Tim Deen discusses Halo Wars combat system
Another developers blog appeared on the Halo Wars website today. Tim Deen a Halo Wars designer and Ensemble veteran discusses the damage system in Halo Wars and how things like accuracy and range affect the damage units dish out.
I will be continuing to mirror blog posts from Robot, Bonfire and others so that fans of Ensemble Studios can continue to find blog posts of their well respected developer in one place.
Blog post from HaloWars.com follows courtesy of Community Manager, Aloysius:
Under The Hood of the Halo Wars Combat System
Intro
The simulation system of any RTS can at times be hard for the players to unravel exactly what is going on so today we are taking a quick look at the core systems comprising the Halo wars combat system.
In Halo Wars every combat unit has an armor type and at least one weapon (often more), while each weapon has its individual damage, damage type and accuracy stats. Every attack in halo wars has a specific weapon associated with it even special attacks such as grenades or canister shot have separate specific weapons just for that special to use.
Accuracy
The first item we will look at it is the accuracy system in halo wars and how individual projectiles are directed when fired at the enemy. Every weapon has individual accuracy ratings that determine how accurate the attacks it makes are; the first rating is a straight chance to have the projectile be fired true while the second rating is used to determine how far off the aim is if the attack is not perfectly accurate. After the projectile is fired all that is left to find out is what unit is actually hit as a weapon can “roll” a miss and the enemy can move into the projectiles path.
Damage
After a projectile actually hits a target comes stage two of combat where the armor type of the unit being hit and the damage type being applied are used to look up a damage modification. The final damage is calculated by multiplying the base damage by this damage modifier.
A simple example of this is a marine firing on a scorpion with his rifle which for this example we will say does 10 base damage, now then the scorpion is armor type “Heavy armor” and the rifle does damage type “small arms fire” so we cross reference small arms fire and heavy armor on the table and get 0.4 modifier. The final damage will 4 damage done to the scorpion tank, calculated by taking the base damage (10) and multiplying Is by the modifier (0.4).
Wrap up
Overall the damage system is relatively straight forward with the main complexity coming from the number of armor and damage types but where feasible like type weapons share like type damage types. The machine gun on a scorpion does the same damage type as on the warthog for example. Also most game units have a fairly straight forward armor type except for a few special cases I will not be covering (but they are not important for this article).
Timotron
Some base Armor types in Halo wars
· Light infantry: Marines, Grunts, Jackals, brutes, Elites
· Heavy Infantry: Flamethrowers, Hunters, Cyclops
· Medium Armor: Warthogs, Ghosts, Choppers, Wolverines, Cobras
· Heavy armor: Scorpions, Wraith, Elephants, Scarabs
· Aircraft: Hornets, Banshees, Vultures, Vampires
· Building: Bases, Buildings, Turrets
Some example damage types
-
- Plasma pistols and rifles
- Plasma cannons on ghost, banshee and wraith
- Heavy machine guns on warthog, scorpion and hornet
Heavy MG and plasma
-
- Wolverine anti air missiles
- Turret anti-air missiles
- Vulture anti-air missiles
- Vampire heavy needles
- Turret anti-air needles
Anti air missiles/ needles
-
- Marine grenade/ RPG special attacks
- Grunt plasma grenade special attack
- Warthog grenadier
- Wolverine grenade mortar
Grenades
-
- Rebel snipers
- Jackal snipers
Sniper attacks
-
- Flamethrower
- Flame mortars
- Covenant anti-infantry plasma mortar turret
Flames
Damage type/ armor type lookup table (real numbers from the Halo Wars database)
|
Light infantry |
Heavy infantry |
Medium Armor |
Heavy Armor |
Aircraft |
Buildings |
Heavy MG and plasma |
160% |
120% |
120% |
40% |
180% |
40% |
Anti air missiles/ needles |
120% |
120% |
100% |
60% |
300% |
60% |
Grenades |
80% |
60% |
160% |
120% |
80% |
160% |
Sniper attacks |
400% |
300% |
40% |
20% |
40% |
20% |
Flames |
300% |
200% |
40% |
20% |
40% |
40% |
So where are they now? Dallas Observer discusses Robot, Bonfire and Windstorm
No, thats not a picture of Ensemble Studios’ old offices. Instead it is a picture of a near by building which was demolished before the closure of Ensemble Studios as discussed in Bruce’s Blog.
You may be wondering where Robot and Bonfire are based now that they have disbanded from Ensemble. Well the Dallas Observer revealed today that Bonfire Studios has taken up the helm in Ensemble Studios old offices in Dallas. Robot Entertainment on the other hand are based in Plano.
It may be assumed that Robot have taken up offices in Plano and that these offices are the same offices that Ensemble Studios was planning to move into before its closure. One might also remember that Bruce Shelley hinted in his blog that with Microsoft shutting down the studio means that they no longer have to pay for these new offices.
With Robot moving out of the old Dallas offices and moving into Plano this may explain why its taken a little longer for them to get thier website up and running. No doubt the move involved lots of work re-creating an IT Infrastructructure for the company.
More information on this can be found here in the Dallas observer: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/040409dnmetvideogames.3b84ec9.html
Dusty Monk talks about Ensemble’s cancelled Halo MMO “Titan”
Dusty was a senior programmer for Ensemble Studios who worked on the Ensemble Halo MMO. He sure seems passionate about the MMO genre and he reveals lots of information about the project including the length of time the team were working on it – 2 years in fact. To have an insight of what Ensemble was doing between 2006-2007 have a read here:
http://ofcourseillplayit.com/?p=131
A reminder of Titan..
In case youve forgotten or arnt aware of Ensembles Halo MMO here are some of the very early mock-up designs: