Fade clipping.
BigD
[OldF] Join Date: 2002-10-25 Member: 1596Members
[OldF] Join Date: 2002-10-25 Member: 1596Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Well, a clip brush for fast moving critters.</div>While writing my other idea just now, I thought, hey, this is something else that's annoying. Boy, it would make fading easier (read: more newb friendly) too.
Oh, before you go jumping on me about a lack of skill, just remember, NS2 is going to be on the source engine.
The source engine is capable of more detail. A lot more detail.
And you can bet you're sweet sorry fade heiny this'll mean mappers are going to make sticky little things that look really nice. A lot of stuff can be, and should be properly clipped as it is right now, but if you go overboard, that skulk hovering off the wall will look sort of weird.
Let's take miasma or painted cooridor in ns_nothing for example. They aren't a huge problem like that, but they are of that size where filling them with normal clip brush would be weird for skulks to walk on, but they are of a snaggable size.
The reason I'm saying this, is so often people blame the map for their death. Then they go on about how they hate this or that and never want to play it. I recall someone somewhere saying the map should offer strategic challenges, not so much tactical challenges. (Tactic in this case being a subset of a strategy, if you follow what I mean.) Doors and pits-o-doom have been regularly removed from maps since 1.0x for that reason. It would help smooth out gameplay AND allow the mappers to stuff in little fiddley bits.
So how to implement this? Have skulks and fades automatically engage it while leaping/blinking? Lerks all the time? Speed thresholds?
Oh, before you go jumping on me about a lack of skill, just remember, NS2 is going to be on the source engine.
The source engine is capable of more detail. A lot more detail.
And you can bet you're sweet sorry fade heiny this'll mean mappers are going to make sticky little things that look really nice. A lot of stuff can be, and should be properly clipped as it is right now, but if you go overboard, that skulk hovering off the wall will look sort of weird.
Let's take miasma or painted cooridor in ns_nothing for example. They aren't a huge problem like that, but they are of that size where filling them with normal clip brush would be weird for skulks to walk on, but they are of a snaggable size.
The reason I'm saying this, is so often people blame the map for their death. Then they go on about how they hate this or that and never want to play it. I recall someone somewhere saying the map should offer strategic challenges, not so much tactical challenges. (Tactic in this case being a subset of a strategy, if you follow what I mean.) Doors and pits-o-doom have been regularly removed from maps since 1.0x for that reason. It would help smooth out gameplay AND allow the mappers to stuff in little fiddley bits.
So how to implement this? Have skulks and fades automatically engage it while leaping/blinking? Lerks all the time? Speed thresholds?
Comments
I.e., instead if being a box, the clipbox would look like this (from the top down view):
.___
/***\
|***|
\***/
I really suck at ASCII art, but this kindof gives the jist of it. You'd basically be cutting the corners. This would help a lot with movement around detailed architecture.
Edit: Apparently gaps in posts get deleted.
Yes, except only for blinking. These walls would prevent fades from being trapped by random geometry. So if a hallway(top down view) looked like this,
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->______ ______
|____|
____
______| |______
it would act like this for a blinking fade:
_____ ______
\____/
_____
_____/ \______<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
Only thing would be that you'd probably have to add in some sort of 'orientation' to the entity, which tells the clip which way the player would exit. Without it, a fade in the details who started blinking could get caught (this is just a bug i'd foresee). With this orientation, the clip would know not to hinder the players movement if its within 60 degrees of the orientation. Hence, if you put the clip against a wall on the left, the orientation would be straight out to the right, allowing any players moving at speed within the clip to exit without problems.
I mean really, who sits in a corner as a fade trying to hide? Even lerks are usually on the floor or in a vent when they aren't flappin' around.
It could work by holding the blink button to show you a sprite on the floor for you to blink to (sprite will be shown at crosshair. This way you don't overshoot your target and it looks way cooler then "look ma I'm flying while making "zoom zoom" noises". Also the air blink could be done by modifying the distance you want to blink while holding the same blink button and modifying the distance of the indicatior sprite with your scrollwheel...
Ah well, not going to happen I'm sure. But still I like the old blink better... And babblers, ehm.. And perma gorge <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
This is basically an issue with adding clip brushes to smooth out terrain after the main bsp geometry. It can and should be done to effect all classes. That's how it is in TF2 and that doesn't even have flying classes.
The problem there though is skulks hovaring wihtout flapping. No really, they should kind of stick to the wall. What you're pertaining to is probably something that should be done anyway. All the small geometry ought to be fully clipped smooth. When done well, skulks could still look like they're on the wall even though they're hovering off it lightly.
What I guess I'm getting at is a special clip brush for the medium size stuff. Stuff a skulk should hide behind, but fades and things should blast right past.
Mind you, now that I think about it, my logic here could be leading me in circles...
<!--fonto:Lucida Console--><span style='font-family: "Lucida Console"'><!--/fonto-->MY BRAIN ASPLODE<!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc-->