Arrows/Archery issue or bug?

[Gamida]

If I knock a zombie down I always wait until it is fully stood up whether I am using a ranged weapon or melee. I use to feel that in earlier days hitting them while they were getting up I seemed to have missed a lot.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Isn't there a dissimilarity in the collider size for a melee weapon
vs a projectile ingame and IRL.

 

For instance a club collider would be shaped like the inner perimeter
of the object giving it a greater chance, to contact more colliders  
or surface area. While a projectile has a diminished collider size
and a single point trajectory vs the angular sweep.

 

The visual I have is of a a bullet, and a club both hitting a
shatter resistant piece of glass. The bullet impact area is a point,
and the club, depending on the angle fractures an area.

 

I-frames don't have to be intentional, it could be a simple disconnect between

transitions of a state engine, or since most representations of colliders  I've seen

are planes. So conceivably if a zombie is at the correct angle during impact, you

are only presented the edge as a target, vs the normal surface area.

 

like a paper doll turned side ways

Edited December 16, 2023 by 4sheetzngeegles (see edit history)

[theFlu]

12 minutes ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

For instance a club collider would be shaped like the inner perimeter
of the object giving it a greater chance, to contact more colliders  
or surface area. While a projectile has a diminished collider size
and a single point trajectory vs the angular sweep.

 

I might be off the mark here, but I think the Main melee hit is still* a single line at the center of the crosshairs, from zero out to the max distance (like a short range instant bullet). The swing arc has several similar attempts to connect along the animated path, but those only yield glancing hits (and seem bugwise a lot more iffy than the proper mid-hitter).

 

*Still: it used to be that and only that until glancing blows were added. It still feels the same, so I'm assuming it is...

 

The larger area would make more sense, but calculating hits is usually reduced down to the simplest geometry possible; lines, points, spheres (= distance to a point). Even if you wanted to simulate the volume of a bat, you'd probably just calculate 3-4 different lines along the sides of the bat, not any actual volume.

 

Not to mention, the club you see in your hands doesn't really have a collider, you'd bonk it into zeds while running past them otherwise .. 😃

[meilodasreh]

On 12/15/2023 at 5:00 PM, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Everybody; I have a few questions. Does it seem to happen more when online
or is it primarily off line play. Online may be packet lag vs render.

For me it happens most/is most obvious when fighting a group of zombies close distance, just moving backwards and taking my shots.

The zombie that is right in front of me doesn't seem to be recognized as a target, but arrow goes through (as mentioned before by others, there is no reason it shouldn't hit).

Zombie animation is just normal moving forward, no ballistics and/or any valid amount of time between shot and supposed hit does apply then.

I'd even be tempted to say the closer the zombie is to you, the more frequently it does happen. I don't know if that might be a factor.

As Roland mentioned, I also never had it happen with sleepers or zombies that are really far away.

I play "SP online" (1max player allowed, game invisible)

 

[Stranded_Napkin]

I mean, I always use arrows and I've never had these issues. I've been more annoyed by the oversized hit boxes that give you a kill on a chicken or rabbit when your arrow was almost a foot off the animal.

[4sheetzngeegles]

This is what I was writing about, as far as what I saw.

There isn't a collider assigned to arrows unless it's under a generic title in another file,
and the club has that cylindrical shape. That's what made me think the arrow collision leaned
more toward a ray trace point calculation.

 

I wasn't able to find a Zombie collider, but reading through nearly 23000 labels
I probably missed it. Right now I'm messing with the Physicsbodies.xml But I am learning from reading the posts

I have not been digging this deep in the files in quite a while. Thanks for the inspiration.

[theFlu]

11 minutes ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

This is what I was writing about, as far as what I saw.

Curious, but unless you have some context to bind it to swings using that club collider, couldn't that just be used to receive hits? As in, hit the weapon, hit the player (or maybe dream of disarm mechanics in the future..)

[4sheetzngeegles]

That's the thing of it all. I don't have full context, I'm trying to understand it all though. The fbx viewer I am using doesn't

recognize the animation as it is extracted. So, that's why I asked the various questions. I had these visual representations,

but knew that others had either explored more in depth, and or had different experiences with the animations. And also

that if I unintentionally had the wrong concept. This is the place it will get corrected. I welcome correction because it

helps me to learn and inspires me to want to learn more.

 

That's why I said thank you, because, as I've read each post, it made me go back and look at a different possibility that

I hadn't thought of before.

 

I was trying to bind the animation to the object, but the player hasn't recognized it yet.

[theFlu]

3 minutes ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

So, that's why I asked the various questions.

Yeh, good place for it - myself, I'm poking in darkness as well, just offering ideas. Take em with a massive pinch of salt

 

But, the list you have in the screenie, has colliders for pistol, bow, sniper etc ranged weapons. Are those weapon-shaped, or bullet shaped? If the first, then it's a pretty safe bet they're for receiving, right?

[4sheetzngeegles]

@theFlu

Quote

Are those weapon-shaped, or bullet shaped?

Yeah, those are for the weapons. Since the file format has changed in A21, its been a lot

harder to view the files. There is a ton of overlap, and things that haven't been released

yet. For example, A firetrap, an arrow trap, and what seems like a template for the bandits.

 

A lot seems like either place holder, or leftovers from a decade of work. All I originally

wanted to do was go in and adjust the lighting textures. Considering the game started as a

few hundred meg, and is nearly 25gig raw now. It gets overwhelming for me to try to look

for anything in a single sitting. But I'm going to still keep looking, because there may be some

redundancy that can be trimmed.

[Jugginator]

On 12/15/2023 at 9:04 AM, Roland said:

It might be just in my head but I also feel like stone arrows miss as described by the OP more often than iron arrows do and that the "glitch" happens even less often with the better bows/ crossbows which lends some credence that there is an intended "hit roll" probability at play even if your aim is visually spot on. I do agree that having a visual result where the arrow appears to pass through the zombie is a poor feedback loop for the player IF things are behaving normally and it isn't a glitch.

 

Also, I notice (and it can't just be in my head) that the "bug" doesn't seem to happen ever for me when I am shooting a stationary sleeper. Those arrows always hit perfectly for me. Could that again be the game giving me a 100% "to hit" vs a non-moving target? Could that be proof that the actual issue is as zztong stated? @Jugginator any idea? Is there a ticket for this commonly mentioned player feedback?

 

Or can we keep messing with Meilo?  

 

It could be an interpolation thing. It's been noticed internally and yeah some people have been noticing it; it's pretty rare but a general hitbox check pass is needed to be done. Honestly most videos I've seen the shot did clearly miss, arrows aren't meant to be laser-pointed and you do have variance on trajectory, I guess sometimes it doesn't represent that visually sometimes.