Battlezone Universe

Battlezone Universe => Battlezone 2 => Maps and Modding => Topic started by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 01:21:56 AM

Title: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 01:21:56 AM
I was playing FE the other day in chaos mode where the beam things come down and hurt your buildings and i thought: what if there where buildings to generate shields which would project for a certain size and protect any buildings inside. perhaps to make it more fair whenever the shield got hit the shield generator would get hurt. maybe the enemy could get inside and hurt the buildings from the inside but only when their inside.

-another thought. Would it be possible to make a vehicle that could drill into the ground?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 01:54:19 AM
It depends on how you want the drilling to work, Cloaking a unit and somehow shifting it underground may work.

As for the shield, SRV has anti artillery shields and a damage field that is just strong enough to kill the super sensitive vehicle based missiles.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 02:06:30 AM
I was thinking more like one of the scions shields except larger.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 02:15:30 AM
what about a land modifying vehicle like to a constructor
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: bigbadbogie on April 22, 2009, 02:23:12 AM
It can be dangerous to modify terrain during games. It can cause all kinds of problems.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 02:45:10 AM
You can edit posts instead of double posting.

Terraforming rigs may be possible, its been an idea for a while and building the appropriately configured building should work.

Larger Scions shields are impossible, its been talked about, never going to happen. Other things can come close and look good doing it though.

I have an old image around here somewhere...
Not mine, just... old...
(http://www.bzcomplex.com/gallery/albums/batchadds/bz2md_old/f7906f360f8d1bc742c1a496bdce0c98.jpg)

AMENDMEN:
BBB posted while I was posting. It is not dangerous to perform minor alterations. MP Editing worked in 1.2 didn't it?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 12:41:12 PM
How about a ship hangar where your ships could go to stay safe from stray shots or enemies rather than a shield?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Red Spot on April 22, 2009, 01:11:06 PM
I had some work done for a new race, loosly based on the isdf however their buildings are (partialy) underground. The recy/factory/Sbay all have an entrance with a ramp but the rest is underground. Havent actually tested if the AI likes to use the Sbay but the recy and factory work well. Doesnt really allow you to hide, but does make it a lot harder for strayshots to do damage ...

The biggest difference is AI-pathfinding and how often units get stuck in buildings.


On the subjects of shields. A large m-curtain on a building would more or less create the effect, it however will only stop projectile based weapons so is pointless vs the energy based weapons (eg: stops sp-stab, doesnt stop blast)
There are some effects that can be played with to create an effect of a shield(generator), but I would sooner advice to remove the (annoying)beam from FEs chaos setting ...
(btw, do you play Rev-D, Rev-C ?? Try the different patches, iirc the later versions remove some bugs but also add some annoying factors, like a lot of area-effect damage to some weapons. I do recal that the later versions, for me, sucked the fun out of the MPI-maps which in plain FE where awesome to play with a couple of good players)
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 22, 2009, 04:46:23 PM
there should be a shield which reflects energy but projectiles can go through. personally i think energy style weapons are more effective.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: BNG Da BZ Fool on April 22, 2009, 07:48:09 PM
Could a drill type weapon be designed to drill/costruct a horizontal tunnel through a hill? Or would that require a DLL to make the actual tunnel construction. And if the tunnel were destroyed would the terrain revert back to it's former solidity minus the tunnel? Ew, my brain hurts just thinkin about it all....
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 07:52:08 PM
The best way to do tunnels and bridges is to have something deploy on a potential spot (DLL prevents scavs from using this sneakily disguised scrap pool) and have the DLL take the object, and use its potion information to place a sright piece until such time that it reaches the end where it would stop and place an exit on the opposing potential spot.

Not really work doing IMO. Any time you would need something in a mission it could be scripted much better as the tunnel would already be there, you would just have to trigger it to 'open'.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Tempest Storm on April 22, 2009, 08:13:38 PM
The Terra-forming Rig in the screenshot above I think was from Special Ops MOD, IIRC it used terrain generated through BZ2's exporter to create buildable terrain deformations. Then had a special DLL that would perform ai.calcliffs after it was terraformed. It worked quite well but I think the problem with it was that ai.calcliffs didn't work in Multiworld making it a SP only feature.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 08:22:46 PM
Odd, whenever I edit terrain the paths view automatically shows the new cliffs, or is this not true for MP?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 22, 2009, 09:51:46 PM
Jamsh has his bridge-builder unit.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 09:58:39 PM
Quote from: AHadley on April 22, 2009, 09:51:46 PM
Jamsh has his bridge-builder unit.
And who do you think is involved in that? :-P
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 22, 2009, 10:13:32 PM
Not neccesary NK :P

No .dll needed. No ones guna be able to do it without certain private things however.

EDIT: actually, there is a model requirement XD
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 10:22:20 PM
Quote from: TheJamsh on April 22, 2009, 10:13:32 PM
No .dll needed. No ones guna be able to do it without certain private things however.

Which are DLL pb4a and previous. :-P
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 22, 2009, 10:25:09 PM
yep definately :D

instant_serenesis.dll (or some name like that) is going to like... quadruple in size...

going to be another .dll playground like factions.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: bigbadbogie on April 22, 2009, 10:28:39 PM
So... basically, you are saying that your entire mod depends on Nk1's cooperation.  :-P
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 22, 2009, 10:33:16 PM
The kidnapping will proceed as planned :D

Unless i can be arsed to learn C++ on top of everything else really... I can do most things without it, but certain single-player things will be... erm.. difficult without his aid, along with multiplayer things.

And at least one race wouldn't survive... certain storyline changes would be needed. Large ones... oo family guy's on.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 23, 2009, 12:16:31 AM
Quote from: TheJamsh on April 22, 2009, 10:33:16 PM
The kidnapping will proceed as planned :D

Unless i can be arsed to learn C++ on top of everything else really... I can do most things without it, but certain single-player things will be... erm.. difficult without his aid, along with multiplayer things.

And at least one race wouldn't survive... certain storyline changes would be needed. Large ones... oo family guy's on.

I thought American attention spans were bad.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: bigbadbogie on April 23, 2009, 12:19:32 AM
Its an American show.... see what your media does to the world??
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Tempest Storm on April 23, 2009, 05:03:22 AM
Quote from: Nielk1 on April 22, 2009, 08:22:46 PM
Odd, whenever I edit terrain the paths view automatically shows the new cliffs, or is this not true for MP?

Special Ops was originally a 1.2 MOD, I suppose 1.3 could have implemented this? (I honestly don't know there are way too many 1.3 changes to keep track of nowadays :D)
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 23, 2009, 06:14:13 AM
Simple enough in theory. Prop ODF with exported terrain as the model, build the object with a constructor.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: bigbadbogie on April 23, 2009, 06:52:04 AM
If the terrain shaped object has a lifespan of 0.1 and an invisible explosion, it will leave the indent in the terrain after it is gone.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 23, 2009, 03:29:33 PM
Or just give it an indefinite lifespan and regenerating health
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Nielk1 on April 23, 2009, 04:54:15 PM
Quote from: AHadley on April 23, 2009, 03:29:33 PM
Or just give it an indefinite lifespan and regenerating health

But then it is not terrain.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 23, 2009, 07:32:10 PM
Fair point, but does it need to be?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 23, 2009, 08:47:52 PM
If you want to build on it it does. doesn't matter how flat it is else. even if it doesnt own terrain (but it has to to shape the terrain, so never mind that)
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Clavin12 on April 23, 2009, 09:28:02 PM
you might just want to put up walls.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 23, 2009, 11:36:34 PM
Greenheart and Commando variants already do thaat.
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: Avatar on April 25, 2009, 12:52:50 AM
I made a series of ramp objects that go 'poof' and leave behind perfect ramps for sculpting terrain in the editor, but you can do the same thing with the constructor building them.  I suppose with branching build trees you could get quite complex with what terrain sculpting you could do.

I've also done a 'drilling' rig that drills pools.  All it really does is deploy and dispense a pool wherever it is.  After that the engine handles adding/removing the pool as Extractors deploy on it.

Tunnels seem impossible ingame, at least the test Constructors I tried didn't work.  Might be that tunnels don't have a specific height below ground level, so it might work with very specific terrain.

-Av-

Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: BNG Da BZ Fool on April 25, 2009, 03:38:51 AM
Maybe something like using the terrian exporter to make a destroyable area where a demolish charge could be used to create a resulting open passage way. Could a tunnel be created the same way by making cylindercal object covering it with terrain and either deleting it or blowing it up? Or does the terrain thingy simply not work this way?
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 25, 2009, 08:49:18 AM
not really. the way to do that would have a .dll replace the object, or animate the object designed to be destroyed (thats what some objects in BZ2 do)
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: AHadley on April 25, 2009, 10:39:11 AM
Making tunnels (and bridges) will be much more possible with TA5 out, you can build the tunnel sections underground (hidden) and allow something to deploy into an entrance at the ends,
Title: Re: Drilling vehicles and shield generators
Post by: TheJamsh on April 25, 2009, 10:42:36 AM
Way ahead of everyone when it comes to building bridges. You can even turn on or off a laser grid on mine, and they only deploy on cliff edges. ODF work only :)

Gotta love TA5