Flying units in RTW?

[orgo.love]

I managed to have units fly high up in the air by manipulating the "rider" coordinates of cavalry units:




I would like to evolve this idea further to create "flying" units in RTW.


Thing is, the collision between the "mounts" of cavalry and other units are not determined by the size of the skeleton. Rather, it is determined by the "radius" and "x-radius" values within the descr_mount.txt.

As a result, even in the above screenshot, if I set the radius and x-radius of the units to 0, it can wade through horde of enemy units without pushing anyone away.

So, my idea was:


1. Make a skeleton scale 10 with the light horse. (will make it go very fast)
2. create a blank texture and apply it, so that the horse will be invisible.

That way, the result will be units that can move very fast and are floating on air, without anything below them.


Some problems:
1. limited to cavalry
2. even if your riders are high up and the radius is 0, for some reason the unit can't go through the castle doors
3. if unit shadows are turned on, the scale 10 skeleton will cause huge shadows...
4. when double clicking on the unit, it will center on the ground rather than the riders

Will this work? Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve this? I'm in the middle of midterm period, so I won't be able to seriously work on this idea until next week. But until then, I would love to hear your ideas.


I did manage to gain access to 3dmax. If simple things can be done (such as moving the origin of the 3d mesh far below the actual unit mesh) to make this possible, I'd also love to hear it. However, even if the origin of the 3d mesh can be found, doesn't the game take into account the location of the origin when calculating whether the unit can go through doors or not?


Another Simple Question:
If you compare "attack dog" "fire pig" and "light horse" skeletons, which has the fastest movement speed?

[Lemons]

WHOA, you kinda stumped me, but I think the fastest skeleton is the light horse.

[Dol Guldur]

I would download another mod with flying units - LOTR:TW comes to mind as the most developed (not sure if BL has any) - and checkout their files. Wlesmana probably knows more than anyone about such creations as he created some good-looking flying Fell Beasts from the LOTR movies. I know flying units will never function as intended because RTW always has a ground contact for all units.

[Thor the Bassist]

First a question:
Can the flying units be attacked by units on the ground?

The skeleton scale might be the reason it wont go between the gates as the engine might be able to tell that the skeleton cant fit between the gates - I believe this is how the game knows siege engines cant fit because there is no collision data for these units unlike buildings. Cant you change the speed of the mount somewhere else instead of changing the unit scale (descr_units.txt or export something or whatever) to counter the fact that the skeleton is smaller.

This looks good - keep it up. There was loads of talk about doing this sort of thing but all attempts have always been flawed in some way - mainly the attacking from the ground part.

What you may want to research into is making your own animations as this will give you the flexibility to build whatever flying fantasy beast you want. This also allows you to vary the height of the unit so you can make it dive down to attack enemies and such.

Personally I believe this is possible even if it will be tough to pull off. Keep it up

[orgo.love]

Thanks.

Question in other thread, but no answer, so posting it here again:


Hi Dol_Guldur.

I am looking at GAFM right now. I haven't actually played it because I don't want to overwrite what I've done so far.
(is there a way to play this without overwriting the "original" data folder?)

I've looked at your "fom balor eye" thing.

Questions:
How does it look in game? (giant floating eye?)

What is its firing rate (as in how fast does it shoot)? (like regular onagers?)

How did you take care of the "loading/reloading" animation and the sounds associated with it? (it's still there or no?)

Are the crews visible? (isn't it still possible to make the # of crews 1?)
Can it move through forests in the battle map? Strat map?

How fast can it move in the strat map/battle map?

Did you use 3d modeling to make a new balor eye skeleton?

Does the onager skin still show? Or is it a giant eye, despite using the "onager" entry in the "engine type"?

Do the "onagers"-aka eyes- have similar hp as regular onagers?

[Dol Guldur]

It is a lot more crude than wles's fell beast etc. -

GAFM - like mms and fatw and as they say in the instructions - are all fully modfoldered and will not therefore overwrite any of your files. I do not do that to players ;)

Boot it up and see but lotr:tw is best to learn from (and that will not overwrite your files either).

I would strongly suggest you work in a modfolder and NOT in the vanilla data folder!

[orgo.love]

whoops... too late...

Is it possible to undo these changes? How do I work in a modfolder? do I just duplicate the data file and name it my mod file?

[Aradan]

Modfolder

Some posts might be slghtly outdated...

[Captn. James Crunch]

I did this a long time ago, so I can't exactly remember how to do it exactly, something in the mount file.

[orgo.love]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpb1...=151506&page=2



This is a video of a flying unit.


It is awesome.


However...

The problem with those fellbeasts, as well as any flying units so far attempted, has been that (you can even notice it in the video) it's only the 3d model that's flying. the game engine still perceives it as a "ground" unit.

If you look at the video, you can see what I mean:
1. The tanks seem to
The fellbeasts can't fly "over" the tanks.
2. The tanks attack on an invisible "something" that's below the fellbeasts, not at the fellbeasts. This would actually be more apparent if the tanks were archers...

What I mean is that, while it's easily possible to show a visual "flying" effect, it's a different matter altogether to make the game engine perceive as a flying object.


It seems like it is hardcoded in the game for every unit to have some sort of an "anchor" to the ground directly below each 3d model.


the problem #1 can be solved by setting the footprint of the anchor of any flying unit to zero. Therefore, it is possible to have really realistic flying units that work fine on non-siege field maps.

However, whether a unit's 3d model is flying or not, as long as it has an anchor to the ground, it just cannot go over any walls or gateways. Even if the footprint size is set to 0, any unit is "stuck" at where the wall or door is. Even in forests! Even if the flying model is far above a tree, if its anchor (point directly below the model) meets a tree, the flying model turns to avoid the tree before it goes forward again.

As a result, I'm trying to figure out how I can change the footprint in the map to make flying units work, because flying units, while awesome, is just BLAH if it can't go over walls or gates.

[Makanyane]

I think you've got to the same conclusion now that other modders like Wles have before. It genuinely seems to be a limitation of the game engine. I don't want to discourage you from trying, we have been surprised sometimes in the past by people finding ways round things..... but there have been quite a few other attempts at this that didn't get anywhere


P.S. can you get flying and shooting? like cav archer - then maybe you could get ranged hits past the walls reliably though still needing other unit to physically get in.

EDIT: P.P.S looks like they can fire in vid. just make sure you are crediting wles clearly that they are his units, and if you actually want to include them in anything released get his permission first.

[orgo.love]

Hey.


That isn't my video... it's just a random video I found from youtube. I'm just saying that that's my observations about other people's efforts. But I really want to get it to work :(

[Makanyane]

ooops sorry - I assumed as we'd mentioned LotR to you in one of the threads recently (and those seem to be LotR units) that the vid. was something you made whilst experimenting - I clearly wasn't paying enough attention....



I'll go hide now

[orgo.love]

No problem :)

I'm really busy this whole week because of midterms and midterm papers. However, I should get back to work next week. I also gained access to 3Dmax, and will try to create my own models as well. If non-flying models don't work... I want to see if I can finally test that idea about siege machines.

the "moving shots" are easy to do. All my mages can do the "moving shots," because the mages aren't actually the ones that are shooting; it's the invisible "riders" that are shooting, and they can shoot even as the mages run across the field.

[orgo.love]

Hm. Someone in twcenter is claiming that the "felbeasts" in the video CAN fly over walls.

I think that's complete and utter ******.

Another is also claiming that the tank models are his own, when they were directly ripped off from Bwian's Metal Mayhem mod-and the felbeast as his own as well, when they were ripped from LOTR content release.

I'm getting angry.

[Makanyane]

Don't get involved in any arguments about who's is what.... its not your problem at all, just point out the issue to a moderator there if its evolving into a dispute.

Now back to flying units.... do let us know if you get anything to go over a wall without using a ladder!

[Flying Pig]

Wles' fellbeast can't do that - I think there is an fs_bird skeletion because DMB mentions it as not implemented yet.

[Lemons]

I think you may be able to pull this off with enough work if it is not in the .exe. Which if it isnt you will bypass something thought to be hardcoded. Just a couple months ago fergulsharky of the TWC bypassed what was thought to be a hardcoded limit. He could put as many walls as he wanted to in a city(RTW of course). He even had pics. It was cool, kind of like the citadel in M2TW. So if he can bypass that, you may be able to bypass this. Good Luck!!!

[Thor the Bassist]

I dont think this is directly moddable but a workaround is problerably the best option. Basically you have to trick the game into thinking that there isn't a unit there. This is generally how to bypass hardcoded stuff.

The most difficult part of this is that units are comparitively easy to mod compared to the other aspects of RTW but they have a very strict system as they are complicated for the engine to work with. You generally find this with computers - if there's a system that is easy for humans to understand its very hard for the computer to understand and so much less flexible on the computer's end.

On the plus side the fellbeasts dont look too bad in the youtube video. I suppose it depends how high you want them to fly - whether its just hovering or full on flying high in the sky.