Trick shots discussion post

[ABlank]

Trick shots is a fun ball variation usually played informally with <12 players where a shot must bounce before going into the goal. This thread is to assess the community's interest in making an automated trick shots server and the feasibility of such a project.


Ways of making a trick shots server that i've thought of so far:
Make a regular ball server with no bots and play trick shots the way we normally do.
Make a ball server with a voteIncrementScore and voteDecrementScore command so that people can vote whether a shot was a trick shot and should count towards the score.


If the developers make it possible for a server to log the position or velocity of the ball (which it wouldn't make sense to do unless there is interest in making a trick shots server), the server can try to detect trick shots and adjust the score automatically. I do not know how much effort this would take for the devs.
The server can find changes in the ball's velocity that gravity does not account for to detect a bounce. The tricky part would be determining whether the ball bounced off of a goalpost or something else. This may at times be prone to error if you don't know where the goal is. The server can be made to have a list of where the goals are for each map on the playlist. This can be put together manually or it could be possible to parse this information from the map file. I just thought of this and have no idea how the map file works.

Alternatively:
It is already possible to log the position and velocity of a plane when it shoots a ball, so if the devs add the the orientation of the plane to this info, it should be possible to, knowing the type of plane being used, determine the initial position and velocity of the ball. From there, if you also know where the goal is, you can check whether the ball is heading in or would need to bounce to score.


edit: we'd need to know what sort of air resistance, if any, there is on the ball, not just gravity

[Slender]

There was a very small discussion about trickshot severs back in 2011 when Nikon was still active and was deeply into trickshots.

http://altitudegame.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6690

He also made a few trickshot videos if that's of any interest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gd6AfNMnBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqF72L2YD4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1HL3TjSMM

You could have a good chat with Vanisher though, he knows quite a lot about coding custom game modes.

[Kafka]

Originally Posted by Slender

back in 2011 when Nikon was still active

Nikon spotted last night in Dojo... perhaps making a comeback

[ABlank]

Originally Posted by Slender

He also made a few trickshot videos if that's of any interest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gd6AfNMnBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqF72L2YD4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1HL3TjSMM

Holy crap! I don't want a trickshot server anymore; Nikon would just destroy everybody.