IGN Review

This is so blatantly untrue that I have to challenge your claim. You are say that units in Spring walk directly at their goal with no idea of the obstacles in the way. You effectively say that pathing is non-existent. Give more details if you want to throw around extreme claims like that or don't state them. In short you are wrong.

I was playing XTA on Wednesday night. Opponent had placed DT's around his base, a move command into his base with the units some way off resulted in a group of tanks stuck on the DT's.

I am a huge fan of Spring, been playing it since its inception and I'm no liar. I'm not throwing round extreme claims- Spring pathing is not it's greatest feature (maybe it's better in Zero K, I'm unsure if these things can changed in the mods themselves or not?)...

Edit: Thinking about it Spring's problem is probably the 'dynamic' pathfinding (or lack thereof?) where new obstacles are created? Spring pathing is usually OK in relation to terrain features....

P.S. @GoogleFrog please understand I wasn't trying to bash Spring, as I said I love the game, no offense intended

A subjectist can't hold any position.

I think by definition they have to hold a position or they are objective, not subjective.

Offtopic but I hope I can clear this up completely with this post.

This is the very extreme statement that I was talking about:

You said that every path given to a unit will be followed in a straight line until it stops (for ever I assume) on anything that gets in it's way. This many foralls create a very strong statement. Such statements have trouble being true.

Anyway, now that I know the source of your statement the discussion is fairly easy to resolve. These probably contribute to the problem:

• Pathing can be significantly affected by the configuration of the game. Unreasonably slow accelerations or turn rates can give the pathfinder some trouble. It is possible to break the pathfinder with incorrectly set movement definitions or unit definitions. It is fairly easy to make these match up correctly but that depends on game developer awareness and effort. (This is allowed because many units can share a movement definition)
  
• XTA is played infrequently and has fairly inactive development. It is likely that the XTA developer(s?) would be unaware of problems or have not updated their definitions for engine changes.
• I think you were using Spring 96.0 and I do not trust that version to work well. More recent bugfixes revealed that it's pathfinder updating may be slow or slightly broken.

I have three ideas as to what could be the cause.

• The movement definition of the unit may be misconfigured such that the pathfinder thinks the unit is thinner than it actually is. So it may have tried to path through a small gap which it could not actually fit through.
• Another misconfiguration this time with crush strength. Dragon's Teeth are effectively wreckage and every wreckage has some crush threshold. If a unit is heavier than a wreckage's threshold the unit can run over and destroy the wreckage. In this case the unit should ignore the wreckage when finding a path and to do this the movement definition has to be told about a unit's weight. If the movement definition is given a weight which is too high units will run into wreckage which they think they are able to crush.
• The engine version you were using may have been slow to update the pathing map to take a newly created DT into account.

I take your point but once more why would this matter from a gameplay perspective? In fact it would just make using the UI a little more awkward.

OK, he claim there is no good in respecting a premise.

Hi, OK I apologize for that part of my statement. Evidently the mods themselves can cause issues and it isn't inherently indicative of the engine itself.- XTA is being developed by 2 people, however I don't think either are particularly experienced with the nuances of the engine, I'll suggest they get in touch with you on this topic as I think XTA is a mod worth maintaining.

To my original statement, the point I was trying to make is that I think people expect too much from pathfinding, and *every* RTS I've ever played has some situations that don't path all that well. I think people need to realize that the pathing in PA is quite good now and certainly on par with pretty much any other game you care to mention- and this is on spherical planets with large numbers of units. The occasional units getting stuck out of hundreds or thousands really *isn't* a problem imo.

Yep, sometimes flow-field path-finding just flips it's **** and makes erry body go balls to the terrain.

Sometimes the management of thousands of units just poops the bed.

Says the guy that claims no RTS allowed players to give instructions trough minimap.
Hilarious.

Actually I agree with Brian on this, IGN has a terrible reputation. Many casual players may not know of said reputation.

I can post some hilarious contradictions of their ratings if you'd like! They don't really rate a game so much as they rate the payment they're given.

Are you're trying to excuse your friend's lack of knowledge about the basics of RTS games?
As much bad as IGN is,i would prefer to trust them than on casuals that dont know the staples of the genre.

Your loss then.

It's not good when the developer has to largely limit the obstacles for it.

You trust these guys?





Honestly he made a little mistake, I can see why honestly. I've never really used the minimap for issues commands anyway.

Calling him a casual implies he doesn't play too often/plays casually, but I can assure you... that's just not the case.

If you cant understand why a babies game (wich has almost no competition in the genre) on Wii has the same score as subpar as subpar action games on more powerful platforms while being reviewed by 2 different persons, then you're dumber than i thought.

Y,im sure he is no casual. I mean,he only said that a common feature on RTS since the 90's doesnt exist,how hardcore.

FWIW I posted a comment, can't be bothered to paste here as it's LONG, but feel free to give it a read and positive/negative feedback as you desire. http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review

Again, being ignorant to a feature is not being casual, you clearly don't know the definition of casual. Also, insults are not allowed on this forum. (referring to "dumber than I thought")

Anyway, it doesn't matter if something has no competition in the genre or not, and it shouldn't matter what console it's on either. Objectivity is key, the real point was for you to actually read what the reviews state, and not just look at the results. A professional review should be as objective as possible, which IGN clearly isnt. IGN is so popular to being incorrect/untrustworthy that there's a whole meme stemming from them (10/10 IGN)

I mean, they gave GTA 4 and Skyward Sword a 10/10, come on.

If you're ignorant about a common feature about a genre who claim to love,i'll call you a casual.

Also, ofc it matter the competition and how good the game is regarding the hardware where it runs. Review 101.
Also,although i dont take IGN reviews too seriously,the entire review industry and users themselves agree: its not a good game. Otherwise there wouldnt be a thread like this one and other about negative Steam reviews. Reeks of despair.

Actually there are a couple good reviews, even over the top good ones (like that silly 6/6)

Anyway, again, you don't understand the accepted definition of casual. :S