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Questions regarding pyrogenesis(engine)


NOXAS1
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Hmm, I'm 100% sure you can't fly a real helicopter, but about an in-game helicopter I don't know about :) Well, we won't have flying units in 0 A.D. as far as I know, but on the other hand I guess it shouldn't be too hard to implement. I guess it depends on how good simulation you're looking for though, it should be possible to just offset the model from the ground to make it appear like it's flying. Anything more fancy than that and I think you'd need to be able to program to get it to work.

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A flying unit would have to be able to fly over all the scenario, without restrictions of objects or terrains, is that possible with the current state of the engine?, if not, it really should be introduced, because that simple change can give pyirogenesis the oportunity of be moded into a modern age RTS or even a futurustic one (Im personally looking foward to that)

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Thats why I was asking I because once this game is out and the engine given to peeps some buddies and I were going to make a Vietnam war Mod or game using the engine. And that has alot of helicopters and jets. So if you guys can implement that, that would be awesome :)

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Maybe we should check with some historians, but I don't think helicopters were widespread in our game's time period.

There are quite a few complexities in making decent flying units: they need to take off and land; they need to move up and smoothly and not crash into the terrain; they need to crash to the ground when destroyed; they need to be shootable with ranged weapons but not melee weapons; they need to move over ground units, but not move through other flying units at the same height; if they're planes then they mustn't stop moving, and have wide turning circles; and probably various other things. None of the units in our game act like that, so the engine doesn't support all those things, e.g. it pretends the world is 2D for pathfinding and collision detection. It'd be fairly easy to make the unit exist at a fixed offset above the ground and move over any terrain, but that would be a bit rubbish, and it would take much more effort to make it work well.

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I don't see why a helicopter unit would necessarily have to move up and down and all that. Except for the initial takeoff animation the helicopter can stay at the same height for the duration of its lifetime. Pathfinding would be tricky as you said so it would fly over things, but not bump into (or fly through) other helicopters. lol I think airplanes would have to be like "god powers" in the sense that you call an air strike and they attack wherever you point and click, but they are not controllable per se, so that pathfinding would be less of an issue, they being rarely seen anyway.

I think it would take an intrepid modder in order to mod these capabilities into the game, because we certainly aren't gonna do it (there's no need for our game). But like I said it would certainly be something a good mod team could implement.

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No need?

What about birds? There have to be birds!

And they have to be shootable.

And they shouldn't stop moving.

And they shouldn't collide.

And they should fly over all ground units.

That's most of the necessities!

There's a difference between a game entity and a game actor. An entity is an object that effects the simulation (game) somehow. An actor is simply visual. Birds will be actors that fly around but don't interact with anything else in the game world. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

There's a difference between a game entity and a game actor. An entity is an object that effects the simulation (game) somehow. An actor is simply visual. Birds will be actors that fly around but don't interact with anything else in the game world. smile.gif

IS_NormanDuck, I believe "catapult projectiles" would fall under the "game actor" category.

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Projectiles aren't just actors, since they affect the simulation (by hitting people); but they're not entities either - they're a special new class of thing. Since they're not entities, they don't have AI or pathfinding or anything like that, and they're just a simple move-forwards-under-gravity-until-hitting-something thing, and they avoid all the complexities of flying entities.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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