THis should be added...

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 10 Apr 2006, 19:48

A tag so that friendly units cannot be damaged by other friendlies, inparticular, subs and fighters as well as some gunships.

Something along the lines of...

absorbfriendlydamage=1;

or some such thing.

OTA did not have this problem because units could fire through each other, in spring we have a new set of issues.

Torrasque · Post by **Torrasque** » 10 Apr 2006, 21:44

I think it would be better to be weapon dependant than unit.
It would be odd to see project go through some unit and hit some other.

Things like torpedo who are not triggered when hitting friendly unit.

Nemo · Post by **Nemo** » 11 Apr 2006, 00:30

Just give the weapon a special damage of 0.0000001 vs that unit.

Problem solved.

Decimator · Post by **Decimator** » 11 Apr 2006, 00:35

And then what happens when that unit fights an enemy unit of the same type, Nemo?

Nemo · Post by **Nemo** » 11 Apr 2006, 00:51

Well, then you have an issue.

I figured you were talking about units not of the same type. This strikes me as something that should be rather possible to do with the current tags though.

mongus · Post by **mongus** » 11 Apr 2006, 02:11

Decimator wrote:And then what happens when that unit fights an enemy unit of the same type, Nemo?

lolz dont put that face :p

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 11 Apr 2006, 02:52

The only way to solve this that will not be lame is to have 3D hitboxes for units. Then we will (hopefully) quit hearing about this "problem".

Or maybe we won't, and people will keep begging for shots to be drawn over friendly units (what a mess setting up code for that would be!) in order to have "OTA gameplay".

For the last time, that is a dumb, dumb, dumb idea.

What you're asking for would add considerable computation time to combat, making mass combat lag rather badly. Why? Because every time a shot entered a quick-check sphere, then the code would have to determine if the unit was friendly, or not, before continuing or engaging in whatever special behaviors we wanted.

If units are shooting each other on a regular basis, it's because they're 3DO, which does not have optimal collision spheres or detection thereof, and very likely never will- there aren't . My S3O units in NanoBlobs do not have these problems, and anybody sitting down with my mod can clearly see the technical problems are solvable. In short, if you want things fixed, quit whining to the developers, and tell the mod-designers (that'd be this new project, E&E, one assumes) that they should start using the new model format.

patmo98 · Post by **patmo98** » 11 Apr 2006, 05:55

Argh wrote:My S3O units in NanoBlobs do not have these problems, and anybody sitting down with my mod can clearly see the technical problems are solvable.

Are you saying that if aircraft were S3O that friendly nukes could never hit friendly air units.

GrOuNd_ZeRo · Post by **GrOuNd_ZeRo** » 11 Apr 2006, 07:23

What if you have 100's of units that need their model converted to S3O? that's my problem currently, it would be nice if there was a tool to convert 3DO to S3O and have the textures automatically mapped based on where they are located on the model.

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 11 Apr 2006, 09:37

It's not about collision spheres at all. It's the AI, if the AI uses the right collision detection mechanism which will be used for the projectile, and not fire if a friendly unit is in the path, then problem solved.

ie. even with collision boxes you have the same problem if the AI isn't smart enough to handle those.

NOiZE · Post by **NOiZE** » 11 Apr 2006, 10:22

GrOuNd_ZeRo wrote:What if you have 100's of units that need their model converted to S3O? that's my problem currently, it would be nice if there was a tool to convert 3DO to S3O and have the textures automatically mapped based on where they are located on the model.

that's not gonna happen me thinks..

Drone_Fragger · Post by **Drone_Fragger** » 11 Apr 2006, 11:00

patmo98 wrote:
Argh wrote:My S3O units in NanoBlobs do not have these problems, and anybody sitting down with my mod can clearly see the technical problems are solvable.
Are you saying that if aircraft were S3O that friendly nukes could never hit friendly air units.

Whered the hell you pull that out of?

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 11 Apr 2006, 11:53

Argh wrote:Or maybe we won't, and people will keep begging for shots to be drawn over friendly units (what a mess setting up code for that would be!) in order to have "OTA gameplay".

For the last time, that is a dumb, dumb, dumb idea.

/me begs for shots to be drawn over friendly units, in order to have "OTA gameplay".

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 11 Apr 2006, 17:39

Argh wrote:The only way to solve this that will not be lame is to have 3D hitboxes for units. Then we will (hopefully) quit hearing about this "problem".

Or maybe we won't, and people will keep begging for shots to be drawn over friendly units (what a mess setting up code for that would be!) in order to have "OTA gameplay".

For the last time, that is a dumb, dumb, dumb idea.

What you're asking for would add considerable computation time to combat, making mass combat lag rather badly. Why? Because every time a shot entered a quick-check sphere, then the code would have to determine if the unit was friendly, or not, before continuing or engaging in whatever special behaviors we wanted.

If units are shooting each other on a regular basis, it's because they're 3DO, which does not have optimal collision spheres or detection thereof, and very likely never will- there aren't . My S3O units in NanoBlobs do not have these problems, and anybody sitting down with my mod can clearly see the technical problems are solvable. In short, if you want things fixed, quit whining to the developers, and tell the mod-designers (that'd be this new project, E&E, one assumes) that they should start using the new model format.

???

What the heck are you talking about?

I'm not asking for that at all. All I am asking for is a tag that would designate to certain units that frendly fire does not hurt them. That's not a whole lot to ask.

Edit:

Not everyone knows how to use s3o's effectively. Fang will be the first to tell you that he isn't a modeler per se. Would you be willing to convert the Models in E&E to s3o format?

Meh, god I wish smoth was around more, but I know he's got all kinds of crap going on with school and such

Fanger · Post by **Fanger** » 11 Apr 2006, 17:54

Look the reason people keep asking for this is not to recreate ota style game play... although this game is already doing that extensively.. its because the unit firing AI is retarded.. and units will consistantly fire even if their line of fire is being blocked by friendly units. This is not easily prevented.. and dont tell me Im not microing my units enough.. it is nigh impossible to keep gunships or subs or anything in some sort of coherent formation as it moves. If units would either make some sort of check to see whether they will hit a friendly and not fire then because of that well then were good.. until then it would be nice if we could just nix friendly fire of that sort...

Nemo · Post by **Nemo** » 11 Apr 2006, 20:41

Fanger wrote:it is nigh impossible to keep gunships or subs or anything in some sort of coherent formation as it moves.

No offense, but holding down ctrl while giving a move order to a group keeps them in the same positions they were when they started moving.

That should help.

Are you sure that the check for friendly units doesn't already exist? I know that units often refuse to fire if there's a friendly unit between them and the enemy. Try FPSing a unit and then shooting a friendly - its damn tricky, since Spring doesn't allow it to 'lock' onto a friendly.

Of course, I have no idea how to enable or disable that, but it is there. Some weapons will lock onto anything though - starburst missles and dgun.

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 11 Apr 2006, 22:14

GrOuNd_ZeRo wrote:What if you have 100's of units that need their model converted to S3O? that's my problem currently, it would be nice if there was a tool to convert 3DO to S3O and have the textures automatically mapped based on where they are located on the model.

I think this would be possible... but based on the way UV maps handle texturing it would probably produce very very ugly and unworkable UV maps. You don't really need to lose the model to convert 3do to s3o, all you need to do is UV and retexture (still alot of work though

)

I wonder if that's something I could learn to do in my spare time...

Post by **jcnossen** » 11 Apr 2006, 22:34

If you would have a 3do->s3o convertor, then exactly what is the bonus? You get more memory use and still no unique textures.

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 12 Apr 2006, 00:19

No offense, but holding down ctrl while giving a move order to a group keeps them in the same positions they where when they started moving.

^^
damn i didn't know that i just use lines jmost of the time XD someone stick that in the noob section of the wiki (i would but no idea where it is)

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 12 Apr 2006, 04:59

I was originally going to write a post on why this couldnt be done at all, by the more i think about it, im thinkign that it will just be very, very hard/difficult.

VERY difficult... hitbox detection would definately have to be modified...

A good way I could think to accomdate this would be (of course, with a LOT OF WORK AND A LOT OF CODE REWRITE)

In memory, partition the hitbox ranges into seperate ranges; the first range containing friendly units' collision spheres, and each succesivve range containing a seperate side's collision spheres, and another range for terrain collision sphere.

Then partition all fired weapons into similar ranges; first range containing friendly weapon shots, other ranges containing all other weapon shots... then determine the next position of the weapon shot ignoring the collision spheres of the corresponding collision box range... like a projectile fired on Player 1's side would be checked only against everything that is not player 1.

Interestingly enough, you could do all sorts of nutty bonuses and other random possibilities in this way by having the option for a mod to say "if you collect this much area of the map, you get special extra damage vs all units of Player X.

But i rant!

This woudl be hard and expensive in any case... better solution would a smarter implementation of firing AI.

Spring RTS Engine

THis should be added...

THis should be added...