Archive: 20 posts

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Ok Im trying to modify my tank cab to open in a different way. Right now I have piston set to activate by an ON grab. It opens in 1sec, pauses for 2. At that time the player releases, steps in cab. Hood will remain open. Player grabs same grab that is accessible from inside. Hood closes and pause. Player releases and hood stays closed. Now of course if they continue hold the grabe you get open, pause, close pause, open.. etc. And if they release midway the hood may stop at some point in between. So heres what I want using the same grab that is accessible from both inside and outside the cab.. Grab and piston extends to full at speed desired and pauses for a time I can set. At this time the player gets in and the piston just retracts back to closed. Player grabs same grab and same thing happens. Now if they dont get in or out in time it just closes.. no big deal.

2008-12-08 19:13:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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How about this? Sort a 3 way switch out. Set it do directional. Place it on a lump of dark matter up out of sight. Then, attach a winch to both sides of the 3 way switch, so the switch would be pulled when the winch retracts? Have the two grabbable things, and connect them to the winches. So when you grab it, it pulls the corresponding winch, which then in turn pulls the lever of the 3 way switch. Get me ?

2008-12-08 19:31:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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You know it never dawned on me that everyting does not have to located on the frickin tank !! So the wires are really just a symbol correct? They dont have a max lenght or breaking point? That makes things LOTS easier if this is true.

2008-12-08 19:42:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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Of course they can't break lol! They're just to show you what's connected to what!

2008-12-08 19:47:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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Oh man my tanks about to get a work over. I have it working fine but being able to move levers off object is going to open alot for me.

2008-12-08 19:53:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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I have found that wires, although theoretically able to stretch to an infinite length and not take up any physical space (they can go through or ignore anything) still sometimes makes high velocity vehicles work strange for me. For example, a vehicle with a rocket that's meant to go dead straight does not go quite so straight when it has a wire going on for a long time. If I can, I try and use sensors and magnetic key combinations as much as possible, or try and put complex switch systems within vehicles themselves. It's a pain and it's a bit limiting in terms of what you can do, but it does feel that things run smoother, at least from my experience. Of course, this might just be a psychological thing. If people had not seen the complexity of the wiring system or seen a vehicle with and without it, then they might not never know. It's not like you can see the wires in play mode, and the most complex of designs tend to be kept secret. One would really need to be doing some complex tests using wired and unwired systems though to be really sure. All of this is in reference to high speed ultralight vehicles though. The same might not be true for slow, heavy vehicles. Most of my complex designs have been more the former rather than the latter. Even the 3 stage rocket I am building, though very large, is extermely light to make it work better. --- To think the issue at hand though in a different way, however, the MM made submarine launcher than you can unlock in the MM levels has a system where a hatch opens and closes very cleanly and smoothly. I spent a few hours trying to reverse engineer it and could not figure it out, but this was when my experience of the engine was a lot less. It might inspire you though to develop a different hatch system from what you might have initially planned.

2008-12-09 03:53:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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Ok after moving some fairly simple lever and piston setups off object Im definitely not convinced that it has no ill effects. You would think off object, safe, not prone to flexing material or breaking but... I have found that on my tank that randomly the grabs for my cannon, rocket, pod raise and lower controls just stop working. The off object drive and cannon angle still work. It also happens in about the same location when it does happen. I can back the tank up a few screens and it starts working again but get back to the original spot and they might or might not work again. So its not levers or pistons breaking, its definitely and off object bug. Onboard this never happened.

2008-12-13 23:49:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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I was getting similiar issues but with creature brains. After extensive fiddling, especially with imported objects from another level, sometimes the brain would "forget" it has legs attached which can make it move, or it would start to completely ignore the limiting system, and just keep on walking. I guess hyper complex objects that have memory, like switchs or brains, might lose the connection of what they were suppose to do if you fiddle with them enough. It sounds like a similar execution to the infamous but far more common "unglue" bug. The only way I found around the forgetful brain bug was to completely rebuild the monster from scratch. Fortunately the monster was not complex, but it's pretty bad when this happens with complex ones. So yeah, that's my take on what could be happening with your switch system. You might need to rebuild the entire tank again fresh. I hope not though.

2008-12-14 04:12:00 Author: Elbee23 Posts: 1280

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That definitely wont happen. I will edit the level to stop just before the area where the problem starts before I rebuild the tank.. heheh

2008-12-14 23:09:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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What about an emitter setup. Have a dark matter rectangle off screen. Have an emitter on the top and a mag switch on the bottom set to direction. When the grabswitch is activated the emitter drops a block with the magkey on it, opening the cab of the tank. Adjust the emitters lifetime so the block vanishes at the desired time. When the block vanishes the cab closes. Make sure you have the emitter set to max emitted at one time to 1 and total emitted to something reasonable like 60 or something. You could install this in the tank if you don't use dark matter.

2008-12-14 23:15:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

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What about an emitter setup. Have a dark matter rectangle off screen. Have an emitter on the top and a mag switch on the bottom set to direction. When the grabswitch is activated the emitter drops a block with the magkey on it, opening the cab of the tank. Adjust the emitters lifetime so the block vanishes at the desired time. When the block vanishes the cab closes. Make sure you have the emitter set to max emitted at one time to 1 and total emitted to something reasonable like 60 or something. You could install this in the tank if you don't use dark matter. Heheh... thanks for the reply but Im way past that now. I actually have two grabs now. One raises the pod for entry then auto-closes. Another grab opens the Pod and leaves it open for firing. Grabbing the same grab again closes the pod. Then I have a single grab that fires rockets from the pod when its raised but a different rocket from the barrel when its lowered. Check out the latest vid update here. 4nWti0qsnfg

2008-12-15 01:18:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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I was wondering why this project sounded so familiar. I saw that tank back in the day. It's been through quite a few changes since then. I liked your hovercraft the most. edit: I was actually thinking of your tank when I was describing that.

2008-12-15 20:02:00 Author: docpac Posts: 601

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I was wondering why this project sounded so familiar. I saw that tank back in the day. It's been through quite a few changes since then. I liked your hovercraft the most. edit: I was actually thinking of your tank when I was describing that. Im kind of at a standstill on the tank now other than features. The off object controls work ok on the first tank in the level, they still sometimes might stop working. It really goes bad if you lose your first tank and used the emitted second tank, which is no different than the first. For example if I make it past the checkpoint where the second tank is emitted, and then my first tank gets damaged, I go back and get the emitted tank. Well thats all good but I might have to destroy the first tank with cannons or rockets to get over it using the second tank. If I destroy to much of that first tank, some of the emitted tank grabs stop working, mainly the cannon and rocket fire grabs. Its almost like the game is seeing the grabs on the first tank as the controls for the emitted tank. Nothing I can really do about it other than removing the emitted tank from the level and just hope people can make it with the one tank.

2008-12-16 22:34:00 Author: rz22g Posts: 340

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Epic Tank! The Rocket Pod Looks DEADLY! I HAVE to try this!

2008-12-16 23:10:00 Author: DRT99 Posts: 431

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So how did you create the single grab setup?

2009-01-01 15:59:00 Author: blaze_boi786 Posts: 19

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Im kind of at a standstill on the tank now other than features. The off object controls work ok on the first tank in the level, they still sometimes might stop working. It really goes bad if you lose your first tank and used the emitted second tank, which is no different than the first. For example if I make it past the checkpoint where the second tank is emitted, and then my first tank gets damaged, I go back and get the emitted tank. Well thats all good but I might have to destroy the first tank with cannons or rockets to get over it using the second tank. If I destroy to much of that first tank, some of the emitted tank grabs stop working, mainly the cannon and rocket fire grabs. Its almost like the game is seeing the grabs on the first tank as the controls for the emitted tank. Nothing I can really do about it other than removing the emitted tank from the level and just hope people can make it with the one tank. i dunno if u still have this problem but heres what i think... to emmit ur tank with off board controls, before u capture it u need to connect the controls to the tank with a dissolvable block in between 2 pieces of string but connect an inverted mag switch to the block so it dissolves as soon as its emmitted... u can only emmit 1 though because the controls from the first tank will be in the way and prevent u emmiting a second one, maybe if u make the controls out of wood instead of dark matter it would fall out if the way and allow space for a new one. one other thing to consider is, if your thermometer is nearly full and u emmit too much they will stop emmiting hope this helps

2009-02-02 20:20:00 Author: Samson107 Posts: 83

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Yeah, we figured this out. Kratos ended up with a video showing how to do it on the MM site, but emitting more than once ended up being problematic with this technique. This off-object wiring problem is supposed to be fixed in the next patch. I had a similar problem with the current level I was working on and did the following (which actually worked FLAWLESSLY!!! for this particular project): The entire vehicle is attached to a hidden piston which is attached to off-screen dark matter, which has a brain and a key switch which can kill the brain. This entire object get's emitted into place before the player walks on-screen. The object which EMITS the other object is dark matter which also contains other emitters each of which each emit a key above the emitted objects key switch. Anything in the level that needs to kill the vehicle simply needs to trigger an emitter above the hidden vehicle dark matter, which in turn kills the brain, thus totally destroying the entire vehicle at once safely. Since the entire emitted vehicle is connected entirely together through pistons the object capture issue doesn't occur. I can't wait for people to see this level... I think I am building something really unique!

2009-02-03 17:04:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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thats an excellent way to do it, so the hidden piston will stay attatched as the vehicle moves?

2009-02-03 17:57:00 Author: Samson107 Posts: 83

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Yup. I set the maximum length of the piston to 999 so the vehicle could travel pretty far. This doesn't work in every design well, but in my particular case it worked REALLY well. I test played the area about 50 times so far to make sure when the object needed to be re-emitted it would work properly after destructing. I'm actually working on a level (Splat II: Caverns of Splat) where you need to fly a space landing vehicle down a LONG shaft. The control had to be incredibly precise and there had to be collision detection when the landing vehicle hit anything that would blow up the vehicle. Just on this one tiny vehicle I've got 14 emitters, 20 wires, 8 keys, 4 light sources, a 3-way switch, a brain, and 2 rockets. I just got the vehicle working 100% last night.

2009-02-03 18:16:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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14 emitters! lol, that must be fiddly. i look forward to seeing it

2009-02-03 19:16:00 Author: Samson107 Posts: 83

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