directional splatter kill-graphics?

The title of this thread pretty much says it. Why hasn't Blizzard considered the direction units are attacking from to graphically display the damage the victim unit is receiving?

Maybe this is too difficult to do? But it would be nice if, let's say, a line of tanks is shelling a line of hydralisks. Instead of the hydras death animation just displaying a splat of blood underneath it when killed, wouldn't it be cool to see a splatter "shadow" behind where the hydra was? Like in a tarantino film or a forensics tv show, the blood splatter pattern on the ground would display where the attack from coming from.

Could marine fire, etc. be displayed in this same way? I suppose it would be a lot of blood sprites to render, but today's machines could handlie it, i think

 

Remember though, they want people with comps 2-3 years old to be able to play SC2 also. They don't want only those with current technology computers to be able to play it, as it would severely limit thier market. Most people aren't going to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new comp just for SC2, or in my case, can't afford that.

 

SLIDERS eon SLIDERS

The more aggrivating thing i find is that blizzard are not using their new physics engine to its full extent. 'Pro' gamers complain cause they cant see their units (this is why they suck) so the game suffers graphically due to a very small portion of its playerbase.

GG

 

Well, sure it can be included but for me it will be just another option that raises the recommended system specs and for me and probably everyone on multiplayer to turn off...

 

Depending on how this is done, I don't see directional splatter having any real effect on the game's graphical workload. The unit's going to die anyway, right? It's going to have an animation anyway, right? Graphical strain isn't an issue.

This is the kind of thing that would be decided as the unit is killed...

Deciding the direction of the resulting debris/giblets wouldn't take much more processing power than deciding which animation type to use when being killed by different units. For deciding which animation, the code would be something like "if killed by Dark Templar, use 'sliced-in-half' animation." Similarly, they could add another layer- "if killed by [unit type that deals the appropriate kind of damage] from angle 'x' use animation in direction 'y'"

They could even use the amount of damage overdelt (like a Siege Tank dealing 100 damage to a structure with 5 HP left) to determine the "velocity" of the animation.

With such a system, a player can determine the direction and strength of an attack, even if they can't tell which unit made the kill.

The only problems I see with this system would be that it might add unnecessary confusion to the battlefield... but if done right, it could provide useful information instead.

 

Good ideas Neon.

I think this would be pretty cool, and if it does start to load your system too much, you can just switch it off. Blizzard does that, allows you to switch things off that would bog your system down. Unit portrates, still, animated, not there. Sound being able to be turned off, color cycling.

In there last few patches, they have made something called CPU throttling, lowering CPU usage of the game.

If they do decide on something like this, I really doubt it will be much of a problem.

 

I might

College? Food? NO!
...starcraft 2...
But I'm glad to hear that they are aiming for older computers.

 

That could work if development time permits. But sounds like there are other things that the development team could spend their time in that might carry more "meaning". For instance, what about leaving some permanent trace on the map of a past battle that took place. The blown up guts of that hydra in just a few seconds are gone. That's fine, but it be neat to leave somekind of small trace on the map that marks the place where the hydras met its end. A small trace of its spine faintly embedded in the ground?
it just seems neat and wholesome to have something like this. Reminding the players until the game is over, where their fallen troops meet theirs doom.

It's another one of those realistic touches that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy about the game play experience.

 

You're right Neon, this wouldn't cause more graphical workload. It would cause a crapload of CPU load. If the splatter velocity is determined by the excess damage, it has to be calculated, associated with the appropriate animation, modified according to terrain, then rendered, and then make the engine be able to do of this like 10 per second. It's no coincidence that only the death animations of mechanical units used the physics engine, but not the organic ones.

If this can be toggled, I'm all for it.

 

How do we know the organic units don't use the physics engine? How do we know that the mechanical ones do? I haven't seen any physics events since the earliest demos.

If it's a preset animation, and not a physics event, then it would be very easy to simply rotate the "direction" of the animation. This would ad no noticeable computational strain.

If it is a physics event- computing an initial direction and velocity would not be difficult to do. You wouldn't be doing any serious calculations per chunk, but for the animation as a whole, where each bit can just have a random variation from the "average." For example- a Viking gets nailed by a Siege Tank. The direction is calculated, the overkill is calculated, then those values are used to determine the velocity of "center of mass" of the resulting chunks. Each chunk is randomly assigned a velocity that varies from the velocity of the center of mass. That's only two extra steps (the chunks would have to have some initial velocity anyway) and each one is very simple. I could probably write a program, right now, that could do this hundreds of times a second with no framerate issues, and I am not even a particularly experienced programmer.

This directional splatter idea is akin to particle effects that you can even see in Flash games. Unless it is poorly written and optimized, it is very computationally inexpensive to do.

 

But if the bits that are splattered don't react with each other then it's a set series of steps, which wouldn't strain the system, and wouldn't achieve the level of realism expected. However, if they do react with each other and is not a set of fixed steps but are generated on the fly, it would cause immense lag at such unitcount as in SC. Also if the torn off bits don't have their appropriate mass that is reflected by their size then the end result is again unrealistic - and assigning mass, then calculating collision with the bits in contact... I won't even go further.

But I just realised that this thread is about moving the animation according to the direction of the killing blow, not how sophisticated the death animation is.

 

I think it would be great if they could put that much detail into the game. but if it delays the dam games release i could live without it

 

Blizzard has always been pretty good about scaling their games, I can't see them making SC2 the one that snubs people with older comps.

 

If you want evidence of past battles on the map, may I suggest that you play Total Annihilation: Spring. While I agree it IS cool to see visual confirmation of your destructive abilities, I think it would clutter StarCraft maps too quickly, SC maps usually being smaller than their TA couterparts. And in TA destroyed units are not merely decorative: they can be recycled.

 

Nice Idea but after the first few times are you really going to notice anymore?

 

if they had directional kill then a battle of marines would look sweet

 

If they could do it, they probably would if it doesn't take too much time to push back the release date. They can also put in an option to turn it off specifically for the people with low grade computers and other junk.

 

But if they do, the people they have it on have an advantage when fired on from an out of sight position.

 

Hahaha! What? This isn't an FPS. A unit that attacks you gets put on your screen unless it's on a cliff... and if it's on a cliff then you know where it is

 

not if you're walking through a trench surrounded by cliffs