Blog 186 (02/06/11)

[OWA]

btw, I'm wondering, when a harrier/kirov/whatever is shot down, does it fall and does damage to what it fell on?

This may not make it into the game due to engine limitations.

[Guest Herr General]

This may not make it into the game due to engine limitations.

 

That would be pretty awesome if they could though.

[Guest sonarpulse]

The fall part is easy enough. just make it spawn on death a rigged-as-a-land-vehicle version of itself. Even if it wont do anything more than run over infantry, I still think doing that would be worth it.

[OWA]

The fall part is easy enough. just make it spawn on death a rigged-as-a-land-vehicle version of itself. Even if it wont do anything more than run over infantry, I still think doing that would be worth it.

You've still got to detect the point where the aircraft hits the ground so that it can explode. This is the bit where our theories fall through a bit.

[Guest IKillU]

Will one of the maps be Little Big Lake? And Urban rush?

[Guest Herr General]

You've still got to detect the point where the aircraft hits the ground so that it can explode. This is the bit where our theories fall through a bit.

 

Perhaps spawn it as a Harrier-shaped projectile when the aircraft gets destroyed?

[Guest metalmouth7]

Perhaps spawn it as a Harrier-shaped projectile when the aircraft gets destroyed?

It spawns a "Rocket" type projectile that moves along the same vector as the parent aircraft, like a sort of Huge, ultra slow V2?

[Guest Herr General]

It spawns a "Rocket" type projectile that moves along the same vector as the parent aircraft, like a sort of Huge, ultra slow V2?

 

Indeed, adding gravity and such so it falls to the ground of course.

[Guest sonarpulse]

I was talking about just a carcass that fell, squashed a bunch of infantry, and then just sat there trolling everybody.

 

I don't think you could "spawn" a projectile like that. maybe C4 with a timer long enough so the airship would always hit the ground first.

[Byamarro]

Hi, I'm new here i messaged to one wing angel because I want to join BHP team ;o

Hello every1

[OWA]

It spawns a "Rocket" type projectile that moves along the same vector as the parent aircraft, like a sort of Huge, ultra slow V2?

Projectiles cannot be scripted. :\

[Byamarro]

So this is not Open Source engine?

 

PS:

One Wing Angel did You get my messgae because of i have empyty outbox.

Edited July 29, 2011 by Byamarro

[cfehunter]

this is not an open source engine no.

 

Some of it's been hacked open, but all the internal code is handled by the tib tech guys for the most part.

Danpaul is part of tibtech as is jonwill and a few others, so that's how we get our scripts in place.

[Byamarro]

Projectiles cannot be scripted. :\

Let's say that shooted harrier is V3 Rocket but with Harrier model

When he is destroyed it dissapear and shoot rocket with harrier model, rocket will continue harrier's falling down and will deal damage to units if it will fal to them...

Edited July 31, 2011 by Byamarro

[Guest Kakashi]

If you were to make the Harrier respawn a dead hull model of itself that just falls down on the ground, that one would be AI (since the player using it would have died or exited the original vehicle upon explosion). Since technically this dead hull model is just another vechicle, one should be able to add a weapon to it and tell the AI to fire it. So would it be possible to use the Demo Truck weapon for it, tune down the explosion to fit an exploding aircraft filled with Kerosine and tell the AI to shooot that weapon after ~3 or 4 seconds?

 

Even if the aircraft was close to the ground and didn't explode directly on impact it would still be pretty close to the desired effect, and I would love to see people going all "It hit the ground SCATTER!!!1elivin" around it.

 

Edit: Instead of telling the AI to wait four seconds before shooting the weapon could also just have a four second warmup time, right?

Edited August 12, 2011 by Kakashi

[Guest sonarpulse]

Just realized whatever technique is used for this can probably be used for parabombs in APB too, and vise versa...

[danpaul88]

Except there's no way in the scripts code to see when something reaches the ground or to determine its current height above ground. So your code would have to guess how long to wait before triggering the explosion, so it would either happen too early or it would be sat on the ground for a few seconds before randomly exploding.

[Guest shaql]

is there a way in the scripts code to determine the distance to a building or anything else? or to determine that the veh suddenly stopped moving / slowed down a lot? (like when hitting the ground)

[Guest Kakashi]

So your code would have to guess how long to wait before triggering the explosion

Well, it's not neccesarily the code that has to guess the timing it but basically that sums it up. Maybe use the height ceiling for the AR maps or the max range of the AA weapons as reference for calculating the neccesary timer, or something like that.

 

As for the explosion happening "randomely" after hitting the ground, I would think that wreckage falling from small heights would be less prone to just exploding. Maybe they would crash to the ground, start burning and ignite the fuel after enough leaked out. If the wreckage model would change accordingly, maybe smaller explosions happening in second intervals before the main explosion it could still be convincing...

[danpaul88]

So, since you don't know the height of the terrain below you and don't know the maximum height of the map (since this is map-specific), how would you, in code, determine when to explode / set on fire / whatever? A Z of 80 might mean 80 meters in the air (terrain at Z=0), 5 meters in the air (terrain at Z=75) or 200 meters in the air (terrain at Z=-120), there's just no way of knowing.

[Guest Kakashi]

As I said, I wouldn't guess the height of the terrain. I would determine the maximum height a debris could fall down from, which is most likely equal to the range flak or missiles could take it down from (so in clear term, if your flak has a range of 100 meters I would take those 100 meters als value), calculate how long the debris would take to fall down from there (for example three seconds). Those XYZ (three) seconds is what I would use as value, in order to get away from the problem of not being able to calculate the height difference between world plane and flying object ingame.

 

I do realize this produces a few problems:

• If a plane flies below that maximum height it will hit the ground and stay there for a second or two before exploding. As I said, I would let the debris be shaken by a few smaller explosions before the main explosion, emmiting smoke and parts falling off. In the air it would look like your average exposive-meets-aircraft-creates-rubble scenario. When it hits the ground before exploding the smaller explosions might make it look like hitting the ground did even more damage, leading to the final explosion.
  
• If a plane is killed by an AA that is stationed on top of a hill and falls down into a valley the timer might be too short. This is actually the bigger possible problem. A slight increase in the timer might counter smaller height differences. For the rest, a nice good splash radius and not placing AA right next to a cliff could help?
  

I never claimed my idea to be perfect. But I thought it was a good solution until someone comes up with a better plan...

Edited August 12, 2011 by Kakashi

[Guest shaql]

geez, why do you guys answer only to the last post?

 

also, what about the idea of spawning a projectile, or, in other words, firing a harrier-shaped rocket on death, like in apb demo truck?

[Guest metalmouth7]

geez, why do you guys answer only to the last post?

 

also, what about the idea of spawning a projectile, or, in other words, firing a harrier-shaped rocket on death, like in apb demo truck?

 

Projectiles cannot be scripted. :\

Edited August 15, 2011 by metalmouth7

[Guest sonarpulse]

I think I got it

Spawn the vehicle upside down (obviously it doesn't need to look that way, just be rigged that way), and use the engine's normal kill-flipped-vehicle logic.

[Guest Loyal2NES]

So it's impossible to spawn an AI Dummy with a gun that shoots a Harrier-shaped, high-gravity bullet forward, then? Even if it's shooting at a second dummy?

[Guest sonarpulse]

make the barral point done and not be on a turret. no dummy needed.

[Guest shaql]

projectiles can't be scripted? what do you mean by that? that they cannot have a specific model? or a non-straight trajectory? ummm... have you seen the V2 in apb? ;] or that projectiles cannot be fired on veh's death, like in apb's demo truck? nothing else would be needed for a fully working shot-down harrier ;]

[Guest TruYuri]

He's saying you can't attach additional code to projectiles like you can a vehicle or an infantry.

[Guest sonarpulse]

Does the demo truck code "fire a projectile" or "detonate a warhead". (I hope I remeber LE enough for that to make sense.)

Edited August 24, 2011 by sonarpulse

[Guest NSpgexp2012]

what is the difference of a body falling out of the sky and a projectile?

I don't know diddly about programing but the the only difference i see is a bang at the end.