Projectile trajectory bug - Game Video and images included!

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Sophung wrote:

Video of the game physics following the ground or a YouTube link to an airplane flying around? Jk

I don't have any screen capture software but I gave you enough information to replicate on your own. Or I can show you in game when I get home in about 1.5 hours.

I will not be able to play tonight as I am having dinner with my wife's parents. If you can convince someone who does have video capture software to capture this and upload it that would be greatly appreciated.

Would screenshots suffice?

Possibly, the problem with a screenshot is that it is much harder to tell what is going on. You would need a fair amount of screenshots to show what you are doing, the result, how the result happened and how to avoid the result.

You say shooting up will get it over stairs while shooting straight will not.

If you cannot find someone to record it then yes screenshots will suffice and I will let you know if more proof is needed.

Okay here's my attempt at screenshots, if you need more proof then I can show you in game.
F8 in game unfortunately hides the cursor but I posted "B" images with markups of approximately where I would have had to aim in order to get the desired effect.

I've placed them in spoilers to hopefully make reading easier.

Image 1A is fired from below the stairs while shift clicking at the bottom of the stairs


Image 1B is marked up


Image 2A is fired from below the stairs while shift clicking on the stairs


Image 2B is marked up


Image 3A is fired from above the stairs while shift clicking below the stairs


Image 3B is marked up
Note: the trajectory of the arrow completely surprised me. it appears to bend, please notice the ice patch on the ground and the ever so slight bend in the grey line of the in-game trail. This can be replicated on your own if you don't believe this picture. Again, I personally can't explain it as a fact.. What's also amusing is I thought I made a mistake so I went back to redo it and noticed my mouse wasn't aimed where the bottom green line goes, it's actually nearer to the bottom of the stairs. Of course the entire thing could be my own lack of perspective. ****** OR ****** It may be that the character's height 1.6 meters is skewed by the distance of the camera and the angle the character is shooting. Most likely it could be that the devs didn't create modelling of the character aiming his bow downward so they had to cheat, and only being able to use subtle bends had to increase the distance before the hit. While I believe the later opinion is likely true; it could only ever be confirmed by a dev and I just don't care enough to bother them with it.


Image 4A is fired from above the stairs while shift clicking at the top of the stairs


Image 4B is marked up


Edit:
I decided to also give a markup of image 1 with M3lt's trajectory just in case you still needed convincing. (Red line is M3lt's) The trajectory differences are almost identical to the picture I put up with chess pieces, so yes that picture continues to be relevant.


One last edit: I figured the first person shooter argument would come up when I said to aim for the feet. Now that you see the cursor really is on the ground it should now make sense that you're firing at the enemy x,y coordinate (feet) while the game calculates the z coordinate for you. Hence why I chose a picture of chess pieces to show real world behavior of objects moving in 3d space while bound to a relative z plane.

I will admit that seeing it this way makes a huge difference. Still do not like the chess picture or the final picture because I feel like when I am aiming I am aiming past the person I am trying to hit so my cursor is much farther away thus not creating the picture in final picture.

Either way well done. I will have to try this out myself.

You don't have to like the two pictures, you just need to understand them, which it sounds like you're getting there.

BTW welcome back to reality, once you're more used to it you'll look back at m3lt's video of D3 and TL and you'll wonder how you were ever fooled by their 2D plane overlay. Don't feel bad though, I fell for the overlay too and didn't realize how unappealing it looked until his video made the side by side comparison and I started looking at how D3 arrows fly. Now it just looks like a flat image and I can't see anything 3D about it.

But by gones be by gones and you're saved now errr exiled now, and that's all that matters.

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Rhys wrote:

Thank you for the extremely detailed feedback. Videos of any problem/bug are always greatly appreciated.

I have seen your footage, and I believe that this NOT a bug, rather a simple misunderstanding:

Arrows are NOT fired at the point you click on. This is intentional. Instead, they are fired at a point approx. 1.6m directly above the point on the ground that you click, so that they travel parallel to the ground (assuming the ground is flat).

This allows arrows to travel past the point you click and to hit enemies in the line of travel. It helps, for example, when you mis-click near an enemy since the arrow can still go on to hit something, instead of getting lodged uselessly in the ground.

Here is a illustration of how the arrow is travelling. This is me using paint to draw onto one of your screenshots.


Note that the line from the click point to the character's feet is parallel to the arrow's flight path.

Thanks again for the detailed bug report, but I don't think this is a bug!

Yes, the reason is quite easy to understand, but still this behavior can be implemented even if the projectile actually cross mouse cursor. In my opinion it does't need to hit ground, but to follow direction which I choose and not the game.

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chrispytoast wrote:

I will admit that seeing it this way makes a huge difference. Still do not like the chess picture or the final picture because I feel like when I am aiming I am aiming past the person I am trying to hit so my cursor is much farther away thus not creating the picture in final picture.

Either way well done. I will have to try this out myself.

As far as I can tell you were pretty much thinking enemies slid along the ground so you could fire an arrow at any part of the screen occupied by the enemy in order to hit them, when in reality the enemy is standing up (But your perspective prevents you from seeing this) so if you aim past the top half of the enemy sprite/model you will actually be firing your arrows next to the enemy.

The auto targeting system that is used when clicking on any part of an enemy correctly adjusts your aim to hit the location occupied by the enemy properly so that clicking the top half of the enemy will still succeed.

Edit: You were led to believe that you can target any part of an enemy and hit it, because that is true when actually clicking on an enemy. When you are not clicking on an enemy however, you have to target the area they are standing at in a 3D world.

Ranger class in this game = GG no RE, dev team.

I think that the projectile targeting mechanic is completely intuitive.
Want to walk somewhere? Click where you want to walk to and your feet will be on top of your cursor.
Want to fire somewhere? Click where you want to shoot through in the same fashion, that is whatever is standing on your cursor will be hit, or it will hit anything standing inline with your cursor and your feet, which is anything that you would run into if you took the same move command.

This method is consistent. It ensures that, no matter what action you are taking whether that be movement or firing an arrow, the volume of space you are targeting remains the same. You click the same spot to move through a door as you do to fire through a door.

They could have made a shoulder based system, where you aim at where you want your shoulder to be after movement and where you fire arrows through the cursor. This would've been intuitive too. But what they should not do is make a feet based targeting system for movement, and a shoulder based targeting system for projectile firing. We need a single consistent method for specifying what volume of space we want to target, and we have that. Changing the method based on our actions would be far more confusing and rubbish. Making a separate system for each mechanic would be extremely unintuitive especially when different systems can be activated by different keystrokes within the same second (You want your arrows to hit the same target as your Rain of Arrows without moving your mouse).

So yes, a shoulder based system would have been more natural for firing arrows. But it would not be more natural for moving or dodging or ground based projectiles or AoEs.

I much prefer naturally grasping where I am going to dodge to than naturally grasping where my arrow is flying. The current system is therefore the best system in my eyes, so just learn how to aim your arrows. And autoattack is always there if you don't want to.