'99 lappy? That's newer then my dell compy. Not to mention my 98 lappy.

lol i just got a new lappy and it's очень супер. i can run halo to it's full potential now. a better comparison is that i can play CRYSIS.

HOLY SHI- MAN!!!!!

Can ithandle Cry 2 ?
At full settings?

People, please. While I myself am curious to see where this new red herring will lead, doing so here is not the place. Kindly relocate all technical conversations to your favorite social medium or PM, and restore this thread to its original glory.

That said, all I really need to do is finalize the crash site and the surrounding mountains and map everything that isn't already. I will be making a minor change as well: cutting in a new chasm (not accessible in this map) that will serve as a visual tie-in for a campaign series I'm concocting.

lol, я хочу видеть эту карту. ( i wanna see this map) whats an estimate for completion?

he hasn't gotten to that point yet. he's still modelling the map.

For a complete list of vehicles I plan on including, read my very first post. It also details the weapons.

Current deadline update: assuming little tool errors (and no 'consistent' ones), I estimate a month. I feel the design is complete, and as long as tool is happy, I need to map the cliffs and terrain, and make the terrain bitmap. Following this, I setup a bit of shaders, then populate it and publish it for testing. This is, of course, a is ballpark estimate (putting it mildly).

Here's an update on the final(?) design plan:

Album:

http://imageshack.us/g/23/crashsitecliffs.png/

Picture 1:



Compares Requiem to Extinction. Unfortunately, it will still suffer from clipping. I did what I could to eliminate this problem, but it will persist. The only combative measure is to use the Clipping Distance Changer.

The chasm now has its stream setup (but not mapped) and all other planned water boundaries are finished (also not mapped). Obviously the crash sit and playdoh mountain are different. The orientation is such that it will still be somewhat integral without cutting off red's addendum from the main area.

Picture 2:



Here's what's new on red side: the addendum entrance is much closer. To prevent it from being flooded by the lake, I put in a tiny cliff (circled). A 'island' of sorts borders the area, keeping the lake at bay. An actual island (circled) was put in for fun. It will be tree'd and rock'd up intensely. You can also see the crash site plowing through the area; still involved and visible, but now not in the way as much.

Picture 3:



Here's an overview of the changes. Besides what I discussed above, everything was pretty much brought closer.

Picture 4:



Here's a full view of the crash site. You can see the playdoh mountain is gone, replaced by a much better looking cliff overhang. These cliffs are still un-climbable and tall enough to provide a legitimate seal to the map. Note that the crash site is still partially flooded; I hid all the water for easier viewing of the terrain.

Picture 5:



Another view of the new cliffs. I wish I could pump more polys into these, but alas, I cannot.

Okee dokee...I have no further major plans, and anything minor I can think of now would be nothing more than a simple optimization or otherwise insignificant alteration to a cliff face for better appearances. I'll begin running this through tool shortly, and consequently will be spending a while hassling with errors. Hopefully my persistent and BS overlapping face errors will disappear (or at least diminish somewhat). Once tool likes the model, I'll make the terrain bitmap and map everything else. Then, off to Sapien and testing.

That said, this will probably be one of the last calls for design suggestions. Speak now, or forever (likely) hold your peace.
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Jul 23, 2011 at 10:03 PM

Amazing, Gonzo. Any chance of a quick little steam/waterfall from the mountains filling up the crash site? All that water has to come from somewhere.

Edit: I hope I don't sound demanding, lol. Just re-suggesting the idea for re-consideration. If you don't want to do it, that's okay.
Edited by nick347b on Jul 23, 2011 at 11:10 PM

As far as the vehicles are concerned, you have a very respectable list for this map, but can i make a request? I'd really like to see the turret's walking animations fixed and employed; as it stands its a sitting duck and useless against decent pilots. Thanks.

Turret?

I think he's either talking about that covenant tripod turret, the scarab, the mythos that are all featured in the original extinction. However the turret doesn't have walking animations, while the scarab and mythos do, but they aren't exactly turrets. These are the only vehicles to be turrets or vehicles that have walking animations in the original extinction. Thus we have created a paradox. I think Switchblade needs to clarify what he means.

Imma ask a question probably asked many times before. Whats the current estimated release date.

Approximately a month.

Well, I have 356 bogus 'overlapping' faces...I deleted a few and rebuilt them differently and still got the same error. Hell, I even noticed some of the errors go away while new ones appear. The WRL will be totally different with each pass through tool...even worse, most of the 'errors' are within the models I imported from Bungie's work. I simply do not understand this at all, and I'm not about to delete 356 errors worth of faces, rebuild them, cross my fingers that tool likes them, then spend hours upon hours remapping them.

Needless to say, this could push the release back a bit. Help?

yea i noticed that bungie's stuff has errors even if its directly imported lol. its weird but i think they used a different tool than us and it doesn't discriminate faces lol.

Try ripping 2 single player bsp's and trying to put them together >_> (Map:halo)

I was talking about the Covenent Shade (your "tripod turret") and yes it does have walking animations, they were never set up properly but they are there. Bungi had them disabled for the campaign and multiplayer due to their tendancy of flipping when walking (one flaw), and that they don't seem to want to walk in straight lines (second flaw other than the initial one to re-enable its movement). I know this because i've played a map where someone re-enabled it (can't remember the map name though >_<). If this isnt possible for you to do could you just replace it with a (more combat effective) needler turret?

Nah. I don't want walking turrets because it defeats the whole idea of them being defensive measures. If you want a mobile plasma system, take a Scarab or a Spectre or a Banshee or a Ghost or blah blah blah. I may use the Needler turret, but I may also just make the stock turret better. Faster projectile speeds, maybe a bit of homing, certainly more accuracy, and I suppose the ROF could use a change.

I really like the phantom as a dropship and ce's h2 phantom pretty much craps all over it.

IMO, a dropship should be a vehicle that's incredibly resilient to heavy fire, but also slow and under armed. It should be able to hold most of a team, transport them to the enemy base, virtually unscathed, give infantry minimal cover fire with a weak turret, and then have to fly away to safety. Basically, 'an elephant in the sky.'

-So what I pictured is an h3 phantom with one pilot seat, one gunner, and six passenger seats. The Driver uses his firing triggers as switches to open and close the side panels so the troops can get out, or they can simply drop out of the bottom hole.

-The turret should only be controllable via gunner (warthog style) with the gunner's camera underneath. Because off the gun's position, it should only be effective on ground units. It should fire the basic phantom plasma burst. Relatively-powerful against shields with splash damage, but slow and low rate of fire, so infantry can barely escape with most of their health bar.

-Pelican style physics, though preferably even slower movement forward when 'hovering.' Either a little faster or slower than a banshee, but close so they can keep up with each other.

-As far as getting hit, it should be virtually 'indestructible' (extinction pelican) on the outside, especially from other aircraft. However, the interior should be significantly weaker, especially from ground fire. Ground based turrets and rocket launchers should be its natural enemy. The idea is, a jet spamming rockets from across the map would barely hurt it, but a well placed grenade through the drop hole would almost kill everyone in it, and that's if it's not already damaged. Similarly, a soon as the pilot opens the sides to let out the troops, the interior should be dangerously exposed to infantry fire, and so he'll have to immediately fly away.

... so that's my idea of an ideal dropship, I don't know if it would suit this map though.

That's an amazing idea. I like every part of it, aside from under-arming the dropships. Downgrading their weaponry is certainly feasible, but not to the point where it can no longer provide adequate cover during deployments. When the time comes I'll work on this, or, if someone is willing to step up, I'll task it to them (giving credit where credit is due, of course).

In CE, unless you are in a seat in the vehichle, you will fall out, no collision. Give the criver gun control. No one really uses dropships for the real reason anyway, tbh. They pick up any aircraft they can.

I beg to differ; provided you had a large enough vehicle, set up individual collision geometrys for its interior parts set it at a slow enough speed, as well as checked the "walks on any surface" box in gurilla you can in fact "walk" inside of a vehicle while its moving.

Unfortunately this method completely eliminates a pilot's or passenger's option to eject straight through the vehicles' haul; they'd have to walk through it and jump out of an opening (the whole time hoping that they can achieve this while the vehicle is falling at whatever angle of decent it started in)

A single, multi-purpose turret. Has an average rate of fire, and an average amount of damage, meaning it can engage both enemy infantry and vehicles, but not as effectively as more specialized weaponry. If you give them a secondary weapon, it should probably be something along the lines of a carpet bomb or unguided warheads.

This would in fact be a GOOD idea to have the inside's "walk around able"

Pilot should NOT have gunner power. Could YOU fly a dropship and control a turret at the same time then jump out straight through the hull of the ship?

And the pilot wouldn't have to eject as along it's an ARMORED DROPSHIP.

Physics in this game don't allow you to walk aroud in a moving vehicle. You'll fall right through and die.

Wow, that sounds perfect! I would love to see this kind of ship in-game

Didn'tchewread?

He said how......

To those saying you'd always fall right through, I'd beg to differ. There have been plenty of times when I've walked around inside pelicans and Drakos, as long as they're not moving ('hovering') you should be able to walk around. Anyway that's mostly not an issue because it would only take a second and a half to get out, by any means.
Edited by WWLinkMasterX on Jul 25, 2011 at 04:56 PM

I'm pretty sure it mentions somewhere in one of the Halo books that the main gun on the Pelican is linked to the pilot's helmet. If the pilot looks left, the gun looks left, etc. All he's gotta do is keep his eye on the target and pull the trigger.

There is a disconnect between what you are asserting and what Sergeant 1337 is saying. Your statement may be true that you can walk on a vehicle when it is NOT moving but you CAN'T when it is. The physics of the game do not allow it.

This is true; I've played around with the above mentioned 'solutions' before, to no avail. It's of little consequence, however, as I will not be implementing such changes to vehicles. Egress and ingress will remain the same. Each dropship will have a pilot-operable turret, as it does now. Each dropship will have a secondary weapon that is best used in a jam (i.e. small salvos of homing projectiles). Unless testing proves otherwise, this is final. I love the idea of making dropships a valuable and strong asset, just not as strong as the Pelican is now (as much as it pains me to admit).

can you have a vehicle inside the vehicle? xD like moving seats or a vehicle that's movement is limited within the vehicle its in

like the vehicle fp leg trick

so when you enter with the action button youll be able to move about inside the vehicle and leave it with the same action button

yo dawg i heard you like getting around in a vehicle so we put a vehicle inside your vehicle so you can get around while you get around

...naw that prolly wont work cause you aren't following the momentum of the vehicle you are on so youll get pushed back anyways but without dying or picking up weapons

Why would anyone walk around inside a dropship while it's moving? That's what seats are for.

Being able to haul a warthog over somewhere would be great.