Spring RTS Engine

I have been informed today that I am working on some sort of area-denial weapon. I unfortunately had no idea about this until i was informed (possible combination of extreme mental fatigue and alcohol). So basically i need details so i can actually start working on it, because it sounds like quite a neat idea.

Do you mean like an airdrop minefield or something?

i have no idea. this week is the first time ive been able to drink this year and thius, to make the most of it, ive drank somewhere in the vicinity of 30 bottles of beer this week. thus i remember little, and i have no idea what shape or form this weapon/unit has

*wanders off to go torture Roxas for more info*

Maybe not ye - the mistake is mine, I fear. Now, who was making th- wait. Roxas? Peet? SOMEBODY SHOWED ME ONE!

Ya know argh made one...

It was a modified Lugar? Anybody?

Well, Nukes as example could cause an area to be radiated, and force that area to block movement temporarily similar in the way that mappers can block off an area of a map by using the terrain type in the map's SMD file.

I don't know code at all, but if it can be triggered at all, thats a good sign that it may be possible.

I guess there could be other ways to do it as well, by making the affected area slow units down, or switch that area to do damage, like Acid water does to ships in those certain maps that use it, or like the fire damage from trees, that would be another cool way to do things, by persistant damage.

DT.

The easiest-possible way to do this, if you do not care about CPU usage (i.e., you're not firing 50 of these all the time, but 1-3 every few minutes, max) is to make whatever the weapon is (cannon, laser, whatever), set it up, rig it, animate it, whatever. Then add a point to your S3O, attached to the root of the model (base, body, whatever).

Then slave a Starburst missile with an invisible texture assigned for the smoketrails, flare, etc. (just name each texture "foo" or whatever- if Spring can't find it, it won't draw it- thanks to Rattle for that hint, btw). Give this weapon no sounds, no FX, etc.- just damage / stun / whatever. Use a point for the starburst missile, and define a CollisionSize of something really small, like 0.125 or whatever, so that the chances of hitting something accidentally are nearly zero. Set it up as a burst, so that the weapon fires over and over again, at whatever time interval / length of time you need the area-denial for.

When the first weapon fires, the slaved weapon would then fire. Since it's a starburst missile, it'll hit exactly where the first weapon hit, over and over again, assuming your Unit stays in range (for obvious reasons, I'd give that starburst a longer range than the controlling weapon).

There ya go- an area-denial weapon, that will work for however many seconds you want, pretty much. Good for simulating gas / radiation / nasty bio-weapons / whatever.

It's not CPU-friendly, however. Just bear that in mind. If you want to have 50 dudes running around firing these all the time, or a real-scale simulation of, say, poison gas artillery from WWI (I tried it, once) forget it, and use the similar but not-quite-identical approach I used in NanoBlobs, for the Demon, which is slightly goofy if the original target survives, but otherwise works about the same, for ballistic-arc weapons.

If you need references for the weapon setups / script crap, etc., please d/l NanoBlobs, right now, and study the Demon, it'll show you the basics.

Lua people. The way you do this is called lua.

It does.... ANYTHING.

You can do this with no-explode weapons. If you fire them through an area very slowly, they will travel through it exploding constantly and doing damage for a long while. The problem is they wont stay in one spot unless they are going directly downwards. If it is a mine or unit explosion or some such though, its pretty easy to make a no-explode weapon with a huge range that force-fires directly downwards from the mine/dying object/radiation emitter (You could have it do 0 damage to radiation emitter, or whatever). It will keep plowing through the earth, exploding again and again and again on the same spot, until it falls out the bottom of its range (So the time it spend there is controlled by the range- but it may, sadly, also be dependent on the gravity of the map).

In the case of a 'radiation emitter' it would just be easier to have it fire directly downwards over and over again, though, than use a noexplode weapon.

does this idea apply to toxic weapons also?

MR.D wrote:Well, Nukes as example could cause an area to be radiated, and force that area to block movement temporarily similar in the way that mappers can block off an area of a map by using the terrain type in the map's SMD file.

I don't know code at all, but if it can be triggered at all, thats a good sign that it may be possible.

I guess there could be other ways to do it as well, by making the affected area slow units down, or switch that area to do damage, like Acid water does to ships in those certain maps that use it, or like the fire damage from trees, that would be another cool way to do things, by persistant damage.

Very good idea
VonGratz

Austrailia has an area denial system using metalstorm. Metal Storm is technology which basically can let you fire 1,000,000 Rounds per minute. They have these like nice long guns and just fire like a large ammount of bullets in like 1 second, it just sounds like a big BRRFOOMFMM and then you hear a THUD.

More like BZZZ..

It's extremely high pitched..

kinda like a shotgun. except each bullet has rifle accuracy. and the million rounds per minute is hype, its not sustainable, so its a useless statistic.

Imagine if that was AP though...

Heh heh heh heh

Could rip through a tank.

Snipawolf wrote:Imagine if that was AP though...

I'd guess there's a reason it isn't.

KDR_11k wrote:I'd guess there's a reason it isn't.

Scalability and recoil are probably the only problems for it at the moment. They have a truck mounted 40mm grenade launching prototype, something like ~40 tubes with 2-3 grenades in each. Look it up on YouTube, probably a good basis for a minefield cannon.

An RPG MetalStorm unit is most likely infeasible, but an AT cannon is probably ok. It would just have a massive recoil and need to be put on a cruiser or something the compensate

I wanna see DT shower arty strikes!

fyi its spelled weApon...