Here's some screenies of the new starcruisers. The ships are now made with custom models and attachment points. And the entire gameplay has been reworked to be more realistic. Each weapon has its own firing arc, and ship now move via thrusters. And the camera is now 3rd person instead of top-down. This is actually more like how it was envisioned in the first place.
I'm working on a new version of starcruisers right now, and as part of the game design, the spaceship is loaded with many weapons each with different firing arcs. To achieve this, the game uses triggers to attach model additions to different attachment points on the spaceship. Then when a weapon fires, it finds the actor that represents that weapon and uses the 'make actor face angle' trigger to rotate that weapon to face the target.
All this work fine... except when the spaceship turns. As soon as it turns, all model additions attached to any attachment points on the spaceships get its rotation reset. So a spaceship not turning will show its weapons facing the target. But as soon as the spaceship begin turning, all weapons will face the same direction as the spaceship.
Anyone know how to fix this problem? I tried going to actors and turn off transfer rotation property, that does nothing.
Anyone know a good way to make a weapon only fire at certain angles? Lets say I want to make a tank with additional weapons. It has flamethrowers attached to the side that can only fire sideways. A machine gun behind the turret that can only aim at stuffs behind the tank. How would I go about it?
Except BasharTeg, wc3 and sc1 didn't have this popularity problem. And real life popularity works differently than b.net popularity. In real-life, there's room for as many stars as it can handle. In b.net, the stars are limited to about 20. The reality is, sc2 has HUNDREDS of stars, can you imagine if real-life celebrities are only limited to 20? There's only 20 movies stars you can ever see on screen. There's only 20 musicians. Very few people would be watching movies or listening to music if that was the case.
Sc2 b.net is more like one of those 3rd world dictatorships where they limit who the stars are. We don't have a popularity system, don't let the name fool you.
I totally hate the sc2 b.net. Nothing worse than seeing maps I want to play and ... empty lobby. Tried joining Mad Scientist Wars (played once, wanted to play again..and you guys know the story). Also wanted to try out Honorgarde Valley and Runecraft. Empty lobby -> ragequit.
But after watching Husky's video of the lobby system, I realized the old b.net is fundamentally flawed too. It would work nice, if there aren't many people hosting games. But if you have a hundred people hosting new games a minute, it only gives your lobby a few second visiblity. Granted if there's that many people hosting, a few second might be enough to attract a full lobby. But if the system is overran with hosting bots, then we'll have a total failure too.
That brings back to the early days when pouplarity = games played. Mappers were botting like crazy! Even Rodrigo in his videos mentioned botting to boost his map popularity. No doubt many mappers used bots to boost their maps, and they probably got their fans to bot too. Just saying, under old b.net, hosting bots will probably kill the custom community as much as b.net 2.0.
The way I did my custom 3d portrait, I export one of the existing portraits in game to 3dsmax. Remove the models there and just replace with my own. Had to resize and reposition my custom model. And through trial and error, I have it look just right in the portrait window inside the game. You can even use your own custom animations too. Its actually quite easy to do. Look for 'secret angels' under NA server to see the 3d portraits i put in.
Balls, you are in the wrong site! This is a very fanatical pro-blizz site. Even though your thread has merit, you won't get much support here. :) And you aren't the first to suggest such ballsy moves, people had been suggesting the page 1 mappers remove their maps as protest before. Also, the 99% who hates b.net 0.2 has already left the game. The remaining 1% are pro-supporters and you won't get them to occupy anything.
This is a very good idea! Damn you! I have so many ideas for maps, and you just add another one to my list... Definitely going to think on this and see if i can pull it off.
To any hopefuls like me I just want to say after implementing the
movement / turning system in my map then Bnet testing it I have found
with the Bnet lag this type of game is unplayable. Single tear :*(
Have you tried using mouse click as a way to control the ship? The battle.net lag is still there, but for me, using mouse click somehow makes it feel more responsive. I made a similar action top-down shooter too using mouse clicks. I think we are just used to the delay from mouse clicks by playing the normal rts mode.
I did put in a wasd control, but instead of holding the button, you press it once to move in that direction. The idea was to use mouse clicks and if you can't move the cursor fast enough, you can use wasd to interrupt the movement. If you want to see how it works, look for top-down shooter in b.net. Its the one with the lost viking picture on it.
Wow, you are a genius! It totally worked! Don't know how you figure that one out. I guess there's a lot of hidden data in data editor. Protoss also uses shield squibs that don't show up in the data editor too.
Anyways, thanks! Can't believe this problem is solved so easily. :)
The good news, over the weekend hours played rose to 94 hours played! And bookmarks rose to 30+! (currently 40something) And I didn't see this map in the up and coming list, so all the hours weren't boosted by fun or not. People actually looked for it and played it! Not only that, but I started working on the heroes, have some really cool ideas. Each hero is going to be very unique looking...
Now the bad news. I just got SWTOR and just finished patching! So this map is now permanently on hold and the heroes may not make an appearnce. :( .. .. cya guys!
The other day, I had a similar problem! My editor loads up without the terrain editor opened. And when I goto open the terrain editor to put in units, it'll begin loading until it starts to load actors. That's when it crashes out. I could still test document and have it run fine.
I spent hours backtracking and trying to figure out what's wrong. The problem was an actor. I had an actor destruction -> set opacity. (its suppose to be actor creation -> set opacity) The editor does not like that, it looks harmless but it crashes the editor.
Ah, yeah, I'm just keeping the map to its original state. I sorta fixed the too many unit spawning. If there's too many around your base, the zergs will stop spawning. The lag was insane if you can't kill them fast enough.. (latest version hasn't been uploaded yet, going to upload it along with the new title screen)
I wish I could use the map on page 1 instead, but I'm using the unlocked one in battle.net which nobody ever plays. That version does has like a million bugs and is basically unplayable. I think I fixed most of them. I'm working on a title screen and then adding in elite units.
I don't know about lag. Haven't played it a full game with it, so who knows. They could lag a lot or not much. The meshes aren't optimized, there are a lot of unecessary polygons. And the animation for the wing uses a lot of joints. We'll probably never know! It could be weeks before someone starts a full game .. if ever!
ALSO, this map is a total failure! Its gathered 4 hours so far with only 3 bookmarks. (1 of them is mine). So only 2 people liked it out of 4 hours of gameplay. I estimate maybe 10ish people (guessed by 4 hours gameplay..although I did spend 30+min playing last night) have tried it and only 2 liked it. :( Oh well, I personally love it though. I like the special forces map and the custom models give it an unique atmosphere. :)
Just spent the week adding in my own custom units into a special forces. The idea of Secret Angels are based on Victoria's same name. :) Its really fun to see my own artwork in the game too.) I'm thinking the map probably won't get played so I'm sharing some pictures here instead!
Plan to add in elite units later with shoulderpads + helm to visually show the upgrade. And a periodic timer that launches a large attack wave while turning it into night time. And going to add heroes with a more unique look.
The name of map is Special Forces: Secret Angels and its on NA server.
0
Here's some screenies of the new starcruisers. The ships are now made with custom models and attachment points. And the entire gameplay has been reworked to be more realistic. Each weapon has its own firing arc, and ship now move via thrusters. And the camera is now 3rd person instead of top-down. This is actually more like how it was envisioned in the first place.
0
I'm working on a new version of starcruisers right now, and as part of the game design, the spaceship is loaded with many weapons each with different firing arcs. To achieve this, the game uses triggers to attach model additions to different attachment points on the spaceship. Then when a weapon fires, it finds the actor that represents that weapon and uses the 'make actor face angle' trigger to rotate that weapon to face the target.
All this work fine... except when the spaceship turns. As soon as it turns, all model additions attached to any attachment points on the spaceships get its rotation reset. So a spaceship not turning will show its weapons facing the target. But as soon as the spaceship begin turning, all weapons will face the same direction as the spaceship.
Anyone know how to fix this problem? I tried going to actors and turn off transfer rotation property, that does nothing.
0
Anyone know a good way to make a weapon only fire at certain angles? Lets say I want to make a tank with additional weapons. It has flamethrowers attached to the side that can only fire sideways. A machine gun behind the turret that can only aim at stuffs behind the tank. How would I go about it?
0
Except BasharTeg, wc3 and sc1 didn't have this popularity problem. And real life popularity works differently than b.net popularity. In real-life, there's room for as many stars as it can handle. In b.net, the stars are limited to about 20. The reality is, sc2 has HUNDREDS of stars, can you imagine if real-life celebrities are only limited to 20? There's only 20 movies stars you can ever see on screen. There's only 20 musicians. Very few people would be watching movies or listening to music if that was the case.
Sc2 b.net is more like one of those 3rd world dictatorships where they limit who the stars are. We don't have a popularity system, don't let the name fool you.
0
I totally hate the sc2 b.net. Nothing worse than seeing maps I want to play and ... empty lobby. Tried joining Mad Scientist Wars (played once, wanted to play again..and you guys know the story). Also wanted to try out Honorgarde Valley and Runecraft. Empty lobby -> ragequit.
But after watching Husky's video of the lobby system, I realized the old b.net is fundamentally flawed too. It would work nice, if there aren't many people hosting games. But if you have a hundred people hosting new games a minute, it only gives your lobby a few second visiblity. Granted if there's that many people hosting, a few second might be enough to attract a full lobby. But if the system is overran with hosting bots, then we'll have a total failure too.
That brings back to the early days when pouplarity = games played. Mappers were botting like crazy! Even Rodrigo in his videos mentioned botting to boost his map popularity. No doubt many mappers used bots to boost their maps, and they probably got their fans to bot too. Just saying, under old b.net, hosting bots will probably kill the custom community as much as b.net 2.0.
0
@Deadzergling: Go
The way I did my custom 3d portrait, I export one of the existing portraits in game to 3dsmax. Remove the models there and just replace with my own. Had to resize and reposition my custom model. And through trial and error, I have it look just right in the portrait window inside the game. You can even use your own custom animations too. Its actually quite easy to do. Look for 'secret angels' under NA server to see the 3d portraits i put in.
0
@BallsButNoSack: Go
Balls, you are in the wrong site! This is a very fanatical pro-blizz site. Even though your thread has merit, you won't get much support here. :) And you aren't the first to suggest such ballsy moves, people had been suggesting the page 1 mappers remove their maps as protest before. Also, the 99% who hates b.net 0.2 has already left the game. The remaining 1% are pro-supporters and you won't get them to occupy anything.
0
@Taintedwisp: Go
This is a very good idea! Damn you! I have so many ideas for maps, and you just add another one to my list... Definitely going to think on this and see if i can pull it off.
0
Have you tried using mouse click as a way to control the ship? The battle.net lag is still there, but for me, using mouse click somehow makes it feel more responsive. I made a similar action top-down shooter too using mouse clicks. I think we are just used to the delay from mouse clicks by playing the normal rts mode.
I did put in a wasd control, but instead of holding the button, you press it once to move in that direction. The idea was to use mouse clicks and if you can't move the cursor fast enough, you can use wasd to interrupt the movement. If you want to see how it works, look for top-down shooter in b.net. Its the one with the lost viking picture on it.
0
@PinkyBlue: Go
Wow, you are a genius! It totally worked! Don't know how you figure that one out. I guess there's a lot of hidden data in data editor. Protoss also uses shield squibs that don't show up in the data editor too.
Anyways, thanks! Can't believe this problem is solved so easily. :)
0
I have good news and bad news!
The good news, over the weekend hours played rose to 94 hours played! And bookmarks rose to 30+! (currently 40something) And I didn't see this map in the up and coming list, so all the hours weren't boosted by fun or not. People actually looked for it and played it! Not only that, but I started working on the heroes, have some really cool ideas. Each hero is going to be very unique looking...
Now the bad news. I just got SWTOR and just finished patching! So this map is now permanently on hold and the heroes may not make an appearnce. :( .. .. cya guys!
0
@DogmaiSEA: Go
The other day, I had a similar problem! My editor loads up without the terrain editor opened. And when I goto open the terrain editor to put in units, it'll begin loading until it starts to load actors. That's when it crashes out. I could still test document and have it run fine.
I spent hours backtracking and trying to figure out what's wrong. The problem was an actor. I had an actor destruction -> set opacity. (its suppose to be actor creation -> set opacity) The editor does not like that, it looks harmless but it crashes the editor.
0
Ah, yeah, I'm just keeping the map to its original state. I sorta fixed the too many unit spawning. If there's too many around your base, the zergs will stop spawning. The lag was insane if you can't kill them fast enough.. (latest version hasn't been uploaded yet, going to upload it along with the new title screen)
I wish I could use the map on page 1 instead, but I'm using the unlocked one in battle.net which nobody ever plays. That version does has like a million bugs and is basically unplayable. I think I fixed most of them. I'm working on a title screen and then adding in elite units.
News, bookmarks rose to 5!
0
@littlefury916: Go
I don't know about lag. Haven't played it a full game with it, so who knows. They could lag a lot or not much. The meshes aren't optimized, there are a lot of unecessary polygons. And the animation for the wing uses a lot of joints. We'll probably never know! It could be weeks before someone starts a full game .. if ever!
ALSO, this map is a total failure! Its gathered 4 hours so far with only 3 bookmarks. (1 of them is mine). So only 2 people liked it out of 4 hours of gameplay. I estimate maybe 10ish people (guessed by 4 hours gameplay..although I did spend 30+min playing last night) have tried it and only 2 liked it. :( Oh well, I personally love it though. I like the special forces map and the custom models give it an unique atmosphere. :)
0
Just spent the week adding in my own custom units into a special forces. The idea of Secret Angels are based on Victoria's same name. :) Its really fun to see my own artwork in the game too.) I'm thinking the map probably won't get played so I'm sharing some pictures here instead!
Plan to add in elite units later with shoulderpads + helm to visually show the upgrade. And a periodic timer that launches a large attack wave while turning it into night time. And going to add heroes with a more unique look.
The name of map is Special Forces: Secret Angels and its on NA server.