pathfinding
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DayZ switches over to DirectX 11 and reworked controls
The days of DayZ as we knew it are over; all hail the upcoming changes to everyone's favorite gankfest featuring the occasional zombie! In an interview this week, DayZ creator Dean Hall outlined six improvements that the team is working on for the standalone version of the game. Right out of the gate is the decision to add an option to toggle DirectX 11 to make everything look a lot better. "Implementing DirectX 10 or 11 will have a dramatic, instant visual difference and quite a significant performance difference," Hall said. Other changes include new 64-bit server architecture, better hunting mechanics, improved controls, a reworked loot system, and an early game experience fashioned specifically for new players.
DayZ gives zombies a hand crossing the street
Poor zombies. All they want to do is eat a little brains and earn your respect, just like anyone else, but that's hard to do when they're walking into walls and clipping badly into a dumpster. Fortunately for our undead brothers and sisters, the devs on DayZ have figured out a good solution to problematic pathfinding. "Our problem was not unique, but our situation was: our world is very big yet it requires the same precision as a small one," the devs wrote in a blog post. "The team devoted to solving this decided to use navigation meshes. The serious problem it presented, though, was how to generate these meshes. With nearly two million objects on the map, doing it by hand would not be an option. So a method was devised to split the world up into grids, and then raycast at a precise interval and generate chunks of navmesh." The result? Zombies that can figure out how to cross a street and go into a building without embarassing themselves. The team also talked about some of the livestock it's creating for the game, including carp to be fished out of ponds by survivors.
City of Steam dev blog talks pathfinding challenges
Did you wake up this morning and think, "Hmm, if there's one thing I'd like to know more about, it's pathfinding in City of Steam." If so, you're in luck. If not, well, too bad, because you're reading this post, which is about City of Steam pathfinding. More specifically, the folks at Mechanist Games have released a new dev diary that dives deep into the nitty gritty of the steampunk title's optimization process. As it happens, the game's movement system relies on a grid to determine what is possible or impossible as a move. This makes it challenging to present a smooth WASD input option for the player. Head to the official CoS site to see how the devs are tackling the issue.
Hunter glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for hunters. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Hunters have one new minor glyph that won't appear automatically anywhere, Glyph of Marking. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Dazzled Prey becomes Animal Bond Arcane Shot becomes Camouflage Concussive Shot becomes Distracting Shot Bestial Wrath becomes Endless Wrath Immolation Trap becomes Explosive Trap Wyvern Sting becomes Icy Solace Trap Launcher becomes Marked For Death Kill Command becomes Mend Pet Silencing Shot becomes No Escape Rapid Fire becomes Pathfinding Steady Shot becomes Scattering Explosive Shot becomes Tranquilizing Shot Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Aimed Shot becomes Aspects Raptor Strikes becomes Aspect of the Beast Kill Shot becomes Aspect of the Cheetah Feign Death becomes Fireworks Scare Beast becomes Stampede Serpent Sting becomes Tame Beast It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Daily iPhone App: Galaxy Express
Galaxy Express is a fun little puzzle game that's similar to Chu Chu Rocket or Chuck the Ball. There's a cute metagame story in this app with some well-written dialogue, but the core game has you pushing a little astronaut around a starfield using some arrows that you place out on the game screen. Put arrows in the right places, hit go, and the little astronaut will follow your rules exactly, hopefully leading him to make his delivery on the destination planet. It's simple stuff, and the difficulty doesn't ramp up too quickly, though by the end of the game's 120 puzzles there are a few mind-benders to beat. There are some good social features as well, including the option to either see any of your solutions that you've done, share them with friends, or even check out what other people have done. There's Game Center integration in the game now, and the graphics aren't really animated, but they look good on a high resolution display anyway. Galaxy Express is currently available at just 99 cents for a universal app, or there's a lite version you can pick up for free. "Galaxy EX," as it's called under the icon on the phone, is a well-made little puzzle game that's easy going enough for almost everyone to enjoy.
The Art of War(craft): Must-have PvP talents for hunters in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport, with the inside line for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP. We don't have much time before Cataclysm hits, so let's get down to business. We've talked about some optimal talents for death knights and druids for PvP, so now we turn our attention to hunters. Hunters have always had a tough time in arenas, not necessarily because the class was broken but because the format simply wasn't conducive to the hunter playstyle. It got so bad, in fact, that Blizzard designed an arena -- the Ring of Valor -- specifically to benefit hunters. On the other hand, hunters have always lorded it over in the open expanse of the battlegrounds. The good news is that battlegrounds will be cool again. Well, they've always been cool in my book, but soon they'll be rewarding cool gear, too. That means hunters will once again feel like PvP gods (without needing the help of an enhancement shaman). There's one big change to hunters in Patch 4.0.1 and that's the change in resource from mana to focus. The difference with the way focus behaves is that rather than a resource well that pays for spells and abilities (mana), hunters have abilities that generate focus in combat such as Steady Shot and Cobra Shot, and then a whole load of focus dumps. In a way it's like death knight runic power or warrior rage without the decay. This means you'll always want to have nearly full focus but never gain focus that will simply slough off because you're over your maximum. It's a careful balance of gaining and spending, although focus regenerates at a steady rate.
Researchers teach ASIMO and HRP-2 a bit of real life Frogger
Some George Costanza-types at Carnegie Mellon have repurposed their own hard earned knowledge of Frogger maneuvers at the university arcade into useful object avoidance techniques for robots. They've outfitted both ASIMO and HRP-2 with versions of the technology, which allows the robots to detect their surroundings, create 3D maps of obstacles and plan routes accordingly (and actually has nothing to do with Frogger). If you check out the two videos after the break, you can see that these guys really put the bots through the ringer, including some death defying spinning obstacles that ASIMO avoided with ease, and the "real life" environment the HRP-2 is faced with... but seriously, couldn't they just let ASIMO have the blue dot already? [Thanks, Poly Bug]
In WoW and other games, pathfinding is still "kind of a problem"
If you're not much of a computer programming person, this one might make your eyes glaze over a bit, but if you have any interest how the AI of videogame characters, including those in WoW, is programmed, this article about designing AI pathfinding is a terrific read. "Pathfinding" is a method of determining how NPCs move within a game world like Azeroth -- you and I can clearly see where the walls and bad guys are, and so we just have to press buttons to avoid either ingame, but NPCs (including pets and mobs) aren't quite that easy -- they need to be told clearly by programmers where they can go and how to get there. And when the rules they're given don't quite work, you get the funny seen above.Many games use a "waypoint" system -- NPCs are given a series of paths around the space they can move in, and use those paths to determine where they can and can't go. The article argues for a "navigation mesh," a much looser definition of available space, which NPCs can then draw their own path across. It's a little technical, but it's cool to see the inner workings (and weaknesses) of Azeroth's code.Of course, it's extremely unlikely that we'll ever really see the NPC pathfinding engine updated in WoW anyway -- Blizzard will update their system in certain places to fix things like exploits (and the occasional annoying escort quest, i.e. all of them), but there's no real need to update the whole system completely when there's so much content to be done. Hopefully videos like this will bring the problem to light, and in future games we'll see some better pathfinding. Someday, that NPC will know that it's easier to go around the pillar rather than trying to walk right through it.
Blood Sport: Gear decisions for S4
We're now a few weeks into Season 4. And, we've known even before it started that Season 4 gear would carry some rating requirements. And while we're all hopefully enjoying the new challenges of the new season, there are some folks who are starting Season 4 relatively fresh.They don't have much Vengeful gear, or even Merciless Gladiator's gear -- they might be starting out in some quest greens and blues, with only a smattering of PvP gear across the character. Heck, some players might be in all Vengeful and Vindicator's gear already, and still facing the same question. Where should you start with the Season 4 gear?Rating requirements and high point costs can make the gear curve seem like an insurmountable obstacle. Don't worry -- WoW Insider is here to help. Let's chart a basic path of gear accrual -- via PvP only -- that will help every fledgeling PvPer grow into an Arena powerhouse. We're going to follow two paths, actually. One will assume that you do have the ratings required for each piece of gear. The other will assume that you do not have the ratings. In either case, our goal here is going to be to be sure you have a plan to pick up the available gear as you gain the available points.
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
