Tank disables, fuel systems and laser designators

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-27 09:01

It is technically possible to do disable hits to tanks. Hear me out, not perfect and doesn't always work right because the engine isn't exactly logical always.

For tanks, it's possible that you can spawn an engine on the tank when it is at, say 10% health, that is on the left tread side and is 180 degrees out of sync with the normal left tread engine (engine is what makes vehicles move in the game engine). This nulls out and means only the right one will push forward. Of course there are small possible bugs (being on a hills edge), but they should self correct within a few feet. You could also do the turret the same way by 180 degree out of syncing the movement at low health. Repairing fixes the problem. You can do this about any vehicle, even aircrafts.
You can also create an engine that rotates on the back of a helo at low health, so that it's semi randomly putting forces on the tail of the chopper making it jerk around in hard to control ways to make it interesting for the pilot (and those aboard!).

Their are semi-randomizing factors that can be included, but I'd keep them to myself only to tell the devs if they ever think about this, to keep it from being exploited at all.

The fuel system is much more complex in the game. It's a design that was tested in BF1 but came up with some situations that it would not work correctly.

Laser designators are possible for automated artillery strikes also. And, you can have a laser designator to use on armor or humvees too. They are simple in concept but have a few issues that can probably be resolved.

Finally, last idea for the night:
It is possible to put random kits into the game menu. Say you broaden the choice of rifleman: You pick rifleman and you randomly receive one of the following (just to show for now)
1) m16, grenades, smoke
2) m203, binoculars
3) m16, AT-4 type rocket

Makes it rather interesting. You could have broad classes where the player will get roughly what he chose but with random stuff. You can control how much percentage of the times it appears too. You can even control it versus how many exist in game already. Makes it rather interesting when you can't just pick AT guy and spawn on the squad leader to attack the tank again. Have to pray you or someone gets the rocket... that or AT guy goes down, have to try to get his. Much more precious to the squad!

Anyway, cheers all

Thunder · Post by **Thunder** » 2006-10-27 09:15

the disableing the tank tracks / helo idea is nice idea.
but the random kit thing i dont like, you wouldnt randomly pick up kit and hope you got the right stuff in real life.
in game you would pick the most sutable class for the job and randomizing the stuff you get with it would make it harder to pick a sutable kit.

it would be like your ordered to mine a road but the engineer kit you spawned with didnt have any.

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-27 09:41

Good point. But say you pick rifleman, might be worthwhile to give some M16 and nades and others a M203 and a random one here and there with an AT-4 (retaining the AT class with pistol).
Or say a sniper/recon class that would give you some randomness to it. Just to make things a bit more interesting.
It would be a method to put in some neat gear that everyone would fight over or abuse. Just say you put an automated artillery laser pointer in the game for recon, a lot of guys would run around with it and use it ASAP. But if it's only 10% of the time, then you would have to suicide or die as a recon/sniper a few times and have several minutes wait time just to try to get it once.

One thing for larger maps that I always thought would be cool is fuel. It's a possiblity, but has inherent problems that require a lot of testing and adjusting. But it would be sweet to have choppers having to go back for fuel, tanks needing a resupply vehicle to them. Or if you had an A-10 in game, it couldn't just fly around forever, it would have to stay on the ground for a few minutes to refuel to stay in the air a few minutes. A wise person might just wait for a squad leader to identify some targets before scrambling off to bomb. Flying around looking for targets eats up your time and increases how long you have to sit on the ground. Same for choppers.

Tanks/LAV's would need to think about a resupply after a while. Might help when you get that solo player snatching one and ignoring his team's needs.

Duckitt · Post by **Duckitt** » 2006-10-27 10:01

Mate - all I can say is wait 15 days, download the new release and be VERY satisfied

Post by **IronTaxi** » 2006-10-27 10:06

Very satified!!! (if everything goes according to plan)

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-27 17:41

Not fair to tease! Spill the beans!

Clypp · Post by **Clypp** » 2006-10-27 17:57

Check out the Unofficial Changelog in the General forum.

You seem to have strong ideas regarding the tanks and helos. If you could code that and send it to the devs you can likely have that implemented AND have access to upcoming betas.

Griffon2-6 · Post by **Griffon2-6** » 2006-10-27 20:47

Hm, very ingenius ideas. It might just work. I doubt .4 has any disabling effects.

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-27 23:06

Well, while they are IDEAS, they are actual code that worked in beta in BF1 and most are implementable to BF2 pretty easily.
The fuel system idea? Nothing to do with fuel or a meter, it's a complex idea that took a while to work out, but works the same as fuel would, but the game engine doesn't see it as such

Track disables worked. Humvee engines could be blown. All this is done by have a reverse engine spawn. It still technically works, but to the game, it doesn't go anywhere or in circles

Laser designation is possible. It's even possible to set up a laser designator to work on vehicles only that will call in automated strikes.

The last idea that couldn't ever be worked out was a possible invisible mesh cone spawned high in the air that only responded to type xyz (whatever number) material, with a indicator high up in the stratosphere. Then an A10 could fly and drop the bombs at the pointer and they'd go down the invisble tube and land right where someone was lasing. Very glitchy, but sometimes hilarious to see some bombs swirling around in the air like someone flushed a toilet.

Take a look into DCX, like their guided missile code? Was simply a spinning cone of sorts, invisible. If you were in front of it and turned away, you'd run into the mesh that was attached to the front of the missile, so it's bump the missile into pointing roughly at you again, until it's proximity set it off. Off course didn't work near the ground and other such issues (i.e. "scooping" up infantry).

Lot of little neat ideas that are possible, like spawning an invisible, tiny concussion grenade where a bomb goes off with a large radius so if you are not killed by the bomb, you will be thrown into the air.

Oh yes... one last thing. It's possible to make a rope work with a helicopter, to climb up and down and deploy the rope. This was actually done, let me see if I can find the video. Not pretty, but it works good

Duckitt · Post by **Duckitt** » 2006-10-27 23:42

Griffon2-6 wrote:Hm, very ingenius ideas. It might just work. I doubt .4 has any disabling effects.

You'll have to wait and see.

Post by **eggman** » 2006-10-28 00:01

Hey Cinders,

Those are some fantastic concepts

Not sure if you are a BF coder / hacker .. but one thing that gets *really* trying with BF modding is the amount of time you can spend on things that end up in a dead end. It gets a lil frustrating and can tend to burn folks out.

So er.. we're always lookin' fer fresh meat with some hacking skills if yer game

Resjah · Post by **Resjah** » 2006-10-28 00:46

'[R-DEV wrote:eggman']Hey Cinders,

Those are some fantastic concepts

Not sure if you are a BF coder / hacker .. but one thing that gets *really* trying with BF modding is the amount of time you can spend on things that end up in a dead end. It gets a lil frustrating and can tend to burn folks out.

So er.. we're always lookin' fer fresh meat with some hacking skills if yer game

So, is this what the BF engine has been rendered too

Its no longer coding a game, its hacking the sh*t out of it.

PlayPR! · Post by **PlayPR!** » 2006-10-28 00:52

'[R-MOD wrote:Resjah']So, is this what the BF engine has been rendered too

Its no longer coding a game, its hacking the sh*t out of it.

You know it, to much hardcoding leaves most no choice I suppose

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-28 06:28

One thing I haven't checked on is if BF2 has the LCU attachment code still intact. That alone can do quite a bit. Worked quite well to add an invisible object to the back of a projectile. Projectile impacts and terminates and the object falls to the ground, where you can have it have a time out and upon reaching < 10% health, spawns another object. An effect can be slapped in to mask and voila! Whatever you can think of!
Basically, an illusion to create a realistic effect

The disabling would probably be the favorite and semi-easy to do. Laser designators are also fairly easy with automated artillery. Both have been done on a BF1 beta, though I openly admit haven't tried with BF2, but the code looks the same for those two.
Fuel systems, my baby, is probably not worth the time since you guys are working on other ideas. It'd be a lot of testing, math and adjusting.

I always thought it'd be cool to take a jet and at low health do a reverse engine of 95% power spawn, so the pilot would not have enough power to stay up and would have to angle downwards to stay moving forward, so would actually have to emergency land somewhere close by.

Anyway, if you guys want to try any ideas like these, you can probably figure out the code logic or I can spell it out if it speeds up the process.
My buddy is a pretty good BF coder, maybe you guys need another one, I'll talk to him. He's pretty good with sounds, too.

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-28 06:33

PlayPRMM! wrote:You know it, to much hardcoding leaves most no choice I suppose

Yes. HL1 and HL2 = coding. BF1 was built ONLY to do vanilla BF. All corners were shortcutted to make do. Nothing was coded out to allow variables, things were meant for only one specific purpose. BF2 is a modified BF1 to do EXACTLY BF2 and little else again. No room for options. If they didn't need it right then, then it's trashed.

It's like having a straw, toothpicks, glue and some glitter and someone wanting you to make a useful object out of it.

Post by **eggman** » 2006-10-28 06:55

Well Cinders that all sounds fantastic

If you or your buddy are interested we can always use creative coders to help out with PR.

Shoot me a PM if yer interested.

Post by **KingofCamelot** » 2006-10-28 07:03

Cinders wrote:My buddy is a pretty good BF coder, maybe you guys need another one, I'll talk to him. He's pretty good with sounds, too.

We could always use more coders.

When I say always, I really do mean always. You sound pretty knowledgable yourself.

BTW, if you know how to get laser designation to work, player controlled (not automated artillery) then please send me a PM.

I got it working, but unfortunately DICE broke it in the 1.4 patch, and there is little to no hope they will fix it.

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-28 23:32

Hey, send me a email or something to pass on to my friend, he's interested in helping out. You guys can do the handshaking stuff

Cinders · Post by **Cinders** » 2006-10-28 23:34

PM me if you don't want it public, of course

R@ge · Post by **R@ge** » 2006-10-29 07:54

Holy **** !!!

Much of the things you write about Cinders is awesome....

I sincerely hope you guys could work out some of thus ideas, and that this is not another example of "lots off big words and nothing else".