Has any thought been given as to how the buildings arrive at their locations?

I've been thinking about this and it doesn't really make much sense to me how a building just magically appears in the middle of nowhere when the commander places it. I think it would make the most sense for the building, or rather, a box of parts to be dropped from the sky (from outer space or high flying planes) to the ground... right before the box of part lands, it'd fire retro rockets and settle to the ground nicely. After that, engineers would rush to the box and construct it -- the building would unfold the more the engineers calculator it. Of course, since it takes some time for a rax to land and players or vehicles may get under the rax... they'll unfortunately be crushed to death (or the building placement will be aborted at the last moment).

An alternative to buildings landing from space would be for a commander to spawn a box-of-parts on wheels from a vehicle factory that players would then drive to the desired location and unpack.. >_>

I realize that this'll take extra modeling from our already strained modelers... so I volunteer to make a prototype of an unfolding building... maybe I'll have something made in a month once finals are over.

 

It's a game.
It doesn't need an explanation.

There's no reason to waste time modelling it...

 

Has any thought been given as to how the engineer's calculator can build just about anything, of any size, by shooting out electrical sparks, despite being the size of a palm pilot and looking like it was manufactured for the 1990 Radioshack catalog?

I propose engineers carry around excessively large backpacks full of building materials, equivalent to about 5 points worth of the current calculator's battery charge.
They'll carry these large backpacks (1 at a time) from the local home improvement store to the commander's selected building site, and proceed to work into a recognizable piece of whatchemecallit.

 

You guys make it sound like this is one of the threads I would lock, but this is a good (and ooooooold) idea. It'll happen as soon as we have seventeen animators with nothing else to do. ;p

 

No, but seriously... the way that buildings appear fully formed absolutely out of thin air is pretty silly. Worse off, a lot of the time this placement is abused -- commanders place two barracks by each other and have the engineers build the one that is in the back while the front one takes a few hits and its burnt out husk protects the rear rax. Also, I don't like how commanders can spam walls and they plop down out of nowhere -- it's extremely cheap how commanders can try to wall in enemy vehicles or commander by placing walls out of thin air.

Finally, if the game seems to function cohesively like this -- that there is a reason as to how everything comes together -- then it helps with immersion.

 

Teleporter! D:

 

no, they magically come out of the ground


think walls

also, have the buildings grow out of the ground like walls do, PROBLEM SOLVED

 

They're Like Fungus!

 

The energy contained in the air materialises the building, it just takes more money for the mole people to make it happen <_<.

 

Have anyone thought how the Grenaider can carry 9mines, a mortar/rpg + ammo for both of them. + a pistol of course!
?

 

I've dropped an armory directly in the path of an oncoming enemy heavy once or twice, just to stall them.

The words everyone uses ("dropped") does imply that they're dropped from above. But they appear instantly, so my assumption is that they're actually prefab building fired out of a railgun somewhere in space. The railguns used by each side were built long before the war started; they are impossible to reach or modify now. They also have security lockouts that keep them from being fired near people, so you can't just crush the enemy comm with a rax from space.

The buildings arrive almost perfect, but they still need their generator 'sparked' to get it going. This is what engineers are actually doing with their calculators (all buildings also have shields, which explains why charging them also causes them to be able to absorb more damage, and why damaging them slowly runs out their charge until they explode into a blackened husk.)

The CV just has a satellite uplink to this building-railgun. They still have to pay res because the railgun was originally intended to be a profitable venture; they're literally buying the buildings from the computer systems of a now-defunct company.

 

The main trouble is that animating the buildings would probably require a redesign of the architecture as well as some way of animating the collision mesh, which I'm not sure is possible.

 

Oh, it's possible. You just don't want to see what happens when a player is next to it, much less a vehicle.

 

Just do what walls do.

 

I have thought about this, but my idea is that it will be an "alpha" building, so that although you can go threw it, it builds like the towers on emp_slaughtered. without the falling ontop the tower exploit.

 

It's actually really hard to make an alternative solution other than jump on top.

 

Er, I assume it's the old 'unstoppable force meets immovable object' problem that occurs in games where physics is not very accurately simulated?

If so, just make sure the animation doesn't include anything that might crush people.

 

Animated collision boxes = fail.

You know how if you stand on top of a moving build brush, it envelopes you? Essentially that.

 

I would love a large double tank sized box that telaports to that location which unfolds as the engy pisses on it with the calc. This would defiantly stop commanders blocking shit by spamming barracks and armories.

 

When the comm places a building, a metal framework pops up like a construction site. The engys use their calculators on that framework to build. Whatever animation goes on inside during building, the engys won't get stuck or enveloped cause the framework acts as a wall. It disappears after building is done.