Column-type AoEs

[Weylin]

I've been wondering if it's possible to have an AoE type that behaves as a rectangle, with range and width being the two parameters.

 

Powers with especially narrow cones would be good candidates for such an AoE type, as cones even in the 45* range (for melee at least) have this tendency to entirely miss all but your selected target without carefully finessing your position and choice of target.

Narrow ranged attacks, like the 5-15 degree cones, will miss targets directly infront of you, even though everything visually lines up.

 

Cone attacks bring up questions as to what counts as being inside the cone. It's certainly not a bounding box around a character, perhaps it's a pinpoint coordinate somewhere between their feet and their head? Floating in the air somewhere in front of them? Swiveling straight out of your AoE coverage by merely rotating in place?

[Saiyajinzoningen]

there are a few very narrow cone attacks that could be classified as column. i have no idea how the collision detection is treated in any case. For what purpose do you make this suggestion?

[Weylin]

8 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

there are a few very narrow cone attacks that could be classified as column. i have no idea how the collision detection is treated in any case. For what purpose do you make this suggestion?

Column, or rectangular AoEs are good for when you want an ability to have a consistent coverage from source to end.

Imagine something like a wave or beam of energy 5m wide traveling down a corridor. The distance from the source doesn't matter, so long as the target is visually within it, it will count as a hit, unlike cones which require backpedaling to get targets into the wide end of it. 

[biostem]

11 hours ago, Weylin said:

I've been wondering if it's possible to have an AoE type that behaves as a rectangle, with range and width being the two parameters.

There has to be some mechanical reason as to why this doesn't exist in game - every AoE, AFAIK, is either a cone or a sphere...

[srmalloy]

24 minutes ago, biostem said:

There has to be some mechanical reason as to why this doesn't exist in game - every AoE, AFAIK, is either a cone or a sphere...

I think that the "narrow cone" AoEs like Penetrating Shots were the devs' attempt to do this within the limits of the game engine -- if the game engine only supports single-target and sphere/cone AoEs, there may not have been a way to do it without rewriting part of the game engine.

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

I think that the "narrow cone" AoEs like Penetrating Shots were the devs' attempt to do this within the limits of the game engine -- if the game engine only supports single-target and sphere/cone AoEs, there may not have been a way to do it without rewriting part of the game engine.

I wonder if AoEs only accept 3 parameters - point of origin, angle in degrees (so you can get a full circle), and radius.  You could get pretty close to a square if you used 2 90 degree cones on a diagonal, but establishing the 2 starting points might be tough...

[srmalloy]

9 minutes ago, biostem said:

I wonder if AoEs only accept 3 parameters - point of origin, angle in degrees (so you can get a full circle), and radius.  You could get pretty close to a square if you used 2 90 degree cones on a diagonal, but establishing the 2 starting points might be tough...

Have to be four -- point of origin, direction of effect, angle in degrees, and radius. Back before the HC staff improved AoE knockback to have radial effects, the direction of effect would be used both for the centerline of a cone and, with the point of origin, determine which direction knockback occurred (since it was always away from the shooter, even if you landed a location AoE behind your targets).

[biostem]

6 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Have to be four -- point of origin, direction of effect, angle in degrees

If you, for instance, equate 0 degrees with what the map considers north, then you have that directionality already.  Either way, your point is taken...