AA hit no longer cause "explosion" effect every time?

[lure]

I've not played much since 1.31 hit us but I've noticed at least two times while AA gunning that I get kills on aircrafts that I fired on but did not see one single hit effect. In 1.30 and before it was very easy to tell if you hit a aircraft as you got that little black smoke puff every time. Just now in game I fired a single mle38 clip at a 111 flying by. I did not see any hit on him but when I despawn I have a 111 kill. I did not see or fire on any other 111. I had the same happen in a bofors vs a 09 a week or two ago.

Have changes been made to make hit effects less visible? Or is there some kind of random chance that no hit effects are rendered when you hit ea? If so that will hurt new players trying to learn AA gunning a lot.

[GOPHUR]

I'll have to take a look lure.

[OLDZEKE]

I think I've been seeing simular with the flak30. I think a few times on close ea it looked like the HE was showing ap hit gfx but can't be 100% sure.

Still ain't got my head fully on straight so the above may not be the case.....

Edited August 4, 2010 by OldZeke

[geckopow]

I am pretty sure that i have seen this as well, and i have certainly noticed a lack in tracers, its either very hard to see some tracers or they aint rendering at all on frequent occasion.

Bug or feature?

[munchkin]

When I think about it I've seen this as well, or rather not seen it!

Quite often even. I score kills or hits but I haven't gotten any visual confirmation that I did.

[GOPHUR]

Couple things I'm noticing.

1. the debris is falling off on hits but not all hits
   
2. the explosion looks exactly the same color as the tracer so at distance it is hard to see compared to the old black puffs
   

Also try and see if there is a specific plane. I'm seeing hits. I'm not seeing them that well though.

[GOPHUR]

These effects are darkened in the latest beta. I haven't seen them but I'll post a vid or some screenies here for feedback when they are ready.

[GOPHUR]

Some changes in 1.32 beta. We'll need to retest in Open Test.

[Tigger6]

I have the same issues. Not always though.. Sometimes I shoot at EA and I seem to be missing all the time, only occasionally a hit sprite appears, but then the EA just disintegrates. Had same situation happen to me recently as 25mm AAG too. No hit sprites but a kill.

[DOC]

The issue is the recent changes to impact and fused (no impact) explosion "puffs" ... they are too transparent and almost white (actually light grey) ... this coupled with the more realistic tracers and the new smoke trail effects and the greater range away from your viewpoint before they self destruct (an AA gunner request for years) ... all converge into "I can't see them or not all the time" ....... they are in fact working and not inconsistently either.

A change will be made this dev. cycle ... all "puffs" whether flak (AI) or player manned AA, from impact or self destruct (no impact) will be made black. We were going to make the tracer more orange than white, but in fact they are already orange enough and we don't want to go back to the "lazors" of old. If the explosion "puff" was black you would see the issues brought up here largely dealt with. Impacts on aircraft (or anything really) would be way more obvious) and distant "self destruct" explosion as the round fuses out would be visible.

At distance self destruct the puffs will still be smaller than they were because they are exploding further away from you than they used to. If we make them bigger than at closer ranges they will be too large, another complaint that was dealt with when we made them smaller at the players request.

TICKET #4489

[munchkin]

DOC

You closed my thread about hits not registering and referred to it as a duplicate to this thread.

I don't know if you read the content in that thread and compared it to this because it is NOT the same thing.

The thread I created was NOT about hits not being visible, it was about hits not registering at all even though we can clearly see that the shells hit the target but just pass through, hence no "puffs" either.

[DOC]

We looked at that and figure it is render related because all hits that are impacts are registering. You might think they are not but you can't track them in code, and we can.

[munchkin]

Well, I know I miss a lot so it's not about that. I miss probably about 90% of all shots. The thing is that I never used to see this happen before, this is something that's started happening the last few months. I'm not a bad aimer, especially when they come head to head and I've seen plenty of times the shells just go right through the planes. Something isn't right when a plane is so close to me that it fills the sight completely and yet I don't hit because it just passes through. It's impossible to miss and yet I seemingly do.

So, if it's due to rendering then it's still a big problem because it never happened before and it gives the gunner a disadvantage. It's bad enough that the accuracy is bad, now we have to guess where to aim instead of trusting the sight.

[Tigger6]

So, if it's due to rendering then it's still a big problem because it never happened before and it gives the gunner a disadvantage. It's bad enough that the accuracy is bad, now we have to guess where to aim instead of trusting the sight.

Doc just said, that they are tweaking it so that you can see the hits better.

[DOC]

Which is why we're changing it to get rid of the problem, and I gave you the ticket number as evidence of that work to change it and get rid of the problem. Refer to my earlier response.

[munchkin]

And we're still talking about two different things.

Even if you change the visual effects of a hit it won't change the problem I described. If the shells travel a different route than what they are rendered as, how is a more visible "puff" going to change that?

Oh well, never mind. I give up. I understand I won't be taken seriously.

Edited September 21, 2010 by munchkin

[DOC]

Please define what is "travel a different route than what they are rendered as" ... all bullets, rounds and shells travel precisely the route they are rendered as travelling. The tracer IS the round that impacts the target. Where you see it land is where it landed. We are taking you seriously, but we are also including in this exchange our understanding how the code works, not how we think it works.

I'd like to impart this understanding to you but it seems you prefer to beleive it is doing something else. Rounds cannot go somewhere that you don't see them go, but you can believe they are going somewhere that they aren't. In past testing on just this subject, players have thought that they were hitting something with every shot but when we tracked that very event in code it was clear that they were not.

Thus what they thought was going on, wasn't. That's a big hurdle to get over, every developer that ever lived has learned this ... that is establishing that perceptions can vary from fact rather a lot at times, and perceptions will always set your beliefs even when they are incorrect.

When I don't hit a target I thought I was, I try to find out what actually happened, and how I need to change what I'm doing to get a different result. It's actually easier than wishing the system changed to accomodate me.

Unless of course I have totally not grasped what you are reporting. That's always possible, and it's WHY I'm responding still. Don't get defensive, get analytical. It's a requirement if effective solutions are your goal.

It should be noted that "getting hits" is currently much harder from a "feedback to the player of any success they are having" perspective, for reasons I have outlined above. We know this, and acknowledge it. We are changing this to make it more like it was, and in a sense undo recent effects/lighting changes (or more accurately, the consequences of those changes) so that the problem goes away, and we are undertaking this work right now ... when it is completed and released you will in all probability find whatever you thought was happening isn't anymore.

The issue is not that rounds don't go where they are rendered, it is that you cannot see the render as a result of each impact because it is badly presented in terms of what you see. Tracers changed in size, colour and smoke trail, making shot tracking more difficult ... and impact "puffs" changed in texture and colour and how they are actually created in code, making it harder to see any evidence of an impact at all.

This makes it seem you aren't hitting the target when you might have actually hit it, and probably leads you to believe some rounds have dissappeared entirely, but they haven't. We have tested and analysed this, using better tools than just shooting at something in the distance, and we figured out what happened in terms of why it seems shooting changed in data when it really didn't.

[munchkin]

Then howcome I can clearly see that the tracer hits the plane and goes right through it and after I despawn there is nothing, not even a hit? And this at very close range, there can be no doubt about it.

I'm just asking. I know I don't hit every time, I said before maybe I miss 90% of my shots, if not more.. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't seen this happen clearly.

Edited September 22, 2010 by munchkin

[ruprect]

Just to reiterate what Munchkin is saying , but perhaps in a slightly different way, I have had the same issue, but not always. I think it is a synchronizing issues for diffrent terminology but more for the non programmers. I realize that sometimes lag can be a casue of this, but most times that get my panties in a bunch are when there is no lag, and cleearly it looks as if the line of the round to the target passes directly through the aircraft. Yet other nights, the same sight causes a direct hit. On despawning, there is not registered or sighted 'hit' on the second example, there clearly is. Most times I do notice this happens at extremely close range, less times medium range. When I saw medium range I am talking dark red circle around the plane. I think the fact that I almost exclusively play AA and am decent at it, should tell you I am not simply trying to blame programming for my errant shots.

I wish you luck on the problem and hope the other issues mentioned initially in this thread is the same root cause of the one Munchkin and I are referring to. I am just getting a little tired of having to figure out which kind of a night it will be. One where shots are hitting when they look like they should hit, or if I have to "game it" a little if I find the shots are going through the target. Thanks for the attention to this issue, I am sure not an issue the vast majority of the player base can even notice as much as the guys that play AA all the time do.

[DOC]

In testing, we cannot replicate shots that impact but don't, if you get my meaning. I'd love it if we could generate what you're seeing because then we could fix it, but we aren't seeing this at all.

What could be happening in your neck of the woods that isn't happening here?

PS: I play AA a lot of my game time. It's one of my favorite things to do. I don't like the new effects for AA vs aircraft and will be guiding the changes.

So anyway, we'll make the changes we have outlined here, and see what that improves. Then we'll move onto the next phase of fixing everything we can find.

[munchkin]

That's all I want to hear. I'm saying I see something that shouldn't happen. I don't know what it is and I have no idea why, I only know it happens. During the 6 years I've played I have seen this happen once in a while and it's gone away just as quickly but the last few months it has happened a lot. Previously it wasn't a problem because it was very very rare but now it is because it happens very often.

I'm sorry if I come off in a bad way but AA is my main thing, I feel for it a lot and it is frustrating when my observations isn't taken seriously. I've been doing this for 5'ish years and I do notice when something has changed. I wouldn't have brought it up if I wasn't sure about it.

[cypher6]

Well, obviously I'm late with this and actually it's not necessary to repeat everything, but anyway I just want to say that I've noticed exactly the same issues (rounds going through aircraft, hits aren't visible to me although confirmed by teammate standing nearby, rounds and tracers sometimes absolutely invisible) since 1.31.

Especially I want to affirm the "rounds-through-aircraft"-thing. I mainly played bofors (till frustration level rised too high lately) and I noticed that in 1.30 appr. 7-8 out of ten head-to-head-situations resulted in a killed EA (even more for better gunners), whereas this quota dropped to 2-3 out of ten (for me) in 1.31 . A Stuka diving onto me was practically dead then, now I'm lucky if it drops its bombs not exactly onto my head after I have wasted 30 mags on it. But as I said, this is just to affirm what other players mentioned before, and I'm looking foward to 1.32 hoping there will be better conditions.

I really don't want to annoy you guys, but last not least I again want to ask for a statement concerning tong's thread about the implementation of offline-drones as an option for aa-gunners to practice. Compared to ground gunners we don't have the possibility to get any kind of feedback if we are shooting too far before/behind or too high/low as we have no visual feedback where the round goes relativley to the ea. A ground gunner can see where his round hits the ground, we don't. So I would be happy if you guys at least could say something like "man, what kinda bull**** is this" or "hmmm, we are discussing it" or "unfortunately this is not possible because blablabla".

S!

cypher6

[lure]

Just tested the new effects firing on the ground, trees and buildings. The dark color is nice but IMO the smoke clouds is a little bit over the top size-wise. The explosions looks larger then the infantry spawn buildings inside the ABs. They are higher then a AI MG tower.

[DOC]

there are several issues you have to be aware of to fully judge this

1. Hit effects when the round explodes at self destruction (air burst) in the distance are the same as the ones used for round impacts, every round has an "explosion" size

2. If we shrink them so that a nearby round impact is small, then you cannot see the airburst unless it is only a few hundred yards away, players complained that they wanted to see the airbursts so we had to find a size that worked for that as well as impacts

3. The 40mm AA rounds have a much larger "explosion" size than the 20/25mm AA rounds do

4. The 40mm AA rounds "time out" self destruct almost twice as far away from you as the 20/25mm AA rounds do

5. We made some last minute changes to the 20/25mm AA explosion effects that you won't see until the .12 release, which probably means the live release since we might not get another beta release in (if .11 is all good) ... I tested these in a local build and it's about the best compromise currently available

6. Of course they won't make everyone happy. C'est la vie