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After reading about negative falloff values for non-beam weapons, I got another brainstorm.
You can simulate a system that is protected by cloaked mines. If the player is (or becomes) hostile, the mines will be activated. If he flies withing range of one, it will de-cloak and start tracking the ship.
Get a dude to start in the system. This dude is a completely cloaked interceptor AI type. It gets a special weapon.
128 Mine Stage 1 Can fire while cloaked An invisible sprite Homing weapon 90 Reload 0 Speed 31767 Life 500 (or so) prox radius -1 Explode type (might need to check detonate after count) Subs into 129 Subs fail if count expires
129 Mine Stage 2 Homing weapon 200 Speed Corona Falloff -1 200 Life
So basicaly, the dude fires off a couple rounds and they appear completely invisible to the player. They will hang around for up to 18 minutes, right where the dude fired them. But if the player gets within the prox radius it will sub into the second stage. To the player it will appear to fade in over 30 frames and begin to track him.
It might be necessary to add a third stage to get the AI to fire it when out of effective range though. The third stage will simply add another damageless invisible sprite that has a fast speed to fake the AI into thinking it has a long range.
You could even use this to guard a specific spob in the system (well, for 18 minutes) Possibly, you could get the spob to always fire the weapon. Just give it a burst reload equal to its life count. (That way you can get multiple mines - and give them some low speed so they drift abit) Though this would make the spob appear outright hostile, not just defensive.
Regardless, you get the dude to always appear at a specific spob, and always attack the player. It will fire off the mines close to the starting planet. So as long as the player doesn't wander into the "forbidden zone" he'll be ok. If you give the dude 0 speed, he'll stay on top of the spob too.
Hmm. Maybe I'll try to make a couple examples of this.
What do you guys think?
This post has been edited by Desprez : 26 March 2006 - 01:28 AM
What do I think?
I think I'd like a mine weapon which would track and impact on any ship in the system, not just the player or whichever target happens to be hostile to the generator ship.
I think the player would get a warning klaxon right away (though that's not necessarily a bad thing).
I think I might have a good use for this, even more so if that first request of mine can be worked out...
This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 26 March 2006 - 06:40 AM
@weepul-884, on Mar 26 2006, 10:39 AM, said in System guarded by de-cloaking homing mines:
Wouldn't a Xenophobic government for the dude work? Alternately, you could have drifting mines that have a prox triggered by any ship.
Anyway, here is a demo that I was working on while you posted.
System Mines (Use with AbsoluteMinimum)
This has three different ways of generating mines.
Also, I have included not only cloaked mines, but also asteroid mines.
This plug was a bit picky for me, sometimes the dudes weren't working. It seemed that if I simply shifted the resources around, it would suddenly work again. This might indicate some kind of corruption, but it was working when I zipped it up...
Instructions: First, land at the starting planet and pick up the mission in the mission bbs, this is to generate the dude over the other stellar in your current system.
As long as you don't get too close, you are safe. Go wander over to the other planet and see what happens.
Pros: The mined spob doesn't apear hostile. Cons: uses up an active misn. ----- Next you can warp to some other systems. The one south on the map has three planets. The on in the center of the system is supposed to be friendly but because the system is owned by a hostile govt, it appears red. Anyway it won't fire on you.
The planet to the south-east is protected by mines, the planet is firing them at you.
The planet to the south-west is uninhabited (so it appears grey on radar) but it also belongs to a hostile govt and is firing mines too.
See how close you can get to the planets.
Pros: fairly easy to control placement of mines, easy to set up. Cons: whole system is hostile. ----- The other two systems both have a single planet. In these systems there are cloaking dudes to warp in and out laying mines.
One has cloaked mines similar to what you already saw, but they will appear system wide, not just local to the planet.
The other has mined asteroids of three types.
While sometimes you can catch asteroids as they de-cloak, the -1 falloff produces a fade-in that looks very natural. (if you land and take off from the planet in this system, you have a good chance of seeing this effect.)
Pros: Can use in planet-less systems Cons: Harder to set up. Getting the dudes to behave properly is difficult. ----- Though I didn't include it here, you could also use a planet to distribute mines system-wide. Have a weapon that subs thus:
Speed: 0 Life: 1 Sub into 36 parts theta: -10
Speed: 20,000 Life: 5 sub into 1 or 2 parts (36 or 72 eventual mines) theta 180
Speed: 10,000 Life: 5 theta: 180
Speed: 25,000 Life: 1
Armed and waiting stage Sub or Detonate on prox trigger
Homing stage (if not already detonated)
This will give a fairly random dispersal in a 3500 x 3500 area in 11 frames Giving a lower range in stage 2 would make overlap a possibility in the later stages, allowing for a higher mine density the closer you get to the system center.
Alternately, you could skip a stage by making stage 2 the initial state. Control the number of mines with a reload of 1, and a high burst reload, with the burst ammount being the initial number of mines you want. Just give an inaccuracy of 180.
How these dispersal patterns will differ would take some testing. -----
Another thought...
In Override there was a way to ensure that a particular weapon sprite would always appear under a different one. That is, one mask will cover the other. (Either it was related to RID order, or the player's shots were always on the bottom)
If you have mines that don't de-cloak before detonating, that would make a system very deadly indeed. (use a black sprite, but keep the mask in the siloutte of the mine)
So you could also have a special mine detector outfit... simply a weapon with a large sprite looking kinda like a broad flashlight beam. (reload 1, life 1) Make the flashlight appear below the mine masks, and in this manner it will illuminate any mine sprites you point it at.
Fan-freakin-tastic!
Ok, so I tried the planet distributing massive ammounts of mines system-wide...
I was trying it on a smaller radius than I listed previously. Both methods worked, but the sub into 36 initial parts did it faster.
However, the rapid fire had one clear advantage. It will still work if the player takes off from the planet in question. As near as I can figure, it is initialy traveling so fast that the set-up shots sail right through your ship - the sprite masks never make contact. Where as the sub in 36 parts hits you on the first frame, and no mines are distriuted.
What's the advantage to this?
Well, as I was doing this, I botched one of the trials and got, not an even distribution, but a ring of random mines with a clear central area where the planet was. I took off from the planet, and in the space of 36 frames found myself surrounded by a 250 pixel thick ring of 144 mines, with 400 pixels diameter of clear space on the inside! There way no way out!
(I was using asteroids and not invisible mines at the moment)
Since I had added a speed of 20 to the final result, they were left drifting in random directions. Some of them were drifting inward, and the noose began to slowly tighten.... I had created a trap!
Anyway, I could vary the result and make a veritable maze of inpenetratable mines. Quite fun to try and slip through a temporary gap as you run out of space and time!
This post has been edited by Desprez : 26 March 2006 - 12:43 PM
Another cool idea. Martin Turner had a system with mines in Frozen Heart - I'm sure he could use something similar to create a better implementation for FH2.
@desprez, on Mar 26 2006, 06:34 AM, said in System guarded by de-cloaking homing mines:
Where as the sub in 36 parts hits you on the first frame, and no mines are distriuted.
ProxSafety?