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 First scene/mission - Some issues 
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Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:11 pm
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Post First scene/mission - Some issues
Hello, I've been making an evac-style mission for the past week or so (inspired by Data's interview in the play magazine) and It should be playable soon. There are few problems which I've been trying to get rid of, and I thought ask for some help, advice and opinions here.

You start inside your bunker with a negative gold value and a few troops+weapons and have to make it to the rocket hangar with your brainbot, clear it of enemies, and launch your brain to space (the rocket arrives automaticly when the room is cleared). To spice things up there are 4 points/spawns where the enemy is trying to get in (the dark purple areas + the shaft at the flat area near the cliff) and some of the doors and security systems jave been jammed. I'm trying to make it so that when you finally get into the rocket and lift off, you'd have only max 2 guys + the brain remaining. In other words: challenging, since you have about 12 guys at the start.

I copy pasted most of the code from existing missions as I didn't know any lua myself, or any programming language, but I have learned a lot.

Oh, and this needs the Bunker Module Compilation Pack v2.0 to work.

Update: The scene seems to be about ready, I think I'm going to post it in the release forum tomorrow or later today. Only things still causing trouble are the caves and the debris in them, changing all the small doors to stationary objects to avoid lag (maybe), the whole switching the doors team during the mission thing (also optional), and making the rocket have stay mode automaticly so when you open the doors and change actor, it wont try to lift off.

Attachment:
Body Movin.bmp

Attachment:
Body Movin.rte.rar


Some stuff that still needs to be taken care of:

- I can't seem to be able to make more than one spawn, one time I managed to flood the map with dropcrates but I wasn't sure if they were from just one spawn. Maybe it has to do with another timer but I wasn't able to make one.
Update: Solved. I was trying to make enemies attack from the lower right spawn with a dropship (just because rule of cool) and the top dummies would arrive with dropcrates. However the dropship just kept killing the dummies too often, so I made them spawn also in dropcrates, and thus made only one spawntimer with shorter delay that just uses random landing zone. The 3 new entries made the map 300% more playable. I haven't setteled for the delay between drops yet and might change it if requested, but it seems pretty good now.

- Dummies from the spawn currently working (lower right corner) try to climb the hill with poor results, maybe after the brain unit gets nearer to the hangar they will change direction.
Update: First I thought making them just go wait for you in the hangar but after solving the door issue they usually go for the lower route now.

- It's a bit big i.e. laggy, fixing this would mean I'd have to place the bunker stuff all over again, and without changing the layout drastically, I don't know how much it would even help.
Update: After reading somewhere here that having many doors can cause slowdown, I tried removing all the doors and it worked. I was able to add 6 doors without causing lag (there were about 16 before) haven't still tested what the limit is though.
Update 2: The amount of doors is ok now. Was thinking of making all the small doors just stationary objects that wont open to anyone, since the enemy won't use them anyway, but I have to do a bit of research on how to do it. With all the actors added, there is still small lag, but it seems to be about the same as with all the other maps


- I tried to place few storage crates in the warehouse with random gun inside each one, but I couldn't get that to work either (the code is in the crate.txt file inside the .rte folder)
Update: I decided just to put the weapons directly in the room with the editor to avoid making the thing more complicated. I may remove or add more of them later (as well as troops etc.).

Optional:
- Is there a way to make a door change teams during the mission when the brain walks into a certain area? Allowing you to pass through the gauntlet near the end (now it's on your team at the start).

- I still get debris inside the dark purple areas even after trying to make a custom material with roughdirt texture and putting a few pixels of it in the map.
Update: Even after trying the technique used in orbit lands, I still can't get this to work. The stones tend to slow down the enemy's movement a lot.

PS: Lately I've noticed in the taskmanager that Cortex Command consumes 100% processor use, I don't know if it did so before. I tried reinstall but it didn't help, and I barely have any applications running on the background, any suggestions?
Update: Few days ago the problem solved itself somehow. Then again yesterday CC is using 100% constantly. Interesting thing is when I alt-tab/minimize the game the usage drops down to almost 0%. Can't remember what other settings I changed other than the resolution, so maybe that is the reason? .... Nope, changing the resolution (ingame) did nothing.

Thanks in advance.


Last edited by einari on Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:13 am, edited 5 times in total.



Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:30 am
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Joined: Mon Apr 28, 2008 1:35 am
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Post Re: First scene/mission - Some issues
wow, this looks pretty awesome. I really like that contour. Can't really help with the lua though...


Sun Nov 30, 2008 5:36 am
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Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 4:55 pm
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Post Re: First scene/mission - Some issues
If you don't know what you're doing with the Lua bits, that could be the cause of the lag and high processor usage. Though the processor usage probably depends more on what kind of a processor you have. I'm pretty busy right now, but if you still need help in a few days, I'll take a crack at it.

Watch out for using a lot of "for x in x" loops.


Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:29 am
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Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:30 am
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Post Re: First scene/mission - Some issues
Lord Tim wrote:
If you don't know what you're doing with the Lua bits, that could be the cause of the lag and high processor usage. Though the processor usage probably depends more on what kind of a processor you have. I'm pretty busy right now, but if you still need help in a few days, I'll take a crack at it.

Watch out for using a lot of "for x in x" loops.
If it slows down considerably check RAM usage. While you wouldn't think code takes up too much RAM, doing something like:

for x=1,10000 do
table[x] = "this that and another!"
end

While that's over exaggeration, defining tables or even code statements inside an iterator can use up considerable amounts of ram. So if you're running on anything below a gig, It might also be a cause.

Now, while I don't know CCs coding specifics, I know general Lua, and use it in Garrysmod. I could probably offer help if need be.

Also does CC feature infinite loop detection? An infinite loop may also be a cause if it does not.

Something like:

Until x = 100 do
x = 1
end

could do that. Again serious over exaggeration, but you get the jest of it.


Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:46 am
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