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I'm not sure if you could actually do this but is it possible to take a frigate and several turrets and make them all into a single object without using ZE? I'm toying with the idea of making Landing at Point Rain a space and land battle with five frigates duking it out in the sky + 3 airstrips on the ground for the player and AI controlled fighers spawning from the edges of the map like in the campaign. However before I begin working on this rather massive add-on I need to know weather Ill have to animate each individual ship gun and how to get manned fighers to spawn from outside the map like in the corruscant space map.

is it possible to take a frigate and several turrets and make them all into a single object without using ZE?

Yes; that is basically just one big animated turret. It would be easier for you (most likely) to simply orient all the objects the same way and animate them as a group.

I'd rather not have space + land at the same time. The cold hard truth is that SWBF2's AI is nowhere near smart enough to handle it - they're not smart, and you can't do overlapping planning arcs, so space would have to be "above and next to" the battle rather than right above it. That and you're basically doubling the amount of system requirements for a map by doubling the amount of AI needed, planning, ordnance, flyers, command posts, effects, models... etc.

The idea is cool, but this falls under my "well, you could do it but it would be an awful hack and would work like crap" category.

I am well aware of the issues with adding space so I came up witha few workarrounds. AI pilots will spawn form arround the corners of the map, I don't know how to do this yet but I know it can be done cas i've seen it in the campaign. As for the player, they have to capture one of the two airbases on the map to gain access to the space battle above. Since all the ships will not have interriors and all the fighters will be following splines there really won't be a need to add planning or barriers to the space level. The only problems I see is how do I get the AI to dogfight and the file size issue. I'm runing a rather crappy computer though so if it works for me it will work for most of GT).

EDIT: How do I group a ship and its guns as one object? I can't seem to get them all to be selectible with one click and to all follow one animation without the turrets going all over the place when the ship turns.

wishihadaname wrote: AI pilots will spawn form arround the corners of the map, I don't know how to do this yet but I know it can be done cas i've seen it in the campaign.

To my knowledge there's no way to control how that happens or if it happens at all. It just happens in space maps and I have no idea why. The AI spawned out of nowhere on the corners of Orbital Assault and I never did anything to set that up.

To my knowledge there's no way to control how that happens or if it happens at all. It just happens in space maps and I have no idea why. The AI spawned out of nowhere on the corners of Orbital Assault and I never did anything to set that up.

im making a space map in addition to my mod and ive never encouterred ai spawning at the corners.
ive seen it happen in the stock space instant action maps and had a look at their .lua files - a line in there i think is what allows it to happen. although i dont remember which line.

A quick look through the common and assault luas doesn't reveal any such line, though it is a quick look. In regards to them spawning at the corners, I would often fly straight for a while and encounter enemy fighters out of nowhere. I always wondered, in an idle, oh-look-something-happened sort of way, where they came from.

Sorry for the bombardment of question but i'm also wondering, is there a way to set how far a model can be seen from? its rather retarded when the cruisers fade in and out of view all the time.

wishihadaname wrote:Sorry for the bombardment of question but i'm also wondering, is there a way to set how far a model can be seen from? its rather retarded when the cruisers fade in and out of view all the time.

Search around the forums for topics regarding NearSceneRange and FarSceneRange. There's at least one topic link in the FAQ thread, and I've seen countless other threads about it.

http://www.secretsociety.com/forum/disp ... sp?mid=197

http://www.secretsociety.com/forum/disp ... sp?mid=895

Try not to make drastic changes (as in "I CAN INCREASE THESE NUMBERS AND SEE MOAR?!?!" ) to the NearSceneRange. Increasing the range forces the system to render more geometry (particularly the high res versions), which could be a problem for anyone not using a higher end system. I doubt it'll be a real problem with you, though, since you mention not having a great computer, thus you'd be the first to know if you make framerates slow to a crawl.

Thanks you guys. BTW I made some progress with the fighter spawning issue, it seems that the SpaceAssaultObjective.lua is not responcible for that effect and I couldn't find anything useful in a typical space assault.lua that leaves me to believe that either its a hardcoded value attached to space maps at their creation or that its a special setup in ZE. I also think i've found a workarround, isn't it possible to spawn vehicles that man themselves? If so then I can just attach four fighters to each CP and have them spawn waaaay up on the cilffs so that it looks like they are appearing from over the edge of the map that way I don't even have to bother with this auto spawning thing. Only place were i'm still dead stuck is how the heck do I animate those frigates. When I had the frigate and its turrets just follow the same path, the turrets went slidding all over the place when the frigate turned. However, I know that the ZE engine can turn multiple objects in proportion because thats what holding down the Z button in multi select does. So does anyone have any idea how to do this properly? Can I just stick them togehter as a single object or will I have to make an individual anim for each turret so it moves in proportion to the frigate?

Eggman managed manned fighterspawns in his Aldura space map. Why don't you PM him and ask how to do it?

Lagomorphia wrote:Eggman managed manned fighterspawns in his Aldura space map. Why don't you PM him and ask how to do it?

No need to PM, I can just answer here: in the .odf for whatever vehicle you want to be self-piloted, add the line PilotType = "self". You'll also need to add that under each weapon section, I believe. Then in ZE, place vehicle spawns wherever you want the fighters to spawn from and spawn them like any other vehicle. I don't remember for sure how I set it up (and I can't check since I lost all my assets), but to give the self-piloted fighters a team I think you'll need to either assign a team to the vehicle spawn object or associate it with a command post.

sweet, thank you eggman, only thing I need now is animating the frigates. You didn't happend to do that by any chance did you?

They were all idle in the Aldura map I think...

Why don't you have a look at the stock Mygeeto assests? There's a moving frigate in that.

Mygeeto's moving frigate is part of the skydome, I have a frigate out of the space assets and it has turrets on it, I can animate it but the turrets don't move with it.

wishihadaname wrote:sweet, thank you eggman, only thing I need now is animating the frigates. You didn't happend to do that by any chance did you?

I wish I could have; I was never able to figure out how to "attach" multiple objects to a single animation. I know objects can be linked, because some of the shipped maps have animated frigates with turrets (Kashyyyk space campaign, for example), I just don't know how to do it.

Perhaps its .lua related? I'll look that up and get back to you guys when I have.

...I was never able to figure out how to "attach" multiple objects to a single animation. I know objects can be linked, because some of the shipped maps have animated frigates with turrets (Kashyyyk space campaign, for example), I just don't know how to do it.

Read through the Creating Hierarchies section of the procedural animation mode.doc, the process is quite simple and is most likely how it was done in the shipped maps.

EDIT
Yep, you basically animate an object then add a hierarchy and list which objects you want to move with the animated object. When playing the animation in ZE you won't see the child objects move with the parent but ingame it works fine.

Should this work in ZE? I set up the hierarchies as described in the .doc but when I played the anim group the turrets still did not move.

EDIT FTW!
HELL YA! It works! Thanks you AceMastermind! The only problem I'm going to have now is which guns to use, since you guys helped me figure this out I may as well let you have the honors. What kind of space battle do you want?

Just as a rought aporximation the map is big enough to comfortably fit 5 frigates while still leaving them some elbow room, currently the setup is 2 cis heavy frigates and 3 rep covettes. I haven't laid out guns and only one path is curently active. So how would you guys like to see these ships interact?