game engine question: armour

[poesel]

I have two questions about how the game engine works.

1) if a shot penetrates its path is followed through the vehicle to see what it hits. Would the engine detect another layer of armour if its in its path?

2) can armour be invisible? I ask because if 1) and 2) are a yes, then we could make forcefields!

[ClaytoniousRex]

1) Yes, but only on another object. Once the armor is penetated on an object, subsequent concave shapes that cause interior armor will be ignored. But all is not lost - see below.

2) Yes. Your collision models (or explicit collision triangles) need not have anything to do with the actual model that's visible to the user.

So to implement your force field, you would need to make a new object which is a child of the chassis. You could use something benign like a Gun - doesn't matter. Make it a sphere (or whatever shape your force field should be) that surrounds the chassis. Mount it with a hinge joint with HiStop and LoStop set to 0.0 so it can't move. Give it whatever armor values it needs and voila, you have a force field. Projectiles which penetrate the "force field" will now continue through to hit other objects (such as the chassis, turret, gun, etc.) if those projectiles have enough penetrating power to punch through the force field. They will hit other objects with reduced penetrating power after having passed through the force field object, just as they do after going through, for example, a tire and into the chassis.

[poesel]

1) If I, for example, wanted to add some crew protection between the Apollons motor and the rest of the chassis, I had to add another object that would consist of a single mesh placed inside the chassis. Would that work? Does armour have an 'inner' and 'outer' side for penetration calculation? Would that be a hard performance hit?

2) What happens if another unit tries to move into the forcefield? Will they start to push each other or just pass through?

Ideal would be a field that depends on the direction and length of the velocity vector. In game terms: vehicles and inf can pass in and out without harm or hindrance, bullets from the inside go through, from the outside have to penetrate.

Can we configure the power reduction or is it simply a function of armour thickness?

Could the field have a visual effect like the deployment zone has?

3) (yeah, you know: theres always more questions ) Spheres? Can we make anything round in this game? The roundest thing I've seen is a hexagon.

[adzling]

hey poesel, i'm working on a concept for an alien race of afv's that would use some relatively advanced technology (including force fields).

it would be nice if the force fields used on the liveship-human produced afv's were somewhat limited.

I was thinking about this issue last night and i think a force field that works as a simple add to armor thickness and has to be synced to the gun so that when the weapon is fired the force field is turned off for a 1/4 second would be a good compromise for the human tech.

the force field generator should be LARGE and HEAVY so that only a BIG afv could carry it and would have to make some sacrifice in SPEED to carry it.

ions could go right through it unimpeded (would make those ions a little more useful).

[poesel]

Adzling, I'm waiting for Clays answer on forcefields. If you can't cross them they would be quite useless.

Another question springs into mind: how do you turn off a forcefiled? If a vehicle is destroyed then its collision model is still there. So the forcefield has to be another destroyable vehicle component.

I can host the Sketchup files where the Wiki is if you want.

Would you be interested in some coproduction? Making and testing vehicles is quite a lot of work.

[aittam]

pos i'm nut 100% sure but by the way they have been described you would collide with them

[adzling]

hey poesel, any way we can hlep each other sure.

how should i send the sketchup files to you?

[poesel]

Just mail it. Address is in my profile. Lets discuss the rest per PM as it will probably not be of much interest for the rest.

[ClaytoniousRex]

If I, for example, wanted to add some crew protection between the Apollons motor and the rest of the chassis, I had to add another object that would consist of a single mesh placed inside the chassis. Would that work? Does armour have an 'inner' and 'outer' side for penetration calculation? Would that be a hard performance hit?

Right, you would have to include another object inside. At the moment, it does not do "inner" and "outer" but I don't think the hit would be too bad.

As for the rest, yes those are all true. You might really want a properly implemented ForceField object type to make all of this really work instead of hacking it in with a "normal" object. Visual feedback would be really important.

Spheres? Can we make anything round in this game? The roundest thing I've seen is a hexagon.

Sure, it's just a question of polygon count. If you want poor yllamana to be able to play, then you have to keep that count low.

For collision detection, you can use CollisionSphere instead of CollisionBox. There are some examples in the power storage building I think.

[poesel]

A 'yes' reply to 'or' questions? Programmers answers...

My guess: yes, a forcefield would 'push', yes, power reduction is a function of armour thickness.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Correct! Sorry to make it so difficult!

[poesel]

Another armour question:

'Front', 'Left',... are just names for 6 armour values. If there is an object which has only one armour value from all sides, would it be enough to make one collision object which would be identical to the complete object, give it a name (say 'Front'), assign it a value and be done?

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yes, you can do that, Poesel.