Anyone want to help me with it?

So I've been having this idea: your ship is an APC, of sorts (yes, no lore sense, but I think it's a cool idea.) The premise is simple: you can have your soldiers fire from inside the APC, or you can deploy them so they can go out and fire from long range. The problem is this: I don't want to be able to have the soldier fire from inside when they're supposed to be deployed. I've tried a couple, and the one that seems most likely, but doesn't work, is as follows:

I have two weapons, the deploying, 128 (just making it up. I didn't actually use those) and the inside shooting, 129. You have one outfit that grants 128 on purchase and gives another outfit that grants 129. You have an ammo item that applies to 128. 128 is a bay, with ammo ID 128 (the ship deployed.) 129 draws ammo from weapon 128. 129 has burst mode set to the maximum length, and uses ammo on end of burst. My thought is that when you have the ship deployed, there's 0 ammo for 129 to draw, so it doesn't function. When you have it back in, you have one ammo, that it doesn't use for 32627 shots. However, this doesn't work. It will let you launch the ship, but not fire the weapon. Anyone willing to help? If so, I've got about ten more ideas that I'd like to get checked. And my head, while I'm at it. I came up with the idea of making an RTS out of EVN. Your ship deployed barracks, which deployed marines, which had weapons. You could also deploy factories and make tanks. I didn't go very far with it, though.

Flags2
		0x0080	  This weapon can only be fired when there is at least one ship of this ship's KeyCarried type aboard

Tanks... In space?

@fireball, on Jul 11 2008, 08:47 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Tanks... In space?

Tanks = win
Space = win

Tanks + Space = win + win
Tanks in Space = 2win, apparently.

It's a good idea, but if you have more than one platoon of soldiers on your ship, then you can deploy all but one platoon and your ship will still fire like it has all of them.

@guy, on Jul 11 2008, 03:44 AM, said:

Flags2
		0x0080	  This weapon can only be fired when there is at least one ship of this ship's KeyCarried type aboard

Thanks! I always try to make things more complicated than they are.

@fireball, on Jul 11 2008, 06:47 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Tanks... In space?

Yeah, it was the sort of semi-delusional idea that comes to you in the middle of the night after playing five hours of Starcraft.

@eegras-studios, on Jul 11 2008, 07:46 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Tanks = win
Space = win

Tanks + Space = win + win
Tanks in Space = 2win, apparently.

It's a good idea, but if you have more than one platoon of soldiers on your ship, then you can deploy all but one platoon and your ship will still fire like it has all of them.

Yeah, I know. I've been trying to figure it out, but I haven't been able to. Maybe it's just a little one fighter bay.

@0101181920, on Jul 11 2008, 11:42 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Yeah, I know. I've been trying to figure it out, but I haven't been able to. Maybe it's just a little one fighter bay.

The only thing I can think of is multiple weapons with a shared ammo pool.

I have a cool tank model, if you want to use it

@nonconventionally-creative, on Jul 13 2008, 10:18 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

The only thing I can think of is multiple weapons with a shared ammo pool.

Yeah, I've thought of that, but it doesn't work. You can only have one keycarried per ship, and all of them need to have the only fire if keycarried thing set.

@yamfries, on Jul 14 2008, 12:07 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

I have a cool tank model, if you want to use it

I did sorta dump that idea, but I might restart it if I can just get one question answered: how the heck do I make it so fighters I deploy just stay put? It looks really weird to have these huge buildings following me around. And anyway, I was planning to make Escape Velocity: Nova: Starcraft, so I'll just use sprites from that. Thanks for the offer, though. It would just look out of place.

EDIT:
One more question, not related to the topic at all: how the heck do I get the forum out of this stupid "view only one post at a time" thing with the "Posts in this topic" thing at the bottom? It's driving me crazy!

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 14 July 2008 - 06:06 PM

@0101181920, on Jul 14 2008, 07:03 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

One more question, not related to the topic at all: how the heck do I get the forum out of this stupid "view only one post at a time" thing with the "Posts in this topic" thing at the bottom? It's driving me crazy!

Try the 'Options' button near the top right corner of the page (but below the ad, 'My Controls', and such).

@david-arthur, on Jul 14 2008, 04:10 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Try the 'Options' button near the top right corner of the page (but below the ad, 'My Controls', and such).

Thank you so much! It was killing me.

@0101181920, on Jul 14 2008, 07:03 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

I did sorta dump that idea, but I might restart it if I can just get one question answered: how the heck do I make it so fighters I deploy just stay put? It looks really weird to have these huge buildings following me around. And anyway, I was planning to make Escape Velocity: Nova: Starcraft, so I'll just use sprites from that.

give the fighters you are launching a speed, turn and acceleration of zero.

also, Escape Velocity: Starcraft will be awesome!

@yamfries, on Jul 15 2008, 07:17 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

give the fighters you are launching a speed, turn and acceleration of zero.

Actually, if the weapon that your non-moving fighters are equipped with can't lock on to a target, you'd have to give them turning ability, such as the Defense Drone and the Stand-Off Rocket Launcher in the PlugPack.

@yamfries, on Jul 15 2008, 06:17 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

give the fighters you are launching a speed, turn and acceleration of zero.

also, Escape Velocity: Starcraft will be awesome!

I thought I'd already tried that... Oh, well, thanks for the support! I'll try, if I can get it to work on my powerbook. It should, so I'm not concerned. I'm going on a one week trip, and I can work on it during that, although I might not be able to get on the forums. The real question is whether I will take time out of doing my main plugin in progress right now and the Starcraft map I'm doing to actually do anything on it.

@king_of_manticores, on Jul 15 2008, 08:21 AM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Actually, if the weapon that your non-moving fighters are equipped with can't lock on to a target, you'd have to give them turning ability, such as the Defense Drone and the Stand-Off Rocket Launcher in the PlugPack.

Actually, you're misunderstanding the idea. Your ship is an SCV, and your fighters are the buildings. So you can build a barracks, and then it'll build Marines. A lot of it will be quite different from the actual SC, because it'll be mostly a resource getting thing. You go and mine asteroids, which give you minerals, which you use to buy the buildings which you deploy. It won't be a TC in the lines of Colosseum or something, but it'll definitely be bigger than the Teacup TC. Should be interesting.

EDIT:
There definitely will be differences and things I can't do with the engine. Probably Archons will be scrapped, Siege Tanks probably won't Siege mode, the Zerg might be completely absent if I can't get sprites, it'll be a really bad idea to try to fly an Interceptor yourself with the way I'm planning to simulate the swarming motion, Spider Mines might not burrow, Science Vessels might be removed (actually, a lot of the special abilities will probably get removed. Most of them are impossible to simulate perfectly. Stasis Field is gone for sure, so is Recall, Infest is scrapped, Stimpack won't work, probably no Nukes (sorry...), you might not be able to build Battlecruisers, instead having them as home bases, Dropships might be removed, I'm not sure. I'll have a more complete list at some point.) It'll still be interesting.

EDIT:
Can your escorts mine for metal or whatever and have you gain the benefits? Because if so, then I'll include the CC and Nexus, but otherwise not.

Another EDIT:
How do you set up something like the Asteroid Miner, where it unfolds the wings and then fires? I've looked at it, but can't figure it out. I'm currently doing the photon cannon. Attached is all the resources I'm using so you can tell me precisely what I'm doing wrong.

Attached File(s)

• Photon_Cannon.rsrc.zip (9.24K)
  Number of downloads: 2

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 15 July 2008 - 05:23 PM

@0101181920, on Jul 15 2008, 03:27 PM, said in Random Stupid Idea:

Another EDIT:
How do you set up something like the Asteroid Miner, where it unfolds the wings and then fires? I've looked at it, but can't figure it out. I'm currently doing the photon cannon. Attached is all the resources I'm using so you can tell me precisely what I'm doing wrong.

In the shan set the extra frames to be used when firing.

I'd already done that.

EDIT:
Well, the models are going to be a bit funky, and I don't know if I can get the engine glows. All of the models in SC have between one and over two hundred different frames. One is generally buildings, and two hundred is things like the Marine, which has moving legs. In addition, I can't find sprite sheets. I have to manually assemble all of them in Photoshop. The biggest problem is that most have seventeen frames in the sprites pack thing I found, but they display 32 in the game (the 32 frame thing is also inconvenient. I have to do 8x4 rlëD's.) This means I have half the rotation, and have to manually flip the frames so I have both sides, which results in an okay but sort of funky looking animation, with the lighting getting completely messed up. Also looks horrible on non-symmetric ships. Also a big problem is that the ground units only have nine frames of animation, so they'll be really choppy. Also I can't find the weapon sprites, so all of the missiles and stuff are cut by hand from shots people have taken of the game. Translation: I'm going to keep going, and I'm still pretty enthuised, but don't expect any gameplay or graphics miracles.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 16 July 2008 - 12:32 AM

lol, thats what innovation is all about. finding new ways to do things, experimenting, ext. it won't be pretty, but it it makes a difference.

The whole thing is going to be quite weird. Not least of which you barely fight at all.