Proplayer explains the genius mechanics of the WC3 Engine that Blizzard imbued it with - Grubby
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- Опубликовано: 6 май 2023
- Today let's "open the hood" of the Warcraft 3 game engine and explain some cool spell casting interaction, you might find a couple of helpful tips in this one!
The TRUTH about Warcraft 3 SPELLS Blizzard doesn't you to know! (Live on 4-May-2023)
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I didn't knew any of this and would have used shift for all of it.
But it does make sense that healing salve does it in reverse. Assuming you have just 1 salve left and gave the action to heal one unit, but you have changed your mind and want to heal a different unit instead. That way the last given action is the one that is actually performed.
So, they did indeed thought about it, nice :)
But is not that equivalent to using any other active item or ability or ensnare with only one raider? There is no group involved in calculations so it works differently, although it's just my theory. How for example staff of wind will work? The same as healing salve?
that’s thoughtful!
I have two possible theories for the casting priority when you’re moving away:
1. In a retreating scenario it’s the closest unit that is in the most danger, that most needs to keep running. The farthest away unit can safely turn and support them. Blizzard was trying to make them behave smarter.
2. The distance calculation might include the distance to get to the current movement target or even to clear the movement queue.
yea but the casting priority was debunked at the end of the video no? it wasn't actually how it worked
Great video! It's mind-boggling to still see menu bugs happening... Reforged has stained this masterpiece of a game forever...
The amount of times he thought he had figured it out, and even went on to explain it, only to test it and have his entire theory destroyed 😂
Thank you for the video!
3:00 I think it is because, since all your units are going away, the game engine realizes that it will be first to leave the radius of the spell, and should be used first so all targets can be effected without slowing the retreat.
The general idea is the game take into the account the spell range. So the movement plays trick with the engine.
P.S. I learned a lot about human surprised sounds from this video.
If memory serves the healing salve interaction is specifically on abilities with no cooldown or multiple charges. Warcraft 3 does something weird with the same ability being used on multiple targets. It auto-queues ability uses in that order but it can't queue different abilities without using shift. I remember this being the case with using Heal from priests as well, you could tell them to heal one unit, then heal another with autocast off and they will heal in reverse order as well. Same goes for Wand of Lightning Shield.
It's been a literal decade since I last experienced this interaction, I've just been living the olden days through Grubby as one does.
Another note: I think this also works for all spells and abilities as long as the cast animation/delay is longer than the actual cooldown of the ability. I might just go into a world editor and test chain lightning at 0 mana cost and 0 cooldown to see if I can cast chain lightning in reverse order.
Hilarious video, and we learned a lot, Grubby learned too ahah
15:30 Gubby i tried telling you that like 6 years ago for a faster start to build Altar and Burrow because u click and select each Peon separately xD
You can select ALL your 5 start Peons, send em to gold mine and quickly BAltar BburrOw your peons from those 5 instantly and have em run to build it while the others gather. I guess you never saw when i told you that 😂❤
Worker priority chooses nearest in each category in the order below:
1. Inactive
2. Active (not same task)
3. Active (same task)
hills of glory is 1st map i have ever played. lost to bot couple times. watched replay and copy computer build order. my 1st gaming improvement. such a memory
This is unironically one of the most interesting videos I have seen in a while!
Pretty cool to see a deep dive like this, and some amusing reactions when things don't go expected. If I had to guess, this is a pathfinding interaction gone wrong where it detects that a peon is in the way perhaps, and tries to cancel that peon's goal and subsequently uses that peon to do the new building instead. That's just my own attempt at explaining it.
5:00 the speed of preparing all this like it’s nothing 🤯
14:40 it makes the closest peon make the newest structure you ordered and cancel its previous building order no matter what structure it is, however sometimes by the time you order a second structure to be built when selecting multiple peons, the first peon ios already further away from it so it chooses a different peon. only exception is when the peon is already in the hitbox of the structure (the area it automatically orders any units to go out of when the peon arrives) or when youre ordering construction of multiple same structures
(the reason it works like that is coz the game believes the different buildings are different ''abilitties'' the peons have, and as we know that is also how it works with spells)
as for the moving thing, im not sure about other races but when i tested night elf (some long time ago) it didnt care if they stood still or not
I love this video so much!
Love the stack versus queue distinction
Please test maybe the "sometimes" rule is based on how far moving peons are from the target building command.
You are performing an extra action when using healing salve via the shift key. You could just press NumPad 4, then hold shift and click all the targets. But it would only use your healing salves from that exact inventory space.
I think if they are moving, it still re-searches who is closest, however it searches based on the target location the peon is moving TO not where it currently is. And then if the whole group all has the same target location, the tie-breaker goes back again to whoever is closest right now.
If you ask them to go ouest, and try to make a command in east, the game will choose the one wish is the closest to done what he is doing. So Since A was the nearest to east, he will go first to do the job since he is the first to complete first task
it's 2023 and I'm still learning things about wc3
That stuff may be happening because of the pathfinding after correction, which basically reorders your last movement order every few frames, which does improve pathfinding. So when your units are on the move and you order to build something in exact moment when that stuff happens it overrides the automatic move order, that has to be made by pathfinding system, by your new build command. Or at least that's why that control bug can happening most of the time in games.
Also those kinds of pathfinding systems are the reason why your units can try to change their path a bit by themselves if they are getting suddenly blocked by something on their way, because as I said earlier the game just repeats your last movement order every few frames and because of that each time it happens the game calculates a new rout for your unit. This is also why some games may become unplayable if you unlock the framerate and make it so high, that automatic reordering system starts to override itself lol
Wouldn't think obscure game mechanics would be so entertaining but here i am at the end of the video.
In the send part it remindme of the "reverse polish stack" that old calculators use.
This is some of the stuff I miss most. Real nice to see 🤓
Its a funny coincidence talking about wc3 implementation details 20 yea after the game released, and at the same time I am messing around with implementing RTS mechanics in python (just for fun). Starting to think about a state system and how I can manage groups of units. That aside I noticed another bug in wc3, where if I click shift a worker to build then go back to collect wood, the order cancels if the building is just on the edge of vision and I move my view screen away (s.t it is not in view anymore).
I think it has to do with how the game handles vision and lock on. The units probably follow an invisible straight line extending from the front of their model. This is most likely used to calculate the distance, and it makes a mistake by calculating the distance from the wrong side of the map.
Never mind, the kodo and raiders prove otherwise. It might just be an obstruction issue
Back in the day when devs thought hotkeys had to be assigned to letters unique that was in the spells name and they thought it was a good idea to have items on numpad and all spells on the left side of the keyboard.
9:53 Had to double back, didnt think he said no SHIFT
10:38 the "stack vs qeue" thing is very interesting. It should be a qeue, but it behaves like a stack. In fact it probably shouldn't be a qeue at all, because the last command should overwrite the one before it, since no aditional keys where held(like shift)....but it does behave like a stack. Very interesting, I wonder if it is indeed intended by the devs or some kind of oversight
it's super hillarious watching grubby slowly losin his mind lmao
Maybe the developer added a "stack" mechanic for items, which means last in first out, it might just be an algorithm oversight. You could test with multiple kodos (4-5), heal salve them in different order (distance not important, actually in a random order would be preferable) now watch if they all are applied in exact reverse order. That would be a FILO algo (first in last out)
ok just reached that part of the video where a viewer mentions that lol. well it can be unintentional, because the algorithm is easy to change, so why would they opt for a stack when everything else isnt? Maybe its just an oversight
Would be really cool to see how Wc3 would play with starcraft 2 convenience (in terms of control groups and units)
This is also the first map i did a custom on against night elf i think i was human because i had gotten through a few of their missions. Because it has so much horizontal tree line i built to defend the open space and was stunned when the keep came through the trees from force of nature
Maybe the logic behind the going away units is that the unit a in your case would reach the "going to" target first from all of these (so it has more time to do something).
Interesting video Grubby.
What about undead acolytes? I used to main ud back when I played and it always bothered me how shift clicking would make the acolytes go through the animations before doing the queued task. Whereas manually building you could instantly cancel the animation for a second of efficiency at the cost of micro ofc
That’s backswing and animation canceling and there’s a good reason for it (aesthetics- and later; skill expression)
Hi grubby! It looked to me that if you did multi build command and the path to the building site was in the way, the building was cancelled because something was in the way. Love your vids~ cheers grub
15:54 gg 🤯
wait a minute.. you're using numpad keys for items?
I expected everyone to have some hotkey thing running in the background to remap this.
I had one for DotA, and had Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5,6 mapped for item uses.
Anyway, if the left hand is around WASD, and the right hand is on the mouse, how do you use the Numpad keys intuitively??
i also had no idea and i was shocked about that. It would be impossible for me to move the hand all over the keyboard and hit at the first try the right number on numpad with speed and precision. Maybe i have some physical limitations (es small hands) but i rarely bind anything beyond the T/G/B keyboard buttons in videogames
Back in the day you could not remap item hotkeys (even with programs). I don't know if it's still the case nowadays.
Like a piano player switches from high notes to low notes with his left hand while right hand remains in the high
whaaat
If I tried to do that I'd loose my grasp or reality. Well maybe not so dramatically, but my concentration would break and I'd need to look at the keyboard for too long.
Nice skill, no doubt :)
see this is because Grubby is from the ancient times despite looking like a 20yo. Old games were all like that, with keybinds all over keyboard. Zoomers got used to everything being near WASD and ergonomic.
very interesting. I like how you don't use pointbreak but use synergy. I've never bothered with synergy; curious I didn't look into it.
Yay. Love these videos
this always screws me up at the start of the game when I make an altar and a moonwell. At some point I got in the habit of shift clicking and it ties both buildings to one wisp. thanks for the explainer
Love this video I'll use it in class
This is such a good deed.
I find it really interesting that with WC3 Blizzard actively tried to make the game as approachable as possible and have your units act in a 'smart' way compared to previous RTS titles so that the micro barrier to entry was reduced, but then with Starcraft 2 they walked back most of that mentality.
TlDr: smart spell orders will task multiple idle units, but if none are idle it will always task the closest unit
Place new pending building (b) overlapping a pending building (a) footprint... (a) gets canceled, (a)'s peon becomes idol, is available, is tasked with the new building
Place a 2nd building that doesn't overlap the first... Closest selected idle peon gets tasked with new pending buildings, if none are idle then the closet selected active peon gets retasked (this will cancel their building command if that was their previous action)
Ensnare works the same...
I'm betting you are clicking to run raiders back, the forward most raiders are active (moving back) so an idol raider (already moved to the rear) gets tasked with ensnare
I love game jank, it always shows how it is hard to make stuff work :P
probably a programming error, I meant feature 🤣
that was unnecessarily interesting
I really want to play it but how to do it. It is free or sell ?
Grub explains ) 17:17
I think it has to do with negative distances and absolute valors
how are your backpack hotkeys still on numpad.. I thought everyone playing even only semi serious changes keys to qwer asdf yxcv and backpack on tyghbn or special mouse buttons
Wasn’t allowed back in my day
Some people… evaded the rules
*PROUD MANUAL READER*
You know things get serious when the ms paint is out.
Grubby getting gaslighted via the Mandela effect
the coding is a little weird for wc3 i mean im certain they fixed alot when making reforged but that is a quite noticeable bug with the great hall i wonder what could be the cause of it? maybe it's queing a great hall for each selected peon and overwriting it with nearest building que. i think that's the only logical possibility that is going on there... that would mean the great hall's have their own independent build order.... that means you can't build a great hall first it would have to be at least the second building you make....
hahh that's a funny bug think ik exactly what's going on here
Spokay
Dendi Micro Arena lulba
For raiders it should be best when they run away that the raider with maximum range but still in range do the net.
Isnt it ?
edit:
I GOT AN HEART FROM GRUB THE LORD HIMSELD, NOW IM BREATH ENOUGH TO DEFORCE FROM MY WIFE.
THANK YOU GRUB
this is what I anticipated too - for ranged spells, the one with the maximum distance but still in range is often the best choice
is this why. when mass building with a group of peons, only some inconsistent fraction of them will actually get assigned? does grubby explain that after the point where I paused to make this comment? let's find out
edit: we got to that point, it's MAYBE when they're moving and MAYBE when they're moving away for unique building types sometimes? is the solution to hit STOP before assigning mass builds? it IS! we got there together :)
Did you just explain in the 1st 3 min how stupid the total war AI is???? I have seen it do this every time
Grubby sounds like an orc
wc3 is much much closer to sc2 than sc1 when it comes to qol mechanics
Please play a match with your brother
maybe was smart for it's time however compared to sc2 the engine seems pretty crap.
Clueless Pro Gamer XDD
If i dont get more obscure wc3 mechanic uploads im gona unsub
WOW 🤩