Flow fields as a way to predict stuff in the fog of war

Yes, but the pathfinding itself don't need to know about the presence of enemy units, at least not until they are seen. You can just disable the "cost" radiating out of the enemy units until they are detected.

And again, there's nothing that says enemy units need to have a cost field. Usually you'd want your units to blindly and faithfully run into the enemy if you'd want - in fact, it'd make much more sense if they avoided friendly units instead, to avoid traffic jams.

That mockup paint drawing is perfect.

Here's what would happen:

(Small text says "Unit sees blocking wall")

New flow fields each time an enemy structure is discovered? Rly? And youre assuming that flowfields And FOW "chats", which I doubt. But again, i hope youre right bro.

You're right, it's much more likely that the developers are going to willingly ignore the fact that its a potentially exploitative behavior.

Have a little faith, chances are they've already either considered the impact and or already have a plan in place to deal with the issue but haven't reached the point at this it's able to be implemented, don't forget what we say in the live stream was essentially a Debug version of the flow field software, not a gameplay implementation of it.

Don't forget, you have just as much to base your opinion on as we do.

Mike

It's not a new flow field, it's altered values on the existing flow field. It needs to be possible anyway, or units would walk right through buildings if they were placed after the flow field was created.

Guys this was a tech demo! It was only to show you what the tech is capable of nothing about how it would be implemented.

I am sorry to say this harsh but what a bunch of useless speculation are you all on about? with drawings and all?

like knight said, let's just wait a bit more on actual info on implementation before going all hysterical.

also if you watch he clearly put down the target location and then draws in cost several times which proves that the flow fields are already capable of this.

Isn't this a problem with A* too? I don't see it popping up in other games that pathfind around obstacles so it can't be that big of an issue.

Yep. Elijah and I looked at this thread and started laughing. It's funny because all of the speculation seems to assume we are a bunch of amateurs that haven't done this before, more than once.

Any pathfinding system that has knowledge of whats underneath the FOW is exploitable in this way. The issue isn't how you pathfind, the issue is what information you give to it to create the paths.

I did not recall any comments about the information you give it to create paths, that might explain why people speculate about it. But in the end these topics are great as players get known about game techniques which is normaly "hidden" from the players. More tech vids plz :mrgreen:

That's because it was pretty obvious that they would not create a game that would be so easily exploited.

Hey, don't blame me. I just made the paint drawing!