Weather & Environmental Movement Realism

[Gamburd]

Basic and essential to any sort of 3-D game is the movement of the game's factors.


Take American Football; the players, if not protected from the elements by a domed stadium, are vulnerable to the effects of the weather. In the past, there have been mud bowls, snow bowls, and probably most famously, the so called Ice Bowl which was played between Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys back in the 1960's.

If bad weather occurs, the outcome of the game is affected. A single slip or slide can affect the outcome of the game; movement is affected by the weather; if the game had been played in perfect weather, the outcome may have been completely different.



As in football (or any other sport subject to bad weather), so on the field of war.



I'm not arguing for every slip and slide of the foot, but my point is that movement is affected by the weather.





I am proposing that movement in RO should be affected by the weather presented in the map.



Currently, the soldiers in Maps (e.g., not singling it out for any reason but a map, for example, like Kryovov {however you spell it} comes to mind) that are set in the Russian winter, which have, I assume, something like half a foot or a foot, or several feet of snow, move as fast as they do as in maps set in the summertime.

Obviously, this is not realistic.



What I am proposing is more elementary; here are some proposed movement rules:



Heavy Snow Rules for RO

Under Heavy Snow conditions:

1) Infantry movement is half the current regular level of movement.

2) Tracked vehicles' (like Tanks) movement is half the current regular level of movement.

3) All non-tracked vehicles ( e.g., trucks, jeep, German armored cars) move one quarter of the current regular level of movement.

4) All rivers, ponds, marsh, mud flats are frozen.

5) Infantry movement speed is the normal current level of movement inside builings; in other words, the Heavy Snow rules DO NOT APPLY to movement inside buildings.

I'll have to edit and develop this some more; I know some people will dislike the idea immensely, but this is a very simple change (I think) that could add a tremendous amount realism to the game's simulation of WWII combat.

I have a few other weather rules, such as mud, and when also when traveling on a road, people tend to move a little faster, about 1/3 as fast than if they are moving across a field, on uneven ground, but I'll have to expand on this and edit it soon.

 

[TT33]

Yes winter in the ost front was tough
I agree with most of this stuff good ideas

Tracked vehicles' (like Tanks) movement is half the current regular level of movement.

The Germans designed tracks on thier tanks to compensate for the winter and muddy condistions called Winter-ketten (1942) and later Ost-ketten (1944) for much better manuverablity through the muddy and frozen terrian that was the Ost-front.

Winter-ketten



Ost-ketten

 

[Murphy]

Random slips would be funny to watch (Indian policemen + banana in "No One Lives Forever 2" !? ) , but they don't fit into this game.
The only situation where I could see this is when players cross icy waters. They would have to walk to be perfectly safe. If they jogg or sprint there is a chance that they slip. Slipping without rag-dolls is very hard to make though, and its not possible to apply rag-dolls to a live player. That's why you can't play dead in UT2004. Rag-Dolls only kick-in once the player dies, and to make matters worse, in RO they are calculated client side, which means that players would fall differently on my machine than they would on yours. Acceptable for dead bodies, which dissapear after a few seconds anyway, but not acceptable for live players.
In UT3 playing dead is possible though, so RO2, or whatever Tripwires new UT3 game is going to be called, could feature good slips.
Maybe players would have to "walk" when corssing frozen waters and if they jogg or sprint there is a chance that they trip.

Different movement speeds would be a good thing to see though.

The problem is, that we would technically need different animations for each surface. For example a slightly semi-jump-walking one for a ground covered with leaves or other small obstacles. Or a wading one for snow. One that looks slightly gay because you place your foot with the front and the back at the same time, for icey surfaces. It would be awesome to see that amount of detail in a game.
If you just slow down the current walking speed, the players would slide over the ground because their animation wouldn't match the speed anymore. I don't know if animations can be slowed down easily without changing the whole gamespeed ala gamespeed-scaler in UT2004.

Be it as it is, I think that a slightly slidy look to the animations would be a small prize to pay for this.

We could also restrict this feature to surfaces where your movement is really severely slowed down and only permit the player to "walk" there. For example deep snow.

 

[Basil]

That's an interesting idea. Slipping might be difficult to implement, but IMO it's not needed, it pretty rare IRL that there would be anything slippery in the "country side" where most of the RO maps are located. But anyway, slow movement in deep snow gets my support.

One thing I was thinking is that would it be possible to implement skis in the game. E.g. as a "vehicle" you can use that makes you travel faster but can't fit through doors etc. (so that people wouldn't be ski'ing indoors). This approach was taken in the FDF mod for Operation Flashpoint, though it looked retarded. Would probably need some very creative animating and haxoring to make it work. Some large winter map with infantry would be interesting if the other side would have skis and the other one not. For example German troops defending their position in deep snow against fast Soviet assault troops with skis.

 

[SiC-Disaster]

Well, sure, it might sound very good in theory.
Dont get me wrong, i like the idea on one hand. On the other though, i have my doubts.
Kryukovo or something, that large open wintermap, with a bridge and a ruined town at the end, for example, hasnt got a lot of cover.
When you walk there, your an easy target. It can be bad enough as is allready, trying to move to cover as quickly as you can, but when you decrease speed, the enemy gets only more time to kill you in an open area. (no choice, the map is all open area)
That could lead to some serious annoyances.

 

[D3terioNation]

What would be truly great was if weather conditions determined the length of time it took for your mg to overheat!!

That would be trully epic but sadly quite impossible on any engine available I imagine!

 

[D3terioNation]

Kryukovo.

Favourite map by far!

I agree, slowing down the game on large maps would only damage it!!

 

[Bobdog]

What would be truly great was if weather conditions determined the length of time it took for your mg to overheat!!

That would be trully epic but sadly quite impossible on any engine available I imagine!

That's been in since the mod days, if my memory doesn't fail me. It *should* take longer to overheat your MG on a map covered in snow than one set in the summer.

As for the suggestion:

First, I don't know why most of you are talking about how slipping could be done, since Gamburd never actually proposed to implement it. From what I understood of his post, he simply wants players and their vehicles to move at different speeds depending upon the terrain they are crossing.

This sounds like a good idea to me. As long as the map retains some relatively unobstructed avenues of travel (roads), I don't see a problem with, say, slowing down an infantry man a lot if he decides to slog up a hill covered in three feet of snow.

One problem where realism is concerned is figuring out the behavior of the various vehicles on the different types of ground cover. Sure, it is easy to tell that footsoldiers and vehicles with tires will have problems in deep snow, but what about tracked vehicles like tanks? A tank that weighs many tons might just compact the snow beneath it down enough that it can get decent traction; then again it might strand itself by sinking too deeply into a snow drift. You can't just assume to know how something like that will behave.

Then there's the whole problem with snow being deformable; in real life it might be possible for a tank to "plough" the snow away somewhat for other vehicles behind it. That would of course require some form of deformable terrain, which is probably not possible with the modified UE 2.5 that RO runs on.

Really though, for me, solving the first problem (for all terrains; I only really discussed snow because I think it would pose the most problems) would be enough. Deformable snow would be cool, but I could live without it.

 

[Murphy]

Then there's the whole problem with snow being deformable; in real life it might be possible for a tank to "plough" the snow away somewhat for other vehicles behind it. That would of course require some form of deformable terrain, which is probably not possible with the modified UE 2.5 that RO runs on.

Crazy idea, but it would be possible I think! If the speed was determined by the surface-type of the texture you travel on, you would have snow below the first vehicle and the texture of its traces behind it. If those traces were set to be, say, dirt, the following vehicle could move faster on them.

 

[Rak]

Can we at least have snow foot prints effect for snowy maps? It'd be great to find a hiding Sniper by just following his footsteps

 

[SiC-Disaster]

Can we at least have snow foot prints effect for snowy maps? It'd be great to find a hiding Sniper by just following his footsteps

hehe loved that in Hidden and Dangerous 2.
Me and another guy used to have 1 on 1 snipermatches, usually the very first map of the campaign.
Bastard found my foottracks and tracked me down, and shot me in the back lol.
First time ever was teh awesome though.
I lay in a tower, and he was lying under a tree. We remained still and searching for over 45 minutes, then i decided to move, but fell down the tower and died

 

[Gamburd]

Advanced Heavy Snow Rules for RO Maps Set In Finland, Estonia, Leningrad & Region 60 Degrees Parallel + Above--Frigid Winter (Someday, Somehow, Someway These Rules May Be Implemented)

A) Vehicular Breakdown

1) If a vehicle (any vehicle, including Tanks) stops and restarts its engine to move again, the computer will randomly calculate whether the vehicle breaks down temporarily. If the calculation is 68% out of a possible 100% or less, the vehicle can move normally.

2) If the calculation is 69% or greater, the vehicle has broken down temporarily for 2 minutes of gameplay, at the expiration of which, the vehicle may try again to move.

3) If the calculation is 86% or greater, not only can the vehicle not move, but it's Turret is stuck also for the 2 minutes and the Turret cannot move



B) Toughest Frigid Winter Rules

1) If desired and for even more realism, the computer will randomly calculate for each vehicle, including Tanks, every 2 minutes of gameplay, whether a vehicle breaks down once every 2 minutes of gameplay;

5) If vehicle breaks down, it must wait two minutes to start its engine again and attempt to move. All rules described above (including Turret rule) apply to the Toughest Rule.




C) Basic Frigid Winter Rules For The Above Listed Countries and 60 Degree Area
(Easier To Implement As RO Currently Is)

According to what I've read from other WWII game rules, Machine Gun Breakdown actually occurred more frequently in cold climates. These rules reflect that situation:

1) Increase in Machine Gun Breakdown as is as follows:

(chance of a Breakdown increases as follows {including the current RO chance of MG breakdown})

Pre-1943 Axis Triples

1943-1945 Axis Doubles

Pre-1941 Soviet Doubles

1941-1945 Soviet No Change; remains the same as in standard RO.

Finnish No Change


Also applies to all armored car MGs.




All Roads will be affected by the Heavy Snow Rules unless the Mapper assumes the roads are clear (civilian work crews or the soldiers have shoveled and cleared the snow before the battle!); but roads will also increase movement slightly (even in summertime; we travel slightly faster on a road than on open ground), and that is the subject for an add on to this thread.



Just a few comments; I know some folks won't like these weather rules; I'm not trying to ruin RO; RO is a simulation of WWII Infantry combat; it cannot recreate the event in every detail but it is capapable of simulating many of the cirumstances and factors that affected WWII infantry combat, and weather is undeniably one of them.

Some people may prefer a more arcade version of the game where things like weather play no role in the gameplay; there is nothing wrong with that, and the game is still a simulation of WWII Infantry combat.

However, objectively speaking, a simulation of battle that does not in some way attempt to deal with basic elements such as weather must be said to be a flawed simulation.

Face it: soldiers who move as fast as they do in summertime in a game set during Russian winters; it is like the snow isn't even there!! Why have the snow and winter scenery at all if it isn't going to play some sort of role in affecting the actual gameplay???



Weather is very important and crucial; remember, it certainly affected Napoleon's Army when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812; and it certainly helped stop the German Army's advance into the Soviet Union beginning in November, 1941.



Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it too much because BOTH sides will be "in the same boat."



For ultimate RO gameplay realism it is recommended that the rules described in this thread be combined with the other suggestions that players of the game have made regarding other simulation ideas.



(Now, I loosely based these rules using as a reference an old boardgame called SQUAD LEADER, published by Avalon Hill, Inc., a defunct boardgame company that was bought by Hasbro, Inc. sometime in the 1990's.

Basic Squad Leader no longer is manufactured and has been dead for years, probably since the early 1990's. The game conceivably could be manufactured again, but remains shelved. There is an Advanced Squad Leader that is still made and which I've never owned or played.

I excluded "dice rolls", and changed the calculations into terms of percentages and odds (which I believe can be programmed into the gameplay without too much trouble), and changed the names of the rules ( for example, the idea of Frigid Winter and vehicles and MGs breaking down is similar to what SL called "Extreme Winter." Another example: SL just says "north of the Baltic"; I specifically mention Estonia and Leningrad and the 60 Degrees which they don't; so I changed some ideas.

SL was designed with realism all the time in mind and was the most realistic WWII boardgame that in my opinion was ever designed. So I trust the games designers when they say tanks moved slower in winter.

Also, I'm not asking for slips and slides, though I suppose if something really does want to go for that and spend the time designing that, that would be fine. These rules would just slow down the movement rate of what the soldiers and vehicles are currently in RO to reflect trudging and moving through the snow.