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Tangent about bad pathfinding: Another game with really frustrating is (still pre-release) Age of Darkness. Units typically get slaughtered if they traverse u

Tangent about bad pathfinding: Another game with really frustrating is (still pre-release) Age of Darkness. Units typically get slaughtered if they traverse uncleared regions of the map. But you can't tell them not to, and you can't even see ahead of time what pathfinding will choose for them. It's amazing how much cognitive load is added by having to prevent units from doing super-stupid stuff.

doctorpangloss 3y ago
This stuff has been solved by middlewares like Unity for ages. > bad What I really wanna get into: the cognitive dissonance of being a programmer and an AoEII ultra at the same time. Game mechanics do have a certain objective truth to them. They are also pieces of software, they follow a lot of the same rules as Gmail and Instagram and whatever. As a matter of objective reality: when your game does not aspire to specifically be clunky - this distinction is sometimes called "QWOP" - it seems valid to say, okay, this pathfinding is the word you used. I have the wisdom to not use that word you used in this forum to describe something people feel ultra about. But it is true. People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their social media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love clicking around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece of gameplay. I wonder how to harness the resources poured into something like 0AD to make "Better AoEII" or "Better AoM." I'm not sure how often that question is asked and how it is answered. That's why this cognitive dissonance matters.
- lukevp 3y ago
  Your phrasing and word choice is very peculiar. It’s a bit difficult to follow what you’re saying to me. For example, you say you’re an AoEII ultra. Is this an ultra fan? Or ultra what? > People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their social media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love clicking around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece of gameplay. If I had to rephrase this section based on my understanding, I would interpret it to say something like: Often, people are bothered by bugs and other issues that happen in commonly-used apps like Facebook or YouTube, but when these bugs manifest in video games, it’s viewed as part of the character of the game. For example, the micromanagement of villagers that’s required due to bad pathfinding in AoE II (to prevent them from running under turrets and such). Is that correct? Any ideas why your phrasing would seem so foreign to me? I’m very curious why.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    > Is this an ultra fan? Yes > you say you’re an AoEII ultra No. I can't say how I really feel about the game. > it’s viewed as part of the character of the game Yes. > I’m very curious why. People feel very, very strongly about their nostalgic retro childhood fun cozy times like playing AoEII. They're ultras, right? It's like talking about football. It can be perilous.
    - jaredhallen 3y ago
      I see where you're coming from, but (in my opinion) you're over indexing on the issue. If someone gets bent because you said some video game has bad pathfinding, so what? Seems like their problem. It isn't a mean spirited or unreasonable thing to say.
sesm 3y ago
But if pathfinding is too smart, then it becomes hard to micro-control the units, see StarCraft 2 vs StarCraft Brood War.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  N.B: Age of Darkness is an inherently player-vs-environment game (Survival RTS… it is sorta like They are Billions if you’ve played that). So, I think super high action-per-minute PVP style gameplay is not really the goal.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  StarCraft is a great example because we can talk about it now without the threat of ultras. Like its audience has gone away, people only feel nostalgia for it but they don't really play it anymore. It's easier to talk about the objectively bad and clunky things about it. I personally don't think micro, as it exists in StarCraft, is interesting or even worthy. It only made that game harder in ways that were not fun. Which is too bad, because it was a phenomenally engineered RTS engine (starting with WC3) that brought us many other game formats in its custom scenarios. Compare to Supreme Commander, which had very sophisticated pathfinding and in my memory more interesting micro. Compare to all MOBA formats, where if you're going to have WC3/SC style micro, you might as well focus on micro of one unit. There were many ideas that came after StarCraft that are in an important way, objectively better. It has a lot of other clunk. The way you have to manage resource gathering. The unit building queues and how spending occurs. The spellcasting. The selections. It has so much legacy. StarCraft 2 had to cater to a very specific eSports skill base that probably led to it going into the same level of obscurity as EverQuest: Gen X people still have strong nostalgic feelings for it, but they don't play EVE Online, they're not 20 anymore with oodles of time and no responsibilities, they don't want hard permadeath single instance experiences. They want something much gentler but they still feel very positively about like, this one clunky thing they may have mastered a long time ago when their brain power was so much more plastic. Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like from a technical engineering point of view? In my opinion, no. So besides the existence of an ultra audience, I don't think there's a good reason to celebrate the crappy pathfinding anymore.
bee_rider 3y ago
This sort of RTS sub-genre (of which They Are Billions is the only other example I can think of) probably needs different unit AI than a typical RTS. In case anyone is not familiar with these games, you are building a base, the map begins unexplored and is populated by monsters which will attack you in waves, so it is a sort of inherently player-vs-environment, very asymmetrical game. Because the enemies are basically expendable and your units aren’t, your units should… try not to sacrifice themselves so much. They should avoid the fog-of-war areas unless explicitly instructed to go there. Melee units should flee when injured. Ranged units should stay out of melee range. Total War unit AI (where ranged units typically skirmish by default) might be a better starting point than Age of Empires style unit AI. Although, it is a niche within a niche, so I guess I’ll take what I can get, haha.
- 3np 3y ago
  Sounds a lot like Factorio. Quite different and you generally don't do things involving pathfinding in the first place; so not sure if it scratches your itch.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I did enjoy Factorio (and also Mindustry) a bit. For Factorio a lot of the fun seems to be in really optimizing the heck out of your factory, which I didn’t really enjoy as much, so it was only good for like one or two playthroughs for me. One or two fun playthroughs though, no complaints. It is sort of funny, I do enjoy optimizing, but in a game I prefer setups where you have to kinda intuitively optimize by your gut rather than really tweak things. The 50-80% efficiency range, rather than hitting those 80-99% targets, so to speak.
    - Cogito 3y ago
      There are a few playstyles, both modded and unmodded, that will allow for more of the "we're under attack!" panic and less optimisation of your factory. Ramping up the number of biters in an unmodded world (deathworld) can be really fun. Modpacks like Warptorio 2 add a very different dynamic but has that same frantic feel.
billfruit 3y ago
Some games have issue in moving groups of units, with some units moving slowly while others move faster, end up reaching the destination at different times, and get easily taken out by enemy units one by one, unless the player painstakingly babysits the entire movement to ensure same time of arrival.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

This stuff has been solved by middlewares like Unity for ages. > bad What I really wanna get into: the cognitive dissonance of being a programmer and an AoEII ultra at the same time. Game mechanics do have a certain objective truth to them. They are also pieces of software, they follow a lot of the same rules as Gmail and Instagram and whatever. As a matter of objective reality: when your game does not aspire to specifically be clunky - this distinction is sometimes called "QWOP" - it seems valid to say, okay, this pathfinding is the word you used. I have the wisdom to not use that word you used in this forum to describe something people feel ultra about. But it is true. People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their social media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love clicking around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece of gameplay. I wonder how to harness the resources poured into something like 0AD to make "Better AoEII" or "Better AoM." I'm not sure how often that question is asked and how it is answered. That's why this cognitive dissonance matters.

lukevp 3y ago
Your phrasing and word choice is very peculiar. It’s a bit difficult to follow what you’re saying to me. For example, you say you’re an AoEII ultra. Is this an ultra fan? Or ultra what? > People feel so strongly about bugs and clunk in their social media YouTube drip. The same ADHD personalities love clicking around villagers! I mean what a "something" piece of gameplay. If I had to rephrase this section based on my understanding, I would interpret it to say something like: Often, people are bothered by bugs and other issues that happen in commonly-used apps like Facebook or YouTube, but when these bugs manifest in video games, it’s viewed as part of the character of the game. For example, the micromanagement of villagers that’s required due to bad pathfinding in AoE II (to prevent them from running under turrets and such). Is that correct? Any ideas why your phrasing would seem so foreign to me? I’m very curious why.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > Is this an ultra fan? Yes > you say you’re an AoEII ultra No. I can't say how I really feel about the game. > it’s viewed as part of the character of the game Yes. > I’m very curious why. People feel very, very strongly about their nostalgic retro childhood fun cozy times like playing AoEII. They're ultras, right? It's like talking about football. It can be perilous.
  - jaredhallen 3y ago
    I see where you're coming from, but (in my opinion) you're over indexing on the issue. If someone gets bent because you said some video game has bad pathfinding, so what? Seems like their problem. It isn't a mean spirited or unreasonable thing to say.

sesm 3y ago

But if pathfinding is too smart, then it becomes hard to micro-control the units, see StarCraft 2 vs StarCraft Brood War.

bee_rider 3y ago
N.B: Age of Darkness is an inherently player-vs-environment game (Survival RTS… it is sorta like They are Billions if you’ve played that). So, I think super high action-per-minute PVP style gameplay is not really the goal.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
StarCraft is a great example because we can talk about it now without the threat of ultras. Like its audience has gone away, people only feel nostalgia for it but they don't really play it anymore. It's easier to talk about the objectively bad and clunky things about it. I personally don't think micro, as it exists in StarCraft, is interesting or even worthy. It only made that game harder in ways that were not fun. Which is too bad, because it was a phenomenally engineered RTS engine (starting with WC3) that brought us many other game formats in its custom scenarios. Compare to Supreme Commander, which had very sophisticated pathfinding and in my memory more interesting micro. Compare to all MOBA formats, where if you're going to have WC3/SC style micro, you might as well focus on micro of one unit. There were many ideas that came after StarCraft that are in an important way, objectively better. It has a lot of other clunk. The way you have to manage resource gathering. The unit building queues and how spending occurs. The spellcasting. The selections. It has so much legacy. StarCraft 2 had to cater to a very specific eSports skill base that probably led to it going into the same level of obscurity as EverQuest: Gen X people still have strong nostalgic feelings for it, but they don't play EVE Online, they're not 20 anymore with oodles of time and no responsibilities, they don't want hard permadeath single instance experiences. They want something much gentler but they still feel very positively about like, this one clunky thing they may have mastered a long time ago when their brain power was so much more plastic. Is the AoEII engine similarly as worthy as SC2, like from a technical engineering point of view? In my opinion, no. So besides the existence of an ultra audience, I don't think there's a good reason to celebrate the crappy pathfinding anymore.

bee_rider 3y ago

This sort of RTS sub-genre (of which They Are Billions is the only other example I can think of) probably needs different unit AI than a typical RTS. In case anyone is not familiar with these games, you are building a base, the map begins unexplored and is populated by monsters which will attack you in waves, so it is a sort of inherently player-vs-environment, very asymmetrical game. Because the enemies are basically expendable and your units aren’t, your units should… try not to sacrifice themselves so much. They should avoid the fog-of-war areas unless explicitly instructed to go there. Melee units should flee when injured. Ranged units should stay out of melee range. Total War unit AI (where ranged units typically skirmish by default) might be a better starting point than Age of Empires style unit AI. Although, it is a niche within a niche, so I guess I’ll take what I can get, haha.

3np 3y ago
Sounds a lot like Factorio. Quite different and you generally don't do things involving pathfinding in the first place; so not sure if it scratches your itch.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I did enjoy Factorio (and also Mindustry) a bit. For Factorio a lot of the fun seems to be in really optimizing the heck out of your factory, which I didn’t really enjoy as much, so it was only good for like one or two playthroughs for me. One or two fun playthroughs though, no complaints. It is sort of funny, I do enjoy optimizing, but in a game I prefer setups where you have to kinda intuitively optimize by your gut rather than really tweak things. The 50-80% efficiency range, rather than hitting those 80-99% targets, so to speak.
  - Cogito 3y ago
    There are a few playstyles, both modded and unmodded, that will allow for more of the "we're under attack!" panic and less optimisation of your factory. Ramping up the number of biters in an unmodded world (deathworld) can be really fun. Modpacks like Warptorio 2 add a very different dynamic but has that same frantic feel.

billfruit 3y ago

Some games have issue in moving groups of units, with some units moving slowly while others move faster, end up reaching the destination at different times, and get easily taken out by enemy units one by one, unless the player painstakingly babysits the entire movement to ensure same time of arrival.