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Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:03 pm
by Jendo7
Is this possible or is it broken in bf2. I have flyersplines set up but after a while they just crash, and I would like them to land. I did a search before posting this but nothing came up.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:08 pm
by DarthD.U.C.K.
it doesnt seem possible but since some time i have the hallucination that i read of landingnodes/regions somehwrere which could be placed on the ground and control where and from which direction to land but that could have been entirely a hallucinatin or for swbf1
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:16 pm
by Jendo7
Thanks, I had a feeling it probably wasn't possible but I do remember seeing gunships land in Rends Coruscant City for BF1, so it's strange it wasn't brought forward for this game.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 5:16 pm
by fasty
I've seen it happen on some mod maps...plus I think I remember reading about this on the secretsociety website. My guess is it's possible, but no idea how

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Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 5:31 pm
by Marvel4
If it's possible - then not the same way as in BF1. I saw flyers land on Geonosis and Bespin, but it never happened in BF2.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 9:12 pm
by Eggman
DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:it doesnt seem possible but since some time i have the hallucination that i read of landingnodes/regions somehwrere which could be placed on the ground and control where and from which direction to land but that could have been entirely a hallucinatin or for swbf1
From the FlyerSplineFollowing doc for BF2:
LandOnArrival -
1 or 0. When the flyer arrives at this node, whether the flyer should attempt
a landing. The flyer never actually arrives at the last node in a path, so if
you want the flyer to land at the end of a path, the node property needs to be
set on the second to last node in the path.
To my knowledge this doesn't actually work, although I haven't tested it myself.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 9:16 pm
by Maveritchell
Eggman wrote:From the FlyerSplineFollowing doc for BF2:
LandOnArrival -
1 or 0. When the flyer arrives at this node, whether the flyer should attempt
a landing. The flyer never actually arrives at the last node in a path, so if
you want the flyer to land at the end of a path, the node property needs to be
set on the second to last node in the path.
To my knowledge this doesn't actually work, although I haven't tested it myself.
I have, and it doesn't.
There's also no effective difference between "land" and "space" maps.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 9:51 pm
by Jendo7
Since landing is not possible I have a different question about taking off. I have one flyerspline in my map entitypath rep that the republic gunship follows but when it reaches the first node it stops, moves to the right, and back again then follows the path. Is there any way I can stop this happening, so it has a smooth transition at the first node.
I hope my explanation makes sense.
OK, this is a short clip to illustrate what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEAt6IkuJwk
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 3:56 am
by lucasfart
I'm not sure if this is what you guys were talking about by nodes, but i think there's a hintnode which is used for landing, and its talked about in psychofreds docs somewhere. I've never tried them, but they might work.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 5:26 am
by sim-al2
Maveritchell wrote:Eggman wrote:From the FlyerSplineFollowing doc for BF2:
LandOnArrival -
1 or 0. When the flyer arrives at this node, whether the flyer should attempt
a landing. The flyer never actually arrives at the last node in a path, so if
you want the flyer to land at the end of a path, the node property needs to be
set on the second to last node in the path.
To my knowledge this doesn't actually work, although I haven't tested it myself.
I have, and it doesn't.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:02 am
by lucasfart
I knew about that, obviously, but i meant hintnodes, not flyersplines.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:04 am
by Eggman
sim-al2 wrote:Maveritchell wrote:Eggman wrote:From the FlyerSplineFollowing doc for BF2:
LandOnArrival -
1 or 0. When the flyer arrives at this node, whether the flyer should attempt
a landing. The flyer never actually arrives at the last node in a path, so if
you want the flyer to land at the end of a path, the node property needs to be
set on the second to last node in the path.
To my knowledge this doesn't actually work, although I haven't tested it myself.
I have, and it doesn't.
Path nodes are not the same as hint nodes. @lucasfart, if a landing hint node ever existed, it was probably for BF1. They don't exist in ZE for BF2, and there's no mention of them in the Hint Nodes.txt file on psych0fred's site.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 3:09 pm
by MercuryNoodles
They are an option in ZE, and they are mentioned in AI notes.txt, not Hint Nodes.txt.
As for the spline issue, what does the spline itself look like? I'm thinking there's a small curve that's being followed. The flyer will try to follow the path exactly, so if there's even a tiny curve that changes direction significantly, it shows when the flyer follows it.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 3:40 pm
by sim-al2
Eggman wrote:
Path nodes are not the same as hint nodes. @lucasfart, if a landing hint node ever existed, it was probably for BF1. They don't exist in ZE for BF2, and there's no mention of them in the Hint Nodes.txt file on psych0fred's site.

Wow, I actually knew that but then I posted something about something entirely different... Maybe I shouldn't be posting right before bed...
@Jendo7: Can you post a screenshot of that area in ZE?
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 5:31 pm
by Jendo7
This is the beginning of the flyer spline, which is at a right angle to the gunship. I've actually moved it closer to the gunship, which has reduced the issue, but it still moves slightly right at the node, and then follows the path.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 7:17 pm
by Eggman
MercuryNoodles wrote:They are an option in ZE, and they are mentioned in AI notes.txt, not Hint Nodes.txt.
Whoops, I stand corrected. That's what I get for not double-checking before I post.

Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:46 am
by MercuryNoodles
Jendo7 wrote:This is the beginning of the flyer spline, which is at a right angle to the gunship. I've actually moved it closer to the gunship, which has reduced the issue, but it still moves slightly right at the node, and then follows the path.
Can you reproduce the angle of the shot in your video with the path showing? I think that would be more helpful. The vid shows what appears to be the gunship already following the path, but changing direction in the middle of it. That's why I suspect you have some unexpected curvature in the path somewhere. If that's the case, you'll need to move the nodes a little to straighten the path, if I remember correctly. It's been a while since I've touched flyer splines, but C-R paths are very different from hermite, which are used for CP spawn paths.
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 6:42 am
by Jendo7
Thanks MercuryNoodles that helped me figure it out. The path is straight from the first node, and only curves slightly at the second node which is much further away. Looking at the Hoth level in game, the speeders also backtrack at the first node in the path, so maybe it's not fixable. It's the same in the space levels but because the distances are much bigger it's not that noticeable. I also changed the path type to CR but didn't make any difference. It's probably just a flaw in the game.
Anyway, here's another angle if it makes a difference:
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 10:12 am
by Maveritchell
What it may be doing is "deciding" which path node to follow there. You may want to take a look at the FlyerSplineFollowing doc and play around with some of the parameters that can make it follow a path more strictly (e.g. SingleDirection, BranchDifferent).
Re: Landing flyers in land maps.
Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 3:06 pm
by Jendo7
Maveritchell wrote:What it may be doing is "deciding" which path node to follow there. You may want to take a look at the FlyerSplineFollowing doc and play around with some of the parameters that can make it follow a path more strictly (e.g. SingleDirection, BranchDifferent).
Thanks Mav,
I wasn't able to stop the issue with the gunship moving right but I did find other properties for a smilar problem. Initially the flyers would follow the path for a short distance, and then randomly veer off course. As I have more than one path for different flyers, I found that putting BranchDifferent in the properties box with a value of 0.0 reduced the frequency of this happening.
From the doc:
Path properties
BranchDifferent -
If set to 1.0 the entity will always branch to a different path. When
set to 0.0 it's possible the entity will select the same path to follow
again. The default is 1.0.
This didn't completely stop the flyers veering of course on occasion but adding BranchProbability to 0.0 added to each nodes properties reduced it even further.
From the doc:
Path node / point properties
BranchProbability -
The probability of an entity branching from the current node to the start of
another path. When set to 0 the entity will never branch from the node unless
the node is at the end of the path. When set to 1 the entity will always
branch from the node which is equivalent to the node being at the end of a
path. The default branch probability is 0.0.
So If you want the opposite to happen so flyers move to another path from a specific point, set the node you want it to move from to a value of 1.0.