Update from Wormbo Vehicle Works: The Draco.
(The video doesn't show that the pilot also controls Cicada-style decoys.)
WIP - Work In Progress
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
The new weapon you present offers some great possibilities of fire gameplay.
The high power is counterbalanced by the incapacity to fight against flyers. I don't have any proposition of changes to do. For me it's perfect !
The high power is counterbalanced by the incapacity to fight against flyers. I don't have any proposition of changes to do. For me it's perfect !
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
And another vehicle update: The Perses Mobile Assault Station.
[video][/video]
Perses is the ancient Greek Titan god of destruction.
The video shows a glimpse of the firepower this super vehicle can have if all five seats are taken by bots. Imagine what happens if five humans are taking up the seats instead. (It took me quite a while and a few hacks to get bots to actually apply artillery logic to turret seats, because originally that logic was only available to the driver seat.)
The Perses MAS has 40% more health than a Leviathan or 30% less than a Kraken, i.e. 7000. Unlike those other two super vehicles, it cannot deploy to unlock an even greater firepower for the driver seat. Instead the driver has four kinds of rockets to pick from via the keys 6, 7, 8 and 9, or wherever you moved the binds for those weapon slots. To remind you of the selected rocket type and the slot numbers, a weapon bar similar to the one you see when on foot is used.
From left to right, the rocket types are: Mercury Missile (very fast, no homing; you may have seen it as the Banshee pilot's weapon already), Homing Missile (auto-homing; tends to stick with the target you point at, but will chase down other targets once it can no longer see the initial one), Frag Missile (non-homing, releases a shower of shrapnel on impact) and Napalm Rocket (see the Draco video in my previous post)
Gunner seats are two tank turrets at the front, which work about the same as the Goliath's main cannon, and two artillery turrets at the back. The artillery seats work much like the deployed Hellfire SPMA in UT3. First you fire a camera (you don't have a choice, both fire modes are the camera if you don't have one out yet), then you have point-and-click action for firing the artillery shells. Like in UT3, the predicted trajectory is plotted as parabola in the world.
[video][/video]
Perses is the ancient Greek Titan god of destruction.
The video shows a glimpse of the firepower this super vehicle can have if all five seats are taken by bots. Imagine what happens if five humans are taking up the seats instead. (It took me quite a while and a few hacks to get bots to actually apply artillery logic to turret seats, because originally that logic was only available to the driver seat.)
The Perses MAS has 40% more health than a Leviathan or 30% less than a Kraken, i.e. 7000. Unlike those other two super vehicles, it cannot deploy to unlock an even greater firepower for the driver seat. Instead the driver has four kinds of rockets to pick from via the keys 6, 7, 8 and 9, or wherever you moved the binds for those weapon slots. To remind you of the selected rocket type and the slot numbers, a weapon bar similar to the one you see when on foot is used.
- Perses driver weapon firing Frag Missiles
- PersesFragMissile.jpg (576.76 KiB) Viewed 10637 times
Gunner seats are two tank turrets at the front, which work about the same as the Goliath's main cannon, and two artillery turrets at the back. The artillery seats work much like the deployed Hellfire SPMA in UT3. First you fire a camera (you don't have a choice, both fire modes are the camera if you don't have one out yet), then you have point-and-click action for firing the artillery shells. Like in UT3, the predicted trajectory is plotted as parabola in the world.
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
The HUD icon representations of the driver's available/selected munition type is a pretty elegant idea. I understand that the numbers at their bottom left corners correspond to their assigned keys, but I wonder if they could still mislead some players into thinking they're on a limited ammo budget (a fun concept to toy with when it comes to vecs perhaps) when that's not the case just out of habit and UT convention. Perhaps they could better be placed over the icons or be coloured yellow or something to better denote that they're not an indicator of ammo.
As regards the SPMA turrets, I was kinda wondering how that deal would work here, considering their vehicular progenitor was forced to be immobile for the weapon to function in its slow n' staggered multistep fashion. I mean, with a maximum of 5 ppl on board, this train obviously waits/stops for no man, therefore its working hypothesis no longer corresponds to the SPMA's. Worse yet, considering this levi variant can't deploy, I'm assuming you've compensated for that lack of threat elevation by slightly upping its speed n' firepower (the latter evident by the 2 forward tank turrets), thereby making the camera placement's deal that much more cumbersome and quickly deprecated as the vec rolls out of range and necessitating almost constant camera replacings. The addition of the UT3 style trajectory visualization is a helpful tool (and, I believe, one of the few vec mechanics I've highlighted as innovative in a short, internal rundown of those), but perhaps there's room here for one more step forward by attempting to see whether the camera system itself can be dropped from the artillery's workflow completely?
One idea towards that might be to implement an exaggerated version of the standard vec's TPCam code, only ahead of the vec instead of behind it, where its height would correspond to a 45° shot's apex altitude and rolling the mouse wheel fwd/back would move it closer or farther away in the viewed direction (perhaps with slight height alteration as it gets closer to the vec too?). Up/down mouse movement, then, can allow for different distance targeting while panning it left/right moves the overhead viewpoint along that radius' circle (counter)clockwise. I know it all sounds a bit confusing or too much to visualize, but just thinking out loud here...
Anyways, props on your newest monstrosity, even if it's yet another vec that flouts the animal naming convention. I mean, I just know this would've made a great Walrus/Manatee
.
As regards the SPMA turrets, I was kinda wondering how that deal would work here, considering their vehicular progenitor was forced to be immobile for the weapon to function in its slow n' staggered multistep fashion. I mean, with a maximum of 5 ppl on board, this train obviously waits/stops for no man, therefore its working hypothesis no longer corresponds to the SPMA's. Worse yet, considering this levi variant can't deploy, I'm assuming you've compensated for that lack of threat elevation by slightly upping its speed n' firepower (the latter evident by the 2 forward tank turrets), thereby making the camera placement's deal that much more cumbersome and quickly deprecated as the vec rolls out of range and necessitating almost constant camera replacings. The addition of the UT3 style trajectory visualization is a helpful tool (and, I believe, one of the few vec mechanics I've highlighted as innovative in a short, internal rundown of those), but perhaps there's room here for one more step forward by attempting to see whether the camera system itself can be dropped from the artillery's workflow completely?
One idea towards that might be to implement an exaggerated version of the standard vec's TPCam code, only ahead of the vec instead of behind it, where its height would correspond to a 45° shot's apex altitude and rolling the mouse wheel fwd/back would move it closer or farther away in the viewed direction (perhaps with slight height alteration as it gets closer to the vec too?). Up/down mouse movement, then, can allow for different distance targeting while panning it left/right moves the overhead viewpoint along that radius' circle (counter)clockwise. I know it all sounds a bit confusing or too much to visualize, but just thinking out loud here...
Anyways, props on your newest monstrosity, even if it's yet another vec that flouts the animal naming convention. I mean, I just know this would've made a great Walrus/Manatee
.Eyes in the skies.
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
The SPMA isn't named after any animal. Goliath isn't (originally) an animal name either, even though there are several animals named after that guy from the Bible due to their relatively large size.
I guess I could have gone with the "Leviathan" theme and called it Behemoth instead, but meh.
The camera system works quite well for a moving artillery platform. You need to place the camera somewhere to see where you want to shoot and it has the same maximum range as the actual shell projectile. And artillery range is huge - on ONS-RedPlanet the Perses can stay at its spawn location near the red core and fire as far as the last tree before the prime node. That's roughly 17000UU, about the same range a Lightning Gun or Sniper Rifle has without fog - except that the camera allows you to have a clear view because it's much closer to the target area. I wouldn't do away with the camera system, btw. It's the only thing that prevents an artillery from being unstoppable. The camera can be used as intermediate waypoint for AVRiL rockets (though I have yet to port that feature to the Perses turrets), so you can lock onto the camera and the AVRiL will automatically switch to the vehicle when the rocket gets a line of sight to it. Also a simple Minigun (or even an Assault Rifle) could slow down the artillery firing. If that wasn't possible, we'd get another hard-to-stop super vehicle that can unfold its full power without having to stay in one place.
I guess I could have gone with the "Leviathan" theme and called it Behemoth instead, but meh.
The camera system works quite well for a moving artillery platform. You need to place the camera somewhere to see where you want to shoot and it has the same maximum range as the actual shell projectile. And artillery range is huge - on ONS-RedPlanet the Perses can stay at its spawn location near the red core and fire as far as the last tree before the prime node. That's roughly 17000UU, about the same range a Lightning Gun or Sniper Rifle has without fog - except that the camera allows you to have a clear view because it's much closer to the target area. I wouldn't do away with the camera system, btw. It's the only thing that prevents an artillery from being unstoppable. The camera can be used as intermediate waypoint for AVRiL rockets (though I have yet to port that feature to the Perses turrets), so you can lock onto the camera and the AVRiL will automatically switch to the vehicle when the rocket gets a line of sight to it. Also a simple Minigun (or even an Assault Rifle) could slow down the artillery firing. If that wasn't possible, we'd get another hard-to-stop super vehicle that can unfold its full power without having to stay in one place.
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
Looks awesome. Are we going to develop some kind of super Avril to give the humble foot soldier at least a snow balls chance in hell of surviving against it? 
PS, Manatee? A slow moving marine herbivore? Hardly sounds like a good name for a land based military assualt vehicle...
PS, Manatee? A slow moving marine herbivore? Hardly sounds like a good name for a land based military assualt vehicle...
Play it safe, do what Droopy says..."Always double tap!"
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Karma_geddon
- Posts: 234
- Joined: Tue 13. Aug 2013, 18:33
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Re: WIP - Work In Progress
Mmmh, a multi-arm monster shooting hell out of multiple appendixes...
What about "Echidna"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna_%28mythology%29
What about "Echidna"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna_%28mythology%29
You can find me on fb here, if you want: https://www.facebook.com/paolo.davolio.3
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
Yeah, I know, there's several stock vecs that aren't named after animals (those you mentioned plus the Hellbender, the Paladin, the space fighters, the Ion Tank and the TC-1200Wormbo wrote:The SPMA isn't named after any animal. Goliath isn't (originally) an animal name either, even though there are several animals named after that guy from the Bible due to their relatively large size.
I guess I could have gone with the "Leviathan" theme and called it Behemoth instead, but meh.
); it's why I went with "convention" instead of rule or law - "tradition" would probably apply as well. It might seem like a strange constraint to try and cater to, I'll admit, but considering there's so many names to work with - actual and mythological - I tend to view it more as a creativity-fostering exercise than some arbitrary limitation, say, kind of like 3D building with Lego bricks or composing music for a 4-channel, 8-bit CPU, you know? Right, that's probably 'nuff 'bout that.About the SPMA's firing mechanic and possible changes to how it'd work in this vec, first off I get where you're coming from with the balancing concerns. I guess I just see things from the other side of that line in terms of whether removing the camera deployment would benefit or hamper the user. To my mind, while the camera does make it easier for enemy AVRiL users to attack the SPMA by guiding 'em in, as well as frustrate its driver with how simple it is to shoot it down (thus forcing 'em to restart the process) and the fact that enemies within the shelling area also receive a warning, we shouldn't ignore a couple of irrefutable benefits that also came with that system, i.e. adjustable recon (higher but nearer or farther and lower) and offensive sneakiness (e.g. purposely deploy behind cover or just out of sight). Both of those are specifically enabled by the custom placement mechanic and can make an experienced SPMA user that much more effective. By stripping the #4 & #5 passengers of such options (and maybe even slightly limiting their overall range) I don't see why you still couldn't end up with a reasonably balanced custom vec instead of something unstoppable that diminishes gameplay. Anyway, that was just one idea - it's still your project we're talking about here so the final say obviously remains with you.
Arrr, manatees be big, ferocious 'n ill-tempered, laddy; I can vouch for thatXac wrote:[...]PS, Manatee? A slow moving marine herbivore? Hardly sounds like a good name for a land based military assualt vehicle...
!
Eyes in the skies.
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
Ahhh, she's giving the little sharky a nice friendly hug...Pegasus wrote:Arrr, manatees be big, ferocious 'n ill-tempered, laddy; I can vouch for thatXac wrote:[...]PS, Manatee? A slow moving marine herbivore? Hardly sounds like a good name for a land based military assualt vehicle...
Anyway, as ferocious they may be in the water, on land, well a fish out of water springs to mind, but that's probably mixing metaphors a bit too much...
Play it safe, do what Droopy says..."Always double tap!"
Re: WIP - Work In Progress
Funny you mention the Hellbender as example, Pegasus. I wanted to use it in my post as well, but checked to make sure and Wikipedia proved me wrong.
Manatee? Maybe not.
About the camera again: I adopted more than just the aiming from UT3. That distant SPMA fire sound won't play for the camera, so you can deploy it silently. If you think it may help, I could also reduce the collision size. I just compared it to a player and a Scorpion - it's huge:
Maybe a smaller collision size could make it less frustrating. (I won't argue about the ridiculous mesh scale here...)
Manatee? Maybe not.
About the camera again: I adopted more than just the aiming from UT3. That distant SPMA fire sound won't play for the camera, so you can deploy it silently. If you think it may help, I could also reduce the collision size. I just compared it to a player and a Scorpion - it's huge:
- Collision shapes of SPMA camera (bright cyan), player model (red) and Scorpion (pink); original size and having the same distance to the viewer
- CollisionSizes.jpg (90.98 KiB) Viewed 10592 times