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Movement range display improvement

The display of movement range is an option that can be activated in the "Features" tab.

This option allows for a quick visualization of the movement range of another character. However, the display wasn't accurate enough: it didn't take obstacles into account.



Can Brigitte really run over to that Black Tiwabbit on foot? Come on now, don't be silly...

The display of a character's potential range of movement is indeed easy to program: you simply tell the program to highlight the cells that are at a lower or equal distance to the number of movement points available to the player with green. However, taking obstacles into consideration requires the creation of more complex calculations as not only must the displayed cells be accessible with the number of movement points that the character has, but there must also be a reachable path. The more complex the operation is, the longer it will take the computer to perform the calculation.

The calculation time depends on the number of possible destinations. As such, the more movement points a character has, the longer the computer will take to identify the accessible cells.

We had quickly reached an early version of this system, which worked quite well most of the time (not many characters have over 6 or 7 MP). Regrettably, it wasn't that simple for everyone... Certain monsters possess over 10MP, and the calculations needed by the computer to determined possible paths increased tenfold.


These infamous monsters didn't make life easy for us!

It was unthinkable for us to add a potential source of lag during fights to display movement paths. We have had to think of more complex algorithms in order to reduce calculation times.

Through research (and some trial and error), we have finally reached a very satisfactory result for everyone; including monsters possessing a high number of MP; where the extra time required by the computer to display the movement paths has become insignificant.


Now it's clear, Brigitte will have to use Jump to attack that Enutrof in close combat.

If you activate this option, with the next patch you will have the pleasure of a movement range preview that is a lot more reliable: it will no longer display inaccessible tiles in green and it will also also highlight areas that are not accessible when the Locking ability of an enemy comes into play in red.


At least Pilipe knows his situation is grim. If he doesn't have Release, his movement options are limited...

(Thanks to [MOD]Rhakuna for translation assistance!)
By: Izmar, on 9 June 2011
15 Back
Game Design Development
Tags : battle, interface, features, combat, monsters, movement, mp, close combat, jump, cells, displays, preview,
Comments
15
MisTbladEr 14 June 2011 - 12:00
Very nice update, although sooooooo useless. Yes, the most useless update since sliced bread to me.
SilentRevenge 14 June 2011 - 11:30

(Novosibirsk @ 14 June 2011 10:50) *
hey moderator ^^ why since update ,,,,, when i fight with monster it can be critical failure 4 times or more,,, please fixed it
You have bad luck. Can't fix that.
Novosibirsk 14 June 2011 - 10:50
hey moderator ^^ why since update ,,,,, when i fight with monster it can be critical failure 4 times or more,,, please fixed it
geinlar 14 June 2011 - 07:06
Surprised it took this long. I'm naively assuming the following: previous approach was simply an overlay of MP on field, an actual implementation wasn't applied due to the only approach being applying the pathfinding algo to every direction. So either you've massively optimized the heuristic and you're doing the latter, implementing some form of caching (would be incredibly expensive storage-wise and would require massive processing for cold starts), or something else that's much awesome-er that I haven't thought of at 1am. Either way, good on ya.
triplesword 10 June 2011 - 12:16
Amazing i have not enabled this feature for this reason...But now i will enable it.







-Greenubuntu-
kieranmckelvie 10 June 2011 - 12:00
seems good, as ele said no downsides so must be good  
luckyspy 09 June 2011 - 23:39
looks very helpful for pvp
SilentRevenge 09 June 2011 - 21:12
My point is that just because its not needed does not mean it shouldn't be added. Many of the improvements to the game that make it better are not necessarily "needed" improvements.