Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

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Enyo
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by Enyo »

pooty wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 10:22 pm However smoke doesn't last quite as long, but the trade off is you can fire the primary flame quicker. I thought about reducing it further, but then you get pretty much everlasting smoke screens....
Thanks pooty! So, does the flame work immediately after a smoke bomb now, or is there still some small delay in the flame doing damage? I would think there should be no delay at all in the flame doing damage… the whole point of the smoke bomb was to be able to pull off the Batman maneuver of smoke bombing an enemy and then swooping in unseen for the attack. Doesn’t work if there’s any delay in the flame doing damage.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by pooty »

Thanks pooty! So, does the flame work immediately after a smoke bomb now, or is there still some small delay in the flame doing damage? I would think there should be no delay at all in the flame doing damage… the whole point of the smoke bomb was to be able to pull off the Batman maneuver of smoke bombing an enemy and then swooping in unseen for the attack. Doesn’t work if there’s any delay in the flame doing damage.
So the way the weapons work fundamentally in UT is as follows. Each fire (fire/altfire) has a fire interval.
So lets say, using Draco times
FireInterval = 0.1, AltFireInterval = 3s. (Recall it was 5s)
So if you Alt-Fire, it will be 3s before you can fire OR altfire. There's really no way around this (Unless you know a way snarf) The firetank works this way, and pretty much anything with dual fire. (eg. when you alt-fire on Firetank, you can't primary fire until recharge)

So on the smoke bomb, it fires, and takes 3s before you can flame. What I did was set the durations on the Smoke Cloud (2s of expanding growth, persists to fade 8s). So that should give you time to swoop down and start firing without much delay, while balancing the ability to just spam smoke clouds. Try it out, and see. If I reduce the fire rate to say 2s, then you'd be able to pretty much keep a smoke cloud up infinitely: the new one would cover before the old one disappears. To balance that I'd have to make the fade much quicker, which IMO would defeat the purpose of blinding.

Give it a try and see.. offline it seemed like it'd be ok, but I can tweak it a bit. Its always a bit different vs. real people than bots...
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH »

Tell me if this is a crap idea, but maybe we should start with it being able to make endless smokescreens, see how it changes gameplay. If it kills the spirit of the game or feels cheap, then we back it down from there? Maybe if we let it exist to its fullest then we can see how it really sits in the game. There is pretty much no weapon like this in the game.

(Unless we start implementing the Hydra Grenade Launcher from the UT2 weapons pack. Gotta plug that thing again just sayin'....)

What?
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by pooty »

Maybe. If I get time this afternoon I'll play with it a bit more now that its working.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by Enyo »

Hmmm… didn’t realize that’s how the alt fire delay works. I’ll try it out as you have it and see, but I suspect a 3 sec delay will still feel very long when you dive in on a mino you just smoke bombed. Problem is he can start shooting lasers up to 3 sec before you can do any damage back.

Question… does the fire interval delay work the same in reverse? Example, say instead it’s FireInterval = 3s, AltFireInterval = 0.1s, and you Primary-Fire, will it be 3s before you can fire OR altfire? Just wondering if switching the smoke bomb to primary and flame to secondary would make any difference.

If not, I think I agree with YEAAAHHHHHH, reduce the smoke bomb alt-fire interval to very short so you can cause damage almost immediately after with the flame. I know you’d be able to create a more constant smoke screen, but that might be kinda cool, and like he said there’s nothing else like that on the server. And it’s not like the Draco has any real advantages, it still needs some more oomph. Maybe reduce the damage the smoke bomb does to almost zero if the interval is almost zero.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH »

Oh I didn’t know the smoke bomb did any damage. I’d have it zero or near zero damage and have the smoke be pure utility.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by captainsnarf »

pooty wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 12:52 pm
Thanks pooty! So, does the flame work immediately after a smoke bomb now, or is there still some small delay in the flame doing damage? I would think there should be no delay at all in the flame doing damage… the whole point of the smoke bomb was to be able to pull off the Batman maneuver of smoke bombing an enemy and then swooping in unseen for the attack. Doesn’t work if there’s any delay in the flame doing damage.
So the way the weapons work fundamentally in UT is as follows. Each fire (fire/altfire) has a fire interval.
So lets say, using Draco times
FireInterval = 0.1, AltFireInterval = 3s. (Recall it was 5s)
So if you Alt-Fire, it will be 3s before you can fire OR altfire. There's really no way around this (Unless you know a way snarf) The firetank works this way, and pretty much anything with dual fire. (eg. when you alt-fire on Firetank, you can't primary fire until recharge)

So on the smoke bomb, it fires, and takes 3s before you can flame. What I did was set the durations on the Smoke Cloud (2s of expanding growth, persists to fade 8s). So that should give you time to swoop down and start firing without much delay, while balancing the ability to just spam smoke clouds. Try it out, and see. If I reduce the fire rate to say 2s, then you'd be able to pretty much keep a smoke cloud up infinitely: the new one would cover before the old one disappears. To balance that I'd have to make the fade much quicker, which IMO would defeat the purpose of blinding.

Give it a try and see.. offline it seemed like it'd be ok, but I can tweak it a bit. Its always a bit different vs. real people than bots...
Hmm, so that is how the base vehicles are coded yes, but it's not required.

For Rocketron and Flakatron I gave them independent fire intervals. You can press fire and alt fire simultaneously. They will repeat fire at their own intervals.

Check CSRocketMechWeapon.uc -> AttemptFire() method and see how FireCountdown and AltFireCountdown work. Also check the Tick() method that adds support for AltFireCountdown also.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by pooty »

Oh I didn’t know the smoke bomb did any damage. I’d have it zero or near zero damage and have the smoke be pure utility.
Its pretty small 85 on direct hit, with a fairly small radius. Figured it'd be enough to tickle a node....
Hmm, so that is how the base vehicles are coded yes, but it's not required.
Cool good to know. It seemed to work pretty well right now, but I think it'd be good to have it be able to immediately fire primary. That way I could make the smoke fire interval longer and make the smoke last a bit longer too.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by Enyo »

pooty wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 8:35 am
Hmm, so that is how the base vehicles are coded yes, but it's not required.
Cool good to know. It seemed to work pretty well right now, but I think it'd be good to have it be able to immediately fire primary. That way I could make the smoke fire interval longer and make the smoke last a bit longer too.
Yes, it would be even better if you could cause flame damage immediately after the smoke bomb. Last night on Nevermore had the exact scenario I mentioned where I smoke bombed the mino, but the 2.5 sec delay was still longer than it took him to home in and start firing lasers. I barely got maybe 100 damage off him and he nearly killed the Draco before I flew away. Only thing that saved me was I could drop another smoke bomb, and he actually lost me.

I think the smoke definitely needs to be bigger and last a little longer, that mino didn’t seem to take more than a sec to find me after the smoke bomb hit.

The smoke also looks like it spreads out low against the ground too. Is there any way to make it taller, as in plume upwards into the sky more? It should be tall enough where the Draco pilot can’t even see the target vehicle with a direct smoke bomb hit, I could still see the mino after I smoke bombed him right on the hood, I assume that means he could also see me. That way it actually obscures the Draco’s vector of approach.
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Re: Fire Vehicles...Fire Tank, Fire Manta, Fire Raptor

Post by pooty »

The smoke also looks like it spreads out low against the ground too. Is there any way to make it taller, as in plume upwards into the sky more? It should be tall enough where the Draco pilot can’t even see the target vehicle with a direct smoke bomb hit,
Yes, I think if I fix the fire/altfire interval. It can say shoot 1 smoke bomb that could last 10-12 seconds, with immediate draco fire aftewards. I think it bursts radially from the point of impact, I should be able to expand it a bit. I think its a nice effect that's different from just straight up killing/blasting.
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