Just a random suggestion... What about customizable entities for the mappers, so that they can add usable civilian vehicles, or soda-machines, or ridable... animals! or hell, environmental hazard characters... you know, crazy redneck rebels holding a resource point, just to add some character and variety to maps. I mean if there's a map that has a school, I'd expect there be a bus somewhere that I could (if I had to) use to take my troops somewheres... and of course, BEAR CAVALRY
For starters, your suggestion does not cover NPCs, so why did you name the thread like that? And this would take too much time to code with little real results.
If these aren't Non-Player-Characters... I don't know what is. I guess I should be a little clearer. I'm not saying add it as a regular feature in the game. BUT, if the mapper so chose to want to include something like that in his/her map and it would be feasible to do so, why not. Are custom entities importable within a map so that they import as the map is downloaded, or do you have to use only the ones in some file on the game? Ex: A mapper makes a map based on an old abandoned weapons facility, and there are "experimental vehicles and weapons" all over the place. These will obviously not be in the empires data files, but if the mapper wanted to go through the work of doing all that, I'm saying let him. Now, I guess the downside of this would be Custom Mods.... of a mod... which would be bad too...
An entity which allows custom vehicles to made would be complex, and with the amount of variables needed it may not even be possible to do in hammer. And the suggestion guidelines list bots (which are a type of NPC) as not being considered. The Ai would only strain bandwidth even more.
oh yeah, they would be considered bots... nvm Now, I remember in the old CS maps, there was a "func_jeep" that made the objects it was attached to drivable... or should I post this as a separate suggestion. My idea here would be for things like trains/monorails, etc...
And, as i have said multiple times before, very complex to code, and place in the map. If you could easily place such a vehicle in a map, then it would be possible to do with console commands, which you can't. And then there's bandwidth usage, and i'm not going into detail on that.
