I haven't seen this mentioned before, so in case it isn't already known, the seastack rocks (at least on Impact) have a horrible ability to block bullets even outside of the visible rock area. the hit detection is way out on the edges of some of the portions of the large rock. I am using it as terrain and cover on a new map, and have found it very frustrating. Basically, you have to walk around the entire rock once placed in desired location w/ a automatic weapon like an AR or SR and imagine the sight lines that people will use to come out of cover and shoot opposing points of the map. Look for where the bullets appear to be hitting the air. Then try rotating the rock until those spots are either completely burried or otherwise hidden. Unfortunately, often times that makes it necessary to orient the rocks in a way that you originally had not intended and may not look as good. But at least it will be playable. The other smaller rocks on Impact do not appear to really have a problem with this. Okay, now the frustration part.... HOW THE HELL DO THEY NOT NOTICE THIS WHEN DEVELOPING THE FRUKKIN GAME!!!??
The rocks section of the objects list has the most complex objects in the entire selection range because of the crazy shapes. I've recently done some work at uni about collision detection, and getting perfect collision detection is very heavy on memory and the bounding box (hitbox) would have to be very complex and this would mean using lots of game memory elsewhere, so they've made the bounding box for the object slightly simpler than other objects to save on memory. That's the short explanation, I could go into detail about how hard it is to check for collisions on objects with complex bounding boxes, but that's an entire module for us at uni, so I'm not going to.
haha... well thanks for the technical explanation. I agree it is very difficult, but I really have to wonder why almost the entire rock doesn't have the problem, and only certain parts do. It seems like they could have gone just that extra .1 mile. But maybe that would completely break the game? But then the smaller rocks don't have this problem at all? Kind of weird if you ask me. IDK. It's hard to believe there is a memory limitation with making something like a tin-cup detect collision correctly, and that problem exists. Couldn't this rock thing also be something they missed rather than something they had to leave imperfect? In the case of the tin-cup, we as forgers are certainly using it in a way they didn't intend, by flipping it upside down and using as terrain. So that hitbox problem is likely a mistake, not a necessity. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure that the possibility of a technical limitation as the reason is necessarily THE reason. Know what I mean? An analogy would be a car maker leaving a piece off the car and one possible reason being that they were trying to save weight. Sure, saving weight is important, but it could have also been a mistake. Thanks again for the input.
While they do catch bullets more than in Reach, the rocks are so much smoother to walk on that it does no bother me. Getting smooth rocks in Reach over a large area was pretty tough, but now one can actually do a lot more with them when it comes to ramps and flooring.
You mean the same rocks from Reach like Seastack? I didn't notice it being any smoother areas to make flooring, it still seems difficult. The ones on Ravine have flat surfaces but they are so small you won't have enough for a big area. You're a better forger than me though so ... ... but I find it difficult to make rock flooring. Too many bumps and humps in Seastack and it's the only big one to use for big areas.
To be fair, it is pretty difficult to bug test every piece of geometry in the game. Take piece, place in each forge map, shoot at it against players over live, LAN, localhost, repeat for fixed, phased, normal, etcetc.
yeah but what he's saying is that in Halo: Reach all these pieces didn't have these issues. Certain Affinity just isn't as high quality as Bungie in my opinion. Too many little things that bother me with everything they do.
I've used this smoothness on several maps so far, and it has been an absolute lifesaver. The rocks were far, far bumpier to walk on in Reach, whereas now a bumpy looking surface is almost smooth. Ask Mock about this, he is pretty much in love with this feature.
Starship Ghost, I THINK what Shoe is referring to is that they are smoother when you walk on them. And so in that respect it is nice to have the hit-detection less accurate. I think if they really needed to stay away from perfect hit-detection and needed to have some boxes not correspond to the shape of the actual object, it would have been best to just keep the longer edges inaccrate for smother walking, but then make the edges where you might want to use as cover and poke your head out to shoot something, have better hit-boxes. but in the end I just wanted to make everyone aware of this if they hadn't noticed already. I know we're not going to fix the problem by complaining about it... just yet ANOTHER thing we'll have to work around as forgers, but hey, we're used that that!
Bullet detection and collision detection use separate hitboxes. This is why the problem barrier on tin cups can be walked through but not shot through. They could've smoothed the movement hitbox and still offered an accurate bullet hitbox.
It's really not too bad. They added the invis barriers to the rocks so you can't easily stand on the at angles where in reach they were easy to break some maps.