Storm Column

[Shadow Knight]

Alright, so i'm working on a mod, and we're going to have a new race.

The aliens are going to have a gun tower called the Storm Column, that essentially has a storm cloud over it that zaps enemies that come close, ala the animated gif



My idea is to make a mine weapon that is placed in front of the building that constantly fires invisible shots like the fountain while rendering clouds above the building. Once an enemy comes close, the shots will detonate and fire down their bolt at the enemy.

Getting rid of the mine would be a simple task of having the building have a small destructive field of 1 damage when it dies, which would be enough to kill the mine due to it being on one health.

The problems with this:

1) As the mine is on 1 health, if an enemy fires a mortar, goodbye mine.
2) An enemy or allied vehicle could park itself over the mine, blocking the shots from reaching their altitude.


Possible solutions and their flaws

1) Set the mine to have a ludicrous amount of health, and have the explosion deal that much damage
Flaw: The explosion could accidentally catch a vehicle, building or even the player piloting the gun tower, resulting in quite a loss

2) Use the spraybuilding class for the shots and have a setAltitude to prevent it being blocked.
Flaw: While a good idea for getting the shots up there, spraybuildings are unable to have an effect render, so we'd miss the cloud effect we're after.

3) Ditch the mine idea and have the column launch the shots directly.
Flaw: This would actually have been my preferance, except it wouldn't create a cloud over the column while it was inactive

4) Have the cloud effect spawn from the shots detonating, having a cloud that could last forever (or near enough)
Flaw: If it's going to be constantly firing, that would be a lot of clouds, and a lot of effects rendered. Good fight, framerates.



So, anyone have any ideas on how i could pull this off?

[Lizard]

if all you need to do is render a cloud over the building then use an emitter hardpoint to generate a cloud and have the weapon work independantly of it, it sounds like you are trying to make things way too complicated.

[Avatar]

Agreed...

I'd make a GT that fires a popper.  Make the original ordnance invisible with no sound (or better yet, a bit of thunder) and the actual shot an arc cannon.  Seems like Lizard has a 'zapper' in Fleshstorm that's pretty much what I'm talking about.

Add an emitter to the GT that makes a cloud, or a couple of them for a more random cloud look, and you're in business.

-Av-

[General BlackDragon]

that tower looks like something from C&C3

and yea, make a gun tower with an hp cannon or hp whatever up there high in the air, make it shoot down a popper that fires a bolt of lightning.

easy pickings.

[Red Devil]

Might bog things down with all those effects, might not.

[Avatar]

Just don't go nuts with the clouds, and as a particle effect it'll respect the settings of the player. 

Otherwise you could use a semi-transparent object to help simulate clouds, but don't put more than one as looking through one transparent object at another transparent object really drags down performance.

-Av-

[Red Devil]

Remember the Natural Disasters one guy made back in '04?  Tornadoes, etc?  Never heard from him after he posted those pics.

[anomaly]

While I think the above mentioned ideas are better, I just thought I would point out that if you want to use a fountain mine, make it a tap of the main building (I think that would work) and give the initial ordinance a negative shot radius so it will go through any vehicles over it.

[Shadow Knight]

if all you need to do is render a cloud over the building then use an emitter hardpoint to generate a cloud and have the weapon work independantly of it, it sounds like you are trying to make things way too complicated.

Oh, i forgot completely about emitters on buildings! thanks for that, Lizard. I'll set up an emitter, and have it fire a popper, as suggested.

Thanks for everyone's help

that tower looks like something from C&C3

That's because it is 

[Zero Angel]

Use the negative shotradius trick to make the shots pass through vehicles. You can also give the poppers an explosive kick if they hit a vehicle so that it gets booted off of the emitter.

[Nielk1]

You could put the turret so it's y is in teh center but its x, eye, and weapon HP in at a distance from that (like an invisable halo with the gun on the tip). Then you can use a standard arc blast style weapon and it will basicly just always originate in the same radius from the center.

[mrtwosheds]

yes, I don't see that using poppers would add anything, just build the weapon hp somewhere up in the cloud, and put a nice flash on it.

[Avatar]

Using Poppers would make it look more like the cloud is firing lightning bolts, rather than just hiding a ship that's firing.  It would also allow for multiple lightning strikes from random locations, which would look pretty cool... 

I like the negative shot radius idea, although a tall tower probably won't have a ship sitting on top of it often...

-Av-

[TheJamsh]

i dont know if its been said.. but better still...

have the thingy make the cloud nice and lovely, then build the weapon HP so that it is INSIDE the cloud when emitting..

put a big flash on it as said, and make it shoot lighting like the arc cannon

you even have the ordnance made for you lol!

[TheJamsh]

or, have it fire wavering heat missiles... the shots can miss sometimes then too =]