WIP - Work In Progress

[Karma_geddon]

I never realized that the SPMA camera was really THAT big O_O

[Pegasus]

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. [...]

Huh, I had no idea. So that too conforms to the animal naming then. Cool. Guess now it just calls into question the reasoning behind naming a 3-seater truck after a "harmless aquatic salamander". Oh well, can't expect Psyonix to get everything right .
Also the manatee is a vicious bringer of pain, death and mayhem, damnit! It just looks plump and docile to, uhh, lure you close. Yeah.

[...]I just compared [the SPMA camera] to a player and a Scorpion - it's huge[...]

So I tried to recreate that arrangement in UEd myself, but couldn't get the deployed animation set/state of the camera mesh to show; I placed a typical st.mesh, then cleared by hand its StaticMesh asset, chose DT_Mesh as the DrawType and plugged in SkeletalMesh'ONSBPAnimations.MortarCameraMesh' as the Mesh, but that only got me the packed version (which is just as huge). How did you do get the deployed state to show? Should I start with a different class actor instead?

I never realized that the SPMA camera was really THAT big O_O

Yeah, it's pretty massive alright. I imagine they originally went with something more reasonable (quarter-sized maybe), but then playtesting eventually showed how aggravating it got trying to shoot a target as small as that down from up high so they inflated it to this ridiculous size. Can't think of any other reasonable explanation for that :o.

[Wormbo]

The trick for the animation is to enable realtime preview and in the animation browser select the camera mesh, enable synchronized animations (the joystick+A button) and play the deploy animation. I used a VMeshActor, but it's a bit tricky because it's DT_Mesh without having any mesh. Place it and press F4 to bring up the properties. If it's no longer selected (sometimes seems to happen when placing), find it with the actor search tool. Or just use any other actor that has a mesh.

[Xac]

This lady seems to get along with mantees ok without becoming lunch:



From:

http://kayakingwiththemanateemama.blogs ... tacks.html

This guy even tries to feed his hand to the manatee, who sucks on it a bit then gets bored when it realises i's not it's normal veggie diet...

[video][/video]

[Pegasus]

Damnit, Xac, what part of "remorseless killing machines" don't you get?

/seethe
/rage

Btw, thanks for that tip, Worms - worked just fine even with a repurposed st.mesh. Shoulda probly looked that up at the BU wiki instead of asking here, but laziness got the better of me. Now to find out exactly how restrictive that synchronized animation toggle is in terms of having multiple copies of the same mesh side by side, but each from a different frame...

[Wormbo]

I suppose you can place one mesh, animate it and then place a second mesh that keeps the reference pose.

[Xac]

Damnit, Xac, what part of "remorseless killing machines" don't you get?

Well, I'm sure there are more deaths and injuries per year from Nutella than the activities of Manatees...

[Wormbo]

Maybe manatees are like cats, except they are much more careful with their plans for world domination - and Pegasus is the only one who already figured out?

Anyway, here are two fully-manned Perses MAS having a go at each other:
[video][/video]
I didn't notice earlier, so the start of the duel is missing. Still frightening, how much damage the concentrated fire of Napalm Rockets (the driver's best choice against large and slow moving vehicles), two tank turrets and two artillery turrets can do in such a short time. The Perses MAS clearly requires team work, or it won't be much better than a Goliath or SPMA with more hit points.

The Perses MAS looks pretty much feature-complete now. Expect a late Christmas present.