Archive: 25 posts

---

I wasn't planning on doing a showcase thread until after it was finished but I haven't been able to shut up about my new mech so Incinerator22 suggested I give it its own thread. http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17010 The VT-5. Picture taken before I added the lightning cannon and compressed the rockets into the body I've been in the mech building business since a week or so after buying lbp. This is my fifth and it's as close to perfect as it's possible to get in little big planet (can't wait for lbp2 with the dcs's, gyros, and other vehicle tools). It can walk forward and backward and can handle medium grade hills: it has a system for maintaining balance as well as a traction assist system. It can jump/double jump: triggering the jump button once will give you a short hop; triggering it a second time will give you a higher/longer jump. I've given it a ground sensor to handle the switch between walking and flying logic (my previous mechs relied on mag keys stuck to the floor throughout the level--this one can see the ground on its own). It supports one or two players with two weapons for each. Player one has an auto-aiming machinegun as his primary weapon, while player two has an aimable cannon. Each will do different levels of damage to enemies. Player one's secondary weapon is a lightning cannon, which I must say looks AWESOME when it fires! I haven't decided on player two's secondary weapon: perhaps a laser, railgun, artillery shells, homing missile. The laser and railgun would be too similar in functionality to the lightning cannon (a fixed gun that shoots an ultra-powerful burst straight ahead), so I probably won't go with either of those. I'm also debating adding support for a third player on the roof similar to my fourth mech, but things are getting kind of cramped (I'm already having to use the layer glitch to squeeze in all the weapons I'm using) so I may just axe that idea. I've used pretty much every glitch in the books for this one. It has theck and thack parts, material glitched parts, lots of invisible stuff including thin layer gas, and just yesterday I added in the 50 layer glitch because my lightning emitters were being blocked. Well, that's pretty much it for now. It shouldn't be too much longer til I finish it: at minimum it needs one more weapon and then I'll need to re-tweak the jump jets to handle the change in weight from the new stuff. If you'd like to try my older mechs: Psn: Sehven Level Name: "Sehven's Mech Mark IIa updated" ---old stone age mech. Very slow and floaty but reliable and tough to break. Level Name: "VT-04b Dire Wolf" ---much more advanced than the mkII, but still slow and extremely fragile. I started the VT-5 when I decided I couldn't fix the problems with this one. This one actually features animated jumping, too (a feature I've dropped from the new one): it quickly hunches down, then extends its legs into a jump.

2010-05-14 20:14:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

Can I ask a friend to record video of it ? A mere picture doesn't do it justice! Thanks for this. As I told you in LBP, the realistic walking motion combined with the great stability is something to behold

2010-05-14 20:37:00 Author: Incinerator22 Posts: 3251

---

Let me get it finished before making a vid. I would appreciate having a vid made, though: I've just got a crappy webcam. It's close now: I've implemented pretty much everything I'm going to (I probably won't do the 3p seat) and I've just about got the lightning cannon sussed, so all that's really left is adding a secondary weapon for player two, rigging a way to get in the mech (like an emittable elevator or something), and doing a final re-tune (unless I suddenly get another idea that just HAS to be worked in). Also, I forgot to mention that the controls are more intuitive than in the VT-04, so I should be able to get away with a couple speech bubbles instead of a full tutorial.

2010-05-14 20:45:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

I support the video idea, it looks rather awesome! http://i.neoseeker.com/mgv/272671-Blackfalcon/671/5/animal0064hb2_display.gif

2010-05-14 20:49:00 Author: Blackfalcon Posts: 409

---

Looks hot dude. Very interested in trying it out.

2010-05-14 21:55:00 Author: gevurah22 Posts: 1476

---

Looks nie! Looking forward to giving it a try! The weapons sound great! I'm in a similar mood regarding mechs in LBP2, the new tools look like they will really help!

2010-05-14 22:05:00 Author: croissantbuncake Posts: 572

---

Thanks for the responses. Hopefully I'll have a showcase level published some time this weekend or early next week. Just finished the lightning gun (was a lot more trouble to set up than I thought it would be). I tried to take some screenshots, but the in-game camera tool just doesn't capture plasma, electricity, and lighting effects very well (all of which feature heavily in the lightning). If you squinted really hard at the pic, you could see the squiggly line of glass, but only a little bit of it looked kinda' plasmafied. In game it looks awesome, though. It has about a 30 second recharge time (which is forEVER in a game like this) 'cuz it's gonna' be so powerful it can basically rip right through just about any enemy you encounter. Now I just need to decide what kind of secondary super-weapon to give the second player.

2010-05-14 22:45:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

I'm in a similar mood regarding mechs in LBP2, the new tools look like they will really help! MechaLBPC (i.e. all of us here) is going to have a field day with the new tools. :3

2010-05-14 23:01:00 Author: gevurah22 Posts: 1476

---

All you need is Gilgamesh

2010-05-14 23:26:00 Author: Incinerator22 Posts: 3251

---

MechaLBPC (i.e. all of us here) Heh. Yeah, it does seem to be a small niche, but I'm sure there's gonna' be tons of people making mechs in lbp2. Just designed what I thought was a pretty cool looking railgun or laser cannon. And then I scrapped it, 'cuz it just doesn't fit anywhere except the back layer, and you can't see it at all back there, which defeats the purpose of even having a cool looking gun (besides, it was heavy and adding a lot of weight to the top of the mech is a BAD thing). I'm running out of space to put weapons (and to think, I was originally planning on two more for a third player). The front and mid layers already have weapons that pivot (meaning they take up a LOT of room) and the back layer is no good 'cuz ******, it's gotta' look awesome or it has no business being on my mech!

2010-05-14 23:36:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

Why not use the compression tool to compress some floaty into the gun to negate unwanted weight?

2010-05-14 23:42:00 Author: croissantbuncake Posts: 572

---

That's a good idea, but you can only take it so far. The metal part (yeah, it has to be metal) weighs 20x the upward force that peach floaty can give you. So if, say, I made a floaty balloon about twice the size of the metal part, I would have to compress ten of them in there to offset the weight. I've already had to tear out and redo my compressed floaty 'cuz there were so many blocks that it was causing lag (I had a 15 in 1 compressed block at the top of the mech and an emitter that fires out another 15 in 1 to give the mech extra lift during jumps). I had to make them bigger with fewer blocks (the main one is 7 in 1 and the emitted one is 6 in 1 and they're both approx 2x as big as before). I can't really afford to add another 10x invisifloat. Anyway, even disregarding the weight, it just doesn't fit anywhere on the mech. I'll come up with something else.

2010-05-14 23:51:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

Pretty awesome looking mech, can't wait to see it in action. And yeah, anxiously waiting for the groundbreaking new LBP2 tools is going to be torture! I'm already imagining all the new features that mechs will be able to have with full button-mapping!

2010-05-15 02:59:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

---

Heck yeah. A lot of the work I've done on these mechs has just been trying to build my own direct control seats (I called 'em control pods, though). I'm reasonably happy with the controls for the driver (the jump button is a bit dodgy: sometimes you have to try more than once to trigger it, and very rarely it'll trigger when the mech hits a big enough bump), but the direction control and shooting work great. I've also included a tap/double tap switch: tap once to switch weapons, tap twice to open/close the mech, hold down R1 to shoot. I'm not as happy with the gunner's aiming control. I think I've got it as precise as you can get a hamster wheel controller, but it's still hard to fine tune your aim (which is why the gunner's weapon is gonna' be shotgun style when I get around to changing the ammo for it). I made another super weapon for the gunner... aaaaaaannnd I think I'm gonna' scrap it. It's a missile that goes up a certain distance, explodes and then rains a TON of paint on the area directly in front of the mech. Like it carpets the whole area. At least, that's the idea: it's proving to be extremely unreliable (sometimes the paint ends up scattered every which way, and one time all 100+ paintballs hit the mech... which was hilarious and disheartening at the same time) and even when it works just right, the visual effect is underwhelming. I'll do a bit more experimenting tomorrow, but if it doesn't work out I'm gonna' hafta' start trying to think of another super weapon.

2010-05-15 11:51:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

I think the problem with paint explosions is paintball uniformity (I have the same problem with my Barracuda when it misfires, the missile just detonates and throws an arc of paint in an unconvincing manner. Maybe if the paint used to carpet the area varied in size it might look more interesting? As for new weapon ideas I always liked the idea of a projectile the uses a sabot (a sort of shell that exists purely to aid barrel velocity and is discarded mid flight).

2010-05-15 12:09:00 Author: croissantbuncake Posts: 572

---

I've always loved the mechs you make, man. Since the rustic clunky one(my personal favorite) to the Dire Wolf. I can't wait to see what the VT-5 can do! Here's to lbp2, may it make mecha construction a less daunting task to the public eye so that we may see a growth in the great mecha factories dotted across lbp.

2010-05-15 16:05:00 Author: 4wheel Posts: 511

---

As for new weapon ideas I always liked the idea of a projectile the uses a sabot (a sort of shell that exists purely to aid barrel velocity and is discarded mid flight). Interesting. I'll have to give that some thought. I doubt I'll be able to make it work in my case though: I used the compression tool to build my missile (it's an mgs missile with three warheads in a row to make it longer) so there's not really anywhere I could put dissolve to separate the "stages." I tried turning the rocket all the way down and just throwing it from the emitter. I also had to give the missile a dark matter emitter: it spits out dm behind and to the sides of the rocket module; because the explosions were throwing it every which way. It's still unpredictable though. Maybe I'll have to put it on a piston connected to dark matter or even a cornerstone piston rig. This is getting stupidly complicated for a relatively simple effect. As for the visual paint effect, I think I can fix it by using a 0 frequency emitter and sticking it on a bit of thin gas with a super fast wobble bolt. Should give a better, more random looking spread.

2010-05-15 18:34:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

Here's what I was referring to by sabot, more cannon than missile launcher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPgdFV19XpQ

2010-05-15 18:48:00 Author: croissantbuncake Posts: 572

---

If you want to see LBP sabot rounds, see ayneh's challenger two remake. It emits two pieces of thin material, one shooting upwards from the barrel and one shooting downwards from the barrel, and the effect is very nice. It makes shooting more fun to see sabots all over the place, falling and colliding. EDIT: I'm curious, how did your paintball missile work? I'mgoing to throw out some ideas: -Glueing a small plasma ball on the end will detect contact and dissipate before the missile hits the target. -You can try rtm223's method of dark matter emmiter fusion to emit perfectly straight weapons, missiles, etc. I've tested it and it works well for making bullets slow enough to clearly see but still go perfectly straight. -Instead of putting the paint emmiters on the missile, you can try emmmiting an invisible dark matter emmiter that emmits the paintballs instead.

2010-05-15 19:18:00 Author: Incinerator22 Posts: 3251

---

My original one worked with a fragile contraption on the front of a missile that functioned as a standard button, i.e. it is depressed when it contacts the target, detonating the missile and releasing the paint. The current model the barracuda is armed with uses a mag switch with matching keys on paint-vulnerable targets, purely for reliability and to enure the paint is always released with a reduced chance of the missile damaging the target. The plasma will affect the trajectory due to it having no weight (it places a degree of resistance at the nose). As for the external emitter, I never bothered with anything like that as it just adds another potentially unnecessary item to the equation. hmm.. All this mech talk is making me want to build one of my own. One thing I must ask, I can never figure it out (and I have a feeling it's probably something really simple that has just eluded me all this time) is... how do you switch between walking forwards and backwards?, like I assume one direction is simply truning the pistons / wobble botls/ whatever "on", but changing directions just seems to baffle me!!

2010-05-15 23:04:00 Author: croissantbuncake Posts: 572

---

One thing I must ask, I can never figure it out (and I have a feeling it's probably something really simple that has just eluded me all this time) is... how do you switch between walking forwards and backwards?, like I assume one direction is simply truning the pistons / wobble botls/ whatever "on", but changing directions just seems to baffle me!! The way I do it is to control the piston/wobble timing with a wheel. I haven't done a whole lot of wobble bolt work for mech legs (the problem with them is that they won't necessarily travel their maximum distance when a weight is applied to them, making for unpredictable walk cycles), but the wheel seemed to work for the little bit of wobble bolt experimenting I did. So set up your pistons/wobbles so that the walk cycle works (you can just let it go and it walks). Now remove all sync settings (I guess you don't have to, but they're useless at this point) and arrange directional mag switches around a wheel: one for each piston/bolt (any that move at exactly the same time can run off the same switch), and put a mag key on the wheel. You'll probably have to spend some time experimenting with the trigger radius of the mags and the speed of the wheel, but once you get it all sussed, it'll control your walk cycle perfectly. To walk backward, simply reverse the direction of the wheel (using a 3way or a double bolting method). I have an idea that I think will make my missile work much more reliably. I'll probably try it later today and, if it works, I'll see about getting that showcase level up in the next day or two. I've also had an idea for supporting a full 4 players: similar to my Mark II mech, I can add seats onto the feet, but instead of just giving them paintinators, I can use a simple spring-based turret (the kind that's mounted on the roof of the VT-4) so they'll have weapons with decent fire power. Maybe I'll even give them a shared super-weapon that either of them can trigger by aiming their guns straight up (since they can't shoot straight up: they'd hit the mech's other weapons). That's a bit more involved, so I'll probably add them after the showcase level is out (which will make it the VT-5a). One other thing. I need a name for the new mech. I really liked Dire Wolf, but I've already used it on the mk III (never published cuz it was crap, but a non-working version was shown at the end of "Dire Wolf pt1: Tameness of a Wolf" before I replaced it with a VT-4). Maybe it's not a big deal, but it just seems kinda' lame to keep naming them all the same thing. I looked up which animal is the best jumper ('cuz the thing that separates the VT-5 from most bipeds out there is its jumping ability) and it turns out the snow leopard is the most powerful jumper (the kangaroo is a pretty close second). Calling it snow leopard would mean I'd want to give it more of a white or lightish grey color scheme (which I don't want to do) so I think that's out. Any thoughts?

2010-05-16 19:01:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

Cougar (aka mountain lion)(They can pounce, and they're usually tan or brown) Behemoth (Your mech has a very robust, compact, powerful style that fits with the definition) Those are two I thought of off the top of my head.

2010-05-17 21:59:00 Author: Incinerator22 Posts: 3251

---

Thanks, but I've decided to go with "VT-5 Lightning." I've dropped the 2p missile cuz it was just too unpredictable/unreliable, and replaced it with a flame thrower. It shoots an arc of napalm over the top of the mech which drops down in front of it. Works well as long as it's not fired while the mech is leaning back. I'm currently in the process of doing yet another re-tweak of the balance (every time I change anything, I have to rework the balance and the jump jets) and building a showcase level for it. I was shooting for early this week (yesterday or today) but I might end up pushing it back to later in the week instead.

2010-05-18 22:59:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

---

im still going to make a mech to stomp on yours sehven I helpped sehven test this thing a bit and so far its awsome.

2010-05-19 21:43:00 Author: OutcastZeroOne Posts: 139

---

Aaaaaaaaaand it's published! (https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=27374-Most-Advanced-Mech-in-LBP-VT-5-Lightning&p=475559#post475559)

2010-05-21 07:54:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

Aus dem Archiv wurden alle persönlichen Daten wie Name, Anschrift, Email etc. - aber auch sämtliche Inhalte wie z.B. persönliche Nachrichten - entfernt.
Die Nutzung dieser Webseite erfolgt ohne Speicherung personenbezogener Daten. Es werden keinerlei Cookies, Logs, 3rd-Party-Plugins etc. verwendet.