26 replies to this topic

[Tahribator]

Article from my blog, you can check it out there (without gigantic images making your eyes bleed).

One of the side effects of playing with the Battlemaster extensively was the constant encounters of invisible walls. Normally I'm playing with my brawlers and I'm not very bothered by them. But when I'm playing with an extremely poky 'Mech with high mounted hardpoints which require you to carefully measure how much you expose yourself, I suddenly realized there are still some spots with absolutely ridiculous collusion boxes. I thought I'd assemble a small list of my favourite invisible wall spots. Feel free to add your own favorite spots!

Number 1: The top of the platform in HPG

HPG's record holding invisible walls are IS-wide famous

These are the most ridiculous invisible walls in the game. The top is supposed to be an advantageous position for 'Mechs with high hardpoints but the invisible walls surround the top make it impossible to pull off any successful peeks. It's especially worse at the elevated boxy parts. You never know if you're going to actually hit. The invisible walls also force you to show almost half of your 'Mech to actually hit anything, alerting your opponents in the meanwhile. Blake may have mercy on you if you're in something with low mounted hardpoints. You have to drop down before you can shoot anything below.

PGI fixed the collusion boxes of the pillars at the top, but looks like they completely forgot to check the platform itself.

Number 2: Buildings at the top of Crimson platform

Now, this is a pretty tricky position to fight. There's little cover up there, so the only form of trading is by side peeking. There's an exception though. There's a little box on the tunnel side of the platform where you can peek over with taller 'Mechs. It has an awesome line of sight which allows you to shoot at 'Mechs coming up to the platform. Everything's perfect right?

!%")"!§)"!§!"%!!!!!

Well, until you actually shoot and hit this invisible wall. Other than this spot the Crimson has no problems, but this little devil had me raging a few times.


Number 3: The dreaded Tourmaline Desert crystals

Yep, there's a Catapult there

Another offender

PGI fixed the worst offending walls last year, but there are still plenty of them remaining. Because of this randomness, you never know if you're actually hit the targets visible over the crystals in E6-D5 area. Other than the times I'm desperately shooting at these, I sometimes troll the other team by standing behind some of these spots, seemingly visible to them, but actually hidden behind an invisible wall.


Number 4: The crashed Dropship parts in Tourmaline Desert

These things are simply infuriating. At a glance, you think you can shoot through the openings in these dropship sections. Wrong. The openings are blocked (not completely though) so it sometimes misleads you into dumping a huge alpha into nothing.

Don't even think about it

NOPE

The creepy Cicada gets to live another day thanks to a miracle

Number 5: Sides of the terraces in Viridian Bog

Viridian Bog is mostly free of infuriating invisible walls, but sides of the terraces are unfortunately still infected by this disease. Not as noticable or infuriating, but they're still there. The top of the terraces also still have some invisible walls that block quite a bit.

Deal with it

Nah

Number 6: The tunnel in Forest Colony

This is the reason I absolutely hate fighting in the tunnel in Forest Colony. Not only it's really cramped in there, it's also impossible to fight properly because of the massive invisible walls. Teammates blocking me while I'm being being torn apart and not being able to return fire because of the goddamn invisible walls is one of the most rage inducing moments I've had in MWO.

Tunnel, not even once

Edited by Tahribator, 16 February 2015 - 06:06 AM.

[Sarlic]

[First image]
HPG's record holding invisible walls are IS-wide famous

Low slung Atlai arms approves this post.

My god, that is one of the most common frustations i have when i am on the top of HPG. Trying to hit some guy below and then realise you cant hit it without exposing half of your chassis.

And not to mention the instructable atennas on Crimson Strait.

Good post!

Edited by Sarlic, 16 February 2015 - 06:05 AM.

[Lily from animove]

yes first HPG pic, i layed an airstrike there LOL, -.-

also HPG the lower level in the base the colums have like 2m wider hitboxes than they are visible

[Alcom Isst]

I wonder what would happen if the visual geometry matched the collision geometry. The game would probably look like MechWarrior 4.

[HARDKOR]

Remember the destryoed city map wherer you could actually shoot through the holes in the buildings? Amazing.

[Lily from animove]

Alcom Isst, on 16 February 2015 - 06:12 AM, said:

I wonder what would happen if the visual geometry matched the collision geometry. The game would probably look like MechWarrior 4.

In think this would add more stress on the servers, which now have to calculate more complex terrain, and suddenly everything would not crazyly bad, And yes would probably look like MW 2 xD

[Bigbacon]

what is odd about the tourmaline one with the wreckage is, I get shot through that thing all the time but I can never shoot through it.

[DaZur]

95% of MW:O's topology's collision geometry is provided by a collion mesh. The simplist way to visualize this is to imagine the topology covered with a sheet



As you can see it largely conforms to gross shape of the object but in areas of transition it occasionally extends past the origins shape. Additionally, gaps in the geometry are essentially covered (the finger hole in the loop of a cup or say a say the space between two boulders)...

In simple terms it's a much lower polygon representation of the origin object:



This is done as the performance cost to actually model the the topology to that level of detail would be far to steep...

PGI has been going in and manually adjusting a lot of this with each patch pass. That said, there is a lot of topology to cover (from multiple angles) and it's no small effort.

The best thing anyone can do is take a image of the offending geometry and send to support with a brief explanation. Understand however that some of it is not able to be fixed (Like spaces between object).

Edited by DaZur, 16 February 2015 - 06:35 AM.

[Keeshu]

This is a thing for support, but I just wanted to say wholeheartedly that i agree and these are the most annoying invisible barriers I've messed with as well. Just about any other invisible walls I don't care too much about since people arent near them, but these ones are ones I run into quite frequently since they are in very populated areas all the time.

Nice post, hope this thread doesn't seem like complaining, and more like a bug report. You did send this info to them right?

[The Great Unwashed]

Tip: watch your range-to-target indicator: it is a perfect indicator. If low: invisible wall. I usually find out too late as well Note that in the screenshots it reads as follows: 48,12,17,76,51,47,40,71,41,44m. All low.

I also frequently hit the invisible mountain sides at tournament, in addition to the crystals...

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 16 February 2015 - 07:15 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

(done in the style of Top of the tops)

Its Friday its Top of the blocked shots

da's da's to yellow pearl

yes very annoying and I completely agree its goddamit time, and I think said in a fun way, and they do need reporting

[Tarogato]

DaZur, on 16 February 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

95% of MW:O's topology's collision geometry is provided by a collion mesh. The simplist way to visualize this is to imagine the topology covered with a sheet <snip>

The collision with topology in MWO is perfect, actually. The sheet analogy is a great way to visualise how you can and cannot make topology/terrain in CryEngine itself, because CryEngine doesn't allow overhangs and such - terrain is basically a heatmap, but the collision mesh shares the exact same polygon count so there's no issue with it.

The collision issues are actually from the assets - items made or imported by PGI so that maps aren't just plain terrain without objects *cough Alpine*. This includes buildings, trees, and especially rocks of odd shapes. Many of this rocks may have been intended to be used at smaller scales, where the discrepancies in collida aren't really noticed, but when you scale these objects up and use them in MWO, the low polygon count starts to become a problem.

You can watch somebody going through the process here, and it's really not that complicated. It just requires a little time and love, and knowing exactly which assets are issuous.

Edited by Tarogato, 16 February 2015 - 07:40 AM.

[DaZur]

Tarogato, on 16 February 2015 - 07:19 AM, said:

The collision with topology in MWO is perfect, actually. The sheet analogy is a great way to visualise how you can and cannot make topology/terrain in CryEngine itself, because CryEngine doesn't allow over hangs and such - terrain is basically a heatmap.

The collision issues are actually from the assets - items made or imported by PGI so that maps aren't just plain terrain without objects. This includes buildings, trees, and especially rocks of odd shapes. Many of this rocks may have been intended to be used at smaller scales, where the discrepancies in collida aren't really noticed, but when you scale these objects up and use them in MWO, the low polygon count starts to become a problem.

You can watch somebody going through the process here, and it's really not that complicated. It just requires a little time and love, and knowing exactly which assets are issuous.

Just a point of correction... A lot of the buildings and larger assets are included in the collision mesh. I don't exactly remember where but a short while ago one of PGI's artists went through the process of developing a map in an article...

Distinctly I recall all the elevated buildings in Mining being treated like plateaus and included in the base topology collision wrapper.

[Tarogato]

DaZur, on 16 February 2015 - 07:39 AM, said:

Just a point of correction... A lot of the buildings and larger assets are included in the collision mesh. I don't exactly remember where but a short while ago one of PGI's artists went through the process of developing a map in an article...

Distinctly I recall all the elevated buildings in Mining being treated like plateaus and included in the base topology collision wrapper.

Ah yes, I didn't think of that. But yes, that's perfectly possible. Using terrain but adding a texture to create the illusion that it's actually a structure. The best part of this, is that the hit detection with 'buildings' created in this manner should already be perfect. If you go check those particular parts of the map, there should be no issues with collision and it's less work for the modelers because they don't have to manually work on those 'assets'. They just have to add a few rails and lips here and there, which they've done. The problem is, PGI can't do this for everything, or else the environments will start to look stale and repetitive.

---

Also worth noting... with HPG Manifold, the terrain is the moon-like surface on the outside. Everything else on that map... eeevvverrryyything in the center where everybody fights... is all assets. So that's a lot of work to sort through and find the offending meshes. However, no excuse for the fact that it's been how long now and we still have some blatant invisi-walls. Should have been fixed in the week or two following the map's launch. =/

Edited by Tarogato, 16 February 2015 - 07:49 AM.

[DaZur]

Tarogato, on 16 February 2015 - 07:45 AM, said:

Also worth noting... with HPG Manifold, the terrain is the moon-like surface on the outside. Everything else on that map... eeevvverrryyything in the center where everybody fights... is all assets. So that's a lot of work to sort through and find the offending meshes. However, no excuse for the fact that it's been how long now and we still have some blatant invisi-walls. Should have been fixed in the week or two following the map's launch. =/

One thing I think hurts when using the collision wrapper is it averages topology. This causes issues where sometimes the collision map is narrowly inside the rendered geometry and others where is it outside the rendered topology.

I think this is the primary culprit when it comes to barriers like the walls on HPG and the crystals on Tourmaline

What ever PGI's artists are using to build their collision mesh needs tighter tolerance numbers IMHO...

[LORD TSARKON]

Its not just the big mechs that have this problem..... A Pirates Bane Locust is craptastic on top of the Terraces on Viridian Bog because of the invisible wall spots....

If you see closely the tops are concaved... and you have to expose way too much of a Locust to Fire over that invisible wall..


Here are some screenshots .... Same Locations for both screenshots... 2nd one is just Zoomed

Edited by LORD TSARKON, 16 February 2015 - 09:28 AM.

[DONTOR]

This post is fantastic, great topic. What about Canyon network? Doesnt that map still have alot of invisi walls?

[occusoj]

The HPG platform is my current number one.
Bring K2 with high mounted ERPPCs.
Unleash 20dmg for 30 heat
Watch them disappear in the allmighty void.

Dont even bother with that edge when using mechs like an atlas.

Tourmaline ranks second.
Especially that junk at crashsite. Enemy stands still behind that, a perfect shot. Charge dat dual gauss. Result: massive sadface.

The bad collisionn geomtery is one of the biggest flaws of MWO in my opinion.

[uebersoldat]

Why would they pick CryEngine over Unreal? Just curious. Would it not be a faster and more dev friendly to overcome this stuff?

I think, looking back, most of the progress barriers for this game is due to a smaller, somewhat newer/inexperienced team working with one of the most difficult engines available right now. To say nothing of the IGP interference over the last few years.
EDIT: IMO Unreal powered games just tend to look a lot better than Crytek. Just pure opinion though.

Edited by uebersoldat, 16 February 2015 - 10:13 AM.

[occusoj]

uebersoldat, on 16 February 2015 - 10:11 AM, said:

Why would they pick CryEngine over Unreal? Just curious. Would it not be a faster and more dev friendly to overcome this stuff?

$$$

uebersoldat, on 16 February 2015 - 10:11 AM, said:

somewhat newer/inexperienced team working with one of the most difficult engines available right now.

Its not the engine .