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Author Topic: Bow improvements  (Read 7580 times)

Drago55577

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #15 on: February 22, 2012, 03:01:54 am »

It would be funny if you instant kill with arrows to the knee
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peskyninja

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #16 on: February 22, 2012, 04:39:24 am »

 ::)
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Funk

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #17 on: February 22, 2012, 12:20:07 pm »

iron bows are not all that silly as thay where used in the Mughal period in India.
read more here
and here


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Agree, plus that's about the LAST thing *I* want to see from this kind of game - author spending valuable development time on useless graphics.

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IT 000

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #18 on: February 22, 2012, 03:03:21 pm »

Quote
I actually start thinking about Mount and Blade again reading this...

Heh, yeah I couldn't help but think how annoying those horseback archers were to chase down while I was typing my suggestions.

Quote
There definitely shouldn't be a bonus for being on horseback

Composite bows were small enough to maneuver, but packed a serious punch. Thus they were the preferred bow for many Asian horse archers. Because the bow was small, one could maneuver it easier then with a long bow or even a short bow, while still retaining all the power. I suppose 'bonus' was the wrong word, as I don't mean a gamey +5 to damage bonus, but you should be able to maneuver them much easier then with the other bows.

Quote
1) Draw string Dwarf has to remain still when doing this (cannot walk/run/ride horse) This step will take a long time

For Heavy crossbows maybe, but it is possible to move, draw, then fire a bow without having to stop. I partake in archery in some of my free time.

However moving while drawing back should result in a decrease in firing force because your stance is off. Unless you stop for a tick before you fire. The penalty is lower with increase of bow skill. So staying still to draw the bow will still provide an advantage, but moving will allow you to survive more. Making for an interesting trade off.



-----

There should be preferences for archer combat, such as 'retreat after firing' 'move while firing'* etc.

* If yes, dwarves will stop for a tick to get into stance before firing, if no, they will continue moving resulting in previously mentioned firing penalty.
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catoblepas

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #19 on: February 22, 2012, 03:52:03 pm »

iron bows are not all that silly as thay where used in the Mughal period in India.
read more here
and here




They are however, something of an outlier, being pretty much restricted to India as far as I know...as of right now dwarves can't botch a reaction and ruin the product/reagents, but for something sophisticated like a steel bow or a crossbow, such things should be possible. You can't just throw joe shmoe a bunch of iron ingots, a block of wood, and some sinew and hope to get a working crossbow in anything aproximating real life, after all. The article you linked mentions that such bows were often lavishly decorated, which would indicate that a lot of work went into them. It might be better to restrict such weapons to the manufacture of master or higher level dwarves, if not restrict them to the realm of artifacts altogether.

Quote
I actually start thinking about Mount and Blade again reading this...

Heh, yeah I couldn't help but think how annoying those horseback archers were to chase down while I was typing my suggestions.

Quote
There definitely shouldn't be a bonus for being on horseback

Composite bows were small enough to maneuver, but packed a serious punch. Thus they were the preferred bow for many Asian horse archers. Because the bow was small, one could maneuver it easier then with a long bow or even a short bow, while still retaining all the power. I suppose 'bonus' was the wrong word, as I don't mean a gamey +5 to damage bonus, but you should be able to maneuver them much easier then with the other bows.

Quote
I actually start thinking about Mount and Blade again reading this...

Heh, yeah I couldn't help but think how annoying those horseback archers were to chase down while I was typing my suggestions.

Quote
There definitely shouldn't be a bonus for being on horseback

Composite bows were small enough to maneuver, but packed a serious punch. Thus they were the preferred bow for many Asian horse archers. Because the bow was small, one could maneuver it easier then with a long bow or even a short bow, while still retaining all the power. I suppose 'bonus' was the wrong word, as I don't mean a gamey +5 to damage bonus, but you should be able to maneuver them much easier then with the other bows.

Quote
1) Draw string Dwarf has to remain still when doing this (cannot walk/run/ride horse) This step will take a long time

For Heavy crossbows maybe, but it is possible to move, draw, then fire a bow without having to stop. I partake in archery in some of my free time.

However moving while drawing back should result in a decrease in firing force because your stance is off. Unless you stop for a tick before you fire. The penalty is lower with increase of bow skill. So staying still to draw the bow will still provide an advantage, but moving will allow you to survive more. Making for an interesting trade off.


-----

There should be preferences for archer combat, such as 'retreat after firing' 'move while firing'* etc.

* If yes, dwarves will stop for a tick to get into stance before firing, if no, they will continue moving resulting in previously mentioned firing penalty.

mongolian-style bows should indeed be easier to maneuver. I would suggest that smaller bows would have a lesser speed penalty to knocking and releasing, as well as lesser maluses to accuracy than a longbow, for instance, and would likely also incur a lesser penalty to your riding skill as well. In this way a highly skilled rider/bowman could still be effective with a longbow on horseback, but it wouldn't be something reconmended for beginners, who might be better off slowing down, bringing the horse to a stop, or even dismounting before firing to maintain a high degree of accuracy and rate of fire. Standing up in the stirrups to fire a longbow while on a galloping horse isn't soemthing for a dabbling rider/archer, after all.

I agree that you should be able to move while drawing, at a cost to power, esp with higher draw bows. Would definately make battles a bit more intense if you had to stratagize mobility vs firepower with bows. Of course, crossbows would not have this benefit, but then again they can be kept 'ready to fire' for far longer than bows since you don't have to hold the string back with your arm.

I'd just like to see more in depth ranged combat. We can do all sorts of stuff with weapons right now, but ranged combat is rather lackluster, with thrown weapons/pebbles/vomit being about as effective as the ranged weapons themselves. Making crossbows/bows/blowguns distinct would go a long way to diversifying combat, I think.
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obradenj

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #20 on: February 22, 2012, 05:16:48 pm »

and there is no bow strings as of yet perhaps a reaction could be made to make them, one for thread another for sinew or cartilage that would go a long way to improving bows and crossbows
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Varjo

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #21 on: May 05, 2012, 03:39:35 pm »

Is it possible to aim with ranged at the moment? If not, this would be nice feature e.g. same kind of advanced aiming as in melee.
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IT 000

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #22 on: May 05, 2012, 04:00:08 pm »

Is it possible to aim with ranged at the moment? If not, this would be nice feature e.g. same kind of advanced aiming as in melee.

Toady has talked a little bit about it in one DF talk or another, but he said he'd like to calculate in things like wind-speed and direction so that you aren't a spot-on robin hood every time IIRC.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #23 on: May 05, 2012, 04:22:26 pm »

We also have parabolic trajectories for minecarts and creatures sent flying now, and Toady has said he is putting off archery/catapult parabolic arcs as he tries to figure out how to do such things well...

Toady has a tendency to only work in spurts, so presumably, when he tries to do one, he'll do the other.
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Supersnes

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #24 on: May 05, 2012, 04:57:41 pm »

There definitely shouldn't be a bonus for being on horseback - and longbows shouldn't be capable of being fired from horseback at all, and all but the lightest crossbows shouldn't be reloadable, since even medium-strength pull crossbows had a stirrup and required foot power to reload, which is basically impossible to do reliably on a horse.  Simply being able to fire the shortbow from horseback at all is the only real bonus you need.

Further, longbows are just plain bulky - usually at least as tall as the person meant to be firing it, if not taller, and as such, it should be a serious encumberance to an adventurer trying to tramp around swimming in rivers or sewers, hiking up and down mountains, etc. 

Well not entirely true.  The samurai had the Yumi bow and specialized in mounted archery.  However, the training required to be able to do this would be astronomical.
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Jeoshua

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #25 on: May 05, 2012, 05:20:49 pm »

Yeah but the Yumi was a short bow on the bottom, long bow up top.  Sort of a hybrid even if, overall, it was one of the largest types of bow ever made.

The other points, about being on horseback giving no benefits to penetration or damage, are very true.  This has been tested and retested, and the dangerousness of a mounted archer is provably NOT in it's damage or penetration, rather in their mobility and their area-of-threat since they can move fast and see far from their elevated perch.  A moving or stationary horse adds no measurable damage or penetration.

===


Parabolic arcs, once set up for one object, could easilly be set up for everything else, if done correctly.  The acceleration of any object towards the ground is a constant, being measured as "1 G" (9.8 meters per second per second, acceleration).  This does not change depending upon velocity or even distance from the earth. 

A spacecraft in orbit falls at ~9.7 m/s2.  However it moves forward so fast that the earth is curving away at the same rate, so the craft never hits ground, even tho it is being acted upon by nearly the same amount of gravity and constantly falling.  If the craft begins moving faster, the ground will curve away faster than they are falling, and the craft can be said to be moving outward from it's frame of reference.  In reality however, it's trajectory is still curving toward the Earth at the same rate, it is merely moving laterally faster than the earth curves.

A bullet fired from a gun will hit the ground at the same time as one dropped from the same height.  The bullet's lateral motion does not affect it's downward rate of descent in any way.  Additionally, the bullet is not traveling fast enough for the curvature of the earth to allow it to be considered to be in orbit, so the bullet will indeed hit ground at nearly the same time as the bullet which was dropped.  Arrows are similar, although their aerodynamic properties mean it falls somewhat slower when moving laterally.

Gravity affects everything equally, and outside of special cases (such as friction or magnetics) everything will always fall down at the same exact rate while in the same gravitational environment.

I sincerely hope that this is being taken into account.  Right now there is no "gravity" in the game.  Everything just "looks down" and "hits ground", generally not even passing through the areas in-between.  At least this was the way it worked last time I saw any real science done on it, and since Magma Pistons still work I would imagine that is still the case.

If, instead, every object gained downward acceleration every tick that it was unsupported, "parabolic minecart paths" and "falling arrows" and "realistic catapults" would fall into place naturally and without even having to think about it.  The only complexity introduced in those two later situations would be getting the AI to understand it has to aim farther up the farther away the target is... which can be calculated relatively simply by a binomial equation.



It seems Toady has already thought of this:
Quote
Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

So here's to hoping he's made it generalized enough to be applied to any kind of object.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2012, 07:30:10 pm by Jeoshua »
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irmo

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #26 on: May 06, 2012, 01:55:09 am »


If, instead, every object gained downward acceleration every tick that it was unsupported, "parabolic minecart paths" and "falling arrows" and "realistic catapults" would fall into place naturally and without even having to think about it.

I'm not sure I see the value of burning a ton of CPU cycles on reimplementing physics. The existing system works adequately for fortress-building, and getting semi-accurate trajectories for arrows and catapult stones would require simulating on the scale of tenths of a second or so.
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Jeoshua

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #27 on: May 06, 2012, 08:32:55 am »

Well the value of it is that currently the physics system doesn't make objects fall, ever.  They teleport to ground without traveling through the space in between.  Only unsupported objects would gain an acceleration so it really wouldn't burn up very many clock cycles unless you loaded a lot of objects onto a bridge and then dropped them all at once, for example.

It really wouldn't be computationally very hard to do, either.  Currently the system finds objects which are unsupported and then looks down to the lowest z-level where there is ground, calculated damage, and moves them all at once.  An acceleration based system wouldn't bother with that.

Current system:
  • Is the object unsupported?
  • Same frame: calculate distance
  • Same frame: Calculate damage
  • Same frame: Drop Object
  • Same frame: Splat

Acceleration-based system:
  • Is the object unsupported?
  • Same frame: Accelerate downward
  • Has a moving object hit something (ground, walls, etc)?
  • Calculate damage

So you can see that it doesn't pile everything onto the main frame like the current system, rather spreads it out over time.  Regardless of how many calculations it requires (not many, since gravity doesn't work like that as I mentioned above), they are spread out over many frames and don't need anything more complicated than checking things which already must be checked and adding a constant variable to an object's downward speed if that check fails.



But this is really about bows and arrows.  It would be nice if there were customizable reload rates.  That would mean bows, crossbows, and even exotic weapons like the Chokuno repeater crossbows would be be easy to make by changing the reload.  Mods could make machine guns and a distinction could be made between a light, easilly loaded weapon and a heavy, powerful, but slow to fire one.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2012, 08:40:33 am by Jeoshua »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #28 on: May 06, 2012, 10:26:26 am »

Jeoshua, I'm pretty sure Toady understands how gravity and orbits work. :P

I'm not sure I see the value of burning a ton of CPU cycles on reimplementing physics. The existing system works adequately for fortress-building, and getting semi-accurate trajectories for arrows and catapult stones would require simulating on the scale of tenths of a second or so.

FPS is burned in this game through processes that occur tremendous numbers of times on a per-frame basis, or which requires deleting and restructuring a large data structure (such as when you raise or lower a drawbridge and the connectivity map is regenerated). 

How often are arrows in the air? 

Running a semi-accurate trajectory, for that matter, would take a tiny fraction of the time a single pathfinding job takes (by which I mean 1/100th of the time, not just half as much).  Fairly simple Newtonian physics, even if you added some sort of wind factor into the game, would only need to load the tiles that the arrow was traveling through at the time it was traveling through them, with the possible exception of the one frame where the archer is choosing the angle of the shot, where the flight path would need to be calculated for accuracy's sake.  This would, again, take far less calculation than a single pathfind.



And to go back to Jeoshua's argument, the reason Toady hasn't done parabolic arcs for weapons yet, but has done them for minecarts and creatures sent flying, is that minecarts are "dumb" projectiles - they aren't aimed, they just fly where their momentum takes them.

Aiming a bow with a parabolic arc is a more difficult proposition because you have to actually aim it.  That means that if you are trying to hit a target 10 tiles away, you'll have to calculate what angle you need to fire the arrow at in order to get the arrow to arc in that path, and then you need to check for a ceiling before you fire to see if you have clearance to make that shot.  If you have things like wind in the game, you need to have your archer take that into account, as well. 

Plus, if we do have this thing running in game realtime with a measurable flightspeed where enemies can take turns and move away, then this whole thing becomes very complicated, as it becomes a question of if the player has to guess how many tiles the target will move and aim at an appropriate tile, or if the computer will try to calculate target velocity when adjusting its aim as well.

These are the things Toady has put off, it's not that he's not thinking about doing it, it's that aiming at a moving target is going to take some work.
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Niyazov

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Re: Bow improvements
« Reply #29 on: May 09, 2012, 04:52:40 pm »

iron bows are not all that silly as thay where used in the Mughal period in India.
read more here
and here

These are steel bows. Cast and wrought iron have yield strength issues. The problem is that when iron bends it generally does not bend back.
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