What's up with particle physics?
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2012-01-08 07:45 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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You know, I suddenly wonder if we can't use this more to our advantage, especially with arch villains. Too bad most of them have enough knockback protection to not get stuck on a wall.
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Originally Posted by Redlynne
My favorite SNAGdoll physics experiment so far has been blasting Arachnoids (which you see in SSA 3) into walls where they "stick" and hang like they've been velcroed there.
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"Ageia(TM) PhysX(TM) support" only determines whether or not the game recognises and uses the Ageia physics card specifically, but controls nothing to do with visual quality. You can run particle physics completely by software, or via any nVidia card of the last two years, and that option is simply disabled.|
Originally Posted by Futurias
Now remember though, particle affects is not the Ageia thing. That's the setting near the top of your advanced settings (Aegia FX (TM) blah-blah.)
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The option I'm referring to is "Particle Physics Quality" which I have currently set to "Very Hight (Not Recommended Without PPU). It just so happens that aside from the Ageia card and a few other exotic software bits that I ran across when researching Ageia PhysX, there really aren't any notable PPUs out there in general circulation, at least none that I've ever heard of.
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Originally Posted by Futurias
Just sounds like the lowered the limit of debris left over on powers that leave things behind (like bullet casing for guns.) Probably is a performance issue change. Which means it may not go back.
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My point is, unless the game somehow entirely lost support for physics - which I doubt - there's no reason to pretty much take them out of the game. I realise the same happened to 3D sound on Sound Blaster cards (I used to be able to run it on mine, now I can't), but that had something to do with loss of support for it when switching... Something. I sincerely hope we haven't lost the physics engine that more or less constituted half of CoV's selling point.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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:3|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Better than a mag 500 hold. If this happened to a Giant Monster, you could solo it easily.
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I don't know if we lost it, but I suspect the current dev team does not include any of the people that originally created it, which makes it problematic to maintain or extend.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I sincerely hope we haven't lost the physics engine that more or less constituted half of CoV's selling point.
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The fact that their "gravitational constant" problem wasn't instantly reverted says a lot.
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Are you referring to how particles tend to "float up?" I suspect there's more going on there than just gravity, as these particles should be ejected with some initial velocity, and even with flipped gravity, they should still describe some kind of arc and interact with items on the way up in at least some fashion. I also assume that they should experience some gravitational acceleration. None of this happens. They spawn in their start points with no inertia, completely stationary, then they float up at a steady, very slow speed and pass through all objects on the way up. It feels to me like these particles aren't experiencing any physics calculations at all and are merely subject to whatever force makes the bodies of Tsoo Ancestor Spirits float up as they disappear.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't know if we lost it, but I suspect the current dev team does not include any of the people that originally created it, which makes it problematic to maintain or extend.
The fact that their "gravitational constant" problem wasn't instantly reverted says a lot. |
That's just inference from observation, of course. I hope that they kept the phone numbers for the guys who programmed City of Heroes' physics, because this really, REALLY needs to get fixed. It's made the game look much older than it needs to be. Especially since I know how much better it was before this "upgrade."
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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After noticing this thread, I decided to hop in-game with my Dual Pistols blaster...
And most of my casings are, in fact, vanishing. They are correctly going up then down when ejected, but the problem is they're mostly not STOPPING. They fall through the floor, with maybe one out of several dozen actually stopping on the floor. To fall out of view again later.
That is pretty damn weird.. And unfortunate. I don't remember when this might have changed either, because I remember standing in huge piles of casings.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Standing ankle deep in brass when playing a Huntsman, burning through ammo on your gun like there's no tomorrow, is one of the guiltiest pleasures I've ever enjoyed thanks to the physics engine in this game (when it was working properly). |
Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
I remember standing in huge piles of casings.
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It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
Ragdoll is calculated server-side so that everyone sees the enemies in the same place, so drivers or hardware on people's computers shouldn't affect that.
That said, they *did* upgrade their PhysX library to a much newer version, presumably one that is capable of using compatible NVidia cards to do the calculations for the client-side effects like shell casings, rocks, leaves, etc. The old version they used to use always did it in software on the CPU, even if you had a GPU capable of offloading it -- it predated the buyout and only worked with standalone PhysX cards.
It appears that something is different in this new version that makes their interface not work right, and so everything that uses those libraries is acting... strange.
I don't see this being fixed in a hot-patch, but we should be looking at I22 some time soon, so my hopes are that THAT will fix the problem. It's a pretty big hole in the engine, sort of the elephant in the room, so it's a pretty big thing to leave broken for too long.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't know if we lost it, but I suspect the current dev team does not include any of the people that originally created it, which makes it problematic to maintain or extend.
The fact that their "gravitational constant" problem wasn't instantly reverted says a lot. |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Are you referring to how particles tend to "float up?"
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Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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That's not really much of an excuse. If I told a customer that we could no longer maintain or extend their billing system because the people who originally wrote it no longer works at the company, we wouldn't have that customer any more.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't know if we lost it, but I suspect the current dev team does not include any of the people that originally created it, which makes it problematic to maintain or extend.
The fact that their "gravitational constant" problem wasn't instantly reverted says a lot. |
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
=][=
My favorite SNAGdoll physics experiment so far has been blasting Arachnoids (which you see in SSA 3) into walls where they "stick" and hang like they've been velcroed there.
Some of the worst possible Ragdoll physics that is instantly recognizable and repeatable is the Heroside SSA 4, Mission 1 conclusion ... where Malaise "poofs" himself and crumples in a heap right before Sister Psyche whimpers that he's in her mind, and faceplants. Malaise just collapses exactly the way you'd expect a marionette with cut strings to slump down in a heap (without regard for joints or contortion limits). Watching his head do a 180 (or better yet, a 360!) turn on the ground with his legs folded up under him in anatomically impossible ways just goes to show how badly borked the ragdoll physics are in the current live release.