Creature smooth rotation

[Yehonal]

Since I'm not 100% sure it's an issue or not, I'm creating a topic here to collect info and discussions about the creature smooth rotations on waypoints and random movement.

The retail behaviour

On retail (both classic and shadowlands) the creatures turn smoothly when they change direction while they are following waypoints or they are in idle random movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDbK-HHO7gk

The behaviour in retail during the 2009 (wotlk)

Some people, however, noticed that in a video from the 2009 the creatures were following a non smooth path: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_5gRE8vy0k&list=PLF5A2ABB39D69E22C&t=29s

AC behaviour

The AC behaviour right now is basically the same of the 2009 video, however, we have not enough resources yet to understand which was the correct behaviour.

Other info and considerations

Even though the official classic expansion should resemble the version they had back in times, it's also possible that they upgraded some parts of the client and the server with some improvements from the latest expansions.

In any case, the only possible way to implement it correctly would be to find the correct information to send to the client to properly show the "turning" animation. There are some partially working experiments done but they are using workarounds that cannot be considered a solution.

References:

cmangos/issues#2050

#2796

TrinityCore/TrinityCore#22863

[Yehonal]

To test a global smooth for all the creatures of the world, you can change this line in ObjectMgr.cpp

NOTE: you MUST clean the client cache

[virgo77]

Hi!
I was thinking about asking about it, so thanks for that :)
I will try your change this week. But I have to know if this modification can be "erased" by a Core Git Pull Update? If yes, do you think that it is possible to make the change by default? So we could have a better and smooth NPC movement for time :)
I will reply here if it's working fine, or not
Have a good day, all!
V.

[Yehonal]

This can't be a definitive change because it's just a hack to experiment it but it doesn't work properly

[alchem1ster]

So we could have a better and smooth NPC movement

We need to implement some kind of interpolation for real smooth movement instead

[alchem1ster]

I found this: https://youtu.be/74_cvkTGriE?t=420
So, in the past, NPCs didn't move smoothly :)

[Yehonal]

Thank you! That's definitely interesting.

It also means that the current classic version of the game on retail has been improved somehow.

Answer approved ✅

[alchem1ster]

has been improved somehow

There are many variants :)

1. Spline interpolation;
2. More waypoints to smoother movements;
3. Changing the animation on the client side.

[Kitzunu]

Well they didnt really have the intention of classic to be as back in the day @Yehonal as they have fixed many "retail bugs". As well as the client being based on legion if im not misstaken