upgrading commander

upgrading commander

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1v0ry_k1ng
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upgrading commander

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

now everyone knows supcom was a piece of junk, but one cool thing was the ability to upgrade your commander with gadgets. how hard would it be to make somthing that had somthing in its build menu that when clicked, makes somthing nanolathe into existance on it, like an extra arm or weapon? there was a 3rd party OTA unit that was a nano tower with no nano attachment. you could choose what head to build on the nanotower and then it built and worked. how hard would it be to do this with a commander? would it be possible to script it so the commander refuses to move while its building on itself etc?
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Cabbage
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Post by Cabbage »

The nanotower used to be like that in an old spring version of AA, not just OTA, so i would assume its pretty easy to do..
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

Impossible to do properly though Zwzsg can give you a shopping list of various hacks that could be used for pretending you can upgrade your commander.

The nanotower was two parts out of necessity, OTA didn't allow immobile builders made by con units. Unless you want to make the commander an immobile factory that can produce a unit that blocks its exit and acts as an upgrade you can't use that approach.
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AF
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Post by AF »

OTA has an answer!

There's a thread on TA unvierse where you can build an upgrade facility, which can build 5 modules which give the commander upgrades such as a shield, autodgunning, radar jamming, antiair and another I dont remember.
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Guessmyname
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Post by Guessmyname »

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AF
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Post by AF »

indeed
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diggz2k
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Post by diggz2k »

How does war evolution handle the upgrades to the mechs? Could you tie it to the build menu instead of experience?
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AF
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Post by AF »

war evo uses unit experience IIRC, you cant control ti save by choosing to play or avoid other players
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zwzsg
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Post by zwzsg »

TheRegisteredOne way is very nice and well done, but for a more supcommish feel, I would use a commander that can build an arm, then as soon as the nanoframe of the new arm is spawn, the commander auto-grab it and place it inside its shoulder socket while hiding its former arm, that way you see the commander nanolathing itself an arm. Also, it'd show some spinning blue hoops for added effect. That way, exactly like in SupCom, the commander wouldn't need any structure to upgrade, and must stay immobile when upgrading.

When that arm is completly nanolathed, well, I could let it fire by having the commander being an isfirebase=1;, but I feel it wouldn't be good to have such composite unit, because the arm wouldn't be aware of the commander orders, and the commander wouldn't know where the arm wants to aim. So instead I believe it's better that once the new arm is completly nanolathed, the commander get rid of it some way or another and unhide some of its piece that are modelled just like the new arm, and unjam one of its own sixteen weapons.

I could do it however it would take me:
- 3 hours of modelling and texxing
- 30 mins of FBI'ing, TDF'ing, bp'ing, and doing all those other varied small files
- 15 mins of scripting (= doing what actually matters)
- 20 mins of debugging
- 1 hr of making an animated gif of it

And then, most people would simply choose to forget it, two people would say "OMG script hack! We want everything hard coded! It's so much cleaner to have that same code in the exe instead of the script!", one people would scorn it on the ground it create some minor side-effect. Then two month later exactly the same question-thread would be posted here.
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Argh
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Post by Argh »

LOL ^^

Yeah, I think the best way, ultimately, is going to be to use LUA to give and take a unit in the same frame after a callout from COB-->LUA, actually.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

I just wish there were more things you could simulate an upgrade of. E.g. can't have a standard radar and an improved radar AFAIK, can't have upgrades that reduce the damage from certain weapons (damagemodifier always applies to all weapons, obviously can't have jetpacks...

Hm, wait, jetpacks may actually be feasible, make the commander grab the jetpack as described and upon a certain command (would unload work for that?) it unloads the jetpack which makes the jetpack load the commander, on another command the jetpack will unload the commander and the commander will grab it again. Of course that still has the drawback of having two units with hitpoints that are kept track of individually until set HEALTH gets implemented (currently isn't supported). Too bad we can't make it so transports spawn with a unit loaded or at least have a script call that spawns a unit so this'll remain limited to upgrading units...
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Well, is it possible for a transport to know what's inside? If so, you could make commander "vehicles" - exoskeletons that are barely functional unless they have a comm inside. Not quite upgrades, but ways to improve the commander.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

Of course it is, that was one of the possibilities Zwzsg listed in an earlier thread. Though I think loading these things into the commander instead of the other way around is better.
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Well, certain upgrades could be done by actually having the carried object do the upgrade. Improved radar can be accomplished by carrying an improved radar module that is actually functioning as a radar. Ditto jammer, and possibly shield.

For weapons, couldn't you just disable an old weapon and enable a new one for an upgrade? Rather than tweaking values? Annoying, but woudl it work?
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

You can disable one weapon and add another but you can't e.g. give the commander a nuke backpack like the one seen in SupCom because you couldn't access the stockpile command for the loaded unit and can't have a unit have both stockpileable and normal weapons IIRC.
Andreask
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Post by Andreask »

OUr beloved community member Optimus Prime should know everything about this subject.

He released the mod War Evolution a while ago, where you have bots that fight eachother, and get new weapons and things like jetpacks when they gain experience.

It is done in such a way that backpacks, barrels and other gadgets appear on the mechs when they reach a new level. Fully funtional and fun to play.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

The problem is not how to make upgrades appear on the unit but how to make them buildable. We know how to make upgrades work but we don't know a good trigger condition for player-controlled upgrades.
Andreask
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Post by Andreask »

If you did it the way Optimus has done it, you would just let the commander build the intented feature, of which all are hidden on the commander´s model in advance, and once the feature is nanolathed in exsistenze, it appears on the com´s body by unhiding it. Voila.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

Isn't that what Zwzsg has just said? Except his version would attach the upgrade to the commander immediately instead of having it lie on the ground until it's done?
Andreask
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Post by Andreask »

The other comments in this thread mentioned this method, Optimus Prime did implement it. Take a look at this mod:

http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/18 ... ution_1.7/
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