-= Gametoast.com =-

phazon_elite wrote:It works on terrain like Mace Windu's force stomp

I'm pretty sure this is caused by a combo state transition, which is not applicable here.

trainmaster611 wrote:Got them working, and they really do look great!

phazon_elite wrote: Ahaha! I knew my research wasn't in vain!

It's great that you got something doing what you want, but this is not a breakthrough. This is basic stuff and it's exactly what I said in the second post.

trainmaster611 wrote:What I would like to know now, is

1) How does the game know which effect to play for the shields
2) What are the downfalls you mentioned earlier Mav?
3) Is there another way to trick the game into thinking that the building has a shield?

1) Offhand, I don't know. I'd have to do some more looking.
2) You have to have a shield on the object in question. Every object needs to have a shield. You have to make an object to cover the terrain exactly. Destructible objects will have big problems with trying to display a shield effect all the time if you ever want them to be able to be destroyed. Question (3) is a subset of this one because the only way an object can have a shield effect is if it has a shield.

Incidentally, none of this is magic and people need to stop jumping at "oh force stomp oh rain effects" as though they are something different. These are all just billboard effects. These will always display along one or two planes and there is no way a billboard explosion effect by itself (which is all these essentially are) will do anything different. Shields have a special property - which is a property of the shield, not the effect - that lets them display an effect perpendicular to the normal of the polygon it hits. Decal effects presumably would have done the same but it/they is/are broken code.

Frisbeetarian wrote:

phazon_elite wrote:It works on terrain like Mace Windu's force stomp

I'm pretty sure this is caused by a combo state transition, which is not applicable here.

The stomp itself is just a billboard effect. You probably haven't seen my initial topics on this stuff (nor would I expect you to since I haven't been here in ages, xD). In it, I created a few billboard effect decals that worked somewhat, but still had obvious issues, as they were only billboard effects.

Maveritchell wrote:

phazon_elite wrote: Ahaha! I knew my research wasn't in vain!

It's great that you got something doing what you want, but this is not a breakthrough. This is basic stuff and it's exactly what I said in the second post.

Of course it's not a breakthrough, I never thought it was. The idea to add a shield to an object just never dawned on me, although the answer was right in front of my face, lol.

The reason I posted that was because the last time this was discussed, it was deemed to be hardcoded after trying to find a practical workaround. I'm just happy to see that a practical workaround has been found.

phazon_elite wrote:The reason I posted that was because the last time this was discussed, it was deemed to be hardcoded after trying to find a practical workaround. I'm just happy to see that a practical workaround has been found.

Yes, but my whole point here is that it is an impractical workaround. There are more problems with this than with using a billboard effect tied to an explosion, simply because of the problems of terrain and destructible objects - just to name two big ones. If you want a practical workaround, then go make a small, three-dimensional, black particle effect and use it as an explosion effect. That will look much better than trying to make a billboard explosion or trying to force shields onto everything.

Maveritchell wrote:Yes, but my whole point here is that it is an impractical workaround. There are more problems with this than with using a billboard effect tied to an explosion, simply because of the problems of terrain and destructible objects - just to name two big ones. If you want a practical workaround, then go make a small, three-dimensional, black particle effect and use it as an explosion effect. That will look much better than trying to make a billboard explosion or trying to force shields onto everything.

Couldn't you just use a billboard effect for the terrain? What I mean is, you can just make it an impact effect for weapons and play around with it so it will be horizontal and flat. Something akin to Mace's force stomp effect. That's what I did when I tried making decals work a while back. As for destructible objects, I also made a different impact effect (that worked somewhat like a shield impact effect) when I made the terrain one.

So would putting this workaround and my initial workaround together be plausible? It isn't too much work if you used both workarounds, but I'm a bit on the fence as to whether it's worth it or not.

EDIT: Gah, my quote tags keep disappearing on me when I'm posting, lol.

Play BFX sometime. That's exactly what ARC_Commander did. It worked well for terrain, except when the terrain isn't perfectly horizontal (I.E., a hill).

You sure can use a different effect for the terrain, and that's not a bad idea to work around adding a shield to the terrain. That is just one of the issues with adding a shield to everything, though, and you haven't convinced me that it's practical, which is the real kicker here. Here are some more problems for you to think about (I told you there were more than two):

1) Every object must become a destructable building (not the classlabel specifically but it must have health).
2) Depending on how shield effects work (again I haven't looked into them enough to check) - whether the effect is a property of weapons or of shields - you will have this effect appear on every shield.
3) Shields are mitigated in some ways as weapons/tools (you can't have specific weapons to affect shields, otherwise they will affect buildings too)
4) You are required to have control over every map this is used in - it's a nontransferable effect in that it can only be used in maps you specifically create.
5) You can't have legitimately shielded objects that play a shield impact effect and this effect.

Now just a couple points-
There's always a time and a place to use impractical solutions - I use them a lot in highly scripted maps because if I script something to happen I have more or less absolute control over exactly how something is going to turn out. If that's what you're looking to duplicate, super, but I promise you this is not something you're going to want for 90% of what you'd want to do with this.

I'm not trying to be the bad guy here (I know that I shoot down a lot of ideas), but I am trying to help you think of why things are not going to work, because I promise you that if there's even a slight something that looks goofy or buggy, someone will notice it (I know I would) and probably mention it as sloppy or an error.

Fiodis wrote:Play BFX sometime. That's exactly what ARC_Commander did. It worked well for terrain, except when the terrain isn't perfectly horizontal (I.E., a hill).

Ah yes, I think he asked me for the effects I had, as the link back then was taken down. My question still stands though.

EDIT:

Maveritchell wrote: 1) Every object must become a destructable building (not the classlabel specifically but it must have health).
2) Depending on how shield effects work (again I haven't looked into them enough to check) - whether the effect is a property of weapons or of shields - you will have this effect appear on every shield.
3) Shields are mitigated in some ways as weapons/tools (you can't have specific weapons to affect shields, otherwise they will affect buildings too)
4) You are required to have control over every map this is used in - it's a nontransferable effect in that it can only be used in maps you specifically create.
5) You can't have legitimately shielded objects that play a shield impact effect and this effect.

Yeah, I'm beginning to question if the work is worth it or not. I didn't realize that this much work would be needed just to get some decals that aren't entirely flawless. Anyone's thoughts on this?

phazon_elite wrote:My question still stands though.

What question?

Maveritchell wrote:

phazon_elite wrote:My question still stands though.

What question?

Oh, sorry about that. I had the question in one of my earlier posts. It was if this amount of work would be worth it to have decals/blastermark effects/whatever.

phazon_elite wrote:Something akin to Mace's force stomp effect.

Which is triggered through the combo, as I already suggested.

By the way, I can't find the effect in any of the munged LVL files, for whatever that means, though I can find the texture it uses, which would seem to indicate that effects are broken down when munged.

phazon_elite wrote:Oh, sorry about that. I had the question in one of my earlier posts. It was if this amount of work would be worth it to have decals/blastermark effects/whatever.

No, unless, as Mav posted, you have control over all the circumstances that the workaround would come into play, and you genuinely want this effect enough to go through all this work to get it.

If you don't have control over all the variables, chances are one's going to come around and bite you.

Frisbeetarian wrote:

phazon_elite wrote:Something akin to Mace's force stomp effect.

Which is triggered through the combo, as I already suggested.

I believe phazon means the effect, not the explosion. The explosion is triggered through the combo file; phazon is just refering to a billboard crack effect on the terrain/object it impacts (which is no different than any other billboard effect).

Couldn't you just use a billboard effect for the terrain? What I mean is,

I was referring to the first part of his post as well without quoting it. I know that he was referring to the effect itself for an example of a billboard effect, however, I was addressing the issue that the only way we've seen a decal on the terrain is as a billboard effect initiated through a combo.

I'm pretty sure the AT-AT has a footprint decal in it's ODF (can't check right now), and I'm pretty sure I checked on high settings last time this issue came up to make sure it didn't show up (meaning broken code; again, I can't check right now).

Frisbeetarian wrote:the only way we've seen a decal on the terrain is as a billboard effect initiated through a combo.

I'm pretty sure the AT-AT has a footprint decal in it's ODF (can't check right now), and I'm pretty sure I checked on high settings last time this issue came up to make sure it didn't show up (meaning broken code; again, I can't check right now).

Decals are broken; we've established this. The ATAT does have a footprint decal call in its odf, which is broken.

And have you played BFX? You see plenty billboard effects on the terrain, this time as a impact effect from a weapon ordance.

Fiodis wrote:And have you played BFX?

Once, on Kamino. For this reason, among others, is why I have yet to claim anything I've said as fact. I was not aware we'd seen them on the terrain outside of Windu.

Regardless Mav's points in his second to last post in this topic still stands, which I think we all agree on.

Ok, I think we can all agree that while this isn't a revolutionary breakthrough, its a decent start. It gives us a somewhat awkward system to implement it and hopefully it'll start people on thinking on ways to make it more practical and effective.

Now changing gears, as far as destructible buildings go, you could assign the building like 1 health and make the shield the real health you want it to be. That way, the object will still sponsor the shield blastermarks and be destroyed when the shield runs out (presuming that the ordnance damage is >1).

Other side effects I thought of is the health bar, the 'hit' effect in the reticule, and the billboard sticking out on awkward surfaces. The first can be rectified with HideHealthBar = "1" and the second could be manipulated with a little HUD magic. The third, I doubt there is any solution to.

HideHealthBar works? Wow, never knew that. I'll need to experiment with that. As for the health thing, you could give the shield 0 recharge. But then you can't fix it with the fusioncutter, should you desire to.