This unit has been trying to get to this settlement for 30 minutes

This unit has been trying to get to this settlement for 30 minutes… And he still hasn’t got there.

Other units on the map have moved much greater distances. :frowning:

I guess I’ll move him away. and try again.


After several more “move” attempts and 3 or 4 countdowns of 5 minutes each, the unit finally reached its destination and I was able to take the settlement. Weird…

I’ve seen this issue a couple of times lately too. We’ll look into it. We’re going to get stuck into bug fixing tomorrow.

I think I want to make a biggish change to the whole movement system, but one that I think will make things clearer and simpler. (I’m actually slapping myself for not implementing it like this in the first place)

In Blight, units don’t move around in cartesian space like the do in most games, they move along paths and simply track what path they are on, and how far they are along it.

Right now, every unit takes a “step” along the path every 10 minutes, and speed of the unit determines the size of the step. After each step they scan around them to see if the ran into any enemies and if a combat should take place.

I think what would be better is that if every unit moved the same amount, but the speed of the unit determined how often they step instead.

If I did the new system, there would be only perhaps 20 points on a path that a unit could be, and the server could tell a player exactly when it will take the next step. So for example: I could say unit is 65% of the way to Quietstead and in 4m 35s it will step to 70% of the way there.

Working out combat collisions and whether a unit is standing in the same place would be simpler as well.

Anyhow, I would like to get all this stuff sorted out and rock solid finalised in the next few weeks.

If you’re going to be looking at the movement system I would like to make one suggestion. Roads don’t seem to be very well placed. By this, I mean units will rarely prefer to take or stay on a road path. This makes the roads themselves less useful. I would suggest specifying the unit base speed as how fast they travel over plains, and then add a 2x or 3x speed bonus for traveling along the road. Hopefully that would make it so that units prefer to follow roads when traveling longer distances rather than taking a straight path and “cutting” the corners.

Also, to the point of this topic, I have also noticed this bug, but it seems more common with “Woodland Assassins” where the base movement rate with modifiers can often result in travel times not in 10 minute increments. Most of the time this resolves itself on the next 10 minute “tick” but I have also found it nessecary to refresh the page when this happens before the unit becomes unstuck.

You could always try the route where the position of a unit is based off of a ratio of time.

If I send a unit from Point A to Point B,

Point A would have a timestamp the moment the move command is given.

Point B would have an ETA timestamp based off of the type of terrain and the unit’s speed

Then the true ETA to the destination would be: (Current Timestamp - Point A Timestamp) / (Point B Timestamp - Point A Timestamp) - along the League from A to B.

Because this gives you a simple ratio from 0.0 to 1.0 (0.0 meaning you’re still at Point A, to 1.0 meaning you’re at Point B, and anywhere between is on the path between A and B) you can easily calculate “collisions” by setting up a rule of close proximity (give it a margin of error for overlaps and passes) && living on the same path.

Let’s say we have wiggle room of 0.1 along the path… A mortal unit going from A to B is 0.4 along the path… An Immortal unit along the same path but from B to A is now 0.5 (0.6 would be right on top of the mortal unit), but because they are 1. on the same path, and 2 (within our margin of error / ‘wiggle’ room) we now say, hey guys! let’s fight!

From there you can even calculate a midpoint between the two and say this will be the battlefield point, and look for any units 0.1 of the units and throw them into the mix, lock it in. have a fight within the hour, roll the results. etc.

Again, just an idea.

For a game that wants to be super time sensitive where I set an alarm for 3:30 AM just to move units about, the same sort of precision for when and where units are would be a welcome feature. :wink: (Otherwise, I should just set my alarms for 30 minutes later, knowing that they may or may not be where I expect them to be and just hope for the best. (Which doesn’t play as well with the OCD addiction of Blight.))

Anyway, I just felt like rattling off some super fun math time. That’s all. Just rambling over here. :wink:

Haha, I can relate to the super fun math bit… I found myself pulling out a bit of algebra the other day tackling a “If train A leaves station X at , and train B…” problems.

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