EDIT: complete board posted below I did some experiments with Force Cone to figure out where exactly "slide back N" would position a character from every possible angle. These are the results for "slide back 1" at distance 2 (Force Cone and Force Bolt): Caster is at the green dot, target starts at a blue dot and slides along line to the corresponding red dot. I'm assuming that for "slide back 2" (Force Blast) you simply extend the line 1 square further.
Also, here's the scenario I used to initialize a square of doors at distance 2. (Caster with Force X should be first in your party, two supporting drawspam priests will make it easier.) I may go back and test at other distances, but not right now. If anyone else beats me to it, please post your results!
Well the effort is appreciated, though the result seems to be disappointingly arbitrary. It would be nice if it were just four-way symmetric, so we wouldn't have to memorize a map like this.
9 out of 16 positions don't need to be memorized, as the movement happens in straight lines. As for the other 7, they appear to push characters away from the vertical center line, except for the upper two, which are directed upwards.
A handy memorization aid could be this: the eight on the major compass points always point straight away from the caster and don't need a rule, the eight between them always tend towards the vertical if they're above the caster and towards the horizontal if they're below the caster. Shortened: ground below is horizontal, trees above are vertical. Shortened more: Ground below, trees above. All you need to remember about the slide directions .
Interesting topic. Thanks for posting it. I never knew how it actually worked. My PvP skills have now increased by 0.1%. It took me a while to understand what you meant but I finally did Here's how my newly developed memorization aid works: I imagine the top-center square is magnetic, and in cases where it's unclear where the red dot should go, it always turns to face the magnetic square at the top
Yours is an even better condensation of the effect. I did think mine would be a mouthful to digest without diagrams but I thought once someone got it, they'd remember it. Yours goes down a lot easier and requires 33% less memorization, well done!
Here's the complete board. The red squares mark where vertical symmetry is broken. Note that horizontal symmetry is never broken. The range 5 lines are length 2 because only Force Blast has range 5 Edit: fixed the broken symmetry markers. Staring at the log pictures and lines for too long is confusing! ^_^
This seems like a bug to me. I don't see why it shouldn't be symmetrical. What do the devs think I wonder, is this intended?
Happily I was directed to this thread by @Jarmo not knowing it existed after my own cone experiment. The graphic is awesome and very helpful, but there should actually be 4 more red squares. The easiest way to describe the missing ones is that if you imagined it as a chess board with a knight sitting at the green dot, every place the knight could land in a single move should be a red square (currently 4 of the 8 spots are red, all of them should be). That also would indicate a clearer pattern of where vertical symmetry is broken and an ability to anticipate the "problem" squares if we every get a range 6 or more slide attack.
thanks for the research, I know at times I'd be 'why didn't they move...?' in SP and MP but I also have to echo bluesage, this seems more like an oversight rather than working as intended?
This is due to broken symmetry when rounding positive or negative numbers. I'll fix it to be symmetric (it will always round up, meaning you should see the same bias towards diagonals along each axis).
Slide back now works like this: (sorry, didn't take my time editing the picture, purple circles are new and correct)
Or if you want to use Neoncat's diagram above, the only change you have to mentally make is that every orange square now pushes the character on the diagonal and never along the four cardinal directions.
Would be nice if we had a new mock up that went behind range 3. And have Jon post it on the official game mechanism page.
