=============================================================
================== Dynasty Warriors 2/3/4 ===================
================= Shin Sangoku Musuo 1/2/3 ==================
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=============== Advanced Game Mechanics Guide ===============
========================= FAQ V3.0 ==========================
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A FAQ by ENAY
V1.0 August/11th/2003 - First Version
V2.0 August/18th/2003 - Added more info and sub categorised
longer sections, many new sections
have been added also, along with
extra info in existing sections.
This FAQ was big enough as it was,
but now it's twice the size. :)
V3.0 August/24th/2003 - Not much this time. Added some stuff
Fixed a few grammatical errors and
added more information to the
section with the invisible horse and
an extra section about clipping.
This document is Copyrighted 2003 ENAY.
Dynasty Warriors 2/3/Extreme/4 &
Shin Sangoku Musuo 1/2/3 are trademarks of
Koei (c)2000/2001/2002/2003
http://enaysoft.co.uk/
enaysoft.co','uk',0);return false;">enay@enaysoft.co.uk
The latest version of this FAQ can always be found at:-
http://enaysoft.co.uk/
CONTENTS:-
1.0 INTRODUCTION
2.0 A.I.
2.1 ALLIES
2.2 ENEMIES
2.3 BODYGUARDS
2.4 PATHFINDING
2.5 BATTLE ORDER
2.6 ATTACK ZONE
2.7 STATIONARY
3.0 BATTLE CPU PROCESSING
3.1 REGIONS
3.1.1 STATES
3.2 Z ORDER
3.2.1 1 PLAYER MODE
3.2.2 2 PLAYER MODE
3.3 MORALE
3.3.1 EVENTS
3.3.2 KILLING ENEMY GENERALS
3.3.3 KILLING ENEMY TROOPS *** IMPORTANT ***
3.3.4 KILLS IN MULTIPLES OF 50
3.3.5 1000 KILLS
3.4 ON AND OFF RANGE PROCESSING
3.4.1 MORALE
3.4.2 OFF RANGE<->ON RANGE
3.4.3 PROCESSING TRICKS
3.4.4 SPECIAL HORSE CHARACTERS
3.4.5 BEHIND THE SCENES PROCESSING
3.4.6 BOULDERS
3.5 PERSONAL TROOPS AND RESPAWN POINTS
3.6 THE LEGENDARY INVISIBLE HORSE AND INVISIBLE ELEPHANT
3.7 CLIPPING
4.0 USEFUL TACTICS
4.1 CONTROLLER
4.2 ITEMS
4.3 CHARACTERS AND CHARGING UP
4.4 INCREASE POWERUPS
4.5 INFINTE COMBO
4.6 BONUS POINTS
4.7 9999
4.8 ARCHERS
4.9 MAXIMUM MORALE AND SUB GENERALS
4.10 MOUNTING
4.11 REINFORCEMENTS
4.12 NEVER GIVE UP!
5.0 SOME PROBLEMS WITH DYNASTY WARRIORS 4
6.0 IDEAS THAT I THINK SHOULD BE ADDED TO THE NEXT GAME
6.1 KINGDOM LEADERS CHOOSE SUB BOSSES
6.2 PRESS SELECT TO INSTRUCT GENERALS
6.3 R3 MENU
6.4 TAKE OUT AUTO AIM
6.5 A FEATURE TO DIABLE DUELS
6.6 MORE INFO
6.7 A BETTER SURVIVAL CHALLENGE
6.8 GENERAL BODYGUARD
6.9 SUB GENERAL SPEECH
6.10 4 PLAYER MODE USING TWO PS2 UNITS
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============================START============================
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1.0 INTRODUCTION
Welcome! Ever since the release of Dynasty Warriors 2 I have
been addicted to the sheer fighting excitement of this game.
The release of Dynasty Warriors 3 improved so much over the
original that it was a very wise purchase for me.
I've been a big fan of scrolling beat-em-ups for many years
but the Dynasty Warrior games definitely are the most
original games to date. Then of course came Extreme Legends
and Dynasty Warriors 4. Although I found a few things in
Dynasty Warriors 4 a step backwards, almost a game between
3 and Extreme Legends.
Being a games programmer myself, I find the AI (Artificial
Intelligence) in these games fascinating. To some extent you
really do feel like you're in a massive war. And for me this
is what makes the game so fun. Each battle is rarely the same
twice. And the 2 player option is just fantastic.
I'd highly recommend anyone to buy any of these games.
The aim of this FAQ is to explain how the game mechanics work
and how to exploit them to your advantage.
All examples used are on the assumption that the game is played
on hard. I like a challenge and as such have never played it on
any other setting. So in which case some of my techniques might
be a tad overkill for the Normal or Easy settings.
Also, if you're the sort of player who completes every single
level by manually going around and killing all the bosses
yourself you may find this FAQ interesting reading as there
are other fun ways you can play the game and get your armies
more involved.
If you're reading this to find all the special weapons
or cheats etc then you're looking in the wrong place. There are
many other FAQs dedicated to those. This is for people who are
really into the game and wish to know more, and ways in how to
enjoy the game just that little bit extra. There are also some
tips at the end of the FAQ which really help me to always win.
Suffice to say I've played these games a lot, in excess probably
of 1000 hours, I have a pretty good idea how everything works.
I shall start off simple but get progressively more complex in
my descriptions.
To get the most out of this FAQ I recommend you to start from
the top and read through from start to finish. This is because
I introduce concepts at various points that are later expanded
upon later in the guide, of course you're free to do as you
please but you may understand better if go through the FAQ in
the order I have written it.
Remember that in my guide I have made up some terminology to
describe some factors or features that the game involves,
these words are exclusive to this FAQ. I know what I'm talking
about but I needed to make up some words that you would find
easier to understand, for you to take on board. So basically,
a lot of slang words are used, so I can make more sense
quickly when describing things in detail without having to
constantly explain the same thing over and over again.
Also, in this guide bosses and generals are the same things.
I will often say enemy general and then say boss halfway
through a sentence, I apologise for this but they are the
same thing in reality. I just can't help saying one or the
other at seemingly random intervals. Sorry.
Don't worry if you don't understand everything in this guide.
You may not, but I hope some people find this guide helpful.
For most, it'll be an amusing and interesting read after
playing the game.
And I apologise in advance if I haven't made myself clear.
I also haven't proof read this FAQ so I am sorry for any
spelling errors or grammatical faults. Yes, even by V2.0
I still haven't checked this guide for any errors.
Ah well.
Enjoy!
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2.0 A.I.
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) plays a big part in this game.
There is a lot of it going on and without it, there wouldn't
be much game. I will be explaining each type.
In general, enemies move around in sets of five. Four of which
follow a leader, usually a rank above the rest.
For generals this tends to differ but generally armies move
around in small clusters of people.
_____________________________________________________________
2.1 ALLIES
The allies are your friends, they help you in this war.
You cannot hit your allies and nor can they hit you.
They will move around the map according to which enemy
generals are alive and whether certain events have
happened. They will also hang around with which general they
are assigned to. See '2.5 BATTLE ORDER' for more details.
In many cases helping your allies, especially the generals
will be the key to completing almost every mission.
Without any allies to your aid, it will be very difficult to
defeat everyone by yourself. Unless you're really powered
up.
_____________________________________________________________
2.2 ENEMIES
Enemies are programmed similar to Allies except you will rarely
see them stood around waiting for battle because once approached
they will engage you in combat. Except on Dynasty Warriors 4
where you need to get fairly close. Regular enemies will generally
engage with the first person they meet or by the last person
who hit them. Enemy generals have a special bias towards you,
each time they finish a combo a check is made to see whether you
are in close range. If this is true they will give chase and come
after you. Keep an eye out on them on the mini map. This is
less true on Dynasty Warriors 2 where generals can sometimes
be fighting right next to you fighting someone else.
_____________________________________________________________
2.3 BODYGUARDS
As everyone should know bodyguards fight alongside you.
If there are no enemies on screen they will just stand idle.
When enemies are on screen they will attack or defend depending
on the orders you give them. Personally I think defend is
pointless. What good are they if all they do is just stand
there not attacking? The answer is simple, they're worthless.
Better in my opinion to fight back and have no one to defend
against. The bodyguards will fight within a certain range, if
you move too far away from them then they will abandon the fights
they were having and then follow you.
You can see this is action if you face them, defend and then
walk backwards.
The bodyguards of enemy generals also do this, as can often
be seen when you are fighting one of them, then they'll
just suddenly run off. When they do this they are not programmed
to retaliate but just run straight towards their general.
If you can prevent them from returning to their master then
you're pretty much guaranteed a safe. Enemy bodyguards gave
you food in Dynasty Warriors 2 but sadly do not in the other
versions of the game. In Dynasty Warriors 4 you can press select
to give your body guards orders, the most useful of which
was to make them stand where they were. On any version before
Dynasty Warriors 4, if bodyguards died, they didn't rank up.
Except with the exception of Dynasty Warriors 2.
_____________________________________________________________
2.4 PATHFINDING
All the characters in the game move through pretty simple path
finding. It's largely unchanged in all the versions.
Because each battle is pre-determined and all levels mapped out
before hand I very much doubt there are any complex heuristic
or A* path finding algorithms used in the game. That is in simple
terms, processes which the PS2 will use to calculate the
nearest path towards another unit whilst avoiding the scenery.
Especially since they often get stuck if you follow their every
move from one place to another.
When enemies follow you or are moving to another location they
move towards a particular location in a straight zig zagged
fashion. This is rather clumsy, often stopping and starting,
and even moving backwards and forwards in the same area before
moving onwards. This is because if they get side-tracked into a
fight they need to get back to a previous way point before they
can carry on moving, even if it means going back through old
ground. If you look at the direction they are moving
they will almost always move in diagonals. As in NW NE SW SE.
I believe this is so they don't get stuck on scenery like fences
or other straight obstacles.
However, when generals are not with you they move to their
destinations perfectly. This is due to the off range processing,
of which I will describe later. It is therefore faked off
screen. For this reason generals move towards their locations
quicker and more efficiently when you are not hanging
alongside them. There are some levels like the battle of Chi
Bi on the 3rd and Extreme where generals can get stuck.
I've had Sun Jian get stuck on two boats and repeatedly move
between the two for eternity, leaving myself to do the
rest of the level unaided. Even when I'm moved away from him
he still wouldn't budge. I've even had Xiahou Yuan stood in the
ocean instead of on a boat. Definitely a bug.
When running through enemy territory all enemies will execute
the age old 'run directly to your position tactics'.
Similar to how bullets approach your ship on shooting games.
A calculation is made to find the shortest distance between
you and the enemy and this is the route they will take.
They will never try to cut you off or guess where you about
to move so the trick is move in a slightly curved and also
zig zag style fashion between enemies.
This way you can avoid getting into contact with them at all
when running through enemy territory.
The enemies rarely crowd you on Dynasty Warriors 4 so running
through enemy territory is much easier. I will explain more
about why this is true later on.
With archers it is recommended to jump in a zig zag fashion,
even when approaching them. This way they will never be able
to get a lock on you.
Watching the demonstration will give you an idea of how
obscure the path finding can sometimes be. You should also
note how strange it is that the computers are also able to
perform the pointless 'circling around' technique during
the demo. You'll have seen many times enemies do this in
battle but strange how it is impossible for you to perform,
yet the demo makes you think it is a legal move. I hope that
last bit makes sense.
_____________________________________________________________
2.5 BATTLE ORDER
Each battle consists of various units set out in strategically
set locations as defined in the battle layout of each level.
Generally speaking the order of this each unit is set is the
same and only varies depending on which side you're on.
For instance at the battle of He Fei castle on the 3rd game,
if you choose Wu you start on the outside ready for the
attack but if you choose Wei then Wu is already in the castle.
This I believe only applies to Hard, but I could be wrong.
You can often get some rather odd layouts on screen when
generals are programmed to chase other generals and one has
moved out of position. Especially if you are playing the stage
leader. The best example is that on many levels, your main
leader will stay in the same position until all the army
in the other team except for the leader has been killed.
The battle order in which the characters move is always the
same, however what makes the battles often seem different is
the order in which generals die. If two armies are in battle and
one dies then the next army moves on. However is there are
a lot of troops left in a particular army on the way to its
location, the troops will queue up and wait their turn when they
are needed. This is most apparent when you have killed everyone
except the leading general of the level. A set number of allies
will attack and any that die will be replaced.
I swear sometimes generals on your team get stuck when they
should be advancing forward. Thus leaving you to finish the
level all by yourself. Very annoying.
If no generals die then no armies with move anywhere, unless
due to a cut scene that triggers an event.
The generals follow a pre-determined route, regardless of what
happens, they do not move to the nearest army. Only a set route.
Unless they are programmed to do so, which is often rather
stupid as there are many times when you could be losing and
reinforcements appear in the enemy camp and are already on lower
morale and thus die very quickly, it's a pity they don't retreat.
This is confirmed when you are the leader of level, if you
let all your armies die but move yourself out of your starting
position, the enemies will move to where you started and
just wait and not attempt to find you. However they will give
chase if there is nowhere left for them to go once they arrive.
Sub generals are a little more complex. They do seem to move
towards the nearest enemy. They often split up from the main
general and be miles away at the other end of the map. This is
most obvious on the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Hu Lao Gate.
Cao Cao and Liu Bei are usually still at the top of the map
whilst their sub generals Xiahou Dun, Cao Ren, Guan Yu and
Zhang Fei are miles ahead, Xiahou Dun is often the first general
to reach Dong Zhuo which to me is surprising since the route he
takes is the longest in the level. I am of course taking about
the 3rd and Extreme games. There are far less directions to take
on the Hu Lao gate of Dynasty Warriors 4.
It is often difficult to see where sub generals are on the map
because they have no symbols. Finding enemy sub generals is
basically just a case of looking anywhere nearby.
Unless of course you happen to know which path this general
should take, otherwise the only clue is to look for places
where there are few blue or red dots on the map.
This is not so on Dynasty Warriors 4 as you can check this on
the map when you pause the game.
On the Hu Lao gate Lu Bu moves around a lot and at times seems
like he has no movement order at all. Therefore it is
recommended to keep away from him if you're a weak character.
Because he will give chase for a lot longer than any other
general and he may even come looking for you. I would class
Lu Bu as a special character as even morale affects him
differently too.
_____________________________________________________________
2.6 ATTACK ZONE
Similar to bodyguards, generals will fight in a specified zone.
However, for generals this area is much larger. And you won't
notice that until they give chase when you are running away.
They will only chase for a certain distance before eventually
turning back and heading back towards the centre of their zone.
With the possible exception of Lu Bu of course, which I
mentioned earlier.
The most ridiculous factor of the attack zone is that they
only follow you when you get within a certain distance.
A distance that is shorter than the possible firing zone.
Put simply, you can arrow them from long range without them
coming towards you to retaliate, an AI problem from the 2nd
and 3rd games which appears to have been fixed on the 4th.
Also a general that is knocked off a horse will constantly keep
trying to run towards where his horse stands and just ignore
the fact that you are firing at him. Making the AI look even
more stupid. Again, this appears to have been fixed in
Dynasty Warriors 4.
With enough arrows it is possible to kill entire generals in
this way but in my opinion, this a good way to exploit the
AI to your gain. It may seem like cheating, but it's not
actually a guaranteed technique. For instance, if the
general is already in battle with another army then the general
will be moving around as normal instead of being a sitting
target. And at other times there can be other archers
shooting back at you preventing you from sniping successfully.
The bodyguard technique can also be applied to generals.
The technique as in repeatedly hitting them when out of their
legal fighting zone.
Get a general to give chase, walk backwards whilst guarding
and watch them follow you. When he/she starts to run back you
know you've found where their attack zone ends.
Quickly move back into the zone and when they give chase again
unleash a stun arrow. Now that they're dazed run behind them
and combo them out of their zone. Now every time they get up
their first priority will be to return to their zone without
even attempting to fight back. You will now be able to fight
them without fighting back or even using their Musuo when
almost dead. It will be only the bodyguards now that will be
of any trouble now.
Gate Captains also have an attack zone. And they too can be
arrowed to death from a distance using the arrow technique.
The attack zone of generals on Dynasty Warriors 4 is very
large and for the main troops it is much smaller.
So you rarely get crowded as you do on the previous versions.
One boundary I do find a tad unfair is that of the gates.
It seems everyone in the entire universe can go there
but you. Horses, elephants, troops. Even your body
guards! Put your hand up if you've ever knocked a defence
up outside of the gate captains area? And how annoying
it is too, you can see it, but you can't touch it.
_____________________________________________________________
2.7 STATIONARY
Any armies that are queuing up for battle or are standing idle
will not be moved. It is possible to nudge people by walking
into them but they will move back towards to their standing
point if nudged too far. And of course this only happens when
you are stood next to allies.
_____________________________________________________________
2.8 COMBAT LOGIC
Surprisingly, combat logic is very simple, and is only
slightly varied between each version.
For regular enemies they will circle round (a strange yet
unexecutable technique) the enemy that they've targeted and
occasionally attack. Often though they will not attack for ages
and it looks more like they're dancing than fighting.
Regular enemies will only ever attack you if you hit them, that
is turn their attention towards you if they're already fighting
someone else.
If you're fighting alone then every enemy that comes onscreen
will instantly target you. Not good when archers come onto the
scene. If this happens and allies arrive on the scene run
away and then when all enemies have disappeared run back.
Now all the archers will have set themselves to the allies that
just arrived. Allowing you to take out all the archers whilst
they're not looking, except on Dynasty Warriors 4 where they
actually turn to face you, otherwise you can pick them off
one by one. It's best to stand with your army when there are
archers about so there is less chance of being hit by an
arrow.
Enemy generals will chase after you and then when in range will
attack. The attack they perform will be random. But as long as
you just stand there guarding and watch. You can instantly
counter attack with an attack of your own once they have
finished. This simple defend and then attack back will work
against everyone. Whilst they're falling run behind them if you
can, then attack as soon as they get up and they will be unable
to defend.
When a general knocks you down they will either charge up and
use a power up or give chase. For this reason try not to let
you knock them down.
Or if they do, repeatedly press the L1 Button, attack button and
direction they are in so you can quickly leap up and knock them
off their feet before they life up.
On Dynasty Warriors 2 you should aim to never knock down a
general as they never use their powerups unless you do, and they
don't charge, they instantly use an item, no way of stopping them.
Not possible however when you are fighting with your own army, as
they will often knock the bos to the floor.
And never use your Musuo on a general on Dynasty Warriors 2 either,
especially when you are on low health, unless you're juggling them.
Because it's impossible to get into a Musuo deadlock, meaning that
if they choose to do their Musuo into yours, you will take all
the hits.
The circling around technique is a weak point for all enemies.
That move where they stand move clockwise around you, the move
you cannot do yourself.
Whilst they are doing this they are guaranteed to be not blocking,
unless you are playing Dynasty Warriors 2 that is, in which they
are likely to be already blocking.
When generals knock you down and give chase they always do this,
when they catch up and find you on the floor, on Dynasty Warriors 4
they often do this when someone else has started hitting you.
Simply wait on the floor until they catch up and then when they
start circling around you hammer attack and you'll get up quickly
and hit them. This technique is a guaranteed free hit every time.
This is especially useful on the Dynasty Warriors 4 duels.
Another point is that generals for some unknown reason never
use their jumping attack unless you're playing Dynasty
Warriors 4. Neither do bodyguards that have bow or crossbow as
their weapon, as they of course don't have one.
=============================================================
3.0 BATTLE CPU PROCESSING
This section explains exactly how the battles are processed.
It is more complex and less obvious than the AI, I will try
and be as clear as possible but you might not understand
everything. Not to worry, as long as you find something in
this FAQ informative or useful. There are also some slight
difference in Dynasty Warriors 4, but I will explain those.
_____________________________________________________________
3.1 REGIONS
Not be confused with the zones each enemy has to fight within
before they must go back to their local area. But each player
(as in player 1 and 2) that has a region, a circular region
that you can see this region by hitting R2 and changing the
large map to mini map. I will be referring to this often
later on in and out of range. As of course, any enemy that
isn't shown on your map, is out of range of your map.
_____________________________________________________________
3.1.1 STATES
The in range region is what you can see on the mini map.
To recap:- The green arrow is you, blue dots are troop allies,
red dots are enemy allies, light blue dots are army general
allies, the other player and the other players bodyguards.
And finally red dots are enemy generals.
The other colours define the landscape but this is not
important to us. There are a set number of people that can be
processed on the mini map in range. I'd estimate about 80ish
max. With about 40 to 50 in range for fighting, except on
Dynasty Warriors 4 where enemies don't bunch together as much.
The in range region is also split into two areas.
What you can see and what you can't see. Basically
Or as I will be referring to these as :- On and Off screen.
On screen is obvious, anything you can see fighting. Off screen
is basically any units that are not on screen but this also
means any units that are not in range either, as in any units
that are not shown in the mini map window.
Each level starts with thousands of people, because you'll
only be seeing a select few at a time I'd guess that 99.9%
of the level is off screen. Remember the difference between
the off screen, on screen and in range as I will be
referring to these a lot more from now on.
So to recap, there are 4 states any unit can be in.
Off screen, on screen, in range and out of range.
For example:-
- A person that is outside your mini map is out of range.
- A person that is inside your mini map is in range.
- A person that is in range that you can also see on
your main window is on screen.
- A person that is in range that you can't see on your
main window is on screen. This can be either someone that
is behind or to the side of the you. Or someone that
cannot be drawn to the screen even though they are close
enough for you to see them. (See the next section)
_____________________________________________________________
3.2 Z ORDER
This is where I start getting more technical. I hope
the previous section makes sense to you.
Ok, everyone should know from Maths that X defines left
and right and Y is up and down.
The Z Axis is depth, you couldn't define the Z axis on a piece
of paper but you can explain it with your hands.
Imagine this scenario:-
Think of being in a queue at the bus stop and you're at the
very back. You can count 20 people in front of you and the 20th
person is about to board the bus.
Now lets imagine that each person is one metre away in length.
If where you are stood is 0 metres in the Z direction then the
20th person is 20 metres away in the Z direction.
Also image that this static image we have in our head is flat.
So that Y direction is up and down and the X direction is left
and right. Still follow me?
Anyway, in Dynasty Warriors a special Z ordering technique is
used as it is simply impossible to draw all the enemies on
screen at once, but it is does in a way that you're meant to
not notice. (as much)
Not lets go back to our bus scenario and imagine it as a game.
A very boring game "Bus Queue Simulator" on the PS2.
It just happens to have a map just like the one on Dynasty
Warriors, so you can see all 10 people on the mini map.
But this bus simulator game only has the processor power to
display 10 people on screen. (including yourself)
So the game has to think how to get around this, the game
programmers could choose any technique for choosing which 10
people to draw. So if we adopt the Dynasty Warriors
technique we'd draw the 10 nearest people, this is what
Dynasty Warriors will do, standing from nearest person and
gradually moving outwards.
So the 10 people nearest the bus are not seen. This would be
very crude of course because we can clearly see on the map that
there are 20 people in front, not 10.
Still following me?
Now lets imagine you move 10 places up the queue. Lets say you
happen to get there first before those 10 people even arrived
at the bus stop. Now our 10 person problem doesn't seem as bad,
or even exist at all, we can see all 10 people in front us.
The 10 behind need not to be drawn, and if you were to turn
round, the other 10 would be drawn and the other 10 would not.
Get the idea, you can only ever see 10 people at once.
This would be ideal only in this example. We could however
cheat and pretend this make believe game could only ever have
a maximum of 10 people at once, then we could stand anywhere
and always see 10 people. But this is also bad. For example
imagine if Dynasty Warriors had a maximum of 10? It'd be
a pretty sparse war now wouldn't it?
This is as simple as I can possibly put it and of course only
happens with the people, this is not the same way the scenery
for example is drawn. And there are also other factors to take
into consideration, whether or not the characters all look
the same for example. And I was only explaining people in a
straight line and not in 360 degrees of movement. I won't bore
you with the multiple other reasons, just make sure you
understand this Z ordering issue, as it plays a very important
role in Dynasty Warriors. The main thing is, there is meant
to be so much going on at once you aren't meant to notice this
drawing flaw.
So to summarise, not everything can be drawn to the screen
at once because the game would slow down far too much.
The game can't cope with everything at once is there is
far too much going on. Therefore many things are faked
or simulated.
"Why tell me all that?" I hear you cry. Well, tactical wise
it plays an important role in how the game is played,
especially during 2 player mode. And that's not all to the Z
ordering in this game. Read on and all will be explained.
Also remember the 4 states of player mentioned in the earlier
section.
_____________________________________________________________
3.2.1 1 PLAYER MODE
Ok. So I'm hoping you understand why this Z order is used,
it determines depth of the people in view and who is to be
drawn on screen.
This is only a guess but I'd say that Dynasty Warriors is able
to render about 30 enemies on screen at once before it runs
out of time. It even says so on the back of the box on
Dynasty Warriors 2 I believe.
You've probably noticed that when there are few enemies on
screen you can see many from a distance but when many are close
you can't appear to see those people you saw stood in the
background anymore.
This is because when more than 30 are on screen at once only
the 30 characters that are closest to the screen will be drawn.
Dynasty Warriors runs at a cool and smooth 60 frames per second.
So you see 60 pictures a second, giving the game that smooth
animated feeling. Or 50 depending on your region in the world.
That's what 60 frames per second means incase you didn't know.
The PS2 has some seriously good hardware. If you imagine that
the last scrolling beat-em-up I can remember of this type
"Zombie Revenge" made a few years was able to draw about 5
to 7 zombies on screen at once. Dynasty Warriors has 30, and
has better graphics. You have to be really impressed with
how this game copes with so many.
But it's also about detail too, this is why you can only
have 30 people on screen, but can have thousands of small
sprites say in an explosion, because the sprites are not
complicated and small, but the people are. There have been
sacrifices made though, just take a look at the general
scenery, it's pretty simple. But the game is all about
fighting, not sight seeing. It's much nicer in general
however in Dynasty Warriors 4.
Anyway, it remains a fact. Using Z ordering all the
characters on screen are assessed. The nearest 30 are chosen
and then drawn from the character that is the furthest away
from the screen up till the closest character.
One thing that happens that you probably don't notice is that
units only battle in about 30. If you're fighting alone you will
fight about 30. But say 10 allies appear. Only 20 enemies will
attack. This is to ensure disappearing enemies are less common.
There are times however when all 30 are so close together
that you can only see a doughnut of enemies circling you.
Or in other extreme circumstances where there are so many
bosses attacking you and they bring all their bodyguards with
them. Usually 8 or so each. This number seems to vary, it can
sometimes be 40 or 50. I think it depends on the level and
game in question.
You remember earlier, I explained there were two types of
in range processing?
Enemies on your mini map you could see and others on your
mini map that you couldn't?
Well, just as you can only see 30 at a time. You can only hit
that 30. Collision detection (the ability to hit your foe)
is only true against enemies that you can see.
You can't collide (hit) anything you can't see. Not a problem
really until you use characters that have a fireball attack.
Or characters like Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang that have
multiple projectile in many different attacks.
If you are attacking into the screen, you will only hit what
you see. So any projectiles flying into the screen will only hit
the people standing near the screen. So a Musuo with the Sima Yi
and Zhuge Liang into the screen is useless.
Make sure you face your enemies first and that they are in front
of you and not behind the screen.
And don't Musuo next to a cliff or other object. Otherwise the
360 spin when doing your flaming Musuo will not fully turn
and you'll find yourself not facing where you started.
Unless the other play can seen the projectiles on their screen
any projectiles fired into your own screen will go no further
than that.
Other objects like food, powerups, items, horses and elephants
also use a similar Z order, but as such these are always
drawn and not selectively rendered and disappeared like the
soldiers are. The simple way to limit too many horses and
elephants coming on screen is to just not let a general on
the screen to happens to have a horse have one when they
arrive in range, it's that simple. Although it seems to be
slightly different with horses in certain occasions.
See section 3.5.4 for more about the horse phenominen.
On Dynasty Warriors 2 the food and powerups were actually
included in the same Z order loop along with the soldiers.
This was incredibly annoying as you could only see food that
was near you, and not at any distance. This meant that if you
were really packed together tight, you wouldn't see any
food glowing in the distance. Luckily this was fixed after
Dynasty Warriors 2, the programmers at Koei probably didn't
realise anyone would notice subtle changes like that.
This I believe is why they also made the powerups glow and let
off steam, just so you can see where they are more easily.
They didn't glow on Dynasty Warriors 2 much, if at all. And
finding that attack up in a huge crowd of enemies was a
difficult task in itself.
_____________________________________________________________
3.2.2 2 PLAYER MODE
The two player mode although revolutionary in my opinion,
sadly has many faults with it. Despite them though, I'm
very thankful this mode was implemented at all. One of the
games best features in my opinion. You soon live with it.
Firstly I will explain the 2 player mode on Dynasty
Warriors 3, Extreme Legends and Dynasty Warriors 4 are
slightly different. In the case of Dynasty Warriors 4 you
can almost ignore some of the problems I am about to explain.
Extreme Legends is almost the same as Dynasty Warriors 3 but
with a few tweaks to improve things, not a gaming engine
rewrite.
I will now explain the problems of the 2 player mode and
why they happen and how to get around them the best way you can.
You remember before I mentioned that in 1 player mode there are
roughly 30 characters rendered to the screen and you'll
only ever be battling around 30 at once in range?
Well in 2 player mode it is different.
The rendering system is split between the two screens but the
battle processing stays the same.
So basically, each player has 15-20 people rendered on screen
at once but still battling 30 people in range. Sometimes less
people depending on the level in question.
The graphics rendering is split in half.
I'm sure they've made some speed critical hacks in their
somewhere. Such as rendering a few more people on one screen
one when one player has no one on their screen at all.
"Why not put a limit of 15 people in range and 15 on screen
then?" you may ask. Well if they'd have done that the flow
of the game would be very different from the one player mode.
You'd basically be having half a fight and the game would
be much easier. Bus as you'll probably see, how can 30
units be in range but only display 15?
This is of course where the problems start. I explain a bigger
problem with this later in this FAQ.
Hopefully you've understood the Z order system I've explained
so far. I'd actually simplified it for the one player mode
to make it more understandable for you to read by omitting a lot
of technical information.
I'm now about to add some more factors into the equation,
what I'm about to explain applies to one player mode as well,
but it's unlikely you'll notice the difference though.
Which is why I'm not mentioned it till now and as not to
overload you with too much information at once in one section.
To cope with this split the Z order uses a selective
mode of display based on character type.
When there are more than 15 people on screen (30 for one
player) not only are the people calculated in order of distance
from screen but also in type. The order of priority is below.
1. Other player (2 player only)
2. Enemy troops
3. Enemy generals
4. Gate Captains
5. Allied troops
6. Own Bodyguards
7. Other players bodyguards
8. Allied generals
9. Allied Gate Captain
Lets imagine a snapshot in time. As if the game were paused.
How would an example scenario look on the screen of player 1?
In this example scenario I will tell you how it's done.
Remember this is a purely emulated hardware rendering guess.
I haven't reverse engineered the program.
Here are the units being processed in range that will need
to be displayed on screen in our example:-
Guan Yu (Player 1)
Zhang Fei (Player 2)
Cao Cao
Cao Ren
Cao Hong
14 enemy troops
7 allied troops
Pang Tong
4 bodyguards belonging to Guan Yu (Player 1)
Total 30 people to render.
In a one player game (excluding Player 2) there would be 29.
No player 2 and since there are a max of 30 people to show
all sprites would be drawn to the screen. Simple.
But in a two player game, here is roughly what would happen.
Lets say 20 will be shown on screen.
Firstly the rendering system looks down the list. (Shown above)
Starts from the top of the priority list. Player 2 is present.
Player 2 is added to the list to be rendered. 18 left.
You might probable think that 19 should be left. But Player 1
is always rendered to the screen, so Player 1 takes a slot too.
Secondly enemy troops are rendered. It is the second type
in the list. There are 14 in total and as there are 18
available rendering slots left all 14 are added and ordered
against Zhang Fei who is already in the list.
Zhang Fei is in the middle of the enemy troops so he is
ordered accordingly to fit in the centre. There are now
4 possible units left to render. Next is enemy generals.
There are 3 and so all 3 are added to the list and
ordered accordingly. Next is Gate Captains, none in sight.
So we skip gate Captains. Next is allied troops. There are
7, but too many to add to the list, so the nearest one to
the screen is chosen. Then we have to stop, there can be no
more rendered.
For player1 the rendering order for this frame looks
like this:- (Remembering that 20 if furthest away)
1 Enemy troop
2 Enemy troop
3 Enemy troop
4 Zhang Fei
5 Enemy troop
6 Enemy troop
7 Enemy troop
8 Cao Ren
9 Enemy troop
10 Enemy troop
11 Enemy troop
12 Enemy troop
13 Allied Troop
14 Cao Hong
15 Enemy troop
16 Cao Cao
17 Enemy troop
18 Guan Yu
19 Enemy troop
20 Enemy troop
Then Player 2's is done, I won't list Player 2 though as
for the example in question it's not needed. This makes a
total of 40. Both are drawn to the screen, we can then view it.
Since this example is imaginary we'll have to imagine what
it would be look.
So a description of what the screen would look like for
Player 1:-
Guan Yu is fighting Cao Cao surrounded by some enemy
troops. Two are behind Guan Yu but the rest in front.
In the distance there is Zhang Fei fighting with Cao Ren
with multiple enemy troops surrounding him.
Only one allied troop can be seen between these two
battles.
However what you don't see is the problem, Pang Tong
fighting alongside Zhang Fei is missing, he's just behind
Zhange Fei and along with the remaining allied troops.
Nor can Guan Yu see his own 4 bodyguards fighting
alongside him. Even though they're right next to him at the
front of the screen. But because they're at such a low
rendering priority they're not visible.
I haven't explained the order of Zhang Fei (player 2) but
he is not facing Cao Cao (player 2) and can see Pang
Tong because he isn't facing Cao Cao and his generals.
Therefore Pang Tong is drawn in favour of enemy
generals because no generals are on screen taking up
the rendering slots, but player 1 cannot Pang Tong
but can see Zhang Fei. What a complex mouthful.
So as you can see from this one frame example how
misleading some battles may be. If there was 30 enemy
soldiers on screen at time, you'd never see any allies.
Most of the time in heavy battle situations all you'll
see are enmy soldiers and no bosses, it'll be difficult
to fight them even though they are right next to you.
Even if you are stood with lots of your allied troops, you'll
rarely see them as all the enemies have drawing to the
screen priority.
Because of this order there are times when things don't seem to
make sense. For instance there can be times when you can see
the other player fighting what appears to be by themselves
in the distance because there are enemies that are being
drawn nearer to the screen on your window.
During a 2 player game the mini map is your best friend.
It reveals *ALL* units in whereas the main window shows
only most of it. Watch it wisely.
And also because this sequence happens 60 times a second
during furious bouts of combat with many units people
will be constantly disappearing all the time.
However, it gets worse gameplay wise. Not only do they
disappear, they're also impossible to hit. Not a problem
most of the time but if you're happily hitting away at an
army general and a large group of enemies appear from behind.
The general will disappear and any consecutive hits will
not hit. This means that during busy battles, it is very
difficult to aim for the enemy generals as they keep
vanishing, there is more emphasis on fighting regular enemies
first during a 2 player game.
The worst thing though in my opinion is running past units
to get to archers. You start hitting the archers and as
soon as the trailing army catches up, the archers disappear.
Very annoying, however it can also work in your favour too,
in the middle of being hit by a general they can often
vanish leaving you to recover and fight back.
Also when you're surrounding constantly, enemies will
only be drawn at the front of the screen, meaning that you
only need to be aware of enemies from one direction.
Basically meaning that you can't be surrounded, so you can
just keep swinging into the screen.
To be fair, Koei have tried to make this problem as fair
as possible, for instance, it's a blessing that enemies are
drawn first over allies. Imagine if you were always with 20
allies and enemies never got drawn?
That would be stupid, so Koei have done a lot of testing,
the 2 player mode is fraught with problems but I think that
this is probably the best they could do at the time. Although
I do feel that enemy generals should have been given a higher
drawing priority than enemies. But Dynasty Warriors 4 was
a lot better in this respect.
It is really difficult to know if you're fighting alongside
allied generals since they come practically bottom of the
list. The only way to know whether you're still near is to
look at the mini map. It should be noted that they are
still fighting, you just can't see them in action.
Saving Pang Tong on the Cheng Du is very difficult as you
often never see him, only the mini map can you know that he
is there.
So that's roughly what happens on a 2 player, I say roughly
because there are a few other factors affecting this rendering.
I know I said before that enemy generals should be rendered
before normal enemies but the reason they're not is because
enemy troops are faster to render because they have fewer
moves, details and polygons. So it's likely you could render
two normal troops over 1 general. Meaning that rendering for
each screen could be as low as 10.
Even generic type generals are rendered in favour of character
generals because they have fewer moves are graphics.
Don't worry too much about the in-depth complexities.
You can pretty much ignore all of this if you're playing Dynasty
Warriors 4 on a 2 player mode.
But of course I didn't program the game so I can only
speculate on to exactly what happens in the rendering department
But I believe 99% of this to be to be true because I've played
the game a hell of a lot and studied how everything works.
I just hope noone thinks I'm trying to reverse engineer the
game. :)
The rendering order explained earlier is tweaked slightly
on Extreme Legends to make a much fairer game.
However it's still impossible to try and find archers in large
groups of people as the people behind you chasing you make
them disappear. But bosses disappear less often, as do gate
captains. There's nothing more annoying than trying to kill
a gate captain but he keeps disappearing but as soon as you
kill more enemies more appear. Making it become a 'gate
captain in a respawn needle haystack' hunt.
There was nothing more annoying that getting a 7 hit combo on
a dead gate captain and then him suddenly disappearing so you
only got a +1 defence out of it. But luckily in Extreme
Legends anyone you are hitting does not disappear until they
have fallen to the floor. And Gate captains don't disappear
half as often.
Dynasty Warriors 4 uses an intelligent selective process on
which units to render. This is where similar clusters of
enemies are rendered in fewer numbers, meaning that a few
people disappear everywhere, but not entire groups.
On the whole this makes 2 player game just like playing the
1 player mode and is a much fairer system. You can often
have 4 or 5 bosses rendered at the same time on both screens!
Brilliant. Although this new system isn't without its
drawbacks. Double Musuo is appalling bad on Dynasty
Warriors 4 anyway, not only does it look so bad but because
many people right next to you will vanish, you'll barely
hit more than 5 enemies at all. Whereas before you could
hit up to 50 in one go. Because in the old system although
it drew all the closest people, at least it was people you
could always hit.
As soon as you run close to a crowd to do it, most vanish.
And that for me one of the best things about Dynasty Warriors
3 and Extreme and a very very bad thing about 4.
You get better performance out of doing it by yourself.
And its made even worse by the fact enemies don't charge you
in large numbers. You'll often see lots of enemies standing
around right near you.
This is definitely been added to improve the general visual
aspect of the game and stop people disappearing more often.
But unfortunately doing so in my opinion really make the
game less difficult and less exciting from a gameplay point
of view.
_____________________________________________________________
3.3 MORALE
Morale plays the most important part in the game. Morale is
everything, and having a lot of it greatly determines the
battle outcome. These are 5 things that affect morale.
- Events triggered that harm you or the enemy. These are
different on each level. The fire attack on Chi Bi is a good
example. These can either affect your army, both armies, or
just one army.
- Killing enemy generals (Not with Dynasty Warriors 4)
- Killing enemy troops.
- Getting kills in multiples of 50 (Not Dynasty Warriors 3
or Extreme Legends)
- Getting 1000 kills (Not on Dynasty Warriors 3 or Extreme
Legends on the very hard setting)
Morale is most important for out of range processing. See
section 3.5
_____________________________________________________________
3.3.1 EVENTS
Except for Dynasty Warriors 4, killing a general gives your
army an extra star of morale, and sometimes sub generals do
the same.
This isn't the same on Dynasty Warriors 4, so it's not
possible any longer to go around the map taking out the bosses
only to get to 8 stars quickly.
Dynasty Warriors 4 is also the first version to actually tell
you when your own morale is going down. There is also an event
on every single level, whereas in the other versions, often
there were none at all, or at least non that would greatly
affect morale. It's recommend that you try to get all the
events to happen that work in your favour and prevent the ones
you don't. It will help you out later on in the battle, and
on some of them and also certain Dynasty Warriors, you will
gain a special item.
_____________________________________________________________
3.3.2 KILLING ENEMY GENERALS
Probably the most obvious of all. As this doesn't work on
Dynasty Warriors 4 you have to think a bit more strategically.
This I believe to be a good move for the game. This also
happens when a general is killed by someone else, that army
then goes up by 1 star. Of course if you lose a general you
lose 1 star if it was a sub general, it'll be zero stars of
course if it's the main leader you killed.
There maybe other times when other generals may get some
more morale too when you kill a general. Generally if that
army happened to be fighting against the same enemy as you.
It's slightly more biased though when your own bosses are
killed. The enemy frequently get more morale.
On some levels you can lose all your generals very quickly
due to one general dying and everyone in your army losing
morale and the enemies gaining it.
_____________________________________________________________
3.3.3 KILLING ENEMY TROOPS *** IMPORTANT ***
This for me is the most important factor in the game.
I've added an 'IMPORTANT' sign to it as I feel this can
be a very neglected part of the game but also very rewarding
if you get to know what's meant to be going on
Which also goes along with the next two sections after this
section.
Depending on the difficulty setting the morale of each army
is different. The harder the setting the more the enemy
starts with and the less you have. If you play the game
on Very Easy on Extreme Legends the game plays itself as you
will always start with more morale. You can win without
even moving, except for the last general.
Ever wondered why your army slowly begins to lose morale?
It's because they are losing enemy troops, this is the key
point to the morale.
If you spend your time fighting an army, the enemy will lose
morale as well, if you manage to kill enough troops they will
be on low morale and your own army will be able to kill
them. They generally lose a star for every 20-50 kills. It
depends on what morale they are on to how quick they go down.
But that's mainly because your troops are helping to rack
up the kills. As soon as you start, your armies are almost
always on lower morale. When armies of different morals
fight each other, the army with the highest morale wins. It's
that simple. Armies that have the same morale will battle it
out indefinitely. Of course the chances of that are slim due
to their being other factors which influence the battle.
For example one army might be against two armies at once.
The size of an army matters, also the lower the morale,
the faster you will die. And the higher it is, the more
aggressive the army is. If anything, the best army is an
army on a fairly high morale and no army at all. Just generals
and sub generals. This way there is no army they can lose and
thus not really much of a way to lose morale. In Dynasty
Warriors 4 two armies with the same morale rarely fight
for too long as armies now have strategies attached to them.
Which basically means that when two armies are of similar
morale the tactics that they have determine the outcome of
their battle. Personally I've not noticed this to make much
or any difference at all.
Fighting armies and not just bosses is crucial to
maintaining your army. Although diving in there and killing
the bosses is always the fastest way to succeed, it's not
always possible. This is especially true when your character
is too weak to just dive straight into the enemy as they
would die fast. But by helping your army defeat the regular
soldiers you can lower the morale and possibly increase your
own, and then fight the boss with assistance. Don't just
stand with the boss on your team or dive straight into the
enemy either, hang around with the regular troops as well.
This is for me another thing I don't like about the duels
about Dynasty Warriors 4 because they makes the killing the
troops even more of a secondary task since it takes away
all the fun of actually needing to destroy an army since
they're all removed from the battle field. Or what actually
happens if that you and the other general get removed from
the battle field. It's pick off the few troops engulfed
in your entire army. Even these few can take out all
your troops if they're on high morale and you are not.
This is mainly to the harshness of the off range processing.
And when they die the morale of that army will be even
lower and then even worse. There's no point in saving an army
who exists on 0 to 1 stars as they'll be in trouble again
when they move to the next army.
This will be covered more indepth later in section 3.5
_____________________________________________________________
3.3.4 KILLS IN MULTIPLES OF 50
In Dynasty Warriors 2 and 4 it is possible to gain extra
morale by getting kills in multiples of 50. 50/100/150 etc
Whenever someone congratulates you it's possible to gain
more morale. This affects all your armies, so it's well
worth getting a high score. And of course it also lowers
the morale of the enemy, the army in which you are fighting.
It appears to be completely random whether you get the extra
morale or not, this also applies to other bosses in your
team and also for the enemy. So helping your allies to get
high kill counts is a good way of getting even more morale.
_____________________________________________________________
3.3.5 1000 KILLS
It's simply the lucky number. Not only do you become the legend
of the Three Kingdoms but everyone in your army goes onto
maximum morale, PERMANENTELY!
It's not easy to do, especially on a 2 player and on more
difficult levels. But I believe you can do it on every level
except ones that have limited time. My personal best is in
Dynasty Warriors 3 with Xiao Qiao stood next to one of Lu Bu's
gates where I achieved a score of over 7000 kills. I probably
could have got to 10,000 had I gone to that respawn point at
the start. So it's certainly not impossible to get 1000 if
you've never done it. The trick is to find a big army and
kill as many troops as you can whilst moving towards the
gate, that way troops come out constantly. And I mean
constantly. Once you get to 1000 your army is practically
unstoppable.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4 ON AND OFF RANGE PROCESSING
Off range processing is a very important issue, as it accounts
for 99% of the map and battle. So it's important you understand
what is happening outside your little world. This is where
morale comes into play.
This section is long and very important, first I'll describe
the impacts with off range processing with morale, the simple
stuff first. Then I'll explain the problems with the
transition between off range and on range and other off
range problems. On range is far simpler, it's anything you
can see on screen and on your mini map, the fact that you can
see this on screen is a nice confirmation and reassurance on
how it all works. On range is a concept easy to accept.
However, haven't you ever wondered why you'll be fighting
alongside a boss on your team who is in trouble, who'll have
full health and then suddenly die for no apparent reason?
Also, I guarantee that if you stay with your boss leader
for the entire duration of the level, he will not die.
Almost any boss can be hit many times, they have tons of
health, and even when they are about do die, they have tons
of health potions and defence/attack up to help them.
So you could argue why on earth when they are left on their
own do they sometimes die so quickly.
Ok, to explain why these and other mysteries happen I'm going
to unfortunately spoil the illusion of the game a little bit.
When enemies are off range (not on your small map) they are
processed very differently to how they are fighting off screen.
Remember before I mentioned about on and off the range
of your mini map? If not, remind yourself in section 3.1.1.
It's all because they fight differently on screen as to when
you cannot see them on your map. Enemies that are on your map
are moving around fighting each other, just like you are, just
like the enemies that you can see are. So basically the only
real battle is people you can see on your screen.
Morale barely affects anything that is in range of your map.
With possibly the exception that the higher morale you have
you great chance your army will have of fighting instead of
doing that pointless side step move.
But it's still not that different, an army of 0 stars and an
army of 8 stars fighting on your screen, you won't tell any
difference. Which is why when you go to help an army in danger.
You may often feel that when you arrive the army isn't in
trouble at all. Or at least not THAT much.
Remember when I mentioned about in range processing and how
many people can be displayed at once on screen? Where
I mentioned that many people can be stood next to you but
only a certain number be displayed through the Z ordering?
Well this also affects how they fight too. Lets imagine we
have 40 people in front of you and say only 20 can be seen.
All 40 will still move around as if they were about to battle
with you, but only the 20 that CAN BE SEEN will be
trying to attack you. The rest will not.
These invisible people can be annoying for one very good
reason, you can't attack them either. And one of them could
be something important you want to kill first like a boss,
gate captain or an archer. These people are in range but
off screen. Which is a problem as they are only invisible
like this when you are looking at them on your screen.
Now lets imagine an even worse scenario. The 20 people you
can see are stood right next to you in a doughnut shape.
They're close enough to you so that no matter which way you
face all 20 are shown. Now lets imagine the other 20 are
archers, there are 5 in every direction. Positioned North,
East, South and West. You cannot see any of them as they
are too far away, the doughnut people are all you can see,
however you can see all the archers on the mini map, they're
all in range. This is where the gameplay mechanics are
seriously unfair. Whichever direction you face you will have
15 archers off screen, behind, and to your left and right.
So any archers not trying to be displayed in your field of
vision (15 of them) can FIRE AT YOU. But of course as soon
as you turn to see where they are, you can't see them and then
they stop firing and the others you chose not to face start to
fire. Then when you go to attack and break away from the
doughnut army they appear. You start laying into one of
them and then vanish again as soon as the doughnut army
give chase and catch up the archers vanish again as they
are programmed to run away when you get too close to them.
Picking off archers in this manner get be very frustrating,
especially when you're trying to run away and find food.
This was a very big problem with the 2 player mode in
Dynasty Warriors 3, but a bit less with Extreme Legends.
Thankfully this is not as much of an issue with 4. But it
still remains, but is more cleverly disguised as the people
you do want to see the most are displayed first using the
more intelligent display system. But since archers are so
very weak in Dynasty Warriors 4, this doesn't even become
an issue. Even on the final stage you don't need to equip
the bow defence item. They've now made the archers too easy.
Another reason I feel Dynasty Warriors 4 isn't hard.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4.1 MORALE
I explained earlier that Morale doesn't have much to do with
fights that you can see on your map. Morale is used to
calculate and emulate battles that are going on that you can't
see. It is not viably possible for the game to process
1000's of people per stage 60 times a second in the same way
it is when you can fighting with people near to you. So it is
processed off range in a far simpler process and morale is
the key factor to this. Unfortunately off range processing
although fairly similar just isn't the same, it works well
enough for when troops are on medium ranges of morale. But
in general I feel the fighting off range is sometimes too slow.
People can often be fighting in the same place for 5 to
15 minutes. You've often cleared up half of the map by
then. It's at its worst I feel when an army is on 8 stars or 0,
extreme morale is when things go a bit out of control.
You could for example do something like leave your main general
with one weedy person and he be surrounded by 20 of your own army.
Run off screen and then very quickly your main general be killed.
Just from one guy because he happened to be on 8 stars and your
army on 0. It's of course a theoretically impossibility
that bosses on your own team could die this quickly, but it
still happens. No matter how confident you are, you could never
win against 20 people. This is where the off range processing
emulation of a real fight is just too inaccurate. If you'd have
stood there for about 30 seconds. Your army would have killed
him very easily. Just look at Pang Tong on Cheng Du on
Dynasty Warriors 3. He dies far too quickly when he's in trouble.
On a 2 player mode you can often barely see him and if he happens
to shoot ahead quickly without you knowing, he's dead within 5
seconds. Same when he gets trapped in Dynasty Warriors 4, and
when you arrive to help, he's barely in battle with anyone.
It's great however when your entire army has more morale than
the enemy. Having low morale is bad enough, but a low
morale with a very large army is even worse. As the opposite
team will plough through a lot of people very quickly. Getting
50 and 100 kills in the process and gaining even more morale.
The ideal army actually is one with no people at all, just bosses.
This way there is no way of losing morale from losing troops.
If you're fighting alongside an ally that has 7 or 8 stars they
fight better when they are out of range. If they're on 8 stars
and fighting an army on zero. They're unstoppable killing machines.
They fight even better than YOU DO! They also appear to lose no
health at all, they can fight for hours without losing a single
bit.
A good tactic is to stay with one army for as long as possible.
The quicker this army advances, and the faster you can get
an army on 6 or more stars, the more likely it is to survive
the entire level in non stop combat. I'd say basically that
any army you have on 7 or 8 stars is guaranteed never to die.
Put simply, out of any two battling armies, the one with the
highest morale will win, ALWAYS win. The difference in stars
determines how quickly they will lose. The battle will be over
quicker if the armies are 5 and 6 instead of 1 and 2 since
higher morale also means higher aggression. An army of 5 against
6 will rarely win when the morale is that similar. What generally
happens is that the weaker army slower gets weaker. Most levels
start off with the enemy on 5 or 6 and you on 3 or 4. The
difference in morale is generally proportional to the life
expectancy of the army. When you're playing the Wu Zhang Plains
with Shu on Dynasty Warriors 3 on Hard the morale is far too
harsh. One of your armies is at deaths door as soon as you
start, and when it dies in 60-120 seconds, your army loses morale
and all the enemy gain it. Within 5 minutes your entire army
is gone. It's like domino effect.
Stopping the fire attack on hard is pointless because by the
time it happens, practically your entire army is already
dead. And it has the double negative in that Liu Bei
doesn't run away to safety, he remains in the centre
of the map, the worst possible place under the overwhelming
circumstances when every single enemy army comes in for
the kill.
What I tend to do on most levels attack the enemy troops of
the army I start near so it is the same morale as the army
attacking or my army one star of morale higher. Then I go
away and leave my army to win, this often takes 15-20 minutes.
I may end up even coming back later and killing this general
myself. But it means that army is delayed as long as possible.
And therefore doesn't lose even more morale when it wins too
quickly on the starting army.
If you start on easy you can move your character somewhere
safe and watch how the level will complete itself up until
the last boss. This is because you start with more morale
than the enemy. The enemies morale will start to descend
as your army start killing all their troops. Just in the
same way your own do when you start on hard. Morale
doesn't how you yourself fight, you can take on an army
of 8 stars by yourself with 0 stars and it won't make a
difference. So it's up to you to take the morale down
on the enemy, your army will not be able to do this until
they get more morale over the enemy. Of course you can't
save everyone, but you can at least give some of your
armies the winning edge.
Progressing too quickly can sometimes be a bad idea, especially
on Dynasty Warriors 4 where doing so can trigger a cut scene
too early which can almost instantly put a finishing touch
on your army. If you take the time to stabilise your overall
morale and not let the enemy run away with the stage you
can have every general in your entire army survive the stage.
This can be exceptionally easy during a 2 player mode also.
This can really really help you, especially on the Nanman stage
on Dynasty Warriors 4. This level is annoying as it is because
your troops lose morale a lot just from general fatigue.
If you're not careful you can lose all your morale in your
entire army very quickly.
Then the level can be almost impossible, you need to defend
your main guy who is on zero stars, but you can't afford to
leave to attack Meng Huo. Which basically means you're stuck
for a very long time at the start of the level as enemies
respawn on this level very quickly.
Here's how I do the level, if you follow my tips, you'll find
the level an absolute breeze.
For starters for some unknown reason Meng Huo accounts for
almost all of the gate captains in the level, and whenever
you defeat him, he comes back and also reopens all of his gate
posts that may have been closed. So it's pointless trying
to close any, but I recommend you leave them all open. As they
work to your advantage in the end. Ok, so the level starts,
I'm presuming you're playing the game on hard. As soon as
you start you have an army attacking you with two sub generals.
It't best to kill them and also Meng Huo. I then go around
the windy path killing everyone but missing out on Meng Huo
this time. Once you get out in the open you will fight against
lots of Meng Huo's troops. Kill them all along with Meng You
and Jinhuan Sanjie, this will probably take off two stars.
Then go back up to the top and kill Meng Huo and the
reinforcements that appear at the main camp. Use an elephant
and burst through all the trees in the middle if you can.
Meng Huo should by now be on zero stars of morale.
By now Meng Huo's troops will be getting killed quickly by
your army as they are on zero stars. And because your generals
are constantly getting high amounts of kills, 50/100 etc.
Combine this with Meng Huo's troops that are spawned quickly
and your morale will grow very quickly. You'll almost be able
to let them complete the level on their own, except for that
all the other armies of Meng Huo will be on 8 stars. Go
and kill these other bosses and remember that Meng Huo will
get 1 or 2 stars back each time he appears. But he won't
for long, if your army is still fair low on morale, you
still may have to go back and help them when Meng Huo gets
any more than one star, just to speed them up a little.
Very quickly each of your armies will be on 8 stars, despite
occasionally losing a star to fatigue.
Eventually the number of kills will spiral out of control.
I've even had bosses reach 1000. Xu Sheng reached 1150 kills
before I had completed the level, with his sub bosses Zhuge
Jin and Sun Shao on around 800 each. In fact most of my
bosses had at least 300. Xu Sheng almost had more than me.
So if you can ever get your troops on 8 stars, you should
try and keep it that way, because when they're fighting
armies of 0 stars, they're even better and quicker at fighting
than you are. Whenever Meng Huo got his extra 1 or 2 stars of
morale, it would within about 5 seconds go back
to zero. Troops were being killed that quickly. And of course
normally it's rare to see any bosses get more than 50 kills.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4.2 OFF RANGE<->ON RANGE
I could talk all day about morale, but I think I've covered
the more important factors. Now I'll move straight onto off
range processing. The main thing to note is that lots of odd
things happen when objects change between in and out range.
Such as bosses that ride horses, if they move out of range
after falling off one, they are back on another horse when
they come back in range. I can remember arrowing Lu Xun off
his horse and then watching him run off, to then come back
with another horse 3 more times until he eventually just
came back on running. I've managed to get around 15 horses
on screen on Chang Ban on Dynasty Warriors 3 where multiple
bosses kept doing the same.
This still happens on Dynasty Warriors 4. You'd have thought
Koei would have fixed that by now. Especially considering Lu
Bu can keep coming back with another Red Hare or Liu Bei with
another Hex Mark. These rare famous horses that there are
only supposed to be one of. Although it is useful to be able
to get two Red Hare's to get to a destination quickly of
course. But from a programmers point of view, I don't think
it'd have been too hard for them to make a check to see if
Red Hare or Hex Mark were already in range before spawning
another. This also includes Guan Yu who becomes the new leader
of Red Hare when Lu Bu is supposedly no more. I think he dies
and Guan Yu steals it or something. It's something that must
be explained in the book and not in the games. Normally when
you leave a regular brown, dark brown or white horse, as soon
as it goes to off range it disappears.
Although I have noticed it seems to get remembered in certain
circumstances, such as on the far east of Dynasty Warriors 3.
The Yellow Turban Rebellion where you must defeat Zhang Bao
from his rolling boulders, once you leave your horse it's
always there when you come back down. But rarely in any other
situation.
We could safely presume, or even pretend that as soon as Red
Hare is off range for both players that Lu Bu and Red Hare
have become united again.
Although then you could argue that since Lu Bu might have
run all the way to the other end of the map and therefore
never travelled to fetch Red Hare, so if you meet him again,
he'd have Red Hare again. But at least if a check to see
where Red Hare was first, would at least make the
horse respawning a little more realistic. Just one horse
per general, at least for generals that do ride horses.
Because as realistic as the game can sometimes be. How many
times must we travel to help a general in trouble, to always
find him (or her) stuck directly in the middle of many troops,
who are arranged in a perfect circle around him (or her) and
are on full health. You'd have also presumed that a general
in trouble would not be still on their horse, and true to form
as soon as they are respawned they fall off their horse almost
immediately, something that would never happen if you were
actually there with a general, witnessing them in trouble.
And since generals never ever remount their horses once they
have fallen off, it's an ever bigger glaring fact. Especially
if you stay with Liu Bei for the entire duration of a level,
as soon as he falls and therefore never goes off range, he'll
never ride his horse ever again.
A little random layout from Koei wouldn't have gone a miss.
Just imagine the time when you go and help your mate somewhere
on the map, when you arrive, it's never the same layout as
when you arrive to help the computer. The spawning in general
is far too static and inconsistent as it stands. I mean the
respawning in general and not just the spawning of generals.
My favourite continuity error which appears to have been fixed
on Dynasty Warriors 4 is one that always seems to happen
with Liu Bei. Although it can happen to any general it more
often happens with Liu Bei because he tends to move around the
map a lot more. What happens is that whenever Liu Bei is
changed from off range processing to on range processing, he's
always respawned on Hex Mark his horse, and that includes areas
where you are not meant to be able to take your horse.
With the possible exception of the battle at Chi Bi where on
Dynasty Warriors 3 and Extreme Legends at least, no horses are
ever spawned. This is all explained in section 3.5.4
I can't remember off the top of my head but I'm fairly sure
I've seen him charge up mountain areas with his horse. And
as soon as you try to follow suit, you're not allowed.
You'd perhaps think whilst Red Hare is strong in battle and
fast in speed that Hex Mark has some sort of a special
ability. Being able to run up mountains perhaps?
But this is not true since as soon as you mount Hex Mark
you cannot do the same as Liu Bei. Infact no, now that I
think of it, I think as soon as Liu Bei gets a point he
cannot get up, he just waits. Although I'm not 100% sure.
But I know as soon as he's off range, the game just cheats
and allows him to go where he likes. In fact this a general
problem with all off range processing. When objects such
as the scenery are spawned on range they are also checked
for collisions, such as for a wall or set of spikes.
Noone can walk through them as long as they are on range.
But as soon as they are off range thay are ignored, it is
faked to a close approximation.
The best example I can think of is your bodyguards. Since
on Dynasty Warriors 4 they are remembered and shown as
green dots on the large map, they must be moved around
like everyone else. But on the previous games they cheat.
As soon as bodyguards are off range, they walk through
everything except with the possible exception of water.
In fact no, they might even do this as well with small
lakes. I bet you've often left your bodyguards behind,
walked through Zhuge Liang's maze, or jumped over the
wall gates in scenarios such as the Hu Lao Gate, to then
find your bodyguards running up to meet with you, often
in the direction you are running towards as well. They
impossibility beat you to it, reach the destination before
you. This of course is not true if the other player can
see them, but as soon as they are off range on both screens
they cheat. Still not convinced?
Well here is a test for you, find a wall on a level, a nice
long wall, such as the wall to a castle. Run along it as quick
as you can, try to leave your bodyguards behind but not so
run so fast that they go out of range. Then as soon as
you find an entrance run outside and run along side the other
end of the wall. So you have something like this on your map:-
WARNING:- CRAPPY DIAGRAM ALERT
O O O O <-------Body guards
-- ---------------------
O <-------You
Lets imagine we're on the Yellow Turban Rebellion Level as
your bodyguards are stuck inside that big castle and you're
outside. If you move back away from the wall the bodyguards
will move back and forth trying to get to you. The artificial
intelligence however follows a simple 'run directly to your
position tactics'. I mentioned this very early into this FAQ.
But now I'm going to digress into more detail. The 'run
directly to your position tactics' is my crude term for the
actual mathematical algorithm of finding the shortest
distance to an object. The bodyguards won't think of going
through the entrance you just came out of because that
is a longer distance than moving directly down to where you
are stood. You might just laugh and think the game has a bug
in it. But this is not the case, this can be a problem with
many other games. Believe me, describing the concepts of
a wall or object to a computer requires a lot more processing
power. More than the game probably needs.
You'd probably use a path finding technique that would take
into consideration objects that you cannot pass through.
The whole point of games programming is to make as
realistic as possible gfx and gameplay with using the
cheapest tricks.
So anyway, back to the game example, it's a problem with the
AI of the game, but as soon as the wall is off range. It is
no longer taken into consideration because the bodyguards
will be off range as well. Remembering that anything off
range is not checked for collision. It'll then resort to the
simplified algorithm for moving around the map.
You could even sidestep slowly so the entrance is far far
away. No entrance for a great distance, to make the
experiment even more obvious, of course making sure the
body guards are still at the other side of the wall.
Ok, so you're still stood there like the diagram described
earlier. Now slowly step backwards, move slowly until the
wall and bodyguards disappear from the top of your map.
As soon as they vanish, stand perfectly still. Within a
couple of seconds your bodyguards will move into range
and will be running at you.
If you'd have moved miles away from the entrance, you'd
know that unless they had suddenly become the faster
sprinter in the universe and had managed to run all the
way the nearest entrance and back again, they'd have
never arrived have arrived that quickly.
It's a cheap trick, and because the bodyguards appear from
the top of the screen and not from the left, where they
should appear if they had run to the entrance, you
definitely know the game has fooled you :)
You're not meant to notice this of course, you're meant
to be so engrossed in the game that you missed this little
detail, whenever it happens. Of course on Dynasty Warriors
4 this does not happen. Well done Koei again.
Actually, after a little bit of extra testing, I've
discovered a few extra things, the AI isn't as stupid as
I first thought, and it doesn't seem as obvious on Dynasty
Warriors 3 or Extreme Legends. However, it definitely works
on Dynasty Warriors 2. It's actually quite a lot harder to
lose your bodyguards too, the best way to see this in action
is on Dynasty Warriors 2. Choose the Yellow Turban Rebellion
stage and get your bodyguards stuck behind a wall just
like the diagram above, except go up on one of those
platforms and jump across to the other side (by the entrance
of course as it won't let you jump in the water) then
quickly run across so the entrance isn't anywhere in sight.
As in run the entrance so it is off range, your bodyguards
will not stand still either as I first thought, they will keep
trying to find you by running back and forth.
Hopefully you should have a couple, if not all of your
bodyguards on the other side of the wall. Face them and then
gradually step backwards by holding down L1. Pretty much as
soon as the wall and moat vanish, the bodyguards will
suddenly appear, this definitely works on Dynasty Warriors 2,
whereas on the next two sequels, you may need to fiddle about
a bit some more.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4.3 PROCESSING TRICKS
Remember when I said the off range is faked to a close
approximation. Well this is true, and it's a very good
way of moving things around the map. That is until you
happen to interrupt the process in the middle of one
of its hacks (cheat tricks to save on processing)
What happens is when things are moved from off range to
on range, many things are not checked. For starters
they are not checked for illegal boundaries first, this is
why enemies can be spawned in the oceans at Chi Bi also,
but very very rarely does this happen. You've probably
noticed the leader of a level in the corner of your eye
suddenly snap 5 or 6 pixels somewhere when viewing on
the large map, Cao Cao often does when moving around
on his boats at Chi Bi. You may also have seen on your
mini map a general on a horse suddenly get a sudden turbo
boost out of nowhere. Many of these are odd tricks. When
you see them happening it can keep on doing crazy things.
It's because you interrupted the computer at the most
inconvenient moment halfway through what it was doing.
On the Wu Zhang Plains whilst playing Diao Chan once, a
boss riding a horse was spawned on the very edge of the
boundary in exactly the same position as a set of spikes
were supposed to be. The boss was actually moving at the
time I made it move into range, but it just happened to
be directly over the spikes at the time when I moved it
into view. So how did the computer handle this rare
processing phenomenon? It does what is always does, places
the object there anyway because the collision for object
checking is not done until after spawning. The amusing
thing was though, is what always happens when bosses in
trouble come into view, they fall of their horses straight
away. The general never even got to move and as such fell
off his horse which was still on the spikes.
I took a few screen shots of this rare incident and put
it onto my crappy website. It's still there if you are
interested in seeing it in action. I won't post the exact
link to the pictures as I may change the url at a later
date. But the main url to my website is at the top or
bottom of this FAQ. It was also impossible from then on
to mount the horse as you had to be jumping to actually
get anywhere near it. Of course as soon as I moved it in
and out of range it had disappeared.
This is also a similar incident that happens with Liu Bei
and his horse, which I was meant to be explaining before
I got a bit side tracked.
Another good trick by Koei is that pretty much every
character in the game uses the same moves. I'm talking
about the non special characters of course. The army
troops and the generals that have no exclusive character
type, such as Cao Pi, Cheng Pu etc. Although in the future
they may be expanded into characters in their own right.
In Dynasty Warriors 2 for example Huang Hai, Zhange He
and Xu Huang were just regular sub generals. The same
goes for Zhou Tai and Cao Ren in Dynasty Warriors 3.
In each game Koei just keep changing these sub bosses
into real characters. They don't even have to make
up any names as they already have plenty to choose from.
Except for the women of course, none of them actually
fought in battle in the real story. Although that's
because it would seem odd, maybe even classed as sexist
to not have any women at all. I still believe Yue Ying
was added only because the Shu army didn't have a
woman in it.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic again. These regular people
are only ever equipped with swords and spears/pikes.
Just look at any sub general with a spear, when they
attack they are always almost using Jiang Wei's moves.
I would consider Jiang Wei and Lu Meng to be not that
effective characters. Which kind of proves the reason
why Koei have chosen those moves for everyone else.
Otherwise they'd be a bit too difficult. Imagine
everyone coming at you with Lu Bu's/Guan Yu's big
swings?
The Musuo attacks are also Jiang Wei's and Lu Meng's.
In fact it's probably like that with anyone that has
a pike or a spear, they're the same as Jiang Wei or Lu
Meng. Sword wielding bosses are the same as Huang Zhong,
Xiahou Yuan and Gan Ning. As is the Musuo, that one
where they repeatedly spin round with overhead swings.
Even Gan Ning had that move on Dynasty Warriors 2 before
it was replaced by that running slash. Koei have even
changed Xiahou Yuan a lot more now so that he is less
like Huang Zhong.
Strong regular the troops, the ones with lots of armour,
and gate captains, they usually fight like Jiang Wei
and Huang Zhong. Anyone else usually has that generic
left and right swing, then stab and overhead swing. You
can probably imagine that one in your head since it is
used often. Since there are generally so few moves it
is therefore a great memory save for the motion capture
of all the characters.
This is one of the reasons why Dynasty Warriors 3 will
choose sub bosses and regular people as opposed to
character as there are less moves needed to be shown on
screen. Not 100% sure on this one, I think it's true.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4.4 SPECIAL HORSE CHARACTERS
I'd like to explain that Liu Bei, Lu Bu and Guan Yu are
fairly special characters when you are playing as them.
This is of course because they ride special horses, although
Guan Yu only becomes special later when Lu Bu no longer rides
Red Hare. But we'll dismiss Lu Bu and Gun Yu for now since
Lu Bu isn't on many levels, and Guan Yu isn't on as many as
Liu Bei. All these characters have unique horses to anyone
else. What special skill Liu Bei has is the fact in 99%
of levels, he is always on his horse, and his horse Hex
Mark. Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Sun Quan and Sun Ce do sometimes
ride a horse, but not on every level. So if you ever need
a fast horse you can always guarantee Liu Bei has one. The
reason for this, combined with the fact that since he is
the leader of Shu, means he is pretty much in any level where
Shu is fighting. So he's a very commonly seen character.
Whether you are with Shu or against Shu, Liu Bei is
everywhere.
The main point of this section is not about the horse
themselves but of Liu Bei in general. Since he is almost
always on his horse and also a leader, he can found almost
anywhere. For this reason, this is where the problems in
continuity start. Liu Bei is often spawned where horses are
unable to go, but because Liu Bei is a special character he
often MUST go through these areas. The first and probably
best example I can give is on the very first level on the
Yellow Turban Rebellion. He starts at the east of the map
going up that hill to fight Zhang Bao (I think) to stop
him from shoving boulders down the hill. It's not possible
to go up that hill with a horse, but it is with Liu Bei.
Instead of killing the general or running up to the top,
just go as far as stopping the boulders and then killing all
the people on the hill and the gate captain. Eventually Liu
Bei will start to follow up the hill, and low and behold,
he's on his horse. As I may have mentioned before when objects
are respawned into off range, it doesn't take into account
where that object is. So Liu Bei gets his horse and if he gets
knocked off you can then proceed to use his horse in the area
that you can't normally have it. The funny thing about these
boundary checks is that they only work in one direction.
Basically if you're below the hill then you won't be able to
get up on the horse, but if you're already up there then
it won't. That's the key to these boundaries.
You can for example go all the way down the hill after
stealing Liu Bei's horse when he's past the boundary, but
as soon as you do you cannot go back up there. I've had
Liu Bei in lots of other crazy places too. Such as half way
up some steps on stages such as the Hu Lao Gate. What's funny
about that is the horses back legs are half inside the steps
themselves whilst the front feet are hovering in mid air.
On a 2 player game you can quite easily get a whole ton of
Red Hare and Hex Mark horses. I have no idea what the maximum
number of horses that can be displayed on screen are.
All you do is get one player to stay away from the general
in question, it's easiest to do this technique if you're
with Liu Bei on the same team and choose a level where he
starts fighting almost immediately. Wait till he is in
heavy combat, then when he gets knocked off Hex Mark, steal
it and take it to the other player and leave it there. Go
back to Liu Bei and he'll be on Hex Mark again. Do this
as many times as you wish and then you'll have an entire
stable worth of Hex Mark horses. Pointless I know. But
something that you don't normally see in the game.
I've tried a few times on the battle of Chang Ban stage
on Dynasty Warriors 3 to see how many horses you can get
on screen at once. My record is 7 Hex Mark horses, 1
Red Hare, 3 brown and 1 white. 12 in total. And that was
with being on the side of Cao Cao. Originally it was
just a test to see how many Hex Mark horses we could get.
We parked the first horse near where Liu Bei starts where
that bridge where Zhang Fei stands on and defends.
Liu Bei of course runs away on this stage and getting
horses became more and more difficult as the stage went
on. We also started on a Hex Mark each to make the
task easier. So we had 3 before we even had to give chase.
The other 5 horses happened to appear as Guan Yu and other
enemy bosses came past. So we thought we may as well add
them into the total too.
I've also noticed that for in order for Liu Bei, Guan Yu
and Lu Bu to get another horse, they must be spawned on
range when Hex Mark or Red Hare are not. So if you ran
Liu Bei on and off range quickly whilst Hex Mark is
standing around then Liu Bei will not be on Hex Mark.
However, what is most unusual is that Liu Bei will be
riding another Hex Mark if you happen to be riding the
other Hex Mark he left behind. Generals that are riding
non special horses however appear to be able to go on
screen with the same horse many times. It seems that a few
extra checks are performed on the two special horses just
to make sure that not too many of the horse are spawned.
Again, this seems to level or game specific, there could
quite easily be other factors involved in the processing
that determines whether or not the horses will be spawned.
Such as during the Nanman stage for example, it's likely
that elephants and horses are entered into the same
rendering process, you certainly can't get any more than
3 or 4 elephants on screen, except of course Dynasty
Warriors 2 where there are no elephants at all.
As soon as any of them go off range, in the case of the
scenario above. I rode Red Hare around the corner and
back again and every single one of them had gone, all 11.
It's unlikely that you'll ever get this many horses on
screen during a 1 player game. You could theoretically,
get some horses and keep riding each to the edge of your
range and going back and getting another until they're
all at the front and repeating the process until you
get to the destination where you are going too, but this
would be far too time consuming, probably best to just
leave a second unused player somewhere safe.
Remember when I mentioned about the selective Z ordering
of the people? Well this doesn't happen with horses or
elephants on any of the versions. If you have 10 horses
on screen, you will always see 10 of them, the only time
horses will disappear is when a general if still riding
the horse. However in close range during a 2 player this
can often cause amusing occurrences when generals move
onto the screen quickly. The horse will appear first and
with noone riding it. I'm sure everyone who owns Dynasty
Warriors 3 has seen that and thought that noone was riding
that horse for a moment.
This has been fixed a bit on Dynasty Warriors 4 though.
Generals on horses for example are rarely on horses in
places where they cannot normally be, like at the top of
castles for example. No longer is Liu Bei the super hero
mountain climbing horse general. Although the horse
respawning in great numbers problem still remains, it's not
to the same extent as Dynasty Warriors 3, instead it's far
far worse, but ultimately hilarious :)
I will get onto that more in section 3.6 later.
___________________________________________________________
3.4.5 BEHIND THE SCENES PROCESSING
Anything out of range isn't fighting at all. Infact they're
doing a very simple process that basically just processes
numbers, energy bars are just reduced accordingly depending
on how much morale everyone has, and is calculated at
certain time periods, again depending on morale.
It's more along the lines of the Championship Manager
football simulation games. Numbers being crunched in the
background with no gfx at all on screen.
Remember when I said that troops come in sets of 5? One leader
and 4 other troopers? Well when these guys (or girls) go off
screen they are no longer processed as 5, they become 1
Each small red or blue dot on your big map represents a cluster
of 5 people already. What the game does remember is how many
troops there were remaining in that cluster when you left. So
that when they become on screen again, the required amount
of people can be respawned again from the one main leader.
And I do mean when you left them, any dots you haven't
encountered are treated slightly differently. But it's possible
to leave a set of 3 or 4 troops for them to either vanish from
the entire level or go back up to 5 again.
The reason for this compression is simple, 100 units off
screen become 20 dots instead of 100. Less numbers to process.
This also means that units die in fives instead of individual
units.
Unfortunately there are many continuity errors and battle
processes that I've noticed which you and maybe even the
programmers of the game have failed to notice or take into
consideration.
Next time you dive into a battle somewhere you haven't been
quickly note the following things, all the enemies fighting
your boss/army. They're all on full health, which of course
would not be possible had all these people been fighting for
real, they'd all have random amounts of health, or at least
some would have lost some to indicate that fighting had been
taken place. This is less noticeable on Dynasty Warriors 4.
Except for boss characters, each troop is basically respawned
again, a whole set of troops based on an approximation of where
the units used in the off range processing were.
I'd bet you that your own troops are all on full health as
well, but of course you can't see those. The only energy bars
that will have changed are the boss energy bars.
The game sometimes tried to hide this by making some enemy
troops have a very very small amount of health. But this
simply doesn't work well enough to convince. There are also
other special occasions with health miscalculations when
concerned with the main leader of the enemy. Did you know
that it is IMPOSSIBLE for your own troops to kill the final
boss? Try it yourself, for example fight until you have
killed everyone on the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Then injure
Zhang Jiao until he's almost dead, then watch as your troops
knock him about all day. He'll never die, EVER.
There's also an even odder trick, do the same as before,
kill everyone but Zhang Jiao but don't go and see him.
Stand somewhere in the middle of nowhere and let your troops
attack Zhang Jiao, leave the game for about 10 minutes.
Then go to attack Zhang Jiao, he won't have lost a single bit
of health in 10 minutes. Not one, as soon as you arrive though
anyone hitting him WILL inflict damage. So be aware that the
final enemy boss is invincible against your army when you are
not around, and they cannot kill him completely when you are.
The leader to each troop of 5 is vital. If you kill the leader
and run away so they're out of range, the remaining 4 often
vanish from sight. The same happens with sub generals when you
kill the main general of that army. Sub generals run directly
to the nearest outpost. If they run out of range they're gone
forever. So you couldn't get onto a horse and ride after them.
They're gone. Sub generals are represented by a single blue
dot on the main map. If you happen to be chasing a lone sub
general alone in the middle of nowhere change to the big map and
let the general run away and watch the blue dot disappear from
sight once the boss moves out of range, teleported from the map.
Another cheap trick against the player by Koei.
Unusually this isn't the case with Pang Tong on Dynasty
Warriors 4 on Chi Bi. When he chains up the boats he retreats
and goes all the way down to Zhuge Liang manually without
teleporting off the face of the world like a sub general would.
Back to the point I was making before where I mentioned that
when people come in range that are respawned again. On the main
map, leaders of 5 troops, all bosses and gate captains are
represented by those single dots. Since these dots are compressed
army types they have to be re-displayed when they come back on
screen. If you leave an army and instantly come back, the exact
positions of each unit will not have been remembered only the
main units. Bodyguards are spawned directly from where the general
is standing, as do the 4 sub warriors to every troop leader.
In battle this is not so noticeable, or bad in any way. But
there are some unusual side effects for the split second of when
they are respawned in other scenarios. Get Red Hare for example and
then ride through your stationary troops waiting to fight, riding
around your main camp is the best place. Notice how troops twitch
slightly or are moving to arrange themselves.
You can see this best on the mini map when people are put in
range, but the effects are often seen in the main viewing screen.
Watch how a single blue dot suddenly gives birth to 5.
This is because the conversion from 1 troop to 5 is being performed.
The other 4 troops have to be spawned from the standing position
of the main leader. There are also other times when a general on
a horse suddenly snaps to the direction that he/she should be
facing. The same happens to the 2 to 8 bodyguards that most
generals have in their protection.
Next we come to another mildly devastating gameplay element.
Which you've probably already experienced on a 2 player already
if you've played it enough. People appearing out of nowhere. I will
explain how this happens, it still happens on Dynasty Warriors
4 too, but the occurrence is far rarer than on Dynasty Warriors 3
and Extreme Legends. It's not really a bug as such, but in my
opinion, an on range gameplay programming quirk.
The AI rules for any pre Dynasty Warriors 4 game was that as
soon as a troop was in your range, they'd go and fight
someone. Whether it to be you or someone else nearer to them
in the area. Remember when I said only 40 to 50 could in range?
That's an estimate. But generally in busy crowds, when the
number gets too low, another 5 move into range, so that it
remains to be roughly around 50 in the area at any one time.
For example if there are 50 enemy troops on screen then no allies
would come to your aid, likewise if 45 allies were on your map
then you'd only fight a group of 5 enemies. Ok then, this concept
is all well and good. No problems there, the game works well
in this mode, and despite this limitation you'd probably
never notice this limit exists. It's a good way of not having
the area too clustered and reducing the problem of 'too many
people' to display on the screen a little bit.
Then comes the odd part, this baffles me a hell of a lot
actually. Remember how the number of people displayed on screen
is split roughly in half during a two player game between both
halves of the screen?
Well it appears Koei couldn't seem to find a solution to the in
range processing problem. As I explained in an earlier section.
You couldn't limit each player's in range area to 25 units each
as this would severely change the flow of gameplay.
But Koei have left the limit to 50, for BOTH players. I'm not sure
why this is the case though as gfx tend to the biggest hit on a
CPU, not behind the scenes processing. I guess it must have been
impossible at the time to make the limit to 100.
Ok, so it's a problem with the game mechanics itself. That's what
we'll put it down too. What happens is that there are a number
of slots available in memory that people coming into range are
set into. This contain the information about the type of character
and what they'll be doing etc. This is shared in a first come first
served basis between both players. So if all 50 slots are filled
then noone else can come in range until there are slots free, such
as people getting killed or people in range running out of range.
Similarly if 46 slots are filled then only bosses can come on as
5 slots are needed to add a typical group of troops onto the
screen. This a guess, it may be more than 50, I don't know.
So now I'll put the main problem into context, if one player is
using all the slots, a busy in range moment such as lots of allied
and enemy troops on the mini map. None are available to the other
player. This will happen when one player decides to leave a battle
to go to another area of the map, thus freeing up all the slots
that player was using. But once the player arrives at the
destination ready for battle, no troops will be found.
Until people are killed or left off range in the other players
range. This is the main problem though, remember how there
are single dots in the big map making up small clusters of
people? The general rule is that whenever one of these dots
approaches your field of range, they are converted into that
particular as soon as they move into your boundary. But when
they cannot be generated into range, THEY CARRY ON GOING!
Which basically means they're actually in your field of vision
already moving around trying to get into a fight with you,
a 5th state if you like, invisible and not yet spawned.
Except this time you cannot see them on your mini map either.
The co-ordinates of the unit will be present in memory. But there
is no way of knowing that they're actually there unless you go to
your big map and think to yourself that you should surely be
in battle now. Then of course the inevitable happens, PING!,
out pops a load of troops seemingly out of nowhere once
enough slots are available. These invisible troops may be in
your range but because they haven't been spawned yet they
are still processed as being off screen. I hope that makes sense.
There was a time when I needed to help Liu Bei really badly.
He disappeared off screen and I couldn't find him again.
I kept checking on the map by pressing start and I was stood
right on top of him. But he died soon after as he was on zero
morale and the enemies morale was high. I've also once had Lu Bu
suddenly appear and Musuo me on his horse, almost killing me.
That gave me a fright and a half.
On Dynasty Warriors 4 this limit appears to remain. Except
since regular enemies rarely attack you in large numbers, it
happens less often. But if you're standing right in the middle
of a huge army of your own and become heavily under attack, even
then the problem still reoccurs.
_____________________________________________________________
3.4.6 BOULDERS
Yes boulders, I feel boulders are special. Not the ones that
simply fall on your head like on Dynasty Warriors 2, but the
ones that roll.
Zhang Bao and also Zhang Jiao on Dynasty Warriors 4 have the
ability to create boulders.
On Dynasty Warriors 3 it is just him who can create these
boulders but on Dynasty Warriors 4 other generals can as well.
If you stop both Zhang Bao and Zhang Lang running away during
the two sub section levels of the Yellow Turban Rebellion,
Zhang Jiao will retaliate with boulders, there is also a
general on the extra Yellow Turban Rebellion who can do this
boulder trick. I can't remember whether or not it is Zhang
Bao or not. Of course to get the extra level on Dynasty
Warriors 4, you simple skip the first two levels and start
on the third, incase you didn't know how to get it.
Anyway, you're probably wondering why on earth boulders are
special. Firstly they're the only objects in the game that
can do damage to both armies. Except of course with the
possibility exception of the flame geysers from Dynasty
Warriors 4, but they are part of the scenery and don't move.
Boulders are spawned from certain places, they just appear out
of nowhere basically onto the screen. If Zhang Bao rolls them
on the final Yellow Turban Rebellion stage, they don't just
roll down a hill, they roll everywhere and come from all
directions and even have their own physics, they can turn
corners and even get stuck in holes and stop moving.
You still get hurt even if you touch these static boulders.
You can't see a boulder being processed out of range such as
on the dots of the mini map, but they are there of course.
Although boulders are spawned off screen from generally static
locations, they don't actually hurt anyone until they come
in range. They only hurt people you can see, otherwise they
don't do any damage at all. Which is kind of surprising and
makes a lot of sense in the fact that armies can often stand
and queue up on those hills and not get hit at all if you're
not with them. So again, another example of no collision
detection out of your range. The fun that can be had is
watching where they go. On Dynasty Warriors 3 you can stand
right up against the castle wall, simply ride in a straight
line from the entrance up the hill towards the wall.
Eventually boulders will come rolling and crash into the wall.
Because you're not stood on the slope, the boulder will miss
everybody. It's certainly not what you're expecting to see if
you happen to be just stood there minding your own business.
Although sometimes they don't seem to come that far, it might
be down to how many enemy troops there are on the hill,
although I do not know exactly myself. The easiest way to
get a boulder to hit the wall is to wait on a horse near the
entrance of a hill, but face the opposite way otherwise you'll
witness people getting hit by the boulder. You should feel the
pad rumble when a boulder is about to go fast. Once you see
it rolling past, simply ride after it without hitting it.
Another inconsistency is that if you're in the 90 degree
turn to the left to go up the hill, the boulders just go
crashing into the wall. They are after all going in a
straight line, but if you're stood further downhill, they
just seem to magically turn the corner all on their own.
Although oddly some boulders do seem to crash all the way
round the wall without breaking, this is rare. You might
think this probably contradicts what I have just said but
when you're far enough away from the corner, all boulders
make it round the bend, not just a select few.
You could argue that boulders were being created after the
turn itself, but you know this isn't the case because if
you're stood near the top, this is the only place you can
see them being created.
_____________________________________________________________
3.5 PERSONAL TROOPS AND RESPAWN POINTS
"Don't Pursue. Wait for Reinforcements"
Probably one of the most pointless things that the generals
say. However, there is some truth in it. Although it isn't
entirely obvious. Each army on every level has a certain
number of troops. They come in two categories, ones that
respawn, and ones that don't. Over half don't respawn at all.
But ones that do, are respawned immediately from a gate
captain. It's hard to tell on your own team which gate belongs
to which of your generals. The only way to know is guess in
relation to where each army started, or have a good memory
and remember which it was when you were on the opposite side.
It's a well known fact that you have bodyguards, but did you
also realise you have your own army as well? It's not as big
as everyone else's though unless you're the head of the level.
And unless you're a main general you won't have your own
respawn point. You can tell if you are or not by checking
to see if you have your own name in the army list.
If you're a sub general in anyone else's team then you won't
have a respawn point or an army of your own.
You can tell which is your own as people will follow you
and then stop and arrange themselves in an orderly fashion
behind your advances.
In fact better still, choose Zhu Rong. Her army consists mainly
of scantily dressed tribe women so you can spot her army a
mile off. Now run somewhere where there is absolutely noone
for miles. Wait around and then your army will eventually
arrive. If you walk backwards by holding down the L1 button
you can watch your army start to chase after you when you
get too far away. It's interesting to stand near walls and
water and watch your army adopt a new position in accordance
with the landscape. If I recall Zhu Rong on Dynasty Warriors 3
has 10 women and 5 guys. Of which when these die they are
respawned. Remember of course that all 5 troops of a particular
unit need to die.
This is why there are either so many people near a respawn
point or none at all. If none come out and the leader general
is still alive it is because the respawnable part of his/her
army is still alive somewhere. You can only respawn of which
that has been lost. Even wondered what all those sparse few
dots were coming moving about? Well it's the reinforcements
arriving, this is what your generals are talking about.
But because they have to walk the entire length of the map
sometimes, this is why you'll be fighting alone and then
suddenly a fair few people come out of nowhere.
Reinforcements have finally arrived.
The number of people to respawn differs from every level,
every person and maybe even each difficulty level. But if
you can manage to hang around a respawn point where all
the troops need respawning, you'll get a high amount of kills
very quickly. Lu Bu's respawn point on Dynasty Warriors 3
has about 50 coming out of it!
It's a pity you can't press R3 to see the health of your allied
troops, or better still, be able to see the morale any troop.
So you don't need to keep pausing the game to check the map
over and over again.
_____________________________________________________________
3.6 THE LEGENDARY INVISIBLE HORSE AND INVISIBLE ELEPHANT
Probably one of the coolest bugs in Dynasty Warriors 4.
I suggest you read the all of section 3.0 up to this point
or at least the whole of section 3.5 before reading this
part if you haven't already. If you've skipped here directly
from the contents you may not understand what I'm taking
about, as I will be explaining in great depth why this bug
happens as well, so you'll need a bit more knowledge in
order to get this working, this is so simple to get
working bug. But believe me, once you've got it and seen
it in action, it'll be worth the effort.
Ok, this section expands on the concepts and what we have
learned from the horse trick described in section 3.4.4
Getting ridiculous amounts of horses on screen at once.
I will mention Elephants later.
The easiest stage to perform this on is the very first
stage, the Yellow Turban Rebellion section 1. The one with
Huangfu Song as your leader. Remember, this is for Dynasty
Warriors 4 only. I suppose you could do the first bit anyway
you like and on almost any level. But I've chosen this one
as it is the one I found the easiest, and it's something
you can follow step by step. Ok, start the stage, and join
in both players, don't worry if you're playing alone, you
won't be using the other player, but you will need 2 joypads
plugged in so you can move the other one a little bit.
You'll probably want to read this FAQ alongside the game,
print this part out or if you can play the PS2 next to
your PC.
With player 1 choose Huang Gai, it can be with anyone but
I feel it's best with Huang Gai as you use his bombs to get
allies from their horses, rather than always having to wait
for them to be knocked off.
Choose someone who is in the Shu army for player 2. I
usually choose Jiang Wei, but it's best to choose someone
who you've completed the game with if you haven't used
Huang Gai at all. This is so the Shu player starts in the
bottom left and you don't have much walking to do. Do not
choose Liu Bei. You need at least one powered player in order
to do some killing. Ok, I'll imagine you've chosen Jiang Wei.
But follow you guide anyway and pretend you have, even if
you haven't.
As soon as the stage starts move Jiang Wei to the far bottom
left of the map, he'll be practically stood there already.
So you won't have that far to go, just move him far enough out
of combat. Now with Huang Gai kill a load of troops that he's
stood next too, keep attacking until you have knocked the
general's morale down to 4 stars. Then move towards Liu Bei
and his army and do the same, and then the same with the army
Cao Cao is battling. 4 stars with each, if Huang Gai is powered
up this should take no time at all. If he's not powered up,
move him towards Jiang Wei and then use use Jiang Wei or the
character you have chosen to take out the morale in these
armies. Now you've stabled the level so that Cao Cao,
Sun Jian and Liu Bei won't lose their battles. They'll win
but not quickly. The only other thing you'll have to worry
about is when soldiers from the mist arrive to attack HuangFu
Song, for some reason his morale plummets and he will die unless
you help him, kill the general he is fighting.
You should hopefully by then have about 150-200 kills and
everyone else in your army should be able to complete the
entire rest of the level themselves. They won't ever kill
Zhang Liao, they'll wait for you to do that. Which should
give you about 45 minutes of time to mess around with this
bug. Free from having to save anyone, this is mainly so
no enemies arrive to spoil what you're doing. You want
peace and quiet, you're not here to finish the level anyway.
But to have some and mess around. Don't of course help
Huangfu Song yet, only when he needs it. Which should as soon
as the first army gets killed by someone else.
Ok, with Jiang Wei find somewhere fairly spacious, don't go
right into the gate captain area, find a space where you are
next to the tents and trees but with a wide open space in
front of you. Leave Jiang Wei and with Huang Gai go and find
Liu Bei, who will be right next to you, not far at all to
walk. He should be in battle and should fall off his horse
quite quickly, if not you could get some enemies to come
after you, don't kill them, jump up and down near Liu Bei
and they'll accidentally knock him off. If he's alone then
just lay a bomb under his horse and when he flies off it,
steal it and take it to Jiang Wei. You should avoid if you
can bombing Liu Bei as it is very damaging to his health.
You should only bomb him 5 or 6 times at the most.
Each time you go back and forth bringing a horse to Jiang
Wei make sure you get the first 5 in a line, as if they
were in some imaginary stables, line them up as close
together as you can, use the L1 button to help you.
Once you bring the 6th Hex Mark back to Jiang Wei very
odd things will start to happen. Before I explain what
to do next or what happens, it's time for me to get
technical. To explain what is about to happen and why.
Remember back in this guide I explained to you about
Z ordering? Yes? Good stuff. If not go back to section 3.2
and refresh your memory. To summarise, all the people in
the game are rendered using a Z ordering technique, nearest
to player gets rendering priority over people further away.
Although this is slightly different for people in Dynasty
Warriors 4 and is a bit more optimised, we don't need to
concern ourselves with these details. Then I proved to you
that you could get many many horses on screen at once on
Dynasty Warriors 3, of which didn't seem to affect the rest
of the game in anyway. Well it seems they didn't have
the processing power to spare in the likelyhood of this
scenario in Dynasty Warriors 4, infact the programmers
have instead this time opted for the 'pray this situation
never arises' instead of coming up with a solution. I
still think the programmers were correct to do this. As
grouping horses together in this manner is probably
something that noone would ever think of doing.
Except sad old me of course though, exploring all the
possible avenues for bugs ;)
In Dynasty Warriors 4 the horses are rendered using a
different approach. Gone are the days of a seemingly
infinite amount of horses to be rendered like on Dynasty
Warriors 3. The programmers haven't even attempted to
do a thing with this problem. No clever Z ordering
algorithm at all, nowt, nothing.
The general rule and processing concept is simple.
There can only be a maximum of 5 horses rendered to
a screen at once. Imagine there being 5 empty slots
to store the horses, they're also treated in a first
come, first served, basis. Remember that, as it is
important, remember back to our little stable of 5
Hex Mark horses arranged neatly in a row?
Well if you imagine running up to Jiang Wei, the first
horse to be transferred from off range to on range is
filled in slot one. And then the fifth horse goes into
the final slot. REMEMBER that as long as these five
horses remain on screen, this order cannot be changed.
As soon as one goes the horses are bunched together
accordingly and another slot is spared. And also remember
that each screen has 5 slots. Ok, hope you're following
so far, I'm starting off easy at the moment.
Now back to the game, once you've got your fifth horse
lined up. Make sure Jiang Wei can see them all on his
screen. Then line him up as shown below, this is what
Jiang Wei's minimap should look like:-
Horses--> X
X
X
Tail end-> X <-Head end
X
Jiang Wei --> O
Remembering of course that horses are not shown on
the mini map, you've just to use your imagination a
bit and imagine that if they were shown on the mini map
then the above is how it would all look. Ok? Good!
Make sure Jiang Wei is fairly close and that all 5
horses are sideways as shown above. Use Huang Gai to
move the horses around if necessary.
I'm probably going into far too much detail already,
but I want this guide to be fool proof, idiot proof even.
WARNING : Before I go any further I must stress, DO NOT
SAVE, when you save it does not remember where you put
the horses, it remember one at the very most. So you
have to do all of this every time you wish to execute
this bug. Although once you've got the hang of it, it'll
only take you 5 minutes to do everything at the most
when you're ready to wow your mates.
If you have any horse saddle powerups available then you
can make your life a bit easier by starting your characters
on horses or elephants. Thus giving you 2 already.
Ok, so now you should have Jiang Wei sorted. Go off with
Huang Gai again, this time for the sake of clarity you
should get a different colour horse, go and find Cao Cao
and Sun Jian is they're nearby.
So what happens when there are 6 horses on screen then?
You're surely asking this by now. Well it's quite simple,
nothing at all. The 6th horse is simply ignored, yep,
it's that easy. So when Huang Gai comes back with a 6th
horse Jiang Wei won't be able to see it. Huang Gai will
be riding around on mid air. HOORAY!
Applaude at the legendary invisible horse, attack, musuo
get on, get off, all whilst floating in mid air. Of
course you can see the horse on Huang Gai's screen,
but just not on Jiang Wei's screen. There is no room
for it to be rendered as all 5 slots have been taken.
And there's no clever Z ordering routine or nothing.
You can have Huang Gai positioned right into the
foreground of Jiang Wei's screen, a big closeup of
Huang Gai in mid air.
WARNING : If a cut scene comes up then the a check *IS*
performed on the Z ordering of the horses, of course
there are only two cut scenes in the entire level.
So it's unlikely to happen during a critical moment.
The effects are minimal, the horse order will be
changed though. Just be aware then when you skip the
cut scene you'll need to do some minor re-adjusting.
You can safely pause the game however. That's fine.
Basically if Huang Gai is up close when the cut scene
appears. The horse at the back of the line will not
be seen. This is easily fixed though, simply move
Huang Gai away so he cannot be seen on Jiang Wei's
window, instantly the horse at the back will reappear.
And then when Huang Gai comes back on again, BAM!
Invisible horse riding again. But it doesn't stop there
I tell you, nope, this is just the tip of the iceberg. :D
Ok, next up I want you to leave that brown horse near
Jiang Wei but don't put it into the row, dump it
anywhere in the right hand side of Jiang Wei's screen.
Similar to the diagram below:-
Horses--> X
X Y <- Brown horse
X
X
X
Jiang Wei --> O
Jiang Wei if you haven't moved him should not you see
the other horse, just the five on the left.
Ok, a few tips here with Jiang Wei, if you ever want to
reset Jiang Wei's horse slot rendering priority, simply
hold down L1 and strafe to the left until all horses are
gone and then move right again. Move in a straight line so
you can return to where you were stood. Your goal of course
to make sure you can only see the five Hex Mark horses, not
the ones on the right. I'd use the direction pad in this
case to ensure you get a dead straight line. Just to help
you.
A few more technical details now. Any horse you can see is in
range, you can't see it on your minimap but it's definitely
in range. You should remember all this stuff for people
roaming your map from before. However there is a slight
difference with these horses. For starters you cannot see
them on your minimap, but they are still in range and
processed just like people are. You can turn around and
although you cant see them on your mini map, they won't
have vanished when you turn back round.
Anyway, you remember how when troops vanished from the Z
ordering problem you were no longer able to hit them?
This is partly true to horses, except instead the game
also requests information from the opposite window.
For example, although Jiang Wei cannot see the horse
of Huang Gai, because Huang Gai can see it then the
game runs as normal. Obviously you cannot see the horse
with Jiang Wei but both screens are able to plot your
X, Y and Z coordinates in relation to where both players
are standing. Because Huang Gai can see the horse it is
considered real. So far so good. :)
Now take Jiang Wei and move him way off screen to the
right using L1 to side step. Hopefully you've left the
horse in the position