Stop Wizards Flinching!

Basically the idea is for wizards, when winding up to blow up a group of critters, target an individual. Halfway through the action the individual in the group they were targeting dies. Instead of unleashing a fireball on a bunch of attackers, they "flinch", swallow their fireball, and think about starting again while an attacking archer picks them off. Just release the fireball and start again.

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Originally Posted by choczombie

Basically the idea is for wizards, when winding up to blow up a group of critters, target an individual. Halfway through the action the individual in the group they were targeting dies. Instead of unleashing a fireball on a bunch of attackers, they "flinch", swallow their fireball, and think about starting again while an attacking archer picks them off. Just release the fireball and start again.

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That's not a flinch, what happens there is that the target of the wizards fireball died (for whatever reason, a defense, another troop, w/e), and the "flinch" you see is the wizard retargeting.

TBH there really isn't a real fix for it, unless they changed the retargeting system for every single troop (unless you want your hogs/giants/golems/balloons running at their initial target defenses, even if they were already destroyed :rolleyes:)

I know what the movement is, and why. But when the fireball would have slaughtered stuff regardless of the individual target not being there, it'd be nice if it simply let go instead of starting it's action over again. It's mainly a defensive thing when the wiz are up against a bunch of archers/barbs etc attacking. All the wiz aim at the same target as the cannon/archer tower, and repeatedly don't unleash their splash capability.

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Originally Posted by choczombie

I know what the movement is, and why. But when the fireball would have slaughtered stuff regardless of the individual target not being there, it'd be nice if it simply let go instead of starting it's action over again. It's mainly a defensive thing when the wiz are up against a bunch of archers/barbs etc attacking. All the wiz aim at the same target as the cannon/archer tower, and repeatedly don't unleash their splash capability.

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If the animation completed where a dead targets hitbox "was" where is the fireball going? AI is set to target nearest target first. If the fireball was let go after a hitbox was destroyed, it would go behind where the target was and hit a cannon (or w/e) if close enough, but the next closest target was another archer breaking the way this game works. And if you want to use the splash radius with no origin point of impact (exploding on the edge of its projectile) then that would be ♥♥♥♥♥ing. Unlike a mortar, which targets the ground and has a set destination, this goes across the map to which other buildings reside and needs to have a hitbox to target, in other words, re-targeting.

The only thing the devs could do which shouldn't break the game would be to cancel the pullback animation and re-target faster but only for re-targeting after a previous hitbox was destroyed but not fired upon. Leaving the normal targeting speed alone as to not break its attack speed.

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Originally Posted by Logix

If the animation completed where a dead targets hitbox "was" where is the fireball going? AI is set to target nearest target first. If the fireball was let go after a hitbox was destroyed, it would go behind where the target was and hit a cannon (or w/e) if close enough, but the next closest target was another archer breaking the way this game works. And if you want to use the splash radius with no origin point of impact (exploding on the edge of its projectile) then that would be ♥♥♥♥♥ing. Unlike a mortar, which targets the ground and has a set destination, this goes across the map to which other buildings reside and needs to have a hitbox to target, in other words, re-targeting.

The only thing the devs could do which shouldn't break the game would be to cancel the pullback animation and re-target faster but only for re-targeting after a previous hitbox was destroyed but not fired upon. Leaving the normal targeting speed alone as to not break its attack speed.

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I won't pretend to know how the targeting is currently coded. Once the fireball is in flight it hits regardless of whether the target is alive or dead at that point. The problem is that (mainly defensive) wizards don't release the fireball at a dead target. It could continue to fire at target's last known location, or could fire at the tile on which a target had previously stood. Alternatively, if there is a target within 1 tile (or splash range, is that maybe 0.5 tiles?) then to instantly switch to that target and follow through rather than starting again.

The impact it has is only really going to be on defensive wiz, although attacking wiz against CC troops would also benefit.

Actually, it would add a component to the game if the 'hit-box' died and the released attack traveled on into the nothing. Would add a touch of realism to 'miss' a target that's no longer there to distribute damage and eliminates the 'whoops, target is gone' pause and reset.

Yes, Wizards do this on attack to. Send in a mob after a Golem meatshield and watch what happens. Shoot. Shoot. Shoo-pause, reset, die.

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Originally Posted by choczombie

I won't pretend to know how the targeting is currently coded. Once the fireball is in flight it hits regardless of whether the target is alive or dead at that point. The problem is that (mainly defensive) wizards don't release the fireball at a dead target. It could continue to fire at target's last known location, or could fire at the tile on which a target had previously stood. Alternatively, if there is a target within 1 tile (or splash range, is that maybe 0.5 tiles?) then to instantly switch to that target and follow through rather than starting again.

The impact it has is only really going to be on defensive wiz, although attacking wiz against CC troops would also benefit.

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They target the same offensively and defensively. And that's basically what I just said but you cannot re-target instantly, it's ch-eating, the only way to fix this without breaking the game would be to stop the pullback (cancel the pull back animation,) and then re-target at the normal attack speed. This will increase the speed overall for re-targeting without breaking the game and would only require one more function in the code, so it's doable.

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Originally Posted by tomatosarenice

That's not a flinch, what happens there is that the target of the wizards fireball died (for whatever reason, a defense, another troop, w/e), and the "flinch" you see is the wizard retargeting.

TBH there really isn't a real fix for it, unless they changed the retargeting system for every single troop (unless you want your hogs/giants/golems/balloons running at their initial target defenses, even if they were already destroyed :rolleyes:)

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This. I have seen posts like these a lot and this guy knows whats up.

They should be coded like how the air bomb is coded.

Notice that when an air bomb targets a healer/minion/dragon, if that unit dies the bomb keeps flying that course and detonates in mid-air in the middle of nothing with no new target. I would assume it deploys, gets the targets co-ordinates and moves towards that point, then explodes when it's co-ordinates match the target's. If the target dies, the co-ordinates just stop moving and the bomb will travel to the last known point and boom.

The wizard fireball should be the same so it is actually useful when defending.

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Originally Posted by Hi5er

They should be coded like how the air bomb is coded.

Notice that when an air bomb targets a healer/minion/dragon, if that unit dies the bomb keeps flying that course and detonates in mid-air in the middle of nothing with no new target. I would assume it deploys, gets the targets co-ordinates and moves towards that point, then explodes when it's co-ordinates match the target's. If the target dies, the co-ordinates just stop moving and the bomb will travel to the last known point and boom.

The wizard fireball should be the same so it is actually useful when defending.

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Right. It should not be that difficult to program splash damage troops to continue their attack once started regardless of whether or not their target is still there, with the leading edge of their projectile still exploding at the range of the targeted hitbox.. I have seen archers fire at nothing, but a troop for which that would actually matter and make sense? That's just too much.