Oi, mates,
lately I found out that Mr. Camp has hidden nice features in his code.
Strangely, almost nobody makes use of them.
I'm just beginning to work it all out, but it looks promising . . . (hopefully)

So, let me take you to a foreign planet:



Or shall I say a nasty planet, full of rotten aliens ?



It's hard enough to kill each other, but now you're in the sights of intergalactic suckers.
Better truce against them . . .

They have eyes in the sky too.
They can, and they will, shoot back !



But don't despair, I've packed seas of fire to give them hell !

See you at Pams World.

BTW,
the secret of the jagged landscape, and the stunning water, is no secret at all.
It's called vector graphics.
Download your copy of Inkscape today, it's free !

Hi Pam:

Hidden features? Really, are you sure?

The boid code, isn't hidden, although there may be some things you want to do that will require a little work, and some things that may seem possible that simply won't work at all. Spline movements are a problem for me at the moment. I can make the little critters go where I want them to go, but they don't fire the same way as the ones using the boid movement. Perhaps I need seperate weapon types specifically made for the boids using the spline movement but as I said before, I've put this on hold for now.

I'm interested in how you forced the bots to use the alien tank model and wonder if you have found a way to force them to use specfic avatars as well. What I have to do currently is delete the computer.png avatar and rename some other avatar as computer.png for use by ALL of the bots.

What I would prefer, given the idea of my server, is to have all of my Apoc Champion bots using the avatar and tank style of the real player they represent and also, if possible, the color that they prefer. Is this a "hidden feature?"

Along the same lines, I'd like to link back to the Apoc HQ FFA stats so that the current rank of the bot is the same as the current rank of the real player. Also, I'd like to have the weapon choices and play styles of the bots matched somewhat closely to the real players as well.

My current understanding is that the types of things I've mentioned is not possible without changing the core. Please prove me wrong on at least a few of these.

Thanks,

Rommel

very pretty, pam. i am impressed.

vector graphics though? any textures and height maps are raster, surely.
water looks cool. looks to me like you have some of the shaders turned off though. am i right?

i'll look out for the server. love the hype : )


ps:
are those jets your creations? they look good. if yes, how are you handling model exports/mapping/smoothing groups etc? (just matter of interest)

Rommel,
I don't use bots with alien tanks, the aliens are defined as tanks.
Tanks.xml accepts the '<aionly>true</aionly>' tag, but it had no effect . .
There's nothing you can do about the tank avatars as long as there's only one TankDefinition file.
You can name any file computer.png, but they will all use the same pic.
The line in question is:
You can hack the game , but unless everybody has the same files, it won't work as a server.
Ask Gavin to define different tank classes, maybe you can catch him in a good mood.


Lappy,
you're right, all hight maps are raster, so I should say exported vector graphics.
The problem with normal paint programs is, that the game reads color numbers. No human eye can spot the difference between single color steps. We can't even spot steps of 10, #000000 and #0a0a0a looks all the same to us. If you just paint along with different shades of gray, you can only guess what it will look like in the game. Mostly, shades of gray, that are different enough to be distinguished without eye strain, won't give a smooth slope. They will look like stairs.
Generated landscapes are much smoother, but with the small differences each time, there's no way of manually placing models.
That's were vectors graphics comes in handy.
As you might know, .svg files are just plain text. You can open them, copy a layer and change some numbers. What I'm basically doing, is painting with a text editor.
I'm using Blender for models, but it takes some time to get used to.
Blender can unwrap a mesh, and lets you paint textures from inside the program.
I found this very convenient.
Models are exported with a Python script made by CBX550.
Then it's back to the text editor again.
I'm much better with plain old numbers than with complicated apps.

This looks verry neat!!

not to question your methods, but i still don't see how vector formats are relevant. any vector image can be represented precisely in raster form at given dimensions (at least in this context). surely you could do the same thing in whatever raster editer.

also, just to be an asshole:

(10 apart)

i know, shades of grey. : ) my limit's about 3 in greyscale.

While these landscape showing more ways to use the existing
methods are interesting, Pam/Raven/roflmao has been globally
banned from all Official servers for some time now..
For being an admitted 'enhancement' user; recompiling the source to include cheats.

http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/phpBB2/view ... c&start=60

Please try to remember this while replying to these posts and entering
non-approved servers.

This is not an attack, it's simply a general warning. There are still
a minor few of us that believe that cheating is wrong. Has nothing to
do with ip-discovery, or malicious code transfer.

nice edit. but what are you trying to achieve with this warning?

i wonder if your minor few are acting unilaterally. this worries me. at least it would if i cared as much about the community as you seem to (and i'm not saying i do ; ). quit it, please? it's not helping.

<this post edited for content by Panther30>
Just to make things clear . .
We are 2 people, Pam is the female, Raven is the male part.
We don't know the third guy.
If you look at my mates first post, when he asked for help with the build,
even a blind person would have noticed that coding a bot is beyond our skillz.
What I did is modify my sight. It's 5 deg lower.
I have a tendency to aim too low, so that helps me a bit.
That's all.
But you know how folks are, if they suspect something . . .
From now on, every of my shots, that wasn't completely off the mark, was clearly manipulated by the dark side of the force itself . .
To make things worse, I once typed to Derrick in German and and said things like:
"You need to aim about 5 deg lower and approx 50 more power."
Those were just guesses, but since our monolingual friends only understood the numbers,
it was clear that I was reading values from an evil device.
That's paranoia for you . . .
The person that started to spread FUD with his aimbot (which he of course never used) thread, should have kept the damn thing and STFU.

Btw, it looks like someone banned the whole IP range from 81.18** - 81.19**.
That's 1.000.000 addresses . . .
Doesn't that give me a warm fuzzy feeling ?
Yo bros, am a GANGSTA, and no two ways about it.

And now there are friendly_reminders, general_warnings and not_attacks.

Bloody hell, they've spotted my evil plans . .
I'm sitting here, for hours on end, painting, coding, modeling . .
This can only mean I'm up to something REALLY BAD.
Who knows, I might even tell dirty jokes and use foul lingo on my server.
(Which in fact, I do )
<line deleted>
It can't possibly get any worse, can it ?

Anyway,
I understand that the game, use of the servers and forums, are for free.
The owners and their inferiors can do whatever they see fit.
If blackmailing is one of their hobbies, there's nothing you can do but hope you're not their next target.

So much for the benefit of "approved servers" . . .

Have fun

For what it's worth, I entirely agree with Lap. I know I'm on Pam's list of "our monolingual friends", but what the hell. These warnings are pointless. I don't see how they achieve anything apart from driving this discussion into unhealthy off-topic.

i felt rebuked beneath his eye: i might have known there was but one, whose look could quell

ps:
foreigners

Fine.. I've archived the true mods, and deleted scorched folders

I'm Gone...

I might be back after the cheating and lying is resolved.

I shouldn't have started to talk about vector format.
Everyone keeps on asking what I meant . . so let me try to explain with pics.
You're all right, the finished image looks absolutely the same, no matter what program was used to create it. My point is that vector graphics are easier to make and edit.
Lets look at a this hightmap:
This is what you work with in a raster editor like Gimp or Photoshop.
If your unhappy with a shape or color, you have to repaint it.


This is how the same map looks in vector format:

If I'm unhappy with shape or size, I just hide the stuff above the objects in question, and pull at the points and handles you can see in the pic below, until I'm satisfied.

Another advantage is, that vector graphics have no pixels, you can zoom in as much as you like, it never gets blurry. Colours can be assigned for whole objects or just a part of them. Gradients can be applied by clicking on colours or entering values. You have total control, there is no guessing. The creation process of maps is scriptable. I always found it hard to draw a landscape that rises smoothly out of the water. Now I start with a shape and tell the app to make X layers that differ Y% in size and Z steps in color.
Long story short:
You can edit/script in seconds, what you'd otherwise paint for hours.

Was this clear enough ?


Btw,
Lappy told me to "QUIT IT !" and I'd love to, but I never took shit from anyone, and I won't start now. Maybe they should ban me from the forum, too . .

Isn't it amazing how some ppl pull in their tail, after a taste of their own medicine ?

ah yes. splines and bézier curves.

i understand. very nice.


and i meant quit it with your alter egos, not your lovely mod.

There are already tank classes, called tank types. But they don't extend to the avatars, just to the health, power and weapons.

Nice map BTW.