: SD: this is the post I was trying to send yesterday when
: Netscape refused to connect to the Asylum: Sorry--that
: was unclear. What I meant was that since my original
: idea (localized projectile) didn't look right my next
: idea was to use the particle systems to make it snow
: when he taunted but that meant it snowed everywhere,
: hence no localization, and if I just localized the
: damage it looked kind of funny--everybody was getting
: snowed on, after all. Good idea about the invisible
: projectile but the blowing snow thing just wouldn't
: look right no matter how I did it (maybe for a
: defensive spell...), especially since it can't follow
: the target, so I gave up on it and concentrated on the
: cyclone, which looks incredible and now works
: perfectly.
: Hey, I really apreciate that, but after about six
: straight hours of tweaking I finally got it to work on
: my own . Turns out I had just forgotten to check
: "centered on target", and since it has an
: area of effect it didn't bother . The real problem,
: as it turned out, was a lot sillier. The projectile is
: made of two parts: a ring of dust puffs (based on the
: mahir hold field but faster and tighter) and a
: descending column of puffs for the funnel. Try as I
: might, the column kept going up instead of down! Even
: after I used the "fast descending object"
: they would go up... and then come back down, through
: the ring, which sometimes looked like a really cool
: mushroom cloud but not like a tornado. I finally fixed
: this by tweaking the inertia (which of course kept the
: damaging projectiles from actually hitting anything--I
: had to give them invisible projectiles wholly seperate
: from the column which turned into dust puffs on
: detonation... man, I love Fear. Really I do). It's
: pretty much perfect now--I love, love, love it, I do.
: I just have to tweak the damage and the radius of the
: effect so that it doesn't blow Trow to smithereens
: from half the map away but is still more than a minor
: irritation to a tight platoon of Thrall. It works
: pretty much like a stationary dispersal dream--if you
: use it just right, all the dark forces will walk right
: into it and go boom one by one, but if you use it
: wrong it'll just sit there in a corner of the map and
: blow debris around harmlessly. I've made it mana
: based, rather than ammo based, because I think that
: was the emphasis with M2--all the same, three of them
: will use up all the mana and then it takes about five
: minutes for Cu Roi to recharge.
Sounds pretty. Were you able to actually get it to blow debris around and around in a circle? (No, I have no clue if that's possible or not)
: Hey, I have one other question, though: I made a "cu
: roi wounded" unit because the plot of the level
: is that your jmen have to sneak in and heal him, then
: defend his camp against a massive invasion. It works
: kinda like the Deceiver's body in M2, so there's an
: invisible, 80% healthy Cu Roi standing on this guy's
: chest who appears (and the wounded one disappears)
: when you heal him. That works great. The problem? The
: wounded unit, who just lays there (I had to tweak the
: "dead" sequence to keep him from twitching
: wildly! Now that was fun!) has a blue bounding box but
: no vitality bar (and yes, I checked it in his object
: tag). He's set to be a missile unit and everything
: else. But still, when an archer gets within range of
: him, he starts taking posthots at the body! And if
: your jmen is told to move near him he attacks with his
: shovel--I kind of solved this by making him
: non-autotargettable (now there's a word) but friendly
: units can still attack him, and usually kill him
: before help can arrive. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
: Is this maybe because I set him to "inanimate
: object", so they think he's a fence post?
I think so. Try setting him to "ambient life"--or actually, since he's non-autotargettable, you should be able to set him to anything without the enemy bothering him. You've probably already tried this, though.
: Anyway, thanks for your suggestions, help and interest. I
: apreciate your taking the time to respond to my geeky
: obsessiveness ;)
You should see the time I've spent trying to perfect the "pig bombards opponent with shower of hams" attack. No one does geeky like I do geeky.
--SiliconDream
