Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Discuss the future of Warzone 2100 with us.
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Should the Guard Position & Pursue Orders be brought back?

Yes
74
94%
No
5
6%
 
Total votes: 79

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vexed
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by vexed »

Per wrote:
vexed wrote:I am talking about the original 1.10 behavior, not our builds, which have things broken compared to that version.
I verified in a VM, unit goes after them, just as I described, and chased the unit all the way back to the base.
Did it ever go out of vision range of the pursuing unit? I am wondering whether the original code used an omniscience cheat for 'Pursue'. That could explain the difference.
Yeah, it had the 'out of site' circles, then the unit caught up to it again.
Per wrote:
vexed wrote:I hate removing things from the game, it just isn't the same.
If you want exactly the same game, then why not play 1.10?
That is a rather flippant comment. :annoyed:

It is possible to retain what Warzone was, yet still enhance it, I thought that was the overall goal here.
Per wrote: The reason for their removal is not inexplicable, I think. As the commit referenced in the ticket said, they were removed because they did not work correctly, never did, were very little used (*), and rather than fixing them we should put work into improving primary orders. The whole secondary order system was poorly designed and a mistake, I believe.

*) Judged on how long time it took for basic bugs in them to get reported...
Since your initial premise is wrong about it never worked, and that they weren't used very much (it was pretty much noticed in the first week from a call of testing), it seems to me that they should be re-implemented again.
/facepalm ...Grinch stole WarzoneπŸ™ˆπŸ™‰πŸ™Š contra principia negantem non est disputandum
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by stiv »

If you want exactly the same game, then why not play 1.10?
The only reason any of us are here is because of the 1.10 features that made us love Warzone. I would like to think we can make things better (opengl and netcode being good examples) while retaining the essence of the game.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

vexed wrote:seems to me that they should be re-implemented again.
By "they" I assume you mean adding back 'Pursue' in some form? Since we already have a better implementation of 'Hold' (the primary order one added by Zarel a while back), and 'Guard' is the default unit behaviour. If we were to add back 'Pursue' I would like to see it as a primary order, though.
stiv wrote:The only reason any of us are here is because of the 1.10 features that made us love Warzone. I would like to think we can make things better (opengl and netcode being good examples) while retaining the essence of the game.
That's why you should define what the essence is, so that we can change things that are not of the essence to improve the game. Having people scream "don't change things" whenever something is changed, refusing to even debate technical merits, is very tiresome and not very constructive.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by cumandgetit »

Per wrote: That's why you should define what the essence is, so that we can change things that are not of the essence to improve the game. Having people scream "don't change things" whenever something is changed, refusing to even debate technical merits, is very tiresome and not very constructive.
epic huge tech tree, unit design, commanders, original campaign narrative and conjoined gameplay. that's the essence. anything missing ?

these can be enhanced & everything else is open to evolutionary change. that was Pumpkin's express mission in collaboration with the games fan base. it was also what made wz extraordinary - Pumpkin's mission to evolve the game in partnership with its fans.

between retail release v.1.0 and v.1.10, 10 patches, some bugs were addressed but, on the whole, the changes were enhancement ADDITIONS to the game (& in one case, a wholesale addition that was subsequently SUBTRACTED because the consensus was it went against the fundamental essence of wz gp. even though Pumpkin commited it out, they reserved the option to put it back in the game in a new form if they could figure out a way that did not conflict with the games essence. btw, they called this mechancic "transformations").

this was what the whole retail bbs were about. Pumpkin, wz creators were very explict about this mission in the thier regular communications with the community - "tell us your ideas of how we can change the game to enhance it." "good one. that will go in the next patch." (ie: troop transport, totally new ski ui & player controlled handicapping scheme, etc., etc.)

the only reason they stopped changing and enhancing wz was because Pumpkin itself as a dev team was terminated by eidos (why they never completed ECMs or pc ver "battle mode", or reintro "transformations", or enhance commander mechanics & ai, just some examples). after, Pumpkin publicaly charged NEWST with that mission in fall 1999. course there were limits without the source which is why source liberation also became part of the mission commencing in 2001.

from the very begining, wz was concieved to evolve, much as a life form (co designer & chief sw engineer alex mclean's exact phrase was "living product"), and stay relevant for as long as peeps were commited to that mission.

post liberation notions of wz's sanctified preservation as v.1.10 in no way represents Pumpkins declared mission, just the opposite in fact. this was common knowledge to the tens of thousands of fans who attended thier retail bbs for years.
Last edited by cumandgetit on 01 Aug 2015, 19:39, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by vexed »

Per wrote:
vexed wrote:seems to me that they should be re-implemented again.
By "they" I assume you mean adding back 'Pursue' in some form? Since we already have a better implementation of 'Hold' (the primary order one added by Zarel a while back), and 'Guard' is the default unit behaviour. If we were to add back 'Pursue' I would like to see it as a primary order, though.
Yeah, and the 'state' icons for each...
Visual cues are important.
Though, I am not sure it would work for primary order... :hmm:
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Per
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

vexed wrote:Yeah, and the 'state' icons for each...
Visual cues are important.
Though, I am not sure it would work for primary order... :hmm:
I completely agree, visual cues are important.

Primary orders are simple: They are on/off. Secondary orders are just slightly more difficult, since they sometimes have multiple states, rather than on/off.

So here is a list of orders that are lacking visual cues: Move, attack, demolish, retreat, guard (no, not the pursue/hold/guard guard - this is the other guard, the one that is actually useful for something), repair/restore, scout, patrol (has button but no visual cue), circle (same), and hold (no, not the pursue/hold/guard hold - this is the other hold, the one that is better). And pursue, of course.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

I looked at the commit that removed 'Pursue' and I could not understand how the 'Pursue' behaviour could have worked, so I started testing it, and eventually went back to the 3.1.0 release but still could not reproduce any working 'Pursue'-like behaviour. The 3.1.0 release was made in January 2013.

I tested it as follows: I parked a machinegun cyborg somewhere that a I knew an enemy truck would pass by, then put it to 'Pursue'. Then I watched as the truck passed by, got shot at, but was not pursued.

Can someone either show that my testing was done wrongly, or find a bug report saying 'Pursue' is not working in a release build in the last few years?

The thing is, I can't find any bug reports saying 'Pursue' was broken, even though my testing shows it must have been broken for at least two years. (Ironically, the only bug report concerning a bug in 'Pursue' behaviour I can find at at is #1610, which removing 'Pursue' fixed.) And if nobody noticed it being broken over the past several years, it is not being used much.

Also, I removed 'Pursue' in git master three years ago (yes, that is how long it has been since git master was put into an actual release). You guys are bit late with the outrage.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Terminator »

Per wrote:my testing shows it must have been broken for at least two years
I've tested the day before yesturday and compared to original 1.10. Yes its broken. Even in 1.10 - its practicaly useless. Its easier to just order to attack anything than use this 'Pursue'. Its just more likly you lost your unit in that state.

As for essence of the game, for me its: unit design, huge research tree, sensors system, commanders, campaing design\gameplay.
AS for removing buttons. I'm expecting some replacement. If whole row is removed - there should be something new or rebranded.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by vexed »

Per wrote: Also, I removed 'Pursue' in git master three years ago (yes, that is how long it has been since git master was put into an actual release). You guys are bit late with the outrage.
That just shows how bad things can get... :stressed:

As I said, it took less than 1 week to find this stuff missing, once people actually tried it.
And, as you can see by this thread, the poll clearly shows most people want it back.

On that subject, there are a bunch of things that have been removed/reworked in master that people would have no idea about, since, nobody is testing master builds, except on that rare occasion a few people actually do.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

vexed wrote:And, as you can see by this thread, the poll clearly shows most people want it back.
Or it shows that many people have faulty memory circuits and are under undue influence of nostalgia.

So if it is agreed that this did not work when I removed it, there is no point in further arguing that it should be 'put back' or 'reinstated', since that would be pointless (no point in having buttons that do nothing except soothe some people's emotions by existing). Someone would have to actually fix / implement 'Pursue', and that person is not me.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by montetank »

??? In 3.1.2 Pursue works. Mark your tanks-give the "pursue" order-click on the enemy unit. Thats it. It is a little difference between the normal attack order and pursue (like Terminator wrote above). Your units will follow the enemy unit in regions, which are not discovered. To be honest, i never use this pursue order, because after destroying the enemy unit, i have to search for my units. Guard and hold are important. Pursue isn`t.
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

montetank wrote:??? In 3.1.2 Pursue works. Mark your tanks-give the "pursue" order-click on the enemy unit. Thats it. It is a little difference between the normal attack order and pursue (like Terminator wrote above). Your units will follow the enemy unit in regions, which are not discovered. To be honest, i never use this pursue order, because after destroying the enemy unit, i have to search for my units. Guard and hold are important. Pursue isn`t.
I'm pretty sure that is not how 'Pursue' was meant to work. If you click on an enemy unit, it does not matter which of Pursue/Guard/Hold you have selected, it should chase the unit to the ends of the Earth unless return to repair kicks in or it loses sight of it. (I just tested this in 3.1, that's how it works there, at least.)
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by vexed »

Watch the video...
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDn39xoQiSE[/youtube]
As you can clearly see by the video, once they have locked onto the units that are running away, they will go after them at all cost, and they don't care about other threat levels or anything else around them.
There are a few times the units go out of sight range as well, and the units still pursue them.

Now, can we agree that it is working, as it should in the video?
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by Per »

vexed wrote:Now, can we agree that it is working, as it should in the video?
I don't know.

This is the original game, right?

It was not clear from the video - did you click on the target units, or were the targets automatically acquired?

By the way, since there has never been any future position extrapolation code in the game, it must be cheating to follow those units in and out of visibility. Are you fine with that?
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Re: Petition to reinstate Guard, Persue and Hold orders!

Post by vexed »

Per wrote:
vexed wrote:Now, can we agree that it is working, as it should in the video?
I don't know.

This is the original game, right?
Yeah.
It was not clear from the video - did you click on the target units, or were the targets automatically acquired?
The only thing I did was set front units to pursue, and 2 rear ones to hold...
By the way, since there has never been any future position extrapolation code in the game, it must be cheating to follow those units in and out of visibility. Are you fine with that?
I am wondering if it goes to their last known location or what...could be cheating as well, haven't looked at the code.
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