Engineer Suggestions

Here are a couple of things I thought of as I was playing as an engineer. Please add any constructive ideas that I may have missed.

-I feel that engineers should be limited to only 2 sentinels. Even if they are toned down, the map will fill up quickly if more than one high level engineer starts building on a small or medium sized map.

-The only automated sentinel should be the smallest (the one that looks like a bullet) and the cost should be increased. In some ways they are like pets, yet they fire continuously and fire at anything that moves. Maybe add sentinel intelligence?

-The link sentinel has to go. It's large, it's powerful, and I think the link turret would be a fine substitute.

-The only vehicles I can see being practical on a wide range of maps are the scorpion and the paladin. The scorpion is small enough to manuver tight areas and the paladin has a nice balance of offense and defense. Not too sure about the hellbender since it can be easy to sit in a corner and camp. Vehicles that are flat out cheap: tank/manta/cicada. Relatively useless vehicle: SPMA. I feel that the raptor should only be spawned in onslaught maps. There's obviously not enough room to fly on smaller maps and flying around open maps like megawoot is just ridiculous.

-I'm torn between limiting vehicles to only 1, or 2 small/1 large. Thoughts?

-I really liked using the trans for spawning vehicles. It was quick and easy.

-I think I spotted someone else mentioning that the point system has to be redone. I would agree, never could figure it out. (though I never had the number wraparound like moof had. I think my screen resolution in the game is 1280x960)

-auto eject, vamp/regen, and stunts: all great ideas. I noticed the stunt gauge was missing. I had level 2, so I don't know if that's in a later level. Forgot to read up about that.

-Hopefully the number of artifacts will be cut down by the time the engineer class is finished because it was pretty frustrating having to scroll through so many.

I'll add more when I think of it.

As I was playing and looking at the skills available to engineers, I had a quick thought. Is it really necessary to split the different types into there own points? Seeing as you are just buying one kind of loaded engineer to get all the different kinds of buildables, as opposed to separate loaded vehicles/turrets/buildings. Why not just combine them all into the same kind of points? Building points or something similar.

supertoast wrote:

As I was playing and looking at the skills available to engineers, I had a quick thought. Is it really necessary to split the different types into there own points? Seeing as you are just buying one kind of loaded engineer to get all the different kinds of buildables, as opposed to separate loaded vehicles/turrets/buildings. Why not just combine them all into the same kind of points? Building points or something similar.

That's a good point. And with the introduction of structures, that'll make 3 different point skills. A single point skill might work if the number of objects to build was cut down. For example:
level 1: turret(s)
level 2: sentinel(s)
level 3: small vehicle(s)
level 4: larger vehicle(s)
level 5: (structures?)
level 6: (structures?)

Or maybe level one would be one cheap turret, and one cheap vehicle. Level two could be a building and a better vehicle, level three a better turret and a better building... etc...

To balance things out then, say each level costs the same amount of summon points. Level one summons maybe costs 1 point, level two maybe costs 3, level three costs 7, and so on.

My main point though is that it doesn't make sense to have only one type of loaded engineer to purchase, but three kinds of points to purchase. In my opinion, that would be a really annoying thing. So you'd either need to split loaded engineer into loaded buildings, turrets, and vehicles, or merge the points (which I think would be better).

BotFodder wrote:

I wonder if there's a way to do some neat thing that would make it look like a "thing" is being built? Put some delay in, say, a tank just popping up from no where? Or have the tank "there", just cover it with a skin of some sort that indicates it's "being built" but keep it locked until done.

Wouldn't be to hard to create an overlay effect then grab the array of skins on the vehicle (or whatever it happened to be) and set the skin to a different "building in progress" material... could even do it as a fade in using a color fade texture with the fading happening on the alpha channel. (overlay would be the easier way though)

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

In terms of buildings, here's what I was thinking... which may be way off base.
1) I figured we could spawn a block using the block combo from the game, and set it to the right team, such that the monsters will target them just like they're a player. It might be possible to even use the satore Nali (not NaliFigheter) class and simply apply a permanent block combo to them, and give them a lot of health and some damage reduction... Probably make them take damage, but not death from a titan rock.
2) Let the engineers spawn a *lot* of these blocks to block in a protective area.

I could wip up a "block" (maybe a standard block and a platform like block) that had sockets on it then make a Pawn or xPawn to use that mesh. If it had sockets you could also attach blocks to each other or other stuff too, would be a <strike>lot</strike>bit

more work but you could do a bit more with it in the end I think.

Edit
Made up a quick box with 6 sockets and tested it in uEd.

Someone suggested fading it in. That actually might be the easiest way to do the whole thing. Skins have an innate alpha property. Start it at 0, dial it up to 255. Create a teleport effect at about 250. All done!

Continuum wrote:

I could wip up a "block" (maybe a standard block and a platform like block) that had sockets on it then make a Pawn or xPawn to use that mesh. If it had sockets you could also attach blocks to each other or other stuff too, would be a <strike>lot</strike>bit more work but you could do a bit more with it in the end I think.

I am hopeless at textures. Any chance you could knock up a static mesh for a block? Then I can get Engineers spawning those.

Attatched a zip of the block in the pic attatchment from previous post.

This was just a really quick test but should work to get the spawning of stuff down. Also I am thinking that a base block is needed that would have karma data to fall to the floor ect, then blocks could be added to the top of the base.

Socket names are

Bottom, Top, Left, Right, Front, Back

Also offsets/orientation of sockets are setup to add an identical block (same size ect..)

I'll work on adding some karma physiques and a gib group for when its destroyed.

Wow. Impressive response. I'll give it a try as soon as I get chance.

Block is working fine

I can spawn them, and stand on them.

I am having some problems with the collision boxes though. But I am well out of my depth here. Whenever I spawn a block, it hangs a few feet in the air. And I can't fire underneath it. It is as if the space under the block is a non-visible part of the block.

When I use unrealed to open the animation, and click on the View Bounds button, I see a green frame underneath the box, which I assume is part of the collision box. But it seems to have no collision boxes or spheres defined?

Help. I don't know how to change.

Also, I am having to define the collision radius and height in the pawn code to stop people walking through it. Because it uses a radius, and the block is not as wide as it is long, it means you cannot get up to the side of the block - which seems a bit strange. I haven't defined any Karma properties for it (whatever they are?). I presume there must be a way of setting the collision boxes correctly in the animation, but I don't know how.

The block doesn't fall, and I have no idea what to do with the sockets. I just have overlapping blocks. I think I need to read up on this section a bit.

oops, didn't set up any collision on the boxes.

As for the attaching to sockets you'd need a function similar to xPawn.AttatchEffect except youd be attatching a mesh instead of Emmitter. Also I can make the block a cube if it is necessary. Also something is making me think that we would need to spawn a static mesh with karma properties then once it fell or stopped moving turn it into a mesh/anim with the sockets or just leave it as a karma object and go without the sockets... Hopefully I'll get out of school early enough tonight to do something (finals & projects due next week)

It would be nice if we could spawn blocks in the air, which fell to the ground. However, we currently have a problem with spawning vehicles like the Manta. If the Manta is slightly up-hill, it slides downhill and crushes you. I wouldn't want blocks to slide down hills.
So, it would be nice if they moved in the z direction, but not in any other.

How can we achieve that?

As for the sockets, I am not sure. If you are creating a map with blocks, then yes you need the sockets to bind the blocks together, so you can get the shape you want. However, the spawning of blocks by Engineers will be a lot more hit and miss.
At the moment, you fire the trans, and spawn the block wherever it is at the time. I have put a temporary mod in so that the block is spawned at where the world is vertically beneath the spawn point.

It would be nice if I could work out some way of implementing 'I am spawning a block here. There is another block at this location nearby. Let me align sockets and extend from it', but my brain can't cope with complex ideas like that.

So, for the moment, I am happy with 'spawn on ground' or 'spawn in air and fall in z direction'. I would prefer the latter, as the former ends up with overlapping blocks, which don't look good.

Added collision / basic karma data (its now a Static Mesh instead of Animation)

I'll look more into the hill issue, when I get a chance. btw when you were spawning the previous version were you setting the physiqes to falling or "Physics = PHYS_Falling" ?

Everything descended from Actor should be able to have their physics set to falling.

Also saw some interesting stuff in Engine>Actor>Decoration not sure if any of it would be helpful at this point though.

Thanks Continuum.
Looking good so far. Can spawn them, they fall through the air. They show a health bar. Collision boxes looking good. Can stand on them, can stack them.

Main thing I have yet to get working is healing them with a link.

Then I need to get a controller together for monsters to target.

Cool

Hey I think Druid said something about the goliath/tanks ect being to powerful, what if you had say loaded mechanic (vehicles) and loaded engineer (buildings ect) then as a level of loaded engineer youd be able to spawn a hanger or mech bay sort of thing that allowed anyone with lvl x of loaded mechanic to build a tank in the building? Sort of similar to the M/MM having multiple paths for low - mid level.