[Source Tut] Conveyors for the Semi-Experienced

[et_cg]

http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/6707/conveyorsmallub8.jpg


Okay, the question of conveyors arised in the General Discussion chit-chat, so I decided to take l SINERGY l's hand and guide him through the process. I promised to release any source created from this, and from what we've gathered - and experimented, we've decided to release this collaboratively.

He already had a small level (mind all the vert's, it's just a quick map), with the shaders assigned, so I took it upon myself to mingle around with a few things.

We found that you DO NOT want to mess with the scenario_structure_bsp, but rather - The shader's animation value itself. This opens quite a bit of possibilities, such as outrageously wild rivers, conveyor ladders (mb?), and quite a deal of other innovative things that I could not fathom in my mind.

It is not requested that you give credit if you resolved to using this for reference, but it would be appreciated if you did. :D

+Rep goes out to l SINERGY l.


Be sure to read the readme. :)


Download (http://www.h2vmods.com/files/conveyor.rar)

[Zeph]

Gj.

[l SINERGY l]

Now to make a level completly made up of conveyor belts lol :).

[Con]

conveyor ladder? no no, that's for fat people only!

good job

[Kornman00]

So what I posted in that thread wasn't what needed to be done? figures...

[et_cg]

Aww, Korn... you brought up a great idea, though. It's pretty nice that they allowed shader animations to control physical properties.

[Kornman00]

I do recommend messing with the U and V values...

[et_cg]

The trouble I was having with the "Conveyor" block, was the UV values seemed to need "i, j, and k" values, which are all related to physics. Bah, I had a hard time working with those. I did note, that whenever I imported the structure, it was defaulted back to a few default numbers. All I had to do was affect the material's animation, and poof - it affected the player/objects. :) And made an animated surface. Killed a couple birds with one stone right there.

[Resinball]

Much appreciated.

*Not a big deal, but I noticed that the description file conveyor.txt was located inside of tags instead of data.

[l SINERGY l]

Much appreciated.

*Not a big deal, but I noticed that the description file conveyor.txt was located inside of tags instead of data.

You can blame that one on et_cg since I didn't put together the rar:lol:.

[et_cg]

lol, oops, my apologies.

[beele]

I've got it working except for one thing: If I step onto the conveyor I don't move, but the only conveyor itself is moving.

What am I doing wrong?

[et_cg]

You probably didn't modify your material name inside of 3ds max, the included 3ds max file shows what it should look like.

conveyor>

> is the symbol for conveyors. This allows whatever animated texture is on the surface to control physical interaction with it.

[beele]

Okay, I must have missed that on some stupid way, thanks alot.
:)

[et_cg]

No problem.

[[EJ] Bean]

This is going to help my map ALOT. Thanks guys.

[beele]

I now have two conveyors, but I want them to move to the oposite side of each other. (===><===)

How do I do this?

[et_cg]

I'm guessing you didn't read the readme.txt, Beele.

Please, check over all of it's documentation as for it get's most major questions answered, such as multiple conveyors.


Be sure to read the readme. :)


NOTE: If you want multiple conveyor surfaces that work indepently, be sure
to create different materials/shaders for each of the surfaces you are defining.
Do not instance your shaders either (e.g. shader0, shader1...) Make sure that
they have unique names. This also helps when trying to obtain different speeds
for different conveyor surfaces.

[beele]

I just named it wrong (I named the second shader [conveyor.shader] which shall be the problem I guess.

Thx

[Llama Juice]

This would be an interesting addition to a race style map.

Make a ramp out of conveyors... just make the final one on the ramp go hella fast :P

[[EJ] Bean]

Um does any one know how to make crates continouly spawn and dissapear, like in enlongation?

[Kornman00]

Scripts

[et_cg]

So anything else wouldn't work? They managed to get a crate script to sync over netcode?

[Kornman00]

Not really. Just the game is setup to be a deterministic state and all objects have some basic properties that are shared with all machines (see zanzibar windmill), and devices have proper game state synchronization (see the zanzibar gate).

EDIT: So you could create an effect that spawns crate objects to reproduce that shit, but you'd have to then setup the crates to disappear somehow. Better just to script it

[Zeph]

Is this essentially the same thing as the energy lifts on high charity? Like where you step on a circle things, something forces you a bitch off the ground and then you move forward to another circle thingy that sets you down?

[l SINERGY l]

Im not to sure how you would do those because they move in an arc but yes that's basicly what they are.

[Kornman00]

Those are gravity lifts last I checked

[[EJ] Bean]

It could be a collisions only conveyors belt lol

[et_cg]

No, I believe those would be directed gravity lifts, or something to do with scripts. Hard to really tell, as access to that content currently has a big X on it saying :P. I'm sure we'll have tons of great content once that is figured out, though.

[Bastinka]

Pretty neato.

[Kornman00]

Their exact control over the player (start and stop speeds especially) pretty much gives it away as not a conveyor. That and I think only units can travel on them (the high charity lifts) where as a any physics enabled object can be moved by a conveyor.

[et_cg]

There are gravity lifts that affect players inside of objects, such as a player in a warthog, or banshee, even a ghost. Sadly, I've yet to see the high charity ones with a vehicle.