[General] Creating Big Scale Battles

[NightStalker]

So, for one of the cinematics in my campaign needs to have a big scale battle, where there are around 30 units on each side spread on a large area. I don't want to leave them by themselves because it doesn't look any good that way. Some units go back to their guard positions after hitting once and then stay there the rest of the day. Some run around like mad pigs trying to find a way to one specific enemy unit, etc... tons of fails.

I can code a few units and I'll do that for some unique actions in the battle, but I don't want to trigger each unit for 60ish times. The battle will only be visible for about a minute but only a few seconds of it needs to be good to the eye, because the camera will do a close up shot passing through the battlefield, that is why I will specifically code a few events as the camera moves, but for the whole battle what would you guys suggest?

 

[Sieben]

Off the top of my head, there's just one thing I can think of right now: reduce units collision. It will avoid some pathing issues. There's nothing more annoying than a unit who tries to throw themselves into battle but can't, because their collision is too high, even though there's a wide space between the other units. I always reduce slightly units collision, not only in cinematics: I find it more realistic that way .
And about units who go back to guard positions, maybe you can order groups of units to attack-move forward?

 

[NightStalker]

Reducing it could be beneficial yeah, lemme add that.

I'm afraid I'm gonna order them using unit groups as you've said. I wanted to avoid any coding for the battle because I feel a bit lazy

 

[Sieben]

I wanted to avoid any coding for the battle because I feel a bit lazy

Ahah, I understand that
I'm also thinking of something else: why not increasing acquisition range for battling units? I don't know if it will prevent them from returning to guard position, but at least it will make them more likely to go back to battle. And it involves no triggering I don't know if it's really efficient though.
Also, isn't there anything is gameplay constants that could help? Creeps Guard Distance and Creeps Return Distance can be modified, I don't know if there could be something simular for regular units that you would find useful.

 

[NightStalker]

That'll need for testing and stuff, I think I'll go with triggering them within Unit Groups

 

[Dr Super Good]

You make a function that produces a "duel". For example say you want a Footman attacking a Grunt in a typical Alliance Vs Horde battle. You create 1 Footman and 1 Grunt and order them to attack each other. Both should be owned by Players and not Neutrals as Neutrals have their own AI mechanics which can sometimes conflict. Now with 24 players one should have no problem allocating even a few just for cinematic use.

This function can be called multiple times to populate your battlefield. For a line of infantry fighting another line a loop could be used.

Unfortunately a lot of trial and error is involved with this. One should be able to guess where to setup lines of infantry, high tech units and ranged but if it looks good only some testing will show.

Keep melee conflict limited to some extent. Too many melee units trying to fight in a small area will result in ugly crushes. If necessary you can have some "second wave" lines behind the melee scuffle which are basically units ordered to move behind the conflict zone and hold position, as if waiting for space to fight in formation.

 

[NightStalker]

There won't be way too many units, so crash won't be a problem.

The cinematic will take place when the battle has spread across the current area, from the plains, into the forest so a single won't work for me.

But what you've suggested might save me. Spawning two enemy units for random generated points, and pre placing and triggering what specific events I want to happen and some extra units dead on the battlefield and voila!

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I'll write here my results in a few days. Thanks guys ^^

 

[Dr Super Good]

Spawning two enemy units for random generated points

Cinematics should use fixed points and not random. That said as long as the RNG seed is set to the same value at start it will not matter if the results look good.

 

[NightStalker]

Ill find a way around with the unit spawning, its not a big deal since i have now figured a way out.

 

[millzy]

You can have a clash of units run into eachother and have them removed. then a cut scene with the units that fight after the clash pree placed it makes things alot easier. theres a example of what im talking about in my map

Revenge of the Blademaster - Part 1