Orb of destruction phasing through monsters


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bel

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Post Friday, 3rd July 2015, 18:08

Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

(Not sure this should be in GDD, feel free to move)

Recently I have been seen a lot of cases where I use an orb of destruction towards a monster on a straight line and it ends up behind the monster! Is this normal?

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Post Friday, 3rd July 2015, 18:20

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

simple answer is: don't fire in a straight line, it is very possible for the orb to "twitch" right in front of the monster and miss it, only to attempt correcting it's trajectory behind it... the end result is that it looks like it passed through but it really just carefully avoided collision.

try to always fire so the orb needs to turn a bit to hit.

bel

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Post Friday, 3rd July 2015, 18:26

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

The orb leaves trail of magical condensation behind it. As far as I can see, it simply travels in a straight line. I haven't really checked very thoroughly, but this is my impression.

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Post Friday, 3rd July 2015, 18:46

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

This defnitely happens.

I've posted about it before, and doesn't happen only when it's a straight line.

My favorite examples are places where it's literally impossible for the OOD to end up behind the creature, yet somehow it does.

I suspect it happens due to energy randomization when a creature gets a double-move, but I can't be certain.
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Post Friday, 3rd July 2015, 19:01

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Sometimes monsters phase in front of their own orbs and blow themselves up..
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 00:05

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

adozu wrote:simple answer is: don't fire in a straight line, it is very possible for the orb to "twitch" right in front of the monster and miss it, only to attempt correcting it's trajectory behind it... the end result is that it looks like it passed through but it really just carefully avoided collision.

try to always fire so the orb needs to turn a bit to hit.

You actually do want the orb to go straight vertically or horizontally. That's the best chance of a hit, except if there's a wall on one side of you, in which case you want to angle it slightly away from the wall.
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 01:55

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

ood should just move giant spore style or something, instead of having bizarre movement rules that look totally out of place in a grid-based game (WHY DOES IT TRY TO MAKE CIRCULAR CURVES, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET RID OF CIRCLES), make it a complete non-threat to players, and make it miss monsters that are adjacent if you cast it on a diagonal

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bel

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 07:14

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

duvessa wrote:ood should just move giant spore style or something, instead of having bizarre movement rules that look totally out of place in a grid-based game (WHY DOES IT TRY TO MAKE CIRCULAR CURVES, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET RID OF CIRCLES), make it a complete non-threat to players, and make it miss monsters that are adjacent if you cast it on a diagonal

My impression is that the orb is supposed to have massive inertia, and can only change direction slowly. (I have no idea how exactly they move, except that they twitch sometimes and try to home in on the target).

I think the situation I described in the OP can easily be fixed by simply checking whether the point (monster new position) lies on the line segment (orb last position, orb new position).

bel

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 11:04

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Just to confirm that this actually happens. It happened a lot with Orb Guardians who are fast. I watched the magical condensation trails, and they were perfectly straight.

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 19:44

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

bel wrote:
duvessa wrote:ood should just move giant spore style or something, instead of having bizarre movement rules that look totally out of place in a grid-based game (WHY DOES IT TRY TO MAKE CIRCULAR CURVES, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET RID OF CIRCLES), make it a complete non-threat to players, and make it miss monsters that are adjacent if you cast it on a diagonal

My impression is that the orb is supposed to have massive inertia, and can only change direction slowly. (I have no idea how exactly they move, except that they twitch sometimes and try to home in on the target).

I think the situation I described in the OP can easily be fixed by simply checking whether the point (monster new position) lies on the line segment (orb last position, orb new position).

Here's what I suspect is going on, I suspect it's a matter of how the turns go for monsters, each monster gets to take a turn's worth of action, which may be two moves, so you end up going:
Initial position:
  Code:
*...C

Orb gets a turn, has 3 moves:
  Code:
...*C

Giant gets a turn, gets 2 moves from energy randomization (or because you did something slow):
Move 1:
  Code:
...*.
...C.

Move 2:
  Code:
..C*.

Now you get a move and it looks like the giant has phased through the orb, when in fact they just walked around it while it was stopped.

Now if the giant hadn't gotten a double move, the orb could've simply exploded and done damage (because if it's target is adjacent and 90 degrees or less off it's last trajectory, it will just 'hit" at least I believe that's how it works.) So as I said, I suspect what we're seeing is due to double moves on the part of the target.

If the order of things was changed so that the turn passed around to the next creature after each monster's action, this situation wouldn't occur, but as I understand it, each monster gets it's full time's worth of action all at once. I suspect with the way things work presently you could ensure more OOD hits by swinging a fast weapon after shooting an OOD as a result (Thereby forcing the monster's to take their partial turns in order)
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bel

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 19:53

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Do monsters try to avoid OoDs?
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 19:55

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

^I think Siegurt means that monsters just step around them as if they are a simple obstacle.

Orbs move only after you take an action??!!

bel

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 20:00

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Siegurt's explanation sounds fishy to me. OoD has speed 30. Is it possible for the monster to get a double move and the OoD to stay stationary? That's messed up.

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 20:08

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Pollen_Golem wrote:^I think Siegurt means that monsters just step around them as if they are a simple obstacle.

Orbs move only after you take an action??!!

Yes, both of those are accurate.

Basically the way it works is you take an action, it takes up X aut, that's amount of aut is added to an 'energy' counter for each creature (plus or minus 1 due to energy randomization), then each creature does things until they run out of energy, each monster action takes up an amount of energy, and if they don't have enough energy to take another action then they stop. Orbs of destruction take 3 energy to move 1 square (IIRC) and most "normal speed" monsters take 10 energy to move 1 square. (Note that a monster's leftover energy carries over from prior turns, that's why they occasionally get double moves or miss a move due to energy randomization)

For the purposes of movement and action, orbs of destruction are creatures. Although since they can't be attacked, they pretty much function like simple obstacles when it comes to monster's turns. (You can try this yourself as the player, if you get an orb of destruction cast at you, and it ends up next to you, you can't move into it's square, even if you want to keep moving in that direction, Sometimes this causes me great annoyance in spider when I have to non-optimally step around a OOD while trying to chase down an orb spider, which is annoying, because i know it's going to explode on me even if I step around it, but I can't walk forward into it, because it's not a creature I can attack or a cloud, but it does occupy that square)

Note that the action of casting the spell itself gives them an initial bit of energy, that's why they move at the outset when you cast the spell.
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 20:09

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

bel wrote:Siegurt's explanation sounds fishy to me. OoD has speed 30. Is it possible for the monster to get a double move and the OoD to stay stationary? That's messed up.

It's because each monster takes it's entire turn all at once, they don't go round robin and take turns doing stuff or anything.

So the OoD does all it's speed 30 movement, then the monster gets all of *its* movement, which might be just enough to give it a double move.
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 22:25

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Siegurt wrote:
bel wrote:Siegurt's explanation sounds fishy to me. OoD has speed 30. Is it possible for the monster to get a double move and the OoD to stay stationary? That's messed up.

It's because each monster takes it's entire turn all at once, they don't go round robin and take turns doing stuff or anything.

So the OoD does all it's speed 30 movement, then the monster gets all of *its* movement, which might be just enough to give it a double move.

It doesn't go aut-by-aut? I would think it would be like this:
aut 0. ood is created
aut 1.
aut 2.
aut 3. ood moves 1 space
aut 4
aut 5.
aut 6. ood moves 1 space
aut 7.
aut 8.
aut 9. speed 10 monster moves 1 space.
aut 10. ood moves 1 space
aut 11
aut 12
aut 13. ood moves one space
aut 14
aut 15
aut 16. ood moves one space
aut 17
aut 18. due to energy randomization, speed 10 monster gets a second action early and moves 1 space
aut 19 ood moves one space
aut 20

Are you saying the ood doesn't move at all until 10 auts have passed, then it leaps ahead 3 spaces?
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 22:51

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Berder wrote:
Siegurt wrote:
bel wrote:Siegurt's explanation sounds fishy to me. OoD has speed 30. Is it possible for the monster to get a double move and the OoD to stay stationary? That's messed up.

It's because each monster takes it's entire turn all at once, they don't go round robin and take turns doing stuff or anything.

So the OoD does all it's speed 30 movement, then the monster gets all of *its* movement, which might be just enough to give it a double move.

It doesn't go aut-by-aut? I would think it would be like this:
aut 0. ood is created
aut 1.
aut 2.
aut 3. ood moves 1 space
aut 4
aut 5.
aut 6. ood moves 1 space
aut 7.
aut 8.
aut 9. speed 10 monster moves 1 space.
aut 10. ood moves 1 space
aut 11
aut 12
aut 13. ood moves one space
aut 14
aut 15
aut 16. ood moves one space
aut 17
aut 18. due to energy randomization, speed 10 monster gets a second action early and moves 1 space
aut 19 ood moves one space
aut 20

Are you saying the ood doesn't move at all until 10 auts have passed, then it leaps ahead 3 spaces?

It does not go aut by aut, there is no "global clock" with auts that pass tick by tick, There's just the players turn and a time cost assoicated with every action, and an iterator that goes through each monster and decides what it did during however much time passed during the player's action. There's also a "global actions" thing that looks at how much time passed and decides stuff like how much piety you lost and hunger points and poison damage and crap like that.

There's no "10 auts have passed, then the OoD moves" thing at all, there's no "passing" of auts, auts don't "pass". You're confusing a game with real life (Where time passes whether we do anything with it or not)

It goes like this:
  Code:
First: The player casts a spell that creates an OOD and which takes 10 aut of time.
Then: The OOD has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The Speed 10 monster has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The player gets another turn to pick an action to do whatever.
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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 22:56

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

How is the order of these determined:
  Code:
Then: The OOD has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The Speed 10 monster has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.

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Post Saturday, 4th July 2015, 23:04

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

  Code:
First: The player casts a spell that creates an OOD and which takes 10 aut of time.
Then: The OOD has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The Speed 10 monster has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The player gets another turn to pick an action to do whatever.

I tested a hasted spriggan shooting an OOD and the OOD moves about one square for each square the player moves.

Are you saying that every monster gets X auts to do whatever it wants when the player acts, where X is the delay before the next player action? That's kind of messed up. It means monsters interleave actions with the player, but not with each other. It means that if you are hasted, your OOD is more likely to hit because the enemy is less likely to get a double move!
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Post Sunday, 5th July 2015, 00:15

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Pollen_Golem wrote:How is the order of these determined:
  Code:
Then: The OOD has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The Speed 10 monster has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.

Without looking into the workings of monster_iterator I would assume it's in order of their monster index (so whichever was created first, except not really since monster indexes can get re-used when monsters die).

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Post Sunday, 5th July 2015, 00:28

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Berder wrote:
  Code:
First: The player casts a spell that creates an OOD and which takes 10 aut of time.
Then: The OOD has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The Speed 10 monster has 10 aut of time to use as it sees fit.
Then: The player gets another turn to pick an action to do whatever.

I tested a hasted spriggan shooting an OOD and the OOD moves about one square for each square the player moves.

Are you saying that every monster gets X auts to do whatever it wants when the player acts, where X is the delay before the next player action? That's kind of messed up. It means monsters interleave actions with the player, but not with each other. It means that if you are hasted, your OOD is more likely to hit because the enemy is less likely to get a double move!

Yes, both messed up and accurate, and what Marvin said about monster order is correct.
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Post Sunday, 5th July 2015, 02:58

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Berder wrote:It means that if you are hasted, your OOD is more likely to hit because the enemy is less likely to get a double move!

Not only that. If the orb gets to move before the enemy, and you do a very slow action, then the orb is nigh-guaranteed to hit the target, before the enemy even has a chance to do anything!

But you can't determine who has the first move, orb or enemy, from the message logs. More practically, you could do this with allies. For example, suppose you have a friendly summon, fighting a monster. If the message logs indicate that your summon moves before enemies do, and is near death, then you can perform a slow action, maximizing the number of hits your summon can dish out before getting attacked!

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Post Monday, 6th July 2015, 20:44

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Siegurt wrote:I suspect with the way things work presently you could ensure more OOD hits by swinging a fast weapon after shooting an OOD as a result (Thereby forcing the monster's to take their partial turns in order)


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Post Tuesday, 7th July 2015, 15:29

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

OK, so is this 'bug' or 'weird, but intentional, behavior'?

(HINT I VOTE BUG)
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Post Tuesday, 7th July 2015, 15:38

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

It's a bizarre result of a lack of a global clock.

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Post Tuesday, 7th July 2015, 17:58

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

I guess one fix for this would be to make monsters not treat orbs as obstacles. Then, at least, it would not look like monsters can magically walk through orbs fired in straight lines.
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Post Tuesday, 7th July 2015, 18:11

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Right, this isn't really about the lack of a clock. I mean, it's an artifact of that, but it's also an artifact of not being able to walk into an OoD and set it off. As mentioned above, this is obnoxious vs orb spiders where you might want to eat a weak orb for better positioning. And it's obnoxious when fast monsters buzz around them.
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Post Tuesday, 7th July 2015, 19:23

Re: Orb of destruction phasing through monsters

Another plausible fix would be to figure out when monsters need to take what actions, then interleve each monster's turn(s) appropriately (Which functions similarly to a global 1 AUT clock in effect, but doesn't require as much CPU overhead)

(The reason I suggested this was that someone tried experimentally running each aut separately and found that it ate up too much CPU time on the server)

Even something very simple like having each monster defer to the next monster in the stack after one action and stick them back to the end of the monster action queue to if they have enough energy leftover would be a big improvement (if not perfect)
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