

Dave wrote:I think he means that at least in non-accelerated mode, the time it takes for the unit movement animation to take place should be proportional to the unit's speed.

I've thought of this before, and think it's a reasonable idea, although would be kinda difficult to do nicely as well as keep things running at a reasonable pace and not make everyone want to use accelerated mode.

David

From Wose to Gryphon Rider, that's only three times as fast. I think it would work out well.

Elvish Pillager wrote:*Bringing this up again*

I'm not sure you're thinking of the same thing I am.... If every unit takes, say, 1 second to go however far it can, then why should everyone want to use accelerated mode?

For instance, a Troll can go five hexes a turn. It would take 1/5 of a second to move into grassland, 2/5 to enter mountains, etc. On the other hand, a Gryphon Rider would take 1/9 of a second to go through any terrain. (Or 1/10 if it was Quick.)

Actually, as it is currently, using fast units makes you want to turn on Accelerated Speed because it takes so long for them to move. This proposal would help that.

Darth Fool wrote:I think this is a good idea since it fits the principle that in-game effects should have a noticable visible effect so that non-expert players (and even some experts) can learn how the rules work in a more intuitive fashion.

Yes, I agree!

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 30th, 2004, 7:16 pm

Invisible Philosopher wrote:Actually, as it is currently, using fast units makes you want to turn on Accelerated Speed because it takes so long for them to move. This proposal would help that.

Now that I think about it, this is exactly the reason I use Accelerated Speed currently!

Fast units should not be slower than slow units, anyway.

Post by **quartex** » July 30th, 2004, 7:36 pm

You mean that a unit that can move 9 hexes in a turn shouldn't take longer to move than a unit that can move 4 hexes in a turn.

Or all units should take X seconds to complete their move, thus a unit moveing 9 hexes would move a lot faster than a unit moving 4 hexes.

The resulting animation would be quicker for faster units and be more "realistic" but I could see it being difficult for some players to see exactly where the units are moving, when fast units move so quickly.

I think people understand that this isn't a real-time game, so it's okay that movement animations for all units are the same speed.

Invisible Philosopher · July 30th, 2004, 8:10 pm

I just thought of something - would [move_unit_fake] be affected too? If so, the Galleon will need a reasonable number of moves...

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 30th, 2004, 8:16 pm

quartex wrote:I think people understand that this isn't a real-time game, so it's okay that movement animations for all units are the same speed.

Elvish Pillager wrote:
Invisible Philosopher wrote:Actually, as it is currently, using fast units makes you want to turn on Accelerated Speed because it takes so long for them to move. This proposal would help that.
...this is exactly the reason I use Accelerated Speed currently!

It isn't okay, IMNHO.

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » July 30th, 2004, 9:05 pm

Invisible Philosopher wrote:I just thought of something - would [move_unit_fake] be affected too? If so, the Galleon will need a reasonable number of moves...

maybe all [move_unit_fake] tags will take the same amount of time....

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » July 30th, 2004, 10:28 pm

I think this idea would be beneficial in the game.
weather it worth coding or not, i can't say..

autolycus · Post by **autolycus** » July 30th, 2004, 11:12 pm

I think this isn't a good idea. The movement properties of a unit in a wargame are best represented by the number of hexes they move in a turn - and that's all. Making them appear to move faster or slower is just plain confusing because not all people perceive speed visually the same way. In contrast, everyone can count hexes and come up with the same number.

I agree that we do try to make what is seen correspond with game mechanics. But so far, what we have done is binary: hit/no hit, aura/no aura moved/not moved etc. Fast/slow in this case will not be binary but multi-value and not only that, different from machine to machine. How would you tell that a unit with move 9 is slower than a unit with move 10 on a fast machine? OTOH, looking at the unit info and actually moving the unit or looking at its movement radius (lighted squares) would give you better information.

Elaboration: according to the tabled proposal so far, units with move 9 on non-slowing terrain would move say 1 hex in 0.111 seconds while units with move 10 would move say 1 hex in 0.1 second. This difference is not easy to perceive. Yes, move 10 vs move 4 would give 0.1 vs 0.25, which is obvious, but move 9 vs move 4 gives 0.111 vs 0.25 and again while the fast unit is obviously faster than the slow unit, the two fast units are not so easy to compare. In effect, you'd be showing that a fast unit is a fast unit and a slow one is a slow one, without helping the user much.

It would be more useful to show leadership aura or healing aura on screen so that a player can see at a glance which units have this (yes/no property). It is not possible to tell speed at a glance using the tabled proposal unless you actually MOVE the unit first, AND are pretty good at judging relative time in a consistent way.

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » July 31st, 2004, 12:22 am

autolycus wrote:I think this isn't a good idea. The movement properties of a unit in a wargame are best represented by the number of hexes they move in a turn - and that's all.

I concur. They don't actually take any less "time" to move per hex in-game; why should we create a fake attribute?

although preventing players from switching to accelerated mode might be a good reason, I'm still not sure about this. Why not just make non-accelerated mode be faster than it is now?

Post by **Dave** » July 31st, 2004, 1:06 am

I do kinda like this idea, and am probably going to implement at least a test implementation.

The aim of the idea isn't to convey to the user such subtle differences as 9 moves vs 10 moves, but rather give them a general idea of the movement speed of different units. It is used in combination with the existing methods of communicating movement speed.

Also, what I think is far more important than conveying the different movement rates of different units is conveying the different costs units pay to cross different terrain.

Players will start to notice that their human units take twice as long in the forest portion of their movement, for instance.

David