brice: While I appreciate the work that you are doing, I have two complaints:
1) You are not using the edit button. You have one post right after another. Why not just edit in the new information?
2) You are resurrecting year old threads. This thread is no longer current. This would have been more appropriate in your recent thread about building permeability, or in a new thread.
Thank you,
xander
Start Pylons
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The GoldFish
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I dunno, I don't really mind! A lot of this is actually quite interesting.
Lowell seems to be long gone, however.
Lowell seems to be long gone, however.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
The GoldFish wrote:I dunno, I don't really mind! A lot of this is actually quite interesting.
Lowell seems to be long gone, however.
That was my point. The work that he is doing is really interesting, and I am afraid it will get burried in a topic that no one is reading. The title of this topic is "Start Pylons", and I know that I wouldn't look to a topic named "Start Pylons" for information about how laser fences are working or not. Especially if that topic is quite old. brice seems to have a lot of good ideas, and a healthy does of OCD to explore them, and I don't want to see them lost because they are in the "wrong" place.
xander
The GoldFish wrote:I dunno, I don't really mind! A lot of this is actually quite interesting. Lowell seems to be long gone, however.
Thanks.
FYI, Lowell just replied to my triangle strip thread a few days ago.
xander wrote:I have two complaints:
I agree I've started several related threads and dredged up one that's a year old. This thread seemed like the right place for these pics since it provides all the right context for any future readers. The shape threads could be merged -- I didn't know I'd be finding all these things out when I tried to pick thread titles, etc.
And to be fair, the entire modding thread is pretty dead recently. I didn't see any harm in starting a few threads since there wasn't any obvious (and active) place to post this stuff. I'm sorry if that's not the usual way. I'm open to merging stuff. Can threads be renamed?
I'm guessing you also didn't like the double post of the shape strip fragment. I could have edited the original, but there was a slight chance someone had already read my errors. And adding explanations of my edits would take almost as much room as what I did. I figured I'd just be up front about having posted a screwed up "answer".
Lastly, I just tend to be wordy. Fact. So sometimes I cringe at the thought of editing a post when that would double it's length. I kinda think of new posts as paragraph (or chapter
) breaks. I could wait until I finish all my "reseach" and then post a dissertation. But there's also a chance someone will chime in before I return with more.But if you tell me you'd prefer one long post over two consecutive half posts, I'll respect your opinion since you're one of the handful of people that have kept this modding community alive.
xander wrote:brice seems to have a lot of good ideas, and a healthy does of OCD to explore them, and I don't want to see them lost because they are in the "wrong" place.
Thanks!
-brice
brice wrote:--==<snip>==--
It is obviously just my concern, as TGF and trickfred don't seem to mind. Personally, I would prefer a whole bunch of topics that all discuss different things to one topic that rambles and is hard to find with a search. I would also prefer one big, long post to several posts by the same author in a row. But, as I said, that appears to be just me.
xander
Hopefully I didn't get anyone's hopes up too too high about these laserfence tweaks... 'cause it just ain't so, at least not all the time.
I just did a little follow up experiment. Conclusion: laserfences are just plain flaky no matter what. It is true that moving the post shape *can* make a flaky corner into an impervious corner. But no two posts behave exactly the same way in a fence. I made the mistake of generalizing from the few perfect corners I made. I didn't actually walk the officers around to every post.
It turns out that some posts are impervious on one side, but not the other, some vice a versa. Some are competely impervious, and some are not at all. It doen't seem to matter if the powerstation is linked to the end, or if the posts all have consecutive ids. The holes are always bidirectional, so it's not the normals. The behavior around a particular post doesn't change if I move it or rotate it a little. And my test fence is on a flatten area. No rhyme nor reason.
The only major consistency is that acute angles almost always work perfectly. Almost always. Zigzag fences might work right 9 times out of 10. Also consistent is that most holes are around the post areas. But not all.
Even long long single sections are a little flaky along their length. I placed a section between two mountain tops and dropped the fence into the grid floor below the land. The terran was very rough and the mountains were > 500 tall and ~ 2000 apart. I walked an officer in gather mode along the length, with DGs on the opposite side. It worked perfectly going form mountain A->B, but there were two holes when the DGs and officer swapped sides and went B->A. The curtain extended well below the lowest valley.
If DGs couldn't climb sheer walls, then the posts could be placed on mesa tops and the curtain extnded below. But even then there may be holes if the terrain isn't nearly flat. But the average player won't go looking for those little anomolies, so single laserfences might work in some situations with DG objectives. Especially when DGs are limited, since the holes almost always take a toll.
The upshot is you *can* make perfect joins between fence segments, but it is black magic. Hit and miss. I haven't experimented with relinking ids in a different order, etc. I may not, since it's becoming very mysterious and random. I don't even want to think about what changing the landscape detail mode would do to a "working" fence.
-brice
I just did a little follow up experiment. Conclusion: laserfences are just plain flaky no matter what. It is true that moving the post shape *can* make a flaky corner into an impervious corner. But no two posts behave exactly the same way in a fence. I made the mistake of generalizing from the few perfect corners I made. I didn't actually walk the officers around to every post.
It turns out that some posts are impervious on one side, but not the other, some vice a versa. Some are competely impervious, and some are not at all. It doen't seem to matter if the powerstation is linked to the end, or if the posts all have consecutive ids. The holes are always bidirectional, so it's not the normals. The behavior around a particular post doesn't change if I move it or rotate it a little. And my test fence is on a flatten area. No rhyme nor reason.
The only major consistency is that acute angles almost always work perfectly. Almost always. Zigzag fences might work right 9 times out of 10. Also consistent is that most holes are around the post areas. But not all.
Even long long single sections are a little flaky along their length. I placed a section between two mountain tops and dropped the fence into the grid floor below the land. The terran was very rough and the mountains were > 500 tall and ~ 2000 apart. I walked an officer in gather mode along the length, with DGs on the opposite side. It worked perfectly going form mountain A->B, but there were two holes when the DGs and officer swapped sides and went B->A. The curtain extended well below the lowest valley.
If DGs couldn't climb sheer walls, then the posts could be placed on mesa tops and the curtain extnded below. But even then there may be holes if the terrain isn't nearly flat. But the average player won't go looking for those little anomolies, so single laserfences might work in some situations with DG objectives. Especially when DGs are limited, since the holes almost always take a toll.
The upshot is you *can* make perfect joins between fence segments, but it is black magic. Hit and miss. I haven't experimented with relinking ids in a different order, etc. I may not, since it's becoming very mysterious and random. I don't even want to think about what changing the landscape detail mode would do to a "working" fence.
-brice
Last edited by brice on Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Testrie wrote:I thought introversion already solved this problem by introducing the ********...
eyra
Testrie, I assume that you are referring to Vistawinia. If so, you really shouldn't be bringing it up. Given that it has been announced, perhaps the NDA no longer applies. I don't know. But if you don't really have much to add, as you don't, why risk it?
xander
This is probably my last post on DGs & laserfences. They're just too weird together.
The following image shows a gridding effect:
But it's not what I expected. There does seem to be a corelation between the gridding and the placement of the DG "holes". But the "grid" is a mysterious moving target. I built this test level with a text editor so I could ensure the fences were perfectly orthogonal. But shifting the fence coordinates a little can drastically shift the DG gridding effect. Sometimes they line up perpendicular to the middle of the fence, sometimes right allong the edges. Sometimes the DG's bounce off an invisible boundary 30-40 units from the fence. But the grid is not fixed so again it's hit or miss.
The upshot is: if you really really want a DG-proof fence it does seem possible. When one corner has a hole, play with any static shapes nearby, including the fence post. Also tweak the post coordinates randomly within +/-50 units or so. Try adding a flatten area or tweak the noise parameters for the land tile. You might even try placing solid static shapes in the area to try to merge it's effect with the anomolous fence effects. But it's going to be an awful lot of not fun work. And be sure to check the map under lower video settings. I haven't explored this, but the fence issues are mysteriously sensitive.
I do have one good piece of news:
You can place working laser fences in the water. I did by accident. Xander might use this to prevent squads from wading ashore in Annihilation. A distant isle with two powerstations could drive a fence around the main island (to keep out squads) and one around the power isle (to keep out engineers and squads)... An engineer can disrupt a working power station if it is manned by red DGs. Just send it to an inaccessable point inside the powerstation and it will bounce around forever scaring DGs from their posts. I guess greens could be used if you didn't mind the story inconsistency. In any case, fences always work against squads and engineers.
-brice
The following image shows a gridding effect:
But it's not what I expected. There does seem to be a corelation between the gridding and the placement of the DG "holes". But the "grid" is a mysterious moving target. I built this test level with a text editor so I could ensure the fences were perfectly orthogonal. But shifting the fence coordinates a little can drastically shift the DG gridding effect. Sometimes they line up perpendicular to the middle of the fence, sometimes right allong the edges. Sometimes the DG's bounce off an invisible boundary 30-40 units from the fence. But the grid is not fixed so again it's hit or miss.
The upshot is: if you really really want a DG-proof fence it does seem possible. When one corner has a hole, play with any static shapes nearby, including the fence post. Also tweak the post coordinates randomly within +/-50 units or so. Try adding a flatten area or tweak the noise parameters for the land tile. You might even try placing solid static shapes in the area to try to merge it's effect with the anomolous fence effects. But it's going to be an awful lot of not fun work. And be sure to check the map under lower video settings. I haven't explored this, but the fence issues are mysteriously sensitive.
I do have one good piece of news:
You can place working laser fences in the water. I did by accident. Xander might use this to prevent squads from wading ashore in Annihilation. A distant isle with two powerstations could drive a fence around the main island (to keep out squads) and one around the power isle (to keep out engineers and squads)... An engineer can disrupt a working power station if it is manned by red DGs. Just send it to an inaccessable point inside the powerstation and it will bounce around forever scaring DGs from their posts. I guess greens could be used if you didn't mind the story inconsistency. In any case, fences always work against squads and engineers.
-brice
trickfred wrote:The NDA applies to any material covered by it for one year after the date you signed it. Testrie, read what you sign.
...if the info isn't publicly available. If the Vistawinia currently sold includes all the features tested, the NDA wouldn't be breached - the beta tester just has to show that either they received the information from a source other than IV and other beta testers or that the information was already known publicly.
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