Chaos Magic

[jb]

Perhaps to make it more effective, we can increase the collision radius on the weapon when it is in blocking mode?

That really wont get us anywere. In fact we hardly use the collision on them as it is. The reason is that you can not rotate the collision cylnder at all. Meaning the blocks would never get detected correctly. Thats an engine limitation. For blocking we look at the distance of the weapon bones. And if they are close we call it a block. We also change how close the have to be depending on if the player is trying to block or not.


But I think shadows right. Maybe tweak some of the animations so they cover the area more effectivly..

[Drone-Fragger]

Why don't you (when you push altfire) somehow detects where the enemy is going to strike, So it automaticaly follows the enimies weapon and counters it. Of course i know practicly nothing about coding and near nothing about mapping, so i don't know wherever this would be possible, It would just look better than a invisible wall.

[neolith]

That'd be really hard to do code-wise and almost impossible animation-wise I fear...

[Shadowstar]

Well, for what its worth, Rune had a really good system for handling the blocks. It used shields. Because of the shape of the shield, it was always a good way to block attacks (unless your opponent got behind your or was able to get thier weapon around the shield). All blocks had one animation, and that simply held the shield up in front of you. It was simple and very functional.

When we made Chaos Melee we decided to allow the weapon itself to be the blocking object (like in previous incarnations of Chaos). This works, but barely. Perhaps it's time to think about implementing shields? I know its possible, but I also know it would be alot of work. At least we would have something to base it on. The code from Rune can really help us to devise our own shield system if we decide to go that way.

In the meantime, perhaps just a horizontal-block would be sufficient.

[LoQtUS]

I have been tryn to talk Jb into a shield and allredy have all of the design of it figured out for a few months now

[Rythmix]

I have been tryn to talk Jb into a shield and allredy have all of the design of it figured out for a few months now

Then you sir, are a great man!

[jb]

I have been tryn to talk Jb into a shield and allredy have all of the design of it figured out for a few months now

Then you sir, are a great man!

problem is we have some weapons/animation that are two handed. And I am no sure if we can detect collison on it with out some tweaking. Remember the collision we have to use can not bend and twist to follow the arm...

[Digikid]

If you wanna implement magic, make em more point n click like those vortex launchers. Pretty magicky already i reckon but anyways, here are a few of my "magicky" ideas.

VOLCANO?
Sumfin cool wud a thing similar to a fire mine except its a constant volcanic plume that lasts for a certain amount of time. You can have a vertex mesh animation of "cone" of the volcano growing and then erupting out this cylinder of lava into the air.

WALL OF THE DAMNED?
Or mebbe something like a barrier would be good in Chaos CTF games. A gun that shoots a node which when on touching the ground spawns a wall of screaming faces. Something like a "wall of the damned". Possibly when you walk into it you dont get damaged but your speed slows down to a crawl, it strips you of the weapon/relics you're currently holding and annoys the hell out of ya with blaring sounds of screams.
...maybe a wall of fire?...


TORNADO?
This would be a alternative to the vortex launcher. I imagine this wouldnt be too hard to implement as basically the physics will be very similar to the vortex launcher instead. It would suck you up just like the Vortex Launcher but will also carry you up the tornado. It wont do any damage but the fall itself will probably kill you unless you could somehow grapple some nearby object whilst falling. Maybe limit this to large outdoor maps only?

STORMS?
With the CGL's poison and napalm nades, the lingering poison/napalm "smoke" they leave behind might be a bit too powerful and spammy? I dont know if this is possible but it would be cool if on impact the grenades burst into their inital cloud of poison/napalm except the smoke released forms a small cloud over the area of impact and then rains down green plague or fire. The rain would be fairly scattered so it would allow skilled players to dodge the death from above

GRIM REAPER
This would be THE most powerful magick weapon. This idea maybe impossible but still...

Like the vortex launcher you shoot out an orb which breaks in half and releases this growing black void thingy. The enemy has time to destroy this void but if they dont it turns into a portal and a grim reaper is summoned.

The grim reaper doesnt give a fcuk who he kills, so he basically targets the nearest player within sight (even yourself), floats towards them and then slashes them dead with his arms which are like scythes. The dead player "spills" ALL his weapons and adrenaline which then you could salvage providing you didnt get killed.

I like your ideas! Especially the Grim Reaper !

UT is a rather fast paced game. If magic were to be implemented, we would have to make it a viable alternative or option to normal combat. Most players aren't going to want to spend thier time fumbling with runes when they could be shoving a rocket or bastard sword down someone's throat.

A faster solution would be neccessary. I've got alot of ideas for how it could be done and kept simple, but at the moment, we're busy doing alot of other things to tackle something new of this scale.

I was thinking using magic in UT would be a lot like fighting with melee weapons. The player would have to keep changing runes and binding them, much like changing stances for better attacks in Duel. It is sure to be very fast paced.

agreed. I would make the grim reaper a special type of gun though to make it match the game. Love the idea though.

Would someone please make this?

[Shadowstar]

Well, one simple way to implement the magic spells would be to basically just treat them as extra weapons (as suggested), but without actual weapon models. An icon on the hud can indicate which spell is currently selected. Models take a while to create, but weapon code at its most basic level is fairly quick and simple, especially if we can borrow bits of code from other weapons. Then, the only thing needed is visual and audio effects, which won't take long to do either.

[Rythmix]

Well, one simple way to implement the magic spells would be to basically just treat them as extra weapons (as suggested), but without actual weapon models. An icon on the hud can indicate which spell is currently selected. Models take a while to create, but weapon code at its most basic level is fairly quick and simple, especially if we can borrow bits of code from other weapons. Then, the only thing needed is visual and audio effects, which won't take long to do either.

isnt it as easy as summoning "skaarjpack.gasbagbelch" ... and maybe a little dance/movement before its summoned... this would be the fire spell! all you need to do now is make some sort of key sequence to shoot it.. i recommend down, right-down, right and fire (Long live Ryu's moves)

[jb]

kind of like what we did with the duke/knight "spells"

[ChaosJester]

This is somewhat in response to the block with melee things and the magic spells thing. Why not have the spells take the place of the block? Then one of the spells can be a shield effect spell that puts a globe/cylinder/some other shape shield around your character for a limited time, or with other selectable spells with varying "ammo" amounts and charge time. Grim Reper-liie spells would be cool and wickedly powerful, but leave a character open to attack that would interrupt the spell for a long time and spells that are weaker take less time and "ammo". To further make them easier to use, the spell would be selected using AWO and the change ammo keys to rotate back and forth through the list, or maybe have one oth the buttons control which spell is cast and which melee weapon is used. Then the melee weapons would have more versatility and use against the guns.

Edit:[long edit section] this would also rid you coders/animators of the problem of getting the weapons to block non-projectile shots and/or reflecting them, since all the block does is produce a volume that blocks projectiles from entering... The weapon would the center/most powerful area of the shield, so that could be used as the basis for any "the weapon does the blocking" stuff. Also, I wouldn't mind having access to all the spells I have in the middle of a match without going to a menu. I would keep the menu for use as a preferred melee/spell weapon, so that it is used to start, but the AWO key is used to switch between weapons/spells where AWO+fire changes the melee weapon and melee+altfire gives the spell, and change ammo changes the strength. I would implement a relic like system, so that to gain new spells, you have to defeat other players/ search the level. Each "Rune" gives a different spell, selected at random, not currently in the players spellbook and "ammo". call the ammo mana, spellenergy, whatever, just make it cool OK? Like the ERDW, my favorite name for a weapon. Aah the secret of the ultimate keyboard setup is in the name of my favorite weapon. [/long edit section]

[lord_kungai]

I have changed my stance on the melee weps.

I DO NOT think they should block bullets in any way.

This paradigm shift occured last night after watching the movie The Last Samurai. I have great reason to believe that a player holding a sword, axe or dagger does not even have the right to confront a player holding a gun, leave alone kill him.

Think about it...

What chance would a human/alien/robot, holding a long, sharp piece of metal do against a human/alien/robot holding a device which can fire sharp pieces of metal at speeds greater than that of sound at a rate of 500 per minute, which can rip the flesh/flesh/metal off the other player???

Hwever, I think that the melee wep animations should be made faster.

[neolith]

I think that the melee wep animations should be made faster.

Unfortunately we cannot just raise the fps on them like you would normally do, because they are mixed with the movement anims. To speed up the melee animations we would have to create new ones that are faster...

[TKATK]

I think that the melee wep animations should be made faster.

Unfortunately we cannot just raise the fps on them like you would normally do, because they are mixed with the movement anims. To speed up the melee animations we would have to create new ones that are faster...

atleast the staff and claws?