UE - not easy game

Originally posted by jammyo2k
I quite liked the solution that was offered in HTL. Of course the ideas are not canon but the concept for making the cloak was quite satisfying. I'd go along with it in a UE2. Plus it could make for some pretty cool animations and cut scenes.
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Cloak'd be a bitch to implement, though...
 
Yeah, but that function would most likely be the hardest one HCl has ever tried to implement, wouldnt it?

--Eder
 
Can't you just set something's IFF to neutral and pray that HCl can make said IFF's radar-dot color pitch black? :p

--Eder
 
We really need the ability to disable an objects dot, like the way asteroids don't show up
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That can be done, when sensor cloak was discussed on the UE list, i got to work on it a bit: disabling the radar dot was simple (i can setup a couple of mission functions to enable/disable this, for instance), there were however a few problems back then, regarding disabling the ability to target a sensor-cloaked ship, due to smart-targetting mechanism, however i'm confident it can be fixed.

Mario

(sentence edited for clarity)
 
So HCl do you have a job in the computer industry or are you totally freelance with your abilities and just make them for fun cause a bunch of them I've messed with look pretty professionally done?:D
 
That's very interesting indeed, Mario, but we'd still need some way to make a ship model disappear on command. Would it be possible to activate/deactivate the cycling of an animated MAT on command?
 
Sensor cloak is about 90% ready, with the work i have done so far. However, as far as visual cloak goes, there's not much done yet. We need to prevent a ship from being rendered, which with some luck i can arrange using a new mission command (i'll have to explore the EXE a bit first, but i just remembered something i may be able to use to prevent a ship from being rendered on command). However, this would only make the ship disappear immediately, which wouldn't be too visually attractive (well, it'd be like WC2, but not WC3/4... no idea if this would be a desired thing, probably not). I assume this is where your idea of animated MATs come in? It could work, but i don't know how to activate/deactivate the cycling of a MAT animation (yet).

DoomsdayPlague: Thanks, i'm glad you like my stuff :) I don't currently work on the computer industry. I'm still a student of Computer Engineering (graduating this year, with a bit of luck), my work researching and editing the games is made just for fun.
 
Originally posted by HCl
However, as far as visual cloak goes, there's not much done yet. We need to prevent a ship from being rendered, which with some luck i can arrange using a new mission command However, this would only make the ship disappear immediately, which wouldn't be too visually attractive (well, it'd be like WC2, but not WC3/4... no idea if this would be a desired thing, probably not).
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Well for just that pop away effect one could simply disable the ship (or set it to some insane distance). Then start a timer and have it reappear within x klicks of the player, facing him.
A bit cheated, but getting over the effect. Now the only problem here would be said cloaking FX.
 
Originally posted by cff
Well for just that pop away effect one could simply disable the ship (or set it to some insane distance). Then start a timer and have it reappear within x klicks of the player, facing him.
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That would also solve the AI problem. If we just stop the ship's rendering, the ship would still fire. If we issue the AI_AttackNothing(1) function, the ship would stop to follow it's target.

A solutions would be to disable from radar, then teleport to insane distance and attacknothing, then after time(random(x)) attack, teleport behind player facing it, show on radar. Problems: only attacks target specified in function, and does not work for the player.

To work best we'd need:
1) Disable from radar (new function)
2) Stop rendering ship (new function)
3) Keep attacking but stop fireing (new function) so cloacked ship continue to close onto target, etc.
4) use the same functions in reverse

Lot of work for HCl ! But if the "Disable from radar" function is already done and almost perfect, we could already implement the first solution.
 
I do not know anything about programming, but is there any way to figure out how Origin did the Strakha cloaking in WC3 and reply it in UE? Or is the engine so different that we can´t even think of working on such analogy?
 
PopsiclePete & cff: Your idea is very similar to what i had in mind for cloaking :) We may even give it a few seconds before "teleporting" the invisible ship so that the player can take a few shots at it, guessing where it is (at least i used to do it all the time on WC3 :) ah good memories...)

Some functions you describe:

Keep attacking but stop fireing (new function) so cloacked ship continue to close onto target, etc.
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This may turn out to be fairly simple after all, the scattergun patch may be modified to stop a gun from firing completely (in fact, the scattergun patch prevents the gun from firing on full guns mode), so all that i'd need to do is rig a new mission function to alter a state (turn guns on/off), and make the patch act accordingly.

(...) and does not work for the player.
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There may be a workaround here, using yet another modification of the scattergun patch: if we use a special gun entry to toggle a variable, we can poll that variable and have a cycle on the player function to turn on/off the cloak and guns (in short, a "cloak gun" like in Armada)

Mario
 
Starkey: To do what you suggest we'd need the source code of Secret Ops :( Since we don't have it, our only option is to resort to little modifications (to parts of the game we can modify) with the hope of re-creating the functionality using mission scripting.
 
Quick thought... if one wants to cloak an enemy ship with missile capability, those also need to be turned off.
 
No time to read the whole thread, but would the method(s) described to simultate cloaking be able to have enemies uncloak on your tail, as in WC2/3/4?
 
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