Hi, anyone knows how to make a fully-functional man cannon?? Thanks.

Play Halo 3+.

That wouldn't be making a man cannon, that would be spawning a pre-made man cannon. Try again.

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Most man cannon ideas for CE seem to make use of damage effects, using a non-damaging explosion to propel the player. Other concepts involve making the man cannon into a sort of vehicle, and having its enter/exit animations send the player along a pre-determined path.

I know there had been various tests and research done back a few years (god I'm so old), since everyone was getting sick of the BS/laggy "non-damaging damage effect."

As far as I remember, the only two strides I saw was some map whose name escapes me but it had a large lake in the middle that dropped off on either side and had a man cannon (literally a cannon) that shot you across. One side was like, Death Island and the other Blood Gulch with the back slightly fused into Infinity or something.
Edit: http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3636

The other I believe might've been from t3h m00kz. Dunno, but it was a small non-released map that supposedly had man cannons/lifts that properly worked over the netcode. He had shown .gifs and that was all I can recall.
Edited by ODX on Jul 20, 2012 at 04:49 PM

Didn't Senior Slappy das Pirate use teleporters for a man cannon in his Valhalla?

you mean the one i'm currently in the process of remaking\finishing? yes. And progress is going nicely. Slowly, but nicely. I'm getting a rather large progress report together to post on the old thread in the next few days. i haven't done cannons yet, i'm still trying to think of the best way to do it. Lol.

slappy the pirate spent ages on trying to make man-cannons work and i think he just came to the conclusion that it just wasnt going to work smoothly on-line so he opted for teles, but he really did try everything, to the point where it did his head in

Yes, slappy gave the map his all. It is a great map, it just needed more time and a little love. Lol. I'm giving it everything i have to try to get it as close to halo 3 as possible.

In multiplayer, you will always have minor problems (For the most part, because object position and angles are what sync, not velocity). In SP, you can really do basically anything lol.

1) Generic damage_effects. Just cause force on someone to launch them somewhere. Multiplayer issues are that unless they are applied at the exact same moment, and hit the exact same number of times, the people will be moving at different speeds on client and host PCs.

2) Device carry. have some elevator that carries them over. Biggest thing even in SP, is if they walk off this device. MP, you then have to worry about them activating at the same moment (Although automatic activation should be fairly good for that part)

3) Vehicle. Have a vehicle where it's animations carry you over the map to the desired location. For MP, it would REQUIRE client-side doubles(Or else clients wont see anything, they'll just show up on the other side eventually). Depending on activation time on peoples computers, some people will be at different locations on each others computers (However since you are inside a vehicle, there shouldn't be the lag effects. it should be smooth)

4) OS Velocity Application. Just apply exact velocity to someone. This way, you know they are going at the exact same speed if the script executed on the same time on everyone's PC, and you do not have to worry about it stacking speed as it will just reset the speed to the same default if it activates twice on them. In theory, you could improve this even further to insure the people flying stay at the same speed throughout there entire flight, although this is overkill and :effort:


In all reality, all of these get down to them activating at the same moment on ALL PCs, the same number of times (for those applicable).

Hmmm. So what if you made a device that was shaped like a bole, or forklift, that was automatically activated and the animation was it traveling where you wanted, then set it so that when it was activated the player could no longer move, but could still shoot. Would it sync, and if so, what are the chances it would fail at times?

Or if i made one that just flung you, like it launched forward when you stepped in front of it. could that work?

I think your most reliable option would be teleporters.

This thread isn't about teleporters, it's about man-cannons, so i'm looking for the most reliable way to make them. Lol. Lets call it...experimentation.

Right, but man-cannons seem to be inherently unreliable, at least without OS.

You can try and trap them in there all you want, but its overall unrealistic, and you have to hope they do indeed activate at the same time. Launching an item ends up the exact same as everything else that uses velocity (Although with devices, if its moving to fast without certain settings, it will let the person fall through rather than propel them. And it you use those settings, they will stick to it. Its one of the elevator settings)

Also, if you're using a device that carries them the whole way, if you use automatic activation that means there can only be 1 at a time (since if you placed enough for 16 players, they would still all be carrying the first person since they activate automatically)

Hmmmmm.... understood. Thanks for the insight.

If I remember right, H3MT_Narrows had working Man-cannons, however they only worked/showed up 70% of the time. I'll go in game and check.

EDIT: Nope.avi
Edited by chuckluck on Jul 22, 2012 at 10:05 PM

How about mkaing a trigger volume or something that fores you to get in the vehicle that plays the animation of being launched somewhere?

i believe slappy tried that, but he couldn't get it to sync. what about a recorded animation? or an animation scripted to be activated when inside a trigger volume? then again you'd still have the issue of getting it to execute at the same time on every clients computer...Hmmmm...Lol.
Edited by grunt_eater on Jul 24, 2012 at 10:35 AM

Isn't it nice that people read my post on all the different ways of doing things before posting ideas?..

Recorded Animation follows your keystrokes.. Unless the player can currently preform a jump identical to the man cannon, it wont do anything (And if they can jump that far, whats the point? Let them do it themselves if they really want to jump to there) And animation would be the same as vehicles (That's all the vehicle is doing. Having you sit in there, and exit when it gets over to the other side)

Okay, i have a couple questions.

1: What exactly do you mean by "For MP, it would REQUIRE client-side doubles"? are you saying that they'd have to have matching vehicle positions, or something else? Please clarify. Lol.

2: So basically are you saying that for scripted custom animations it would do the same thing except without a vehicle?

To force people into the seat, they need the vehicles object name. Without OS, you cannot get the object name on clientside PCs (and with OS, its limited but it would be more than enough for this application) The host doesn't tell anyone who was scripted into a vehicle, so the clients can walk around and lag crazily not knowing whats going on with the people they see. object_create checks if the named object exists; if it doesn't, create it. Since the clients have no clue that the vehicle exists on the hosts PC, they create their named duplicate. On the client PCs, they aren't even in the real vehicle, they are in a fake only seen on their PCs, but since that sort of information isn't transferred, nobody even knows, because they are put into the fakes that move them the same as the originals do, at the very same time since the conditions in the script are met at the same time. Since mancannons do not drive around, they don't have physics, so the fakes and real ones don't collide either, they exist in the exact same space, doing the same things.


JMW should work (World relative animations), although I have never personally used a JMW. Its the same idea, just carry the person directly to a location. Anyways, if you animate the person, their body moves in the exact way listed in an animation. If you have a person sit in a vehicle while the vehicle animates, the person can still show whatever animation they want while the vehicle does its own animation, so if you have it setup similar to w-passenger, they can aim around and act more naturally, etc.

understood. i will say that i'd probably use a JMA though, because in the past i've noticed that no matter what direction you're facing it plays it in the direction you're facing.. so something like.

(script continuous cannons
(if (volume_test_object "gravlift" (unit (list_get (players) 0)))
(vehicle_load_magic (unit (list_get (players) 0)) "W-driver" man-cannon))
)

or

(script continuous cannons
(if (volume_test_object "gravlift" (unit (list_get (players) 0)))
(custom_animation (unit (list_get (players) 0)) "characters\man_cannon\gravlift" "launch" 1))
)

i threw those together real quick, so idk if they'll work, but yeah.

(script static unit p0 (unit (list_get (players) 0)))

(script continuous cannon_01
 (sleep_until (volume_test_object cannon_entrance_vol (p0)) 1)
 (vehicle_load_magic (p0) "Fake-inAir-driver" cannon_vehicle_01)
 (sleep <DURATION OF ANIMATION MINUS A FEW FRAMES>)
 (vehicle_unload cannon_vehicle_01)
)

I went all colorful for some reason.

Anyways, open your characters animations, make a duplicate of the stand or something, toss the airborne stuff everywhere, see how long the enter and exit frames are, have the sleep the duration of the animation minus the number of frames your exit animation is. In your vehicle tag, you can toss the movement animation connected to a function block for driver power (so it will automatically play the animation when someone is in it, and stop when someone isn't) There's lots of other ways to trigger the animation on the vehicle too, do it however you want (I don't really care lol. I'm caring less and less about this thread with each post I make.)

Of course, for the picking a cannon to put someone in, rather than having a set cannon for player number, you can have it check which cannons have people in them, and which ones don't. (vehicle_test_seat_list <vehicle> "<seat_label>" (vehicle_driver <vehicle>)) although in this situation you can just check (players) instead of vehicle_driver.

I didnt read anything since it's speaking about scripts in the end, but I can tell you MASSFX makes miracles in max 2012 for animating, you can even use the inithial velocity by making a starting animation before letting 3ds compute trajectories.
eg : https://picasaweb.google.com/112524143346253422469/Pictures?noredirect=1#5733853987117838338
Edited by bourrin33 on Jul 25, 2012 at 03:29 PM
What a king google link ! Pray this one.

I think I'll attends to king-fu class next year.
Edited by bourrin33 on Jul 25, 2012 at 03:30 PM