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Item solidity, or why my phaser or weather passes through things.
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One question that I don't know has been addressed to date is the nature of building block items in the Foundry, and indeed some of the premade maps as well. I have noticed if I use parts in the toolkit to build a structure, and then add weather effects to the map, such as snow, my nice pretty building now has a raging snowstorm inside as well as outside.
These buildings also tend to be transparent to weapons fire as well. On premade maps this also has been an issue as well where I can fire at enemies around corners or in separate rooms through a wall, and be fired on by said enemies as well.
At the moment, this primarily influences some of the immersion of Foundry missions, adding a feeling of disbelief to a given mission. Thinking forwards though, with some of the potential upgrades to combat stated in the Season 4 release, it becomes to my mind more critical that a wall be a 'solid' object that I can duck around to let my shields recharge, or to be able to absorb the brunt of a photon grenade thrown near it. Is this issue related to the pathing issues that have plagued the first iteration of the Foundry? Has this been addressed to any degree with the build we are waiting to go live on Tribble at this moment? Any response would be greatly appreciated to see where things stand in regards to this so we can try and make some of the best missions we can for the community at large.
These buildings also tend to be transparent to weapons fire as well. On premade maps this also has been an issue as well where I can fire at enemies around corners or in separate rooms through a wall, and be fired on by said enemies as well.
At the moment, this primarily influences some of the immersion of Foundry missions, adding a feeling of disbelief to a given mission. Thinking forwards though, with some of the potential upgrades to combat stated in the Season 4 release, it becomes to my mind more critical that a wall be a 'solid' object that I can duck around to let my shields recharge, or to be able to absorb the brunt of a photon grenade thrown near it. Is this issue related to the pathing issues that have plagued the first iteration of the Foundry? Has this been addressed to any degree with the build we are waiting to go live on Tribble at this moment? Any response would be greatly appreciated to see where things stand in regards to this so we can try and make some of the best missions we can for the community at large.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Sorry Soriedem, not sure if your post is in supposed of Castmodean or an editors note of objects that shouldn't be used for a particular purpose.
wow bummer Castmodean. I'm only complaining about ESD Space and A couple of lost Pop ups.
This will effect some of my future Foundry Mission scripts.
Somehow I don't see Cryptic seeing this as a concern to halter launch, But it should be a huge concern to players of Foundry Missions. If the wall bug didn't kill Missions, this could cause some problems. Especially for authors who do not know that playing your mission is as important as designing and writing it.
Like I stated, there are already issues with some missions that have been created because either mobs themselves can start engaging a player through a wall, or vice versa. I had a terrible time, if I am recalling the correct one, with The Grand Nagus' inaugural mission because I kept getting agro'd through corridor walls and sometimes from around corners. This has continued to be an experience I have run into, and this is simply with pregenerated ground maps from Cryptic's inventory.
When we start talking with an structure that is built using parts from within the toolkit itself, it becomes even more difficult because while there do appear to be some oddities to these. While mobs don't always seem to be able to see through a structure, it is still possible to shoot at them through a structure wall. In addition to this, placing these objects in the environment creates no blocks to weather effects. The example I give is I build a neat domed structure one day when someone had asked about creating a vaulted ceiling. While I was just testing the flexibility of the editor, I placed the driving snow weather effect on the map. Walking inside the structure, I am still assaulted by the weather effect. Now I would love to think by making an object solid, that would stop this, but I guess the question becomes how exactly are weather effects 'drawn' and does this recognize models on the screen. Say a author wants to build structures for a map that is experiencing a 'nuclear winter' and want to be able to enter and exit the structures on the map. The suspension of disbelief fails when said winter is pouring through the walls of your building. When I was a child, I had blocks and I build structures for my action figures to explore and the like, this is what i see the building blocks as in the Foundry, but I really see a need for the objects to be as solid as the blocks I built with, or whats the point?
i agree I don't believe that this will hamper the launch of the Foundry on Holodeck, but it leaves a glaring opening when compared to the missions Cryptic created and gave 'full' building time to. I understand that in order to increase the performance of publishing a Foundry mission, they cut down on the passes run against missions, but is there a compromise that can be met so that we can get the best of both worlds? Am I approaching this concept from entirely the wrong idea? If so if someone would help me to understand the process or the 'state' of objects, that is all I am asking for, other than for things to work like I think they should
We have the ability with our FX system to use particle collision so stuff like rain and snow stops as soon as it hits a collideable surface. However this would mean calculating collision for every single snowflake, which would certainly cause a significant framerate hit. I've requested some very light snow/rain FX that have full collision to be added to the library, but I doubt we will be able to do thick storms with collision turned on.
I know you can show/hide objects based on triggers... have you tried adding a trigger to the entrance of your structure that hides the snow effect?
::runs to test::
I had thought about that earlier today that it might be possible to use a reach marker to do that, just got to get the timing right, the one down side to that is you can still see the weather effect inside the structure as you approach it, but it is at least a potential workaround to start with.
I've tried it and it's pretty noticeable that weather magically turns on when exiting a structure. The best that I could do was make the reach marker trigger happen inside the buidling, right before the player runs outside. Still if they stop, it snows inside.
It's a work around, but it's still an eye sore.
I concur with this analysis so far, while I can understand the insanity of trying to predict collision on every snowflake, the effect of a trigger is....ok at best.
Is there anything though that can be done to improve the other issue, the opacity of structure walls and map walls to enemy weapons fire and the like?
Is it possible to have an invisible object that would "hide" the effect. Wouldn't need to have collision at that point.