I would love to know how you went about making an ability use the retarget feature. I have only been able to get Weapons to retarget their missiles thus far, and using both the Leviathan's Bile Swarm (which uses retargeting) and the Warhound's Tornado Missile Ability as templates hasn't worked for me, even with the suggestions in this thread.
I also can't download the map attached...it looks like the link is broken :(
Don't know if your map would be compatible with this kind of setup, but you can disable the fog plane under your map's Terrain Types which will completely remove the black mask on the map (units outside LOS are still hidden, there just wont be a black or grey mask over the map anymore).
I used to find you had to launch them from the missile unit before it died. Unless you do like the lurker and use events to move/create a site actor at the impact location. Are you setting the correct host subject for your Action actor and forcing the launch site?
You are correct, I now have the missiles set up such that their Effect:Death creates the final Persistent Effect instead, and everything is finally working (at least visually).
I still can't seem to figure out how the retarget feature works with abilities though. Ever since I made the change above, now even the weapon version of my ability doesn't retarget anymore.
I'd be happy enough if AT LEAST the missiles didnt disappear when their current target died. That just looks really awkward...
Issue 1: The final set of missiles that are supposed to be fired from the impact location of the first set of missiles isn't firing in the right place. I can only seem to make them fire from the origin point of the casting unit (ground level of where my unit is) or at the caster itself (such as in the video below). I want them to originate from the impact point of the initial set of missiles...
Issue 2: I took at a look at the Leviathan and it's Bile Swarm attack, and it does indeed use the Retarget function effectively. I tried having my cluster bomb mimic the Bile Swarm's retargeting behaviour, but haven't had any success. I've noted that the Bile Swarm is a Weapon (as such the effect fires from a weapon) vice my ability which is an "Effect - Instant".
I also noted that if I took the Leviathan's Bile Weapon and replaced its effect chain with my effect chain, my cluster bomb would behave as expected (the missiles would retarget with no issues). I'm now left to believe that abilities don't seem to function the same way as weapons when it comes to retargeting, and am wondering how I can set up an ability to use the retarget feature correctly.
Below are the various configurations for my ability, in hopes that it may help troubleshoot the issue.
Alright I got it working the way I want now, I just needed to set up my Search Area effect to use Target Sorts:Random and that's done the trick for now. I may have to set up either markers or a behavior and validate it later on if Target Sorts can't handle complex situations on its own, but for now its good enough.
Random question though, under "Launch Missile" effect, there are a bunch of fields set aside such as "Retarget Range" and "Retarget Filters" that are supposed to be used in conjunction with the "Retarget" flag. That being said, I'm not seeing any of my missiles retarget anything if a unit dies before the missile impacts, even if the "Retarget Filters" is set to exclude dead. What are these fields used for then?
I'm trying to make a Cluster Bomb-type of ability: essentially an ability that fires off a bunch of missiles [via a persistent, let's call it "Initial"] in random directions, and those missiles then explode into more missiles [which creates a second persistent, which we can call "final"] that fire off in random directions and then acquire a random target within a specified range of the first explosion.
That being said, I'm having issues trying to get the ability to behave the way I want it to. Right now, I have no way of telling the ability that I want the second set of missiles to each track targets individually.
I have thought of setting up a search effect that fires off the missiles afterwards, but if I set up the search effect to fire the persistent afterwards, ALL the missiles in the persistent will acquire the same target. If I tell the search effect to fire each missile individually instead, it will only fire as many missiles as their are targets in the specified range, which isn't what I want either. I want it to always release 16 missiles, and those 16 missiles each acquire a random target.
What would be the easiest way to go about doing this?
Attached a video below showing the basic structure of my ability (I didn't set up the actors yet)
Will making the textures invisible still cost computational power? I primarily want to remove the smoke particles because they just slow down the game needlessly.
Is there a way to [preferably] prevent, or at the very least permanently remove, particles (specifically, smoke particles from muzzle flashes and explosions] from actors, without having to resort to modifying the actual models with a plugin on blender or 3ds?
As much as I would like to fix the models myself via blender, the .m3 plugins are no longer being maintained and I will often find them to glitch up, causing errors and models to partially disappear.
If there was a way to tell a model to prevent particles from appearing, that would make my job a lot easier.
Currently, the only thing that would appear to help me is the "Destroy Particles" actor message, however I haven't been able to get it to do anything for me thus far. Are there particularities with this actor message that I'm not aware of?
The highlighted fields are the most important ones you want to modify if you want to hear your sounds from farthur away/closer relative to the camera. If you want 3D sound but dont want it clipping out as you zoom out, just set the rolloff points to be farthur away and choose your blend type that makes the most sense.
As most of you already know, this tooltip appears when you hover over the "Msg Type" box in Actor Event messages. It's so long that it appears to cut off the bottom of my screen, and judging by how descriptive it is based on the info it gives for the first 6 actor message types, I'm wondering if a full tooltip of this can be found somewhere? It would be really useful to know what each actor message type does in-depth...
Well, considering this is for a space simulator map, I need actors to rotate smoothly as they turn left/right. That basically scratches out the first option.
You mentioned the SiteOp Rotator, and after a but of tweaking, I can get a reasonable result with that and a few triggers. I can have my ship roll to the left/right at a constant rate, reissue a new SiteOp with a rate of 0 to maintain the rotation as it's turning, and then reverse the whole thing by doing the above in the opposite direction.
I do have to ask though (as I'm afraid this might bog up the game after some time), if I send an actor message (via "HostSiteOpsSet") via triggers and then resend another SiteOp of the same type (in this example, another rotator SiteOp), do they both stay on the unit actor or do they overwrite eachother?
I don't want any given unit to have thousands of SiteOps on it by the end of the game, as I would assume that might have impact on performance over the long run?
EDIT - NVM answered my own question, "HostSiteOpsSet" sets the Host Site Ops to whatever you give it, so it overwrites any previous Host Site Ops you had.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Why is there no native support to change an actor's rotation over time anywhere in triggers (or even in actor messages?).
I need a way to have a unit's pitch and roll changed on the spot while it is moving over a period of time. How do I do this?
Yes, both via the models tab and by actor messages, altering all the planes (x,y,z) proportionally and a variety of different ratios to see the effects.
In the video above, you can clearly see that it's the z-axis that's not scaling properly. So I tried giving the model's z-axis scaling an even smaller ratio compared to the other two, in hopes that would fix that problem. It sorta does - but then the x and/or y axes start having the same issues in its place. No matter what I do there always appears to be one axis that bugs out when you orient your view a certain way.
At this point I would just settle for a way to have the beam actor facing the player's camera at all times. Is there a way to do this?
I have a beam. This beam has been scaled to 5% of its original size. When this beam is fired, it will fire with this reduced scale, except:
There seems to be a plane on which this beam cannot be scaled at all. This varies from model to model. If you orient your camera a certain way, the beam will grow bigger until it reaches its default size.
I am wondering if there is a way to either:
Allow it to scale the beam on all axes or;
Orient the beam in such a way that the beam will always be facing the player's camera a certain way, so as to never have this issue.
0
I would love to know how you went about making an ability use the retarget feature. I have only been able to get Weapons to retarget their missiles thus far, and using both the Leviathan's Bile Swarm (which uses retargeting) and the Warhound's Tornado Missile Ability as templates hasn't worked for me, even with the suggestions in this thread.
I also can't download the map attached...it looks like the link is broken :(
0
Don't know if your map would be compatible with this kind of setup, but you can disable the fog plane under your map's Terrain Types which will completely remove the black mask on the map (units outside LOS are still hidden, there just wont be a black or grey mask over the map anymore).
0
0
Welp I'm stumped again.
Issue 1: The final set of missiles that are supposed to be fired from the impact location of the first set of missiles isn't firing in the right place. I can only seem to make them fire from the origin point of the casting unit (ground level of where my unit is) or at the caster itself (such as in the video below). I want them to originate from the impact point of the initial set of missiles...
Issue 2: I took at a look at the Leviathan and it's Bile Swarm attack, and it does indeed use the Retarget function effectively. I tried having my cluster bomb mimic the Bile Swarm's retargeting behaviour, but haven't had any success. I've noted that the Bile Swarm is a Weapon (as such the effect fires from a weapon) vice my ability which is an "Effect - Instant".
I also noted that if I took the Leviathan's Bile Weapon and replaced its effect chain with my effect chain, my cluster bomb would behave as expected (the missiles would retarget with no issues). I'm now left to believe that abilities don't seem to function the same way as weapons when it comes to retargeting, and am wondering how I can set up an ability to use the retarget feature correctly.
Below are the various configurations for my ability, in hopes that it may help troubleshoot the issue.
Ability Setup
Actor Setup
Effects Setup
Linked to ->
Which is linked to ->
Which is linked to ->
Final link to ->
0
Alright I got it working the way I want now, I just needed to set up my Search Area effect to use Target Sorts:Random and that's done the trick for now. I may have to set up either markers or a behavior and validate it later on if Target Sorts can't handle complex situations on its own, but for now its good enough.
Random question though, under "Launch Missile" effect, there are a bunch of fields set aside such as "Retarget Range" and "Retarget Filters" that are supposed to be used in conjunction with the "Retarget" flag. That being said, I'm not seeing any of my missiles retarget anything if a unit dies before the missile impacts, even if the "Retarget Filters" is set to exclude dead. What are these fields used for then?
0
Hello,
I'm trying to make a Cluster Bomb-type of ability: essentially an ability that fires off a bunch of missiles [via a persistent, let's call it "Initial"] in random directions, and those missiles then explode into more missiles [which creates a second persistent, which we can call "final"] that fire off in random directions and then acquire a random target within a specified range of the first explosion.
That being said, I'm having issues trying to get the ability to behave the way I want it to. Right now, I have no way of telling the ability that I want the second set of missiles to each track targets individually.
I have thought of setting up a search effect that fires off the missiles afterwards, but if I set up the search effect to fire the persistent afterwards, ALL the missiles in the persistent will acquire the same target. If I tell the search effect to fire each missile individually instead, it will only fire as many missiles as their are targets in the specified range, which isn't what I want either. I want it to always release 16 missiles, and those 16 missiles each acquire a random target.
What would be the easiest way to go about doing this?
Attached a video below showing the basic structure of my ability (I didn't set up the actors yet)
0
I already thought of that, but that's not in the best interest of the map. Do invisible textures still bear any kind of impact on performance?
0
Will making the textures invisible still cost computational power? I primarily want to remove the smoke particles because they just slow down the game needlessly.
0
Is there a way to [preferably] prevent, or at the very least permanently remove, particles (specifically, smoke particles from muzzle flashes and explosions] from actors, without having to resort to modifying the actual models with a plugin on blender or 3ds?
As much as I would like to fix the models myself via blender, the .m3 plugins are no longer being maintained and I will often find them to glitch up, causing errors and models to partially disappear.
If there was a way to tell a model to prevent particles from appearing, that would make my job a lot easier.
Currently, the only thing that would appear to help me is the "Destroy Particles" actor message, however I haven't been able to get it to do anything for me thus far. Are there particularities with this actor message that I'm not aware of?
0
The highlighted fields are the most important ones you want to modify if you want to hear your sounds from farthur away/closer relative to the camera. If you want 3D sound but dont want it clipping out as you zoom out, just set the rolloff points to be farthur away and choose your blend type that makes the most sense.
0
As most of you already know, this tooltip appears when you hover over the "Msg Type" box in Actor Event messages. It's so long that it appears to cut off the bottom of my screen, and judging by how descriptive it is based on the info it gives for the first 6 actor message types, I'm wondering if a full tooltip of this can be found somewhere? It would be really useful to know what each actor message type does in-depth...
0
Well, considering this is for a space simulator map, I need actors to rotate smoothly as they turn left/right. That basically scratches out the first option.
You mentioned the SiteOp Rotator, and after a but of tweaking, I can get a reasonable result with that and a few triggers. I can have my ship roll to the left/right at a constant rate, reissue a new SiteOp with a rate of 0 to maintain the rotation as it's turning, and then reverse the whole thing by doing the above in the opposite direction.
I do have to ask though (as I'm afraid this might bog up the game after some time), if I send an actor message (via "HostSiteOpsSet") via triggers and then resend another SiteOp of the same type (in this example, another rotator SiteOp), do they both stay on the unit actor or do they overwrite eachother?
I don't want any given unit to have thousands of SiteOps on it by the end of the game, as I would assume that might have impact on performance over the long run?
EDIT - NVM answered my own question, "HostSiteOpsSet" sets the Host Site Ops to whatever you give it, so it overwrites any previous Host Site Ops you had.
Cheers,
0
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Why is there no native support to change an actor's rotation over time anywhere in triggers (or even in actor messages?).
I need a way to have a unit's pitch and roll changed on the spot while it is moving over a period of time. How do I do this?
0
Yes, both via the models tab and by actor messages, altering all the planes (x,y,z) proportionally and a variety of different ratios to see the effects.
In the video above, you can clearly see that it's the z-axis that's not scaling properly. So I tried giving the model's z-axis scaling an even smaller ratio compared to the other two, in hopes that would fix that problem. It sorta does - but then the x and/or y axes start having the same issues in its place. No matter what I do there always appears to be one axis that bugs out when you orient your view a certain way.
At this point I would just settle for a way to have the beam actor facing the player's camera at all times. Is there a way to do this?
0
I have a beam. This beam has been scaled to 5% of its original size. When this beam is fired, it will fire with this reduced scale, except:
There seems to be a plane on which this beam cannot be scaled at all. This varies from model to model. If you orient your camera a certain way, the beam will grow bigger until it reaches its default size.
I am wondering if there is a way to either:
Video demonstration below: