Sooo drones...are you going to have to deploy the CV to get them? Tbh there's been a few low-pop games where it wouldn't have been so bad for a cv to have like two helper guards to build and protect, buuut the problem is when you're a single player against even a turret it can be an issue. Especially if you consider a low-pop game is usually a mix of newbies and experienced players. If they're going to be dangerous, you might have to have them use something that's painful...but not too lethal.
There will be a structure to build them, perhaps even the old aircraft factory, though I am aiming for a smaller model. I intend the first building to be free though. They will spawn and use tickets in the process, with the commander being able to disable drone/bot spawning. And they will be able to be upgraded and customized like vehicles, which will cost res. It won't be like mg/ml turrets. They will have offensive - lethal - capabilities, but remain vulnerable to small arm fire. The idea is also to make them (a bit) slower than standard infantry.
Sounds interesting at least. Low-population games are really a different game entirely, so it's a good idea to start treating them as such.
I disagree only with tickets cost. I think that's the point of unmanned vehicles/drones... Reduce human casualties...
Don't make a building for them, that will just make it harder for them to get into the game. Because you need to make the building, fuck with the textures of the building, spend god knows how long bug testing and collision testing. Just place them like you can with turrets, thats easier to do and it gets what you want faster. If you are so set on giving them their own structure. Go with my idea of making and implementing them, place them like you would with turrets, then work on the building so the feature of having drones is in the game and not hindered of not having the prerequisite of the building.
Not really, I just need to fix a few weird collision model issues. Nor is it difficult as I can copy the current VF code. It's quite easy actually. But we have a building. Alternatively I was working on a model for it anyway. The most difficult part is the pathfinding, which can be copied from hl2.
until you find out there are walls and turrets, their ability to completely seal off areas will give you headaches i dont mean to disencourage you though. also to add to the more general discussion, "real" bots will be even more difficult as you can place buildings that are walkable. the hl2 pathfinding is completely precomputed. by extending agent with an avoidance algorithm you might be able to use it for distance pathfinding, but going inside or onto buildings would need a way more sophisticated approach. and then there still is the walls/turrets thing mentioned above ... i might be mistaken though, i only read a bit about it yesterday.
Well, hl2 ai might be advanced enough to deal with that. I mean you could move cars and barrels around and the ai could navigate around it I think.
yes as long as its only convex shapes it needs to avoid it might work (though empires buildings are rather big) with not that much effort.
From my recollection pathfinding in HL2 was done with nodes and a navmesh, which you certainly won't find in any empires maps regardless if it's supported or not. For my 2 cents I think drones that move with a direct vector waypoint system would be better anyway. As in the commander would make three shift-right clicks and give them three exact points to move to in sequence.
Not really, not in open areas at least. The problem starts when certain passages are walled off. I intend to fix it by making moving drones similar to moving units in in the Homeworld series. Allowing the commander to adjust the altitude of the drones (to a certain extend). Yeah, hence I'm not going to try and make that work. The drones are intended for open maps, though the way I envision them they should work with maps like Homeland and Streets of Fire as well.
I know shift click lets you drop multiple buildings. Shift is used to do something, add units to a group or something like that? I can't really remember what I used it for besides the multi building drop now. Also, I remembered that the zombie master did release their source code which might be handy to you.
I meant shift clicks to queue orders, yeah it can be used to select more units and drop multiple buildings. I'd love to shift click a unit that is selected to deselect it.
I still say mobile turrets, and giving them move commands is the easiest, fastest solution to get what we want. The turret code is there, just make them follow move commands. A custom repair turret that fixes and builds anything in a small radius could be exactly what we need. Adding waypoints to my idea as well.
