Start Pylons

[trickfred]

In addition to above: Green and red DGs seem to be able to walk through any Teams' fences with a PS attached, but Team 1 Officers can MOST of the time. Sometimes they get burned on the same section of fence he made it through four or five times before. Weird.

I'm done playing with them. Sure, they look nice kicking in, but they obviously don't work properly enough to actually use for anything other than decoration.

[xander]

could you name all your pylons "1" and have all sections rise at once. Rather than winding up 1 at a time... ?

No. This is not a name, but rather a unique ID. Darwinia will crash if two buildings in the same level have the same ID.

xander

[trickfred]

I may have been slightly incorrect.

It seems the proper way to set up the fences is to link the PS to the first fence post, and link the last fence post back to the PS. They seem to work differently, almost properly, in that case. Enemies still seem to be able to move through them though.

It seems that Green DGs will refuse to walk through a green fence when they're set up in this manner, even when directed by an Officer.

[Lowell]

In addition to above: Green and red DGs seem to be able to walk through any Teams' fences with a PS attached, but Team 1 Officers can MOST of the time. Sometimes they get burned on the same section of fence he made it through four or five times before. Weird.

I'm done playing with them. Sure, they look nice kicking in, but they obviously don't work properly enough to actually use for anything other than decoration.

What version are you playing? I just commanded an officer to make them run through the fence and the greens were zapped dead. If the reds come up to it and try to go through they are zapped, engineers are zapped, squads are zapped even if they touch the laser fence poles and cannot walk through the fence. Grenades are the olny thing that can get through. Now I will say that I had a fence up on Nucleus and the red guys did walk through...but I am telling you that when I set this thing up this way it works. And it works well...stops anything from "walking through"...I'm using the 1.42 beta...
EDIT//I have to replace a dead Voice Mail at the Belgian counsel downtown, when I get back I will post the level...

[trickfred]

1.42 full, non-beta.

Do you have the last fence pole linked back to the PowerStation?

My observations are that (while hooked up to the PS):

- The fences seem to be perpetually in 'enabled' state, no matter what they're set to in the editor. For example, you can't seem to to make them be 'on', and have DGs make them turn 'off' by activating the PowerStation (which is what I would assume the 'disabling' mode should be for). Therefore, I'd have to say this doesn't work properly.

- Enemies take no damage (other than a Centipede occasionally taking a hit, but that's the case without a PS anyways), and seem to be able to pass freely through fences set to any Team. That makes fences a liability only to you, and kinda reduces the usefulness of being able to turn them on.

- Set up properly, DGs of any color will not voluntarily walk through them, even if ordered to a point on the other side of them with a GOTO command, or an AITarget. They are still immune to the fences though, as witnessed by stragglers walking through them while the fence was still raising. This of course, may only be until the fences are fully operational, as I can't get them to go through the fence at all once it's fully active. This seems to be the only really useful aspect of the PowerStation's functionality. If you've made them walk through one, I'd like to know how you did it.

- Without the last fence pole linked back to the PS, fences are completely buggy, and their effects, and ability to destroy enemies or player units seem to be random.

Edit:

Wacky. Make an Officer, and set the GOTO point to a point that the fence crosses over, and the Officer's instantly destroyed. Weird.

[Lowell]

Well...when the green darwinians take control of the terminals, the engineers have set the control tower that should be linked to the power station...the now turned off fence enables and turns up...when one is halfway up the poles the next turns up and starts to rise and so on...No red darwinians can get through the fence...they are zapped. Their grenades can be thrown through...their lasers once the fence section is fully up they cannot get through...neither can the squads.

Here is the test map...the camera is set for you...just load go to the "power" map and watch. There is an AI unit for each team...works great. Then look at it in the editor and see.
EDIT//guess it would help if I loaded the zipped file on my site first... brb
Here's the link to the Power map...

http://www.crimsonsun.cc/testIslands.rar

see if it run the same for you...

[Lowell]

Well I have to disagree with you about the "Disabling" mode...That too works great...almost better.

In this test version there is a red team inside the fence...and ten red engineers...the red group gets stopped at the fence as before...but as the engineers compete for the control tower...the red engineers will win after a bit...then the red darwinians take control of the power station...the fence is disabled. "it's fun to watch...the fence goes up and down as the engineers compete for it...Ha ha ha

For fun take a squad in and take back the power station...and the fence will engage once more. So with it set in the disabling mode it depends on the group as to it being turned up or down

It works both ways...here is test number two...

http://www.crimsonsun.cc/testIslands2.rar

I'm going to use this for sure...thanks for telling me about the disabling mode...skipped over it.

EDIT// somehow I think we lost track of my Start Pylon...

[trickfred]

...I don't know what to tell you, but neither mod is doing exactly what you claim they do on my system. The first one, yeah, the red DGs are stopped, but they don't fry themselves on the fence like you said they did. The second one, what, you're claiming the fence goes on once the CT is reprogrammed, and manning it with DGS will then turn the fence off? Not happening. And I haven't fiddled with them or anything, ran them straight out of the rar file. Can you verify they do what you claim they're doing with 1.42 full?

[Lowell]

wow...that's strange. I using Winn 2000 with an Intel board and chips. I can also film the desktop and games as well. But here are a couple stills that do the same. I did notice that when the fence first starts up one or two get through...but after I let it run for ten minutes everything got zapped, even lost two engineers picking up souls a tad too close.
The two pics below are where the two teams were fighting over the power station and control tower, you can see where the fence was going up and down in different sections...soon after this shot the reds won and the fence was down.
.... hey...the first time I used the fences on my Nucleus map the reds walked right through. I had started the fence enabled then. It's working on my system now for some reason.
Could some others please test these maps and let us know what it plays like?

Teams fighting over station shots... {testIslands2.rar} Disabling



{testIslands1.rar shots} Enabling
if you look close you can see the broken figure bottm left and right of the fence...



//EDIT//Warning...use AirStrikes on these levels at your own risk...ha ha ha

[Lowell]

[quote="trickfred The first one, yeah, the red DGs are stopped, but they don't fry themselves on the fence like you said they did. The second one, what, you're claiming the fence goes on once the CT is reprogrammed, and manning it with DGS will then turn the fence off? Not happening. And I haven't fiddled with them or anything, ran them straight out of the rar file. Can you verify they do what you claim they're doing with 1.42 full?[/quote]

>okay the reds stop just before lunging into the fence...every once in awhile one or two try to run through the fence...they get zapped.

>on the map where the two teams fight for the station terminals and the red and yellow engineers compete for the control tower, what happens is different sections will go up and down at different times and rates. Then when the yellow engineers are killed off and the red guys take over the terminals, the fence is powered down, drops all the way letting the other red team through the fence wall.

I have both 1.3 and 1.42 ... well I also have 1.4 but I'm all steamed up about that one...

[hitm4n]

They work as you say for me. Green and red fight over the fence and it goes up and down like a tarts knickers... I spawned a squad and created a sea of souls and green won - hurrah...

Reds do sometimes try to go thru a fence, but it seems only on the right side (looking from the power station side) and they don't die. They seem to get thru then get pulled back. I didn't see any get fried on the fence, but the fence does stop lasers and does block reds at about 95% rate.

Its great to see something new that could be in future mods.

[Lowell]

i did notice that a couple on the right side across from the station ...one or two did get through only to turn around and go back and get fried. I have a couple pics where you can see them breaking apart after going up to the fence.

Trickfred you had asked if I had the far end pole looped back to the power station...I didn't link the last pole to anything...do you think it is needs to be linked back...maybe that's why the far end seems weaker and a couple had walked through...? I'm going to try that now and see what happens...

For the most part it seems to work like hitm4n says about 90 some percent.

The last time I used these I had it start right away (enabled) and no power station...you would have thought it wasn't even there, the reds walked right through. Plenty of engineers still got zapped...wish they could detect the fence wall and try to avoid it.

[Lowell]

Okay...I found out what's going on. It's the poles...they are hollow. Only the fence has the repelling power. See pic...I have the new settings for the stations and poles here...the control tower isn't needed either.



Now I did this test on level ground as you can see...hills can be trouble...I could lower the square area a tad and make it more level and bring in the sides some and fade it out. But this works real good. So I guess use less poles and fairly level ground and you have it...

Here is the new test Island 3 ... http://www.crimsonsun.cc/testIslands3.rar
EDIT// I also used a double layer fence...just for show, that isn't needed either.

[brice]

Okay...I found out what's going on. It's the poles...they are hollow. Only the fence has the repelling power. See pic...I have the new settings for the stations and poles here...the control tower isn't needed either.

Now I did this test on level ground as you can see...hills can be trouble...I could lower the square area a tad and make it more level and bring in the sides some and fade it out. But this works real good. So I guess use less poles and fairly level ground and you have it...

It's not that they are hollow. The two laser curtains meet at a single point inside. The problem is likely related to why single static shapes are solid but clusters are permeable. Let me explain a potential problem with your testIsland3 level.

If you place the near power station close to the fence, then an officer can direct DGs through the fence where they are close. The DGs won't cross other places. When placing the power stations (or any other building) you must be sure it's white area circle does not cross the laserfence.

There probably needs to be a small buffer area too, just like for static shapes and solidity. My theory is that the engine can only handle one "vector" per grid unit. If two shapes are near or overlap, then the avoidance vectors conflict and bogus data gets stored for that point.

This laser fence hole appears to work identically to the shape overlap solidity problem. So I will guess that the pole itself might be causing the engine to get confused at the laserfence corners. You can actually remove all the pole shape info and the fence will still work -- but it's damn hard to select in the editor!

Here's a working laserfence.shp which has no building. Also, the fence markers set the height above and below ground. Could be useful for extra rough terrain.

Code: Select all

Fragment: laserfence
   ParentName: sceneroot
   up:     0.00  1.00  0.00
   front:  0.00  0.00  1.00
   pos:    0.00  -10.00  0.00
   Positions: 0
   Normals: 0
   Colours: 0
   Vertices: 0
   Triangles: 0

Marker: MarkerLight1 #sparks
   ParentName: sceneroot
   Depth: 1
   Up:     0.00  1.00  0.00
   Front:  0.00  0.00 -1.00
   Pos:    0.00  10.00 0.00
   MarkerEnd

Marker: MarkerFence01 #upper edge
   ParentName: sceneroot
   Depth: 1
   Up:     0.00  1.00  0.00
   Front:  0.00  0.00 -1.00
   Pos:    0.00  50.00 0.00
   MarkerEnd

Marker: MarkerFence02 #lower edge
   ParentName: sceneroot
   Depth: 1
   Up:     0.00  1.00  0.00
   Front:  0.00  0.00 -1.00
   Pos:    0.00  -80.00 0.00
   MarkerEnd

-brice

[brice]

So I will guess that the pole itself might be causing the engine to get confused at the laserfence corners. You can actually remove all the pole shape info and the fence will still work...

I tried shifting the pole shape away from the laser curtain junction. This fixes the problem:




Note where the small spheres are on the ground. Those are the laserfence shapes. You can see how the DGs encircle the one that is shifted away. That circle size is exactly the zone of interference between the shape and the curtains. The DGs can pass through wherever that circle intersects the curtain. Building solidity works similarly.

Using these offset "poles" you can actually close a laserfence ring and have no DG holes. I couldn't get the last section to repel DGs if I linked it back to the first pole. I tried the obvious step of crossing the ends of the two end sections. Unfortunately this causes extra holes, apparently for the same reason as above: two curtains cannot cross without creating holes.

By using offset poles a perfect ring can be made with a little text editing. The two end poles must have exactly the same coordinates and rotations. No amount of coerscion will make DGs cross that corner.

-brice