Reinforcements are arriving, sir...

[Red Devil]

Reinforcements

..but, unfortunately, they're not ours...

[Commando]

I was hoping we could get some assistance on the animation front, but havent received a single response in a three week time span.

[MrTwosheds]

A response to what?

[Red Spot]

Something concerning some assistance on the animation front.

[General BlackDragon]

nice RD, an interesting way to recieve AI reinforcements...

[Commando]

My original idea for this involved multile phases.

1. You see the dropship fly in at a altitude of x, basically using APC class, so it can fly over hills
2. The dropship lands
3. The dropship gets replaced by a building, that has the deploy animation
a. My original idea for this was making 30+ odf and XSIs that the dll loops through. The only difference between the XSIs is the position of the doors and the collision. Basically simulating animated collision boxes for the opening doors.
4. While the doors are still opening, the payload is spawned along with MITs mines to hold them in place. Just like the first ISDF mission.
5. Once the doors fully open, the units drive out of the dropship
6. After a few seconds, to ensure all units are out, the doors close back up
7. The dropship gets replaced, and the "APC" dropship undeploys
8. It flies away leaving the map

I doubt this can be done seemlessly. Would be nice if we had an odf flag that says, OnlyDeployOnFlatTerrain = 0/1. Basically only allowing the unit to deploy on flat terrain. Also using a flag DeployInCenterOfGrid = 0/1. Basically meaning the unit will deploy as if placed in the editor with the alignment option enabled. I guess this can be worked around by giving the building OwnsTerrain=0, or ReplacesTerrain=0, whatever the jammer uses.

[Commando]

Another goal was to have the dropship specific code contained within its own CPP file and said CPP file's code being released. Mainly so others could freely use the code in their specific dlls.

[Red Devil]

all that's been done; don't need 30+ models, just the models with animations. i didn't use the mits mines, too.

main problem now is that the scion dropship/crow doesn't have a deploy animation - it just lands and is replaced by the crow already deployed - but it does undeploy nicely, though, so i'm wondering if i can reverse that animation to have it deploy. another thing is that i'm using atanks for escorts now and the titans remain levitated in the air for a few seconds after the dropship leaves.

it's not compartmentalized now since conditions have to be checked constantly; do-able, but it's basically just a bunch of condition checks with bools and time checks right now using member varbs just to get it working and prevent resyncs. nice to finally be getting this done since it's only been on my bucket list for about a decade now :-/

working on commando's other thing now and then i'll get back to the other thing.

[Commando]

Most is done, you still don't see the dropship approach before it lands. Unless the altitude is set insanely high when it spawns.

The mits mine isn't critical. I figured it would allow you to keep units in place until you are ready for them to move.

The 30+ models, also isn't critical. It would just allow us to simulate animated collisions, for the gates, as bz2 lacks that capability and probably always will. This part would only be applicable to the ISDF dropship since it has the swing door. It could apply to a smaller extent to the scion dropship as you can still drive inside it, when the door is graphically shut.

[Red Devil]

yup, the location of the model when built is way up in the sky and that is built into the model itself; could probably see it if the view/fog distances are maxed. not too concerned about the collision thing since they are built and land away from the players usually.

[Commando]

My reasong for the low altitude is to give the player team a chance to intercept and shoot down the drop ships. Granted we would need a modeler for animating.

[General BlackDragon]

My idea for this was to use aircraft class that spawns high and has a forward neutral speed, and auto lands. this way they could be shot down in real time. only trick would be getting them to land dynamically, not the exact same place every time. Then once they landed I'd have the DLL play the door open anim, then spawn units around it, then close anim and tell it to undeploy so it'd "take off". x seconds later remove it.

[Red Devil]

*channels Avatar* hey, you can't shoot down a big ol' dropship like that - you'd need to know where they were going to land (they have randomized drop points) and then have a large force that could throw enough firepowah at it (or have Braddock lurking in the bushes).

now, the next one, that's a different story...

forgot, one other issue is the sound effects being "heardable" wherever you are on the map instead of being localized, so i have to work on that, too. there's always something...

[DarkCobra262]

Interesting o.O

[Red Devil]

i'll link a more recent vid where the sounds match up better.