seperating drifters and macs more

RobB

<div class="IPBDescription">unique movement</div>I would say that the drifters shouldn't float around. Their size is to big for their weakness and importance (slug down - no buidling, period).
Instead, they slime over the surface of floors, walls and even ceilings to avoid marine contact. if there is infestation growing there, theyre "swimming" through it, giving them a visual cover bonus (no damage reduction, just hard to spot).

yourbonesakin

Wallclimbing pathfinding would be much more prone to error (and thus much more complicated) than flying pathfinding.

Slurping along on the floor would be less difficult, and it might be rather cool.

Having a puddle of Dynamic Infestation (or Drifter inside said puddle) travel to a res node to build it would be a very cool builder bot aesthetic.

Once DI is in, why not?

Chris0132

It would probably be easier to just have the MACs work like ground units for the most part, following floor paths, and give drifters the option to fly high and in odd paths.

You could make a separate set of path nodes for drifters which takes them over big obstacles or around the edges of rooms, then let the alien comm switch behaviour between using MAC pathfinding and drifter pathfinding, or speed vs stealth as the UI would call it.

RobB

I don't even know how pathfinding is done here besides the obvious nav nodes.
Of course, you could allways compile surfacemaps into the mapfiles, but that would require a blue to host the games I guess.

It's just that those slugs seem still too anorganic despite their wiggle animations.

Chris0132

Probably because they currently move like really thick bots.

I'm sure UWE will add a bit of flair to their pathing code or animations to make them actually drift around an area more.

Hell if it were my choice I'd scale them right down and have a little cloud of the things be the unit instead of one big fat one.

Kouji_San

In like the idea, but I also like to keep an eye on mah drifters. Them floating around will make them harder to target and if they can hide from marines, they could also hide from the Alien commander (HUD could fix that). Just makes sure they aren't to jittery in their movement for selection purposes (CTRL+1 to 0 helps of course)

BRICE

MAC = Light blue or contrasted color - take a pick.
Drifter = Light blue or contrasted color - take a pick.

As in an aura or something like in NS1 (parasite, markers, waypoint color)

Differentiate the colors or let them be the same.
Purpose being them being visible to the commander and stand out a bit even amongst human players but mostly to spot "hiding ones".

peregrinus

Drifter should look more like this little guy :)

After the dev guy posted about the non playable Aliens being based on sea creatures, I googled 'underwater crustaceans' and found this:
<img src="http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/09bermuda/background/plan/media/spelaeoecia_600.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<i>Ostracods are small, bivalve crustaceans that can inhabit underwater caves. The ostracod genus Spelaeoecia is know only from marine caves and occurs in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and Yucatan (Mexico). Image courtesy of Tom Iliffe, Bermuda: Search for Deep Water Caves 2009.</i>

RobB

Topic: failed.
Try again in another thread, please.

Harimau

Alien structures and models should definitely have more translucency to them. And maybe glow.

RobB

Yes, but its not working at the moment. That's what flayra said, it will be done later.

schkorpio

i like this idea - slurping around on the ground would be creepy as, and it could keep them hidden to some extent.

as long as the commander can find them easily then its all good.