[Super Weapon] Storm Caster

[Wormbo]

This is a super weapon I'm currently working on. It's inspired by the weather control device in Red Alert 2 that allowed you to create a thunderstorm. In UT2004 the storm is created by ionizing the air above the target area using a controlled ion cannon blast from orbit.

[video][/video]

The ion blast itself doesn't do much damage, that's the thunderstorm's job.
The final version will damage flying vehicles near the clouds and anything that is below.

[edit]
Download (version 1)
Download (version 2)

[Pegasus]

Whelp, there go blue's power plants, barracks n' ref. And I bet the rhino, drone n' fodder rush is right around the corner too. Oops, wrong game's MP .

Nice to see you still tinkering in the ole' shed, Worms. I wonder if I should feel partly responsible for the inception of this particular abomination too . Anyway, visual implementation looks pretty damn impressive, although I wouldn't hesitate to push the clouds' alpha a bit further towards opacity myself - you know, make 'em just a taaaad bit more black n' ominous. Or it could just be the clear skies of IslandHop that are making this seem more innocuous than it really is (or YT's video encoding).

Still, (network)emitters and event states ahoy, I imagine, huh? Btw, have you also considered using a few downwards pointing projectors to also convincingly darken up the ground below the storm? Might add to the victims' "experience".

[Wormbo]

Actually the logic behind it isn't that difficult or complex, it's all about spawning things when others finish.

Here's an update, now with shadow and damage and stuff.
[video][/video]
(No idea why that preview pic's gamma is too high.)

[Pegasus]

Actually the logic behind it isn't that difficult or complex, it's all about spawning things when others finish.[...]

Yeah, I was probly just going off of recent memory's impressions; I'd been looking through ONS-TitanNecropolis' assets in UEd and there's a NetworkEmitter in there which, I imagine, is used to sync the triggered, spawned shinies for everyone looking at 'em. So when I saw the horizontal lightnings between the clouds (which probably weren't meant to be projectiles that do damage), I figured you'd be trying to sync 'em net-wise so that all observers are seeing the same thing when a storm breaks out. Obviously, there's other, simpler ways to do that (just have the entire span of the lightnings be zero extent/hitscans or have the projectiles be invisible little blobs at each end of the emitters, and their targets picked by the storm's/volume's main loop). Anyways, I guess I'll find out exactly how you're doing it when you decide it's done and post it as a bundle.

Btw, that initial downward (cloud seeding?) beam is pretty reminiscent of another C&C superweap, only from the Tiberium universe, the Ion Cannon. Although the IC was way more bright during its firing, but still; colour and expansion/direction movement bear a strong resemblance. Was that intentional?

Here's an update, now with shadow and damage and stuff.
[vid]
(No idea why that preview pic's gamma is too high.)

Hmm, I looked into that a bit and it turns out, the vid's snapshot is just an autobalanced/autoleveled version of the source frame. To see what I mean, here's the actual frame from your vid,

What a horrible night to have no umbrella...

wormstorm_actual.png (939.01 KiB) Viewed 16151 times

.. and here's YT's thumb. If you open the former with any decent image processing prog and do an autobalance tweak (basically spread the colour distribution/histogram across the entire range), you'll get a result almost identical to the latter. Can't exactly say I blame YT for that either, since I too was expecting such tests would be carried out in clear, sunny skies maps so as exactly to illustrate how the natural ambient brightness is affected - say, your IslandHops, ChainIsles2s, etc. Severance, OTOH, is dark already, so of course the overall result would be too dim and heavily slanted toward lower grey/brown chromatic values, so yeah, YT flipped a table there trying to derive a representative thumbnail from the vid.

Say, are the cloud projectors taking into account existing sunlight actors in the map or are they always just pointed downwards? Just something I was thinking a few hours ago for no reason. Those lightning strikes seem pretty damn strong too :o.

[Wormbo]

Yes, that beam's visuals are inspired by the C&C ion cannon. In fact, I created those years ago for another modified Ion Painter weapon, but never released it. The entire beam does damage to anything it touches, and it won't be stopped by level geometry. That means you could even attack underground nodes by pointing the painter at the ground above the cave's ceiling. The original version (maybe I should release that as well) would do quite some damage and apply downward momentum.

The entire thunderstorm cloud, including the lightnings, is a single emitter and is just for visuals. The actual thunderstorm logic is contained in a separate actor that spawns the emitter when it starts and also handles the lightning strikes. The storm "introduction" sound is played by the thunderstorm actor as well, the "background rumbling" sounds of the small lightning bolts inside the cloud are handled by the engine's emitter logic. The large lightnings towards the ground or against flying targets (not presented in this video) are separate emitters that also play thunder sounds. (I thought about adding rain as well, but that just KILLS the framerate and wouldn't really fit desert themes.)

Good to know how Youtube does it, but I don't get why it does that. I mean, it could have just taken the exact frame from the video. Oh well, whatever. Next one will probably be a brighter map again, but IslandHop's distance fog affects the cloud looks.

Cloud shadow projectors point straight down. I might modify that to somewhat take the main sunlight into account, if possible. That should also reduce the weird brightness on vertical walls. I would have preferred a "negative light" (UT2004 has that, too), but unfortunately those work like standard lights for terrain surfaces. In other words, the darker BSP, static meshes and other stuff gets, the brighter terrain is illuminated. Countering that effect with a terrain-only projector probably won't look good.

The lightning strike damage may need further tweaking, but only actual online play will tell whether it's too strong or maybe even too weak. Using a fast vehicle you may be able to cross the storm area without getting hit. Then again, things like power nodes or large vehicles like the Leviathan can take many hits. A well-placed Redeemer can do up to 1500 damage points to a single target wit ha direct hit (nodes are two targets, so they lose a lot more health) and still damages other targets within the up to 2000UU radius. The thunderstorm is different in that it distributes smaller hit areas (300UU radius, a bit more than a rocket) over a large area (3000UU at the ground, up to 5000UU sideways from the center of the cloud) over a longer time. When there are more potential targets, the chance to hit a target gets higher, but with fewer targets, there is a significant chance individual lightning bolts will just strike a random spot on the ground instead of hitting a target. And most importantly: While the Redeemer definitely destroys an unshielded power node, the thunderstorm usually leaves it at around 50-70% because it simply doesn't hit often enough.

[Wormbo]

And I've added a download link to the first post.

[Pegasus]

Excellent!!

Let's proceed and introduce you to your worst nightmare come alive, shall we?

Partly cloudy, chance of death

spamstorm_forecast.png (861.72 KiB) Viewed 16136 times

Mwahahahaa ...

Summon XAccessories.umbrella!

spamstorm_combat.png (769.74 KiB) Viewed 16136 times

Aaaaaand that's a wrap for this test. You're lucky I'm a benevolent god and didn't make the storm last more than 40s >:}. Ah well, someone get the spatulas!

Still trust those lightning strike statistics?

spamstorm_score.png (1.02 MiB) Viewed 16136 times

Btw, I used set StormCasterBlast ThunderStormHeight 3000.000000 to make things even worse for the bots. Also, it seems that DamTypeStormCasterLightning is missing its WeaponClass prop and so the lightning strikes don't get their own weapon name string :/.

Still, way more fun than should be legally allowed .

[Wormbo]

Okay. You, sir, should seek mental help.

I've updated the download. (New package should be network compatible to the old one.) Lightning damage now registers as the correct weapon type. Also, because one storm is bad enough (and overlapping cloud emitters look bad), you can't mark a location for a new storm if it would overlap with another that is already active. This limitation is independent of who tries to create the second storm. By default the minimum horizontal distance between the centers of two storms is 10000UU now.

[Pegasus]

Okay. You, sir, should seek mental help. [...]

Oh, boo-hoo, waaah-waah. "You can't keep subjecting semi-sentient beings to such abuse, Peg", "torture and genetic-algorithm cannibalism are severely frowned upon, Peg", "cyborg biology doesn't work like that, Peg", "you can't keep playing god just because you have tenure, you psychopath", "oh, dear, you again?!". You sound just like my Academic Research Ethics Disciplinary Subcommittee hearings every other month: boring! Proper science demands sacrifices, ya cowardly, bleeding heart crybabies - fringe science doubly so! I can't afford to have my progress halted and my laboratory sites thermo-scraped all the time just because of some people's childish, narrow-minded hang-ups. Besides, I'm pretty sure most of you would appreciate having a controllable, psychic, lightning-fast-moving, natural-elements-mastering cyborg army around you once my research bears fruit - if you know what's good for you, anyway. Baah, hypocrites, the lot of you!

Ahem. What were we talking about? Oh, right, thunderstorms! Okay, umm, here's a few more serious thoughts on that.

- I dunno if it's the best decision to have the cloud ionizer beam (that's what I've been calling it) do damage, considering what's coming after it. On the other hand, if this were to be used in an actual online game, the ionizer would probly be the only part of the whole affair that might catch one's enemies by surprise and do some damage to them :/.
- Where'd ya get the thunderstorm sounds? Some of those wavs sound a bit... familiar. Would I happen to run into 'em if I were to, say, rummage through my RA2's mix files ?
- I agree on not adding rain effects. For one thing, thunderstorms aren't even a phenomenon caused specifically by water as they can manifest in environments where water doesn't even exist like gas giant planets. All it takes is for fluid streams carrying statically chargeable particles to swirl at high speeds and friction will take over and do the rest. For another, yeah, along with everything else occurring, the rain weather emitter would only serve to slow things down much more. Perhaps a couple o' wind depicting emitters could be spawned near the ground, but their direction and colour might require some calcs before spawning, so even there I dunno how prudent it'd be to keep pushing for the sake of further meteorological accuracy. 'Sides, if that were the top priority, I'd already be insisting you overlay the storm's location on the radar map with this .

[...]Good to know how Youtube does it, but I don't get why it does that. I mean, it could have just taken the exact frame from the video.[...]

Well, it stands to reason that YT would be trying to generate as representative and informative thumbnails from uploaded vids as possible for the convenience (and attraction) of its users. That is how they generate revenue after all.
I've no doubt the way they derive the characteristic frame itself probably employs criteria such as source chromatic variance (excluding bland or colour-uniform shots) and business (to avoid lots of text and other visual obstructions) before even moving on to the visual touching up of the chosen pic. My guess is, in your last vid it picked the one it found to be most interesting n' varied, but then decided it still needed filtering because it was still too dark.
Since there's big content owners out there that would be seriously miffed if even the thumbnail to their vids were to be treated this way (think movie trailers where a specific aesthetic is aimed for with some kinda filter), however, I'm pretty sure there must exist an option for users to provide their own pic, or specify the best frame (by number) themselves. Not that this also doesn't open an avenue for abuse and viewer misinformation; ever come across a vid where its (alluring) thumbnail pic is a red herring and never even appears in it? Yeah, lots for YT to consider even for something as simple as this.

- In terms of the cloud projectors, wouldn't the Darken draw method be the one you'd get the best result from on average, regardless of BSP/st.mesh textures/shaders? I forgot to check, but I gather that's the one you're using already.

- Was I not paying attention while gleefully turning bots into puddles of melted flesh and metal or are there no lightning bolt impact effects? If so, considering there's only one strike occurring at a time, would it be too taxing to have some sparks or illumination come out of any impact point on static geometry or enemies? You could even have the electrocution shader applied to zapped vecs big enough that shrug off LG hits - you know, for emphasis (also coolness).

[...]Using a fast vehicle you may be able to cross the storm area without getting hit. Then again, things like power nodes or large vehicles like the Leviathan can take many hits. [...] [T]he thunderstorm usually leaves [an unshielded power node] at around 50-70% because it simply doesn't hit often enough[...]

All those issues have to do with game design and balancing considerations. To be brutally honest here, while this work of yours has me intrigued both because of its relevance to another game franchise dear to me but also due to its novelty (dynamic environmental hazard), when it comes to actual ingame usage prospects, I'm very skeptical of its value as a superweapon. That's kinda why I didn't raise any such point - except for a passing remark of astonishment once I saw it take out medium armour vecs in one hit, but not meant to delve into that turf. Of course, anyone's still free to include this in any map they're working on and we'd then be able to accurately gauge its effectiveness, but as you yourself already pointed out, UT2004 not being an RTS game where instead most of the team assets are mobile, a 40sec storm breaking out over any fixed location would most likely only result in players staying away from it for the duration of the effect and little more; nodes wouldn't go down either, so essentially it raises hell for quite awhile but amounts to pretty little.
Still, like I said, it did intrigue me visually as well as gameplay-wise, and poor ingame adoption outlook doesn't necessarily mean it's a dead-end, useless innovation either. What was stuck in my mind late last night for some reason was the question of whether such a storm could be used semi-autonomously and in a scripted manner by mappers as a natural hazard asset instead? Say, for whatever fictional reason (some kinda malfunctioning force field generator) you could have storms breaking out around expanses in the middle of a map, or even being formed, slowly drifting down a general direction, then dissipate. Either fixed or on a path, placed in a clever place such storms (of bigger sizes too) could provide room for further meaningful choice for players deciding where to go next and what the risk of each available path would be for them. Roving thunderstorms around the midsection of Panalesh is one idea I've been mulling over since yesterday - hell, that place is already echoing with thunder and has force fields holding back nature. Further down that road, there's other sorts of extreme environmental dangers one could also (easily?) implement, like a field periodically/constantly being barraged by meteorites (only, instead of being spawned from a central point as in IslandHop's volcano, they'd be spawned from a plane/volume way above and plummet randomly in parabolic fashion).
I strongly believe that dynamic environmental hazards is an element sorely overlooked in ONS maps up till now and could serve to get mappers thinking along fresh and different tracks, maybe even invigorate the gametype just a little bit. Just a thought there though, still your project this.

Oh, btw...

Surely the boss will understand

stormy_mondays.png (1.36 MiB) Viewed 16104 times

[Wormbo]

I thought about the ion beam as well. Since I borrowed it from another weapon I created, it doesn't seem quite right. Maybe if the look and sound are modified a bit more, I can get away with removing the damage from it. Making it more distinct from the "actual" ion cannon attack (I mean the one I borrowed the effects from) would even allow the two weapons to coexist in the same map without causing too much confusion.

Everything you hear after the beam are sounds from RA2 - a longer startup sound, background humming and the various thunder sounds.

The lightnings really don't have any impact effects yet, apart from a scorch mark on the ground. I don't quite see a problem with converting the storm into a placeable actor that could be attached to e.g. a mover. Only the shadow part of a moving storm worries me a bit. Wind effects, though... Convincing wind visuals are hard already if you have full control (i.e. if you design the map), dynamically creating them at runtime without knowing the map is probably not going to look good.

[edit]
Added lightning impact effects, including vehicle overlays. New version is up at the same location and should be network compatible to the previous ones. (Impact effects only show if the client has the new version, overlays only show if the server has the new version.)