Spring RTS Engine

have pepol thought of jump jets that are eather bilt in or upgrades?

Yes. But it's somewhat complicated to make it work.
Pathing would have to be overhauled to take into account the limited ability to move over otherwise impassible terrain, and currently it's not possible for ground units to actually change their height as far as I know.

But the answer at present for anything, lua, could be used to make a simulated jumpjet, but it would probably only be able to be triggered manually with any usefulness.

If not lua, you can try script-emitting low damage huge blow explosion to throw units upward....

Good luck aiming that...

I think jumpjets should just work like in Dawn of War but coding that won't be easy I think.

I've been sitting on the theory of jump jets for a while. I have no LUA coding skills though so I doubt that I would get it done ever. I might try though.

Ways of doing a jump jet:

• 1.When it collides with an impassable object in it's path, it switches move class and moves like a gunship/ helicopter until it finds passable ground. This would probably require lots of hacking into paths and other nastiness. Would look cool though.
  
  2.DoW style jump jets that require you to press a button to jump. Requires lots of micro for player, but much easier to code compared to the other options.
  
  3.Fixed boost amount I.E can only jump a certain distance. When it collides with an impassable slope/gradient it jumps a certain distance up onto terrain. Could also be messy codewise and require some map hacking probably like the first option.

just do cc3 style jumpjets, then we can talk about expanding it into full unit transformations

I'm a bit confused. Doesn't "jumpjet" mean VTOL?

No, in CC3 some of the troops have a jumpjet action, which allows them to temporarily fly over obstacles.

jumpjet isnt the best name for ti admittedly

so in a word heck-a-big can of worms. I have no programing scils but what I can figure is that it's kinda not going to happin, right?

I suppose you could make an air unit that follows the ground really closely, and it stops its leg animation when it encounters a certain gradient or gos under a certain speed over land (like when going over a steep obstacle). that would be evn more clean and much easier to do.

But yes, it is a BIG can of worms, and why the Devs haven't implemented it is no surprise.

HeavyLancer wrote:

• 1.When it collides with an impassable object in it's path, it switches move class and moves like a gunship/ helicopter until it finds passable ground. This would probably require lots of hacking into paths and other nastiness. Would look cool though.
  
  2.DoW style jump jets that require you to press a button to jump. Requires lots of micro for player, but much easier to code compared to the other options.
  
  3.Fixed boost amount I.E can only jump a certain distance. When it collides with an impassable slope/gradient it jumps a certain distance up onto terrain. Could also be messy codewise and require some map hacking probably like the first option.

number 2 (DoW/CnC3 style) is proabably do able with lua to some extent... the other two would acquire attacking the pathing part of spring which i don't think anyone is willing to do.

#1 would be possible if the unit had a movetype that could actually go anywhere (fails on space maps though) and the jumpjets just activate once the terrain has certain properties.

I think #2 would be the best option, after all you would want there to be some restrictions to the unit's jumpjets anyway and it'd be better to let the human player handle the activation then.

Not sure how #3 differs from the other options.

Hm, while we're at it, is there a way to retrieve the pathing nodes the unit will go to next so you would know where to move the unit if the jets autoactivate?

Don't we have mutation now? Couldn't a unit be made to metamorphose into a gunship for the duration of the jump, and then turn back into a ground-unit after it lands?

That is
1) use LUA to add jump button. The "jump" button transforms the unit into it's jumping form.

2) when the new "jumping form" unit lands, it turns back into it's old form.

The unit consumes energy while in it's "jumping form" so you want to remain in ground-mode most of the time.

Better still pxtl, make it drain fuel when in jump mode, and gain fuel slowly when its in ground form. That would work nicely.

HeavyLancer wrote:Better still pxtl, make it drain fuel when in jump mode, and gain fuel slowly when its in ground form. That would work nicely.

Except that fuel-empty behaviour isn't "land" it's "retreat to refuel-post". So you'd have to script your own fuel-analogue where it automatically "stops" when the fuel is depleted.

you should check trepan's unit launcher (in ca sandbox):

1. you can hook the physics of an unit with Spring.MoveCtrl.X
2. you can stop a hooked animation on collide

and no you don't have any access to the pathing engine atm, so an auto mode is impossible.

The biggest problem is the intergration into the command queue (with "shift" etc.). Btw. I will soon publish a saboteur luaRule which has a workaround for that problem.

Maybe you could piggyback off the load/unload code and simply treat the jump as a transport by a non-unit invisible armature?

Just hope the CAI of the transport doesn't fuck up like it loves to do...

jK wrote:you should check trepan's unit launcher (in ca sandbox):

1. you can hook the physics of an unit with Spring.MoveCtrl.X
2. you can stop a hooked animation on collide

and no you don't have any access to the pathing engine atm, so an auto mode is impossible.

The biggest problem is the intergration into the command queue (with "shift" etc.). Btw. I will soon publish a saboteur luaRule which has a workaround for that problem.

How's this: use the D-gun command (or a custom command, if possible) that is, it has the "on-off" for permanent transformation, or you can use the D-gun for the jump. The d-gun's fire-range represents the unit's actual flight-range. When you tell the unit to D-gun a location, it mutates into the aircraft form, flies to that location (or, alternately, uses the direct-move stuff since jumping doesn't need pathfinding), and mutates back, and continues on it's order queue.

Of course, I have no idea how feasible that is.

if it is possible that's kinda what I was thinking