Archive: 10 posts

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Hey sorry if this has been asked in a slightly different manner but I can't think of how to word this easily. Basically I am trying to emit zombies for a survival challenge, they come from the right of the screen. I want these zombies to only take up 1 layer and make it possible to have a zombie in each layer without them colliding. I got that working fine, it looks a bit odd with one thick leg and one thin but not much else can be done. So I constructed the zombie fine how I wanted it. Then it comes to moving the things. I am not good at making walkers let alone bipedal with 2 different width legs and methods of movement. So I just thought I'd use a piston. The legs move like they are walking but a stiff piston is really the driving force. I initially had a snazzy looking effect with the zombie slowing on each step to make it look somewhat realistic. But then I hit a snag. It's a survival challenge so I want the difficulty to increase. My plan for that was to have the zombies get faster. Well that turned out I had to get rid of the realistic walk which was controlled by a 3 way switch set to directional. See the speed increase made limbs move faster but the piston speed didn't change meaning at first the zombies made slow big steps, in "fast" stage they made really quick steps which resulted in smaller movements which made it all a bit backwards. My only solution to that was to set a switch to speed and connect it to the main piston that moved the zombies. Sure enough it works but then a snag even bigger occurs in my opinion. Unreliability! Sometimes the zombies pause for ridiculous amounts of time for no reason, the speed switch didn't change at all. Everything works fine for a few mins then they all slow down to a stop halfway through movement all at once. The pistons are attached to dm so they are ok overlapping right? I am curious if this has an effect somehow? Can you only emit so many pistons over one another or something? It seems directional is the only setting for movement I think gives you exact results. The others have pause times as if they calculating or something randomly. Very frustrating!

2010-05-23 15:14:00 Author: OneEyedBanshee Posts: 1370

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well can't you put a speed switch pointed down or backwards on the dm and have a mag key get closer to the emitted dm at each stage, or just have it constantly getting faster so that it flows. I can't exactly tell what result you want, sorry if this method is the one you just explained if it is, the pausing is usually because the switch radius ( the angle one) is set to small, try 180* or just anything bigger to ensure the switch can see the key

2010-05-23 19:21:00 Author: Littlebigdude805 Posts: 1924

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Yes I am using that method but the radius is less than 180 so I'll give that a try, cheers littlebigdude!

2010-05-23 19:26:00 Author: OneEyedBanshee Posts: 1370

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Sure enough it works but then a snag even bigger occurs in my opinion. Unreliability! Sometimes the zombies pause for ridiculous amounts of time for no reason, the speed switch didn't change at all. Everything works fine for a few mins then they all slow down to a stop halfway through movement all at once. Maybe your zombies are just too realistic, and they forgot what it was they were supposed to do? Anyway, I think you should just drop the whole "Realistic Leg Movement" thing and the piston movement, put the legs on the front thin layer, add a protected creature brain and a creature leg behind the legs.

2010-05-23 21:14:00 Author: Starchy Posts: 353

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Thanks for the suggestion starchy I will look into it. At this stage I am so sick of piston trouble. I actually have never really used the legs feature for movement, first time I tried it went very wrong, but I was a noob lol so I didn't get what to do really. Maybe now I can realise their potential. I might yet get a realistic walk and use a leg tool.. ponders :kz: I updated so the mag key switch had 360 radius but still the problem remains. The best way I can describe it is like it's pulsating. There's times when zombies spawn and they are at full speed, then they slowly start getting slower as they spawn and eventually pausing, then coming to a stop(massive pause!). Note their limbs which are connected to the exact same speed mag key switch keep moving at a constant speed. Then they start moving a tiny bit, then more and more until they reach that max speed again. Then the process repeats. It is as if the piston is moving invisibly and it's waiting for the piston to come back to itself then it will move forward after it has performed a full extension and retraction almost. Every zombie inherits this effect which baffles me. The mag key switch and the mag key are static. Yeah, I give up pretty much too unpredictable for my liking.

2010-05-23 21:30:00 Author: OneEyedBanshee Posts: 1370

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I ran into god knows how many problems when I made my zombie survival challenge, it sounds a lot like what you are making now but I made this ages ago, so theres no way mine will be as good. To increase the difficulty you could turn on more and more emitters. To squeeze the most out of the thermo, watch it go up as you change the amount of time they last, sometimes the difference between 19 and 20 seconds will be an increase of a whole linespacing on the thermo! I'm pretty proud of the different zombie designs in my level and I think it just looks sloppy when people use the sackboy shape tool and don't put much effort in. What you could do for the feet is to have a single layer zombie with a moving arm on the front thin layer, and have a very tiny set of creature legs on the very bottom of the feet, then just rev the speed up!

2010-05-23 22:25:00 Author: Asbestos101 Posts: 1114

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I played it there and I thought it was cool how new zombie types appeared but there was some things I really want to avoid and confirmed some of my fears also. There is no real incentive to switch layers initially meaning you can just spam firing either direction to keep zombies off. Not something I want really so I'll have to come up with something there, you had a crazy giant thing that shot zombies or something so that done the trick lol. Then there is the collisions that drive me mad. The layer you ignore zombies bump into each other creating one big mess. For now I just have zombies from one direction to avoid that but I would like both directions otherwise where is the challenge? The difference in our approaches I think is you increased volume of zombies. I'm looking to increase speed, will probably need a bit of both really. I am intent on animating legs, arms and head somehow. Only issue now I have is you can't adjust the speed of legs during play by switch. Agh! Regrettably the play area I have set up is pretty big, so zombies have to have longer life which as you said can increase thermo massively which is a pain. Somehow I don't see this turning out exactly how I want it,

2010-05-23 22:46:00 Author: OneEyedBanshee Posts: 1370

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This sort of thing will be made easier in LBP2 with the way the new thermo technology will come into play. One thing that does work super well in LBP for a zombie survival level is the fact that every time you kill one, you get 50 points. Thats the incentive to switch layers, if you are killing the stream of zombies on multiple layers, you rack up so many more points before the big 2 layer fat zombie joins in the fray. Animated legs will be a tough one to achieve, I hope you manage it. Feel free to use my zombie torso's moving mechanic, I lifted the idea from another level I saw as I thought it was simple and effective. There can never be enough good zombie levels, I think i'll remake mine at some point, it was my first attempt at using some real logic and not just crappy attempts at platform levels.

2010-05-24 22:36:00 Author: Asbestos101 Posts: 1114

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Well I've got to a point now. I have the zombies roughly how I wanted them with moving legs etc. I had to use a make do solution so now no matter what layer a zombie is in it kills you so you can't let any one zombie get to you. The problem now is the creature parts eat SO much thermo. I have 6 emitters, one for each layer behind and in front with a max of 5 each. Each one has a protected brain and 1 leg. The thermo is filled almost to max with the environment taking up a quarter, it keeps complaining about creatures. I don't think I'll be able to add much more which irritates me as there isn't any variety and yeah it's a bit easy, I'm going to tweak some stuff anyhow, hopefully I can squeeze in a new type of zombie. I do like the added 50 points a kill so I'm inclined to hang onto the brains and such. Going to experiment with creature partless ones and see what the story is. If I get significantly lowered thermo I will consider that route.

2010-05-25 14:52:00 Author: OneEyedBanshee Posts: 1370

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Ouch 6 emitters is tough going, I think you should cut down on layers and have two directions or have all 3 layers but only from one direction (well, thats the one way of cutting down on thermo instantly). You should work out how long it takes for a zombie to walk from their spawn point to the back wall of wherever you are defending, and then make that their spawn duration, if not slightly less, but i'm sure you've already realised that If you need any help beta testing, i'll help you out

2010-05-25 19:48:00 Author: Asbestos101 Posts: 1114

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