Duck and Cover

I made this question about rising an actors base action points a while back. JJ86 and OTB answered and the remarks where helpfull enough. I didn't got back to them cause to be frank I didn't mess with it since, but I have a definite answer now, so:

An actors action points is a synthesis of three numbers
-your agility in the attributes area Stats field.
-your max actionpoints number in Attributes area, Derived field.
-your max actionpoints number in Modified area, Derived field.
There is no theoritical limit for action points.

While I bothered to raise these stats I managed to construct an actor with 1569 AP's. I don't believe you can have a valuable unit with more than 30AP's. Note however that the more AP's you allocate the faster the unit will be. It will seem as if he's walking through dimensions or something if you exceed a limit as I did. Very funny.

I'm assuming most of you already know Agility can only be modified to display 12 this way. Also note that only 20 AP's are visually seen.

Lastly if you want to experiment with high numbers, remember to go down to the Actor status area and change the AP's accordingly(if you leave it to zero, it will take a really long time to regenerate them).

Thanks, Flamescreen.

Flamescreen wrote:Lastly if you want to experiment with high numbers, remember to go down to the Actor status area and change the AP's accordingly(if you leave it to zero, it will take a really long time to regenerate them).

Yes, that's one thing I like to set for 'cruits, simply because otherwise they start w/0 AP and have to regenerate when you get them from the pool. Not exactly a big deal, but it bothers me.

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote:Thanks, Flamescreen.

No prob, I felt I owed it to you guys in any case, so i had in mind coming back to it eventually(It is disturbing but i do get to fiddle with things leaving them in the middle and coming back later. There some exceptions to this, i won't tell you which though )

Flamescreen wrote:(It is disturbing but i do get to fiddle with things leaving them in the middle and coming back later...)

I know what you mean about that. That's why I take so damned many notes. I never know when I'll get frustrated w/an issue or - more commonly! - sidetracked w/something else.

Today's project will be re-researching the idea of Gas Grenades in FoT, which was something that I tinkered w/a long time ago. Since it's come up again I may as well find out exactly what can/can't be done w/it.

OTB

Personally it's sidetracking 99% of the time for me. I ask first in most cases so i don't get too frustrated with something I cannot do.

Flamescreen wrote:Personally it's sidetracking 99% of the time for me. I ask first in most cases so i don't get too frustrated with something I cannot do.

You mean you don't hear the siren song of entities/sprites/features in the game that weren't included w/the core campaign? I do. In fact, I hear them calling me from the darkness when I lay me down to sleep... 8O

I'm still dying to find a use for the Mortar Sprite that was supposed to be used in St. Louis. Ed Orman said that he wanted the SMs to have some of those, and every time you stopped your APC for too long the SMs would start firing it at you and would progressively get more accurate. Now that would have been one cool-ass feature!

I was going to use the mortar sprite for a destroyable entity. The idea was to have the PCs go in and have to take them out so that the BoS could move its main body in on a town they wanted to lay siege to. (Sort of like The Guns of Naverone...) However, the sprite lacks an exploding animation and death scene, so that idea quickly went to the dogs.

OTB

Is there any chance of creating crew served weapons using existing sprites?? Having to clear fixed weapon emplacements would almost be as much fun as being bracketed being enemy mortar fire if your squad REMF's around for to long!!

Flamescreen wrote:I made this question about rising an actors base action points a while back. JJ86 and OTB answered and the remarks where helpfull enough. I didn't got back to them cause to be frank I didn't mess with it since, but I have a definite answer now, so:

An actors action points is a synthesis of three numbers
-your agility in the attributes area Stats field.
-your max actionpoints number in Attributes area, Derived field.
-your max actionpoints number in Modified area, Derived field.
There is no theoritical limit for action points.

While I bothered to raise these stats I managed to construct an actor with 1569 AP's. I don't believe you can have a valuable unit with more than 30AP's. Note however that the more AP's you allocate the faster the unit will be. It will seem as if he's walking through dimensions or something if you exceed a limit as I did. Very funny.

I'm assuming most of you already know Agility can only be modified to display 12 this way. Also note that only 20 AP's are visually seen.

Lastly if you want to experiment with high numbers, remember to go down to the Actor status area and change the AP's accordingly(if you leave it to zero, it will take a really long time to regenerate them).

Wow, thats pretty wild.... Moves very fast with so high AP. Thats pretty funny. Might be usefull too.

It might be interesting to play TB with about 1500 AP. You could probably finish a level without having an enemy fire a shot.

Viktor wrote:Is there any chance of creating crew served weapons using existing sprites?? Having to clear fixed weapon emplacements would almost be as much fun as being bracketed being enemy mortar fire if your squad REMF's around for to[o] long!!

Sorry, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. The closest I think we can come to that would be to use the tank turret as a gun emplacement. (Which could be interesting in-and-of itself... )

BTW, what do you mean by "REMF's around"? The only meaning of "REMF" that I'm familiar w/is "Rear Echelon Mother Fucker" (i.e. support troops).

JJ86: If I were a betting man I'd put green money on a munchkin releasing a Ultra-High AP..."Mod" (read: cheat) as soon as they read your idea.

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote: Sorry, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. The closest I think we can come to that would be to use the tank turret as a gun emplacement. (Which could be interesting in-and-of itself... )

Now that's something I'd like to see!

OnTheBounce wrote: BTW, what do you mean by "REMF's around"? The only meaning of "REMF" that I'm familiar w/is "Rear Echelon Mother Fucker" (i.e. support troops).

I forget where I picked this up from but my understanding is that it means behaving like a "Rear Echelon Mother Fucker" by standing around with their heads up their arses day dreaming about "finger banging Mary Jane Rottencrotch through her pearly white panties" instead of carrying out their mission in a by the numbers, proper military manner!

Viktor wrote:Is there any chance of creating crew served weapons using existing sprites?? Having to clear fixed weapon emplacements would almost be as much fun as being bracketed being enemy mortar fire if your squad REMF's around for to long!!

Why not? It should work in theory with a little work around. Take for example the robotic turrets. You could make an emplacement based on those and make it very hard to kill. The gunners or crew that used it would have tag names. Once they were killed, you could set up a trigger to "kill" the turret. You would have to make the crew immobile so they would not try to attack you, crouch or run away. Maybe create a new sprite for the crew based on one animation so they aren't capable of anything else. Maybe our modellers could create some sort of high caliber machine-gun emplacement or vintage cannon.

You know, I was thinking about the exact opposite, namely something that the PCs could use. However, your little work-around would probably work. The "gun crew" could simply be NPCs w/their Nature set to "Dummy", although this would mean that they wouldn't take cover or move.

OTB

Jimmyjay86 wrote:It might be interesting to play TB with about 1500 AP. You could probably finish a level without having an enemy fire a shot.

Yes I thought of exactly that when I made that character, but was bored to test it. I was thinking "Quagmire" in specific, which is a fairly long map. It would be usefull for strange things. I concidered at a point creating a "Captain Vault" map that could possibly use some high AP characters.

buggies are faster than hummers, hummers are faster than tanks, etc... if it's possible to lower the speed of a vehicle, is it possilbe to make the speed of a vehicle zero? It may be less possible to make the vehicle not need a driver, but i don't know. You could make a vehicle, build a sprite for the gun placement in 3ds, then import the gun placement as every single frame of the vehicle sprite, then use the tank tourret as the vehicle weapon. when the vehicle is distroyed the tourret will show it is so. I don't know if this is possible... but it's a suggestion.

but you were thinking of an enemy touret? You could go into photoshop and make the tourets like 110% and see if it doesn't pixelate them too much. then just use those or something... i dunno

Ed the Monkey wrote:if it's possible to lower the speed of a vehicle, is it possilbe to make the speed of a vehicle zero?

The speed of a vehicle is controlled by a value in the entity file. I haven't played w/it too much, but it does affect the vehicle's speed noticeably.

Ed the Monkey wrote:It may be less possible to make the vehicle not need a driver, but i don't know.

No, this can't be done. Even if you use a vehicle's sprite for an entity w/the Race set to "Unique Other" it still doesn't work. (Not to mention that your vehicle will gout blood instead of oil when you do this...) Unfortunately the devs didn't implement AI vehicles, although there were plans to do it.

Ed the Monkey wrote:You could make a vehicle, build a sprite for the gun placement in 3ds, then import the gun placement as every single frame of the vehicle sprite, then use the tank tourret as the vehicle weapon. when the vehicle is distroyed the tourret will show it is so. I don't know if this is possible... but it's a suggestion.

The problem is that vehicle sprites have 32 animation rotations, whereas other character sprites have 8. So there is a compatibility issue. Vehicle sprites assigned to entities whose race isn't that of a vehicle will show up as destroyed.

Ed the Monkey wrote:but you were thinking of an enemy touret? You could go into photoshop and make the tourets like 110% and see if it doesn't pixelate them too much. then just use those or something... i dunno

I think something like that is a better option. (IIRC turrets have 16 animation rotations, but they lack many of the other character models' animations, such as stances, various forms of movement, etc.)

It'd be great if someone could do something like this up. Then I could reinstate my Guns of Navarone rip-off mission. :mrgreen:

OTB

I was acutally refering to making a player side gun placement and building it some 3d proggie in the first part of the post. but I think everything else you've said is pretty much in the spirit of what I ment.
I think a gun placement would be easier to build than a character in a 3d proggie, and Section8 has told us how to shoot it. Basically you'd want to build the gun placement and set it up to eithor be shot from 8 or 32 rotations depending on the kind of ent you want. If you're making a vehicle read the post on matte shadow in the modelling thread.
If someone is willing to build it, I'd be willing to shoot it and possibly animate, it since I have the software to make it most like MF's work. (a gun placement I mean, fuck doing it for anything else).
I've acutally got a 50-gallon drum with a mini-gun sticking out of it as a model, I might be able to build a base for it or something.... what kind of touret? (btw... here's an interesting idea, but i don't know if it's possible. If i (or some other motovated soul) builds a touret as first a character sprite then builds a second that's a vehicle, then builds ents based on these sprites respectively. One place the character ent, then when the character ent is killed, it is removed from the map and replaced with the vehicle ent. This could simulate taking a gun placement.... it just couldn't be taken back.) this is probabbly all gibberish since it's like 4am, so i'm gonna get some sleep...

Just checked it, and the numbers do change the speed noticably. I just made a tank that couldn't move, but the touret could rotate normally, etc. However, it couldn't accelerate or even turn. Just set the numbers pretaining to speed, acceloration, and turning speed in the ent to zero and you've got an imobile object. Check vehicle weapon and you've got an imoblie object with a touret. That means that you could just build a vechile sprite using shots from only 8 angles.. or even from just one angle and just double up on all the rest, then add on a touret and you've got a gun placement....
so i lied about my going to bed... curiosity killed the cat, or maybe curiosity just made him really sleep deprived so he just acted dead all the time...

Ed the Monkey wrote:Just checked it, and the numbers do change the speed noticably. I just made a tank that couldn't move, but the touret could rotate normally, etc. However, it couldn't accelerate or even turn. Just set the numbers pretaining to speed, acceloration, and turning speed in the ent to zero and you've got an imobile object.

Another option if you want to make an immobile vehicle that can be used as a pillbox would be to include a vehicle that has the "Requires Repair Item" box ticked/checked, and leave the "Repair Item" field blank or enter gibberish/a fictitious item.

There may be a bug w/this option, though. I once had a character use a Super Tool Kit to repair a vehicle that required a Repair Item, and even though he didn't have the part the vehicle was repaired, at the expense of all of the charges/uses in a fresh Super Tool Kit. I haven't tried to duplicate it, so I can't say if this is a regular occurence or not.

OTB