Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 3:24 am Post subject:
Spy Plane
Cost: 1400
Prerequisite: Helipad, tech center
Role: Recon
Strengths: Extremely fast
Weaknesses: Weak armor
Nod has developed the Spy Planes to gain quick and accurate information of the battlefield. Not only can they be used to scout the map quickly, but they are armed with a special scanning device that can reveal any stealthed or hidden enemies in the selected area for a short while. When ordered to scan a location (either by force-firing the ground, or attacking a specific target), the Spy Plane will keep flying over the area, scanning it. It will keep doing scanning runs until you give it a new order. The Spy Plane sacrifices all of its armor for speed, so do not expect to fly one into an enemy base with AA-defences and make it out alive, and watch out for mobile AA-units out in the field. Due to technological restrictions and Nod military protocols only one Spy Plane can be operational at a given time.
Spy Plane using scanning device to reveal enemy mines:
Spy Plane on a recon mission:
_________________ Last edited by SuperJoe on Thu May 02, 2013 6:17 pm; edited 4 times in total QUICK_EDIT
Tested this unit around and I am pleased with how it works, so I've enabled it for the mod. I've adjusted the stealth reveal to last a few seconds to make it more user friendly. With the addition of the spy plane every faction has at least 2 different ways to reveal stealth now. The spy satellite / map reveal has traditionally been given to the "good guys", but I think a special advantage like this should rather belong to Nod. GDI already has the firepower and airforce, Nod should have the tactical advantage. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
the Spy Plane will keep flying over the area, scanning it. It will keep doing scanning runs until you give it a new order.
Does that mean it has unlimited ammo?
How big is the turning radius when it scans an area continuously? I guess such a fast unit would have a quite big one, thus making it hard to keep it focused on only the uncloaking area.
Just an idea:
To avoid the debris water splashes, you might want to try a time limited debris.
If you give the debris a limited loopcount, it will simply disappear in midair if it reached the last frame and hasn't hit the ground yet. If you now let the debris spawn a traileranim (no debris) at the right moment, the traileranim is playing in midair.
If then this traileranim has damage, the damage will be done on the ground, even if the anim was spawned in midair.
This way you could avoid the debris hitting the ground and also make it work over water. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
How big is the turning radius when it scans an area continuously? I guess such a fast unit would have a quite big one, thus making it hard to keep it focused on only the uncloaking area.
Yes, it has unlimited ammo. It has a large turning radius (even lowered the ROT), so it can't keep uncloaking a certain location continuously. This makes it act bit different than say jumpjet infantry, who will reveal stealth around them all the time, but are much slower than the spy plane.
Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
Just an idea:
To avoid the debris water splashes, you might want to try a time limited debris.
If you give the debris a limited loopcount, it will simply disappear in midair if it reached the last frame and hasn't hit the ground yet. If you now let the debris spawn a traileranim (no debris) at the right moment, the traileranim is playing in midair.
If then this traileranim has damage, the damage will be done on the ground, even if the anim was spawned in midair.
This way you could avoid the debris hitting the ground and also make it work over water.
But wouldn't the animation damage be forced to use the default anim damage warhead, [Fire2]? To get absolutely no damage dealt I'm using the Damage=1, all Verses=-100% trick. Can't edit Fire2 since it's used by certain other animations to deal damage.
I got the water splashes removed by editing these:
But the side-effects remove the wake anim from units moving over water, and the splash anim from weapons that deal little damage AND cause water splashes (such as Rocket Infantry bazooka). I tried putting like 50 animations to the SplashList, trying to make even minor damage cause splashes, but the bazooka never played the splash animation. I'm not sure how many animations the list accepts, and how exactly it works. And yeah the landing debris also cause the WAKE2 anim to play, in addition to the splashes. So both would need to be dealt with. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
But wouldn't the animation damage be forced to use the default anim damage warhead, [Fire2]? To get absolutely no damage dealt I'm using the Damage=1, all Verses=-100% trick. Can't edit Fire2 since it's used by certain other animations to deal damage.
ah yes you're right. I thought about something like Damage=0.01 so only very few is done.
Debris cause a wake anim to play? That is new to me. o.O
I wouldn't advise using INVISO as this has Damage=1 in art.ini and IIRC it is even hardcoded to have this tiny amount of damage.
The SplashList is strange. I also tried in the past to get the vanilla TS mg and pistol splashes (W_PIFF, WPIFFPIFF) to show up, but the damn list seems to accept/use only the first anim. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
In RA2/YR, SplashList works in following fashion AFAIK. Not sure about TS but it's entirely possible that the way it works is identical.
- IsMeteor=yes debris use the last animation of the list.
- Other types of debris use the first animation of the list.
- For weapons it's decided by Damage. Damage divided by 35, rounded down to the nearest integer gives you a number used to choose the animation from the list (0 = first animation from the list and so on). If the resulting number is larger or equal than the length of the list, it just uses the last animation instead.
Also the list supports practically unlimited number of animations as far as I know. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
In RA2/YR, SplashList works in following fashion AFAIK. Not sure about TS but it's entirely possible that the way it works is identical.
- IsMeteor=yes debris use the last animation of the list.
- Other types of debris use the first animation of the list.
- For weapons it's decided by Damage. Damage divided by 35, rounded down to the nearest integer gives you a number used to choose the animation from the list (0 = first animation from the list and so on). If the resulting number is larger or equal than the length of the list, it just uses the last animation instead.
Also the list supports practically unlimited number of animations as far as I know.
Based on this I guess could try to give the stealth reveal debris IsMeteor=yes, and add some more animations to the SplashList (enough so highest weapon damage divided by 35 can't play the last anim), then make the last anim in the list invisible (INVISO). Normal meteors wouldn't cause splashes then either though. And there's still the problem with the wake anim.
EDIT: And yeah TS does play more than just the first anim in the list, try firing the Nod artillery into water and it will play the big splash. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
SuperJoe, you should definitely consider adding the water piff anims (see conquer.mix) so MGs and other small arms cause a nice tiny splash in water. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Well this is a nice surprise, Westwood is actually feeling very generous for once. IsMeteor=yes solves all problems with this. Not only can you use it to play the last anim in SplashList (without any side-effects if you add enough anims to it), and a debris with it won't display the wave animation when landing on water.
The only problem I have now is how to get the debris to land faster. Even if I spawn them very close to the ground they take a while to reach it. First I thought to add another TrailerAnim to the debris, so it would spawn more stealth reveal debris on it's way down, but that would bring back the water splash problem. So I added it to the debris warhead AnimList instead. Now more stealth reveal debris are spawned at where the initial debris lands (except on water, nothing is spawned or shown there). Just need to make the initial debris fly bit faster towards the ground.
The few splashes in the animation are caused by debris landing on a shore tile, so the spawned extra debris are considered landing on the water thus causing splashes. I could try to add IsMeteor=yes to the extra debris too. Will have to try it out.
EDIT: Just to clarify why I used AnimList with the initial debris instead of ExpireAnim is because IsMeteor=yes seems to disable any ExpireAnims.
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_________________ Last edited by SuperJoe on Sat Mar 09, 2013 4:36 am; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
ok forget about using AnimList with the debris warhead to spawn the extra debris. Using AnimList key in the warhead forces it to deal some damage (probably forced to 1). Odd, can't see a reason for that. But you can use the ExpireAnim to do the extra spawning after all. Not sure why it wasn't working before. Possibly due to Bouncer=yes, I've changed it to No and now it works.
So as far as I can tell the only problem left is getting the debris to land bit faster. Maybe setting the PrimaryFireFLH so close to the ground the spawning would be immediate. Though not sure the debris would spread around then. Maybe add the spreading to the 2nd set of debris, not the initial. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Managed to fix the last problem with PrimaryFireFLH. Setting it 100 lower than the FlightLevel of the aircraft will create an instant effect. E.g. if the aircraft has FlightLevel=1200, then set PrimaryFireFLH=0,0,-1300.
Here are a few random tests with debris, nothing unique but had some fun with it. Maybe a flame tank weapon could be done with the 1st animation. Create a projectile and attach this anim to it as TrailerAnim. As the flame projectile moves forward, and instant debris anim damage is applied there. You could even spawn some secondary flames with debris to make the burning last longer and deal damage over time.
Using the trick has 2 small side-effects I found out. Normal meteors won't display splashes when hitting water (well, anything that has IsMeteor=yes won't), nor do aircraft when they die and crash land into water. The aircraft thing can't be tied to damage cause I added like 100 entries into the SplashList, and it still picks the very last one. However it does display a flash of light on the water, so maybe the [HE] warhead is applied there, and could be tweaked somehow to include the splash anim.
I tried a few workaround to create the splash for meteors (like meteors spawning another normal debris just before it hits water), but none of them worked out well enough. I don't see how anything could be timed perfectly for it to work.
Speaking of meteors, is it possible to make them spread out more? When you use the trigger on maps to call down meteors, they pretty much always hit the exact same spot. I would like to add bit more randomness to it, but couldn't get it done by editing the meteor MaxXYVel, MinZVel or MaxZVel. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Those only define the distance and speed of the spawned meteor relative to its target location.
The higher MaxXYVel, the farther away it is spawned.
The higher MinZVel, the higher their altitude from where they are spawned and the faster their fall.
I think MaxZVel doesn't work on art.ini debris (only voxel debris), though i never tested it.
The target is exactly the cell on which they are created.
To scatter them you have to use a dummy debris before which then spawn the meteor via ExpireAnim. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
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Spy Plane
