Artillery discussion thread

JHermes said:

No, unfortunately not. The only possible way to do that is to set the individual shoot speed very high so it can fire projectiles in very quick succession, but at speeds of more than 100 the projectiles often clip through collision meshes without taking any damage.

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The shooting speed does not affect the projectile's speed.  Or is it that a unit cannot fire another shot while the last one is in the air?

Nethoras said:

has any one thought of making artilliry a mount, like it doesnt reely even have to be hooked up to the skelton cuz it wont be moving to much, like I know u cant make a mount shoot but possibly make the item for a cannon nothing or mabye even a match thingy or an aiming stick and make it so its only usable when on mount: cannon this way it wont be like people are running aroung with cannons awkwardly in front of them or moving with their arms

I personnally think its a wicked idea oh and sorry if someone already submitted this cuz i only read 1st page (lazy)

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if you had read the 1st page you would have seen that it has allready been submited

mkeller said:

JHermes said:

No, unfortunately not. The only possible way to do that is to set the individual shoot speed very high so it can fire projectiles in very quick succession, but at speeds of more than 100 the projectiles often clip through collision meshes without taking any damage.

Click to expand...

The shooting speed does not affect the projectile's speed.  Or is it that a unit cannot fire another shot while the last one is in the air?

Click to expand...

Don't know where you've been, but shoot speed most certainly does affect the projectile. Ever notice how much slower a javelin is than a crossbow? While speed doesn't affect trajectory, it does affect projectile velocity. Speeds higher than 110 will clip through hitboxes with no damage at close range, and occasionally at long range. Speeds higher than the absolute maximum of 150 will clip every time, no damage. It would be nice if the velocity and fire speed were separate, but they are not.

Or has it been changed in 0.800?

Another thing that would be nice was having an alternative way of damaging enemys, the crosshair still shows the accuracy and then when you press fire it selects a smaller spot within the crosshair and fires an arrow, from there at speed of 150, the arrow is non important though. for explanation, lets se the hud as a big picture, and the direction where the arrow was fired towards as a red dot, if the red dot was placed ontop of a solder (be he ally or enemy) the soldier would recieve a certen amount of damadge.
that would solve the problem with the arrow speed and velocity (but that would only work for rifles =/ ) for cannons it would be nice to have splash damage, or be able to trick it into thinking that there is splash damage, i cant se any solutions of yet, except perhaps making a gigantic cannonball and have it invisible (maybe have a small invicible npc thingy stand near the cannon firering a small canonball in the same direction) but then all soldiers would recieve the same amount of damadge...


Or have the cannon be sorounded in small invicible npc's that fire invicible cannonballs at the same time as you do in the same direction!?

You can do something similar to what you suggested, using agent_set_hit_points to set all troops within say 7 feet of a cannonball impact to 0hp. Problem is that even though they have 0hp they won't fall over dead until hit by another troop.

There is only one projectile in M&B, and while making it larger might work, it would also affect the basic firearms.

You can't make several NPC's fire at once, or at least not by any way I know of.

JHermes said:

Don't know where you've been, but shoot speed most certainly does affect the projectile. Ever notice how much slower a javelin is than a crossbow? While speed doesn't affect trajectory, it does affect projectile velocity. Speeds higher than 110 will clip through hitboxes with no damage at close range, and occasionally at long range. Speeds higher than the absolute maximum of 150 will clip every time, no damage. It would be nice if the velocity and fire speed were separate, but they are not.

Or has it been changed in 0.800?

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Sorry, I guess I had that mixed up with spd_rtng (which is how fast you reload, I think).

the normal size of a field gun in the civil war was a 10 or 12 pounder. but the north used rifled cannons that where the best cannons at the time...the differnce between a smoothbore cannon and a rifled cannon was a smoothbore could hit a barn at 1000 yeards( lets say as i forgot the real range) and a Rifled cannon could hit the barn door at 1000 yeards. As to the cannons in game....I think it should be named equipment that needs 3 npc's to run with very high reload time and two types of attack if its possible. one standerd solid shot.... alt rounds be canister rounds (fired a hollow round filled with 50-100 mini-balls). just me but im not a progammer so i dont know what im asking for lol.

I have noticed that some people recommended making a cannon a mount, and one of your points was that is would run around the map if it was un-mounted. I think that it would be possible, to just set the speed of the cannon to 0, and if I'm not mistaken, then riding normally increases the speed of your mount a bit (though i am not sure if it is by a set amount or through some kind of multiplier) if it does do it with a set amount of speed added on, then it would make it possible for you to make the "cannon" move very slowly, which would be accurate as cannon could not move fast, and it would make it possible that the cannon does not move after it is dismounted. If i am incorrect about the riding thing increasing the speed then i am sorry, i have not played M&B for a while, and i do not remember exactly what the skill does. I am also aware that it would not be right to make the same skill affect horses and cannon, but this was the only thing that i could think of.

You know, that's a cool idea, if it works!  I guess we'll have to try it out to see.  But is it possible to check whether someone is mounted, and prevent them from firing the weapon if they aren't?  And then you'd have to have a cannon weapon and ride one too, which could be really weird, but if only the AI get to do so, it wouldn't be so bad.

there is a tf_cant_use_on_horseback call but I don't know if it works for ranged weapons.

But this sort of thing would require a tf_cant_use_on_foot.  Guess it won't really work. 

I was thinking of something like this in my spare time, and I dont know if it helps, maybye the cannon counts as an npc without anims, or movement of any form, and then you used the gunner formation that was in the script sharing thread, one of the troops that milled about the gun could be an npc, who by some fluke or another you could talk to, and through dialougue like "I need a cannon ball bill", getting a cannonball, you could then trade with the cannon, giving him the ball and now he would have ammo allowing him to shoot, maybye you could do the same thing with gun powder, counting gunpowder as the weapon and a cannonball as the ammo, the only down side with this system in my boks is that, you will have to code it so dialougue is availible in battle, and you could aim the cannon, even still I think this would be a usable system, or maybye if you really had your heart set on aiming the cannon yourdelf, you could make the cannon part of a certain armour mesh, ie of to the side quite a bit, or maybye up front a bit, and then maybye you wouldhave to speak to the cannonball npc dude to get your ammo bbefore you fire, this system could actually work quite well, ou would just have to make sure you know where to position the particle effects. I guess alternativly you could ditch the cannonball npcs all together, an make it so you come to battle with cannon balls in your inventory, or maybye you could make the cannonball npc a pile of cannon balls.. its your mod,

I hope this has been of any help, because I think (just like everyone else) a feature such as artillery could revolutionize ameplay

I'm not sure if this would work or not, but couldn't you set the cannon balls as a throwing weapon, but never actually make a texture for them, and then you could somehow set it so that they cannot be used while on foot? This would also not force you to have both the weapon of a cannon, and the mount. Also if you cannot change the animation of the "throwing" then it is pretty good as it is, just think of it as your character lighting the fuse or whatever you want.

you can make the cannons a scene prop so that way a invisile solider shot whit a gun and you call the script to make the trops hp set to 0
and them you make a props that loks like a canno ball and hit them so fast so this way the enemy will take damage like a fall and has their
hp are already set to 0 they will die(dot know if it works)

maybye the cannon could count as a soldier with really heavy armour so you it could move,just make it the armour mesh, and leave the helm, greaves and face mesh invisible, and use your gunner formation code so your cannon crew are around, and then you could make a script that will give the cannon ammo, or allow it to shoot only when a certain number of troops of a certain type are around it, I know that that last code is actually possible, ecept for the ammo part, although Im pretty sure that works. and you could even go without the gunner formation code, and people would have to use the "infantry hold position" thing although this could screw stuff up if you have other troops who lack any ranged weapon, I dont thinik there will be very many of those. alternativle if this is possible you could make gunners into a new troops class, ie F1=infantry F2=archers(or cavalry?)...etc F6or7 or whatever "F" isnt used = gunners, I dont know just a suggestion.

MAXHARDMAN has made catapults and is planning to make service teams which fire them, in his mod. Maybe you could ask him? I'm not sure he'll tell you though.

highlander made some cannons, Im sure you've seen, but I thought it neccesary to post that here in case you forgot about this thread or something...

just read progress report, disregard this, sorry.

JHermes said:

You can do something similar to what you suggested, using agent_set_hit_points to set all troops within say 7 feet of a cannonball impact to 0hp. Problem is that even though they have 0hp they won't fall over dead until hit by another troop.

There is only one projectile in M&B, and while making it larger might work, it would also affect the basic firearms.

You can't make several NPC's fire at once, or at least not by any way I know of.

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all true - but I'd suggest the following way out:
that you make one cannon prop (either as a horse or as body armour) and 2 cannon weapons:
1 x canister + 1x solid shot.

canister (and shrapnel) would rarely kill, becasue the projectiles are small and unaimed.  Therefore, using the agent set hitpoints script is a VERY GOOD approximation of the effect:  lots of wounds, and, if you have other ranged weapons too, their added fire would soon turn these wounded to dead.

Solid shot would be basically the same as a giant rifle - it would have enough damage (150+p) to kill every time, but only kill one enemy.  Again, realistic, as M&B AI will almost always assume a looser formation akin to a skirmish line.

For canister, if you make the weapon THROWN, then you can give it a weapon length of 150 or so, which means it will hit things very easily even if it doesn't go close to them, thus triggering the agent set hitpoints script.....


edit - maybe make the canister BLUNT so that it will also knockback those it hits?

Amman de Stazia said:

JHermes said:

You can do something similar to what you suggested, using agent_set_hit_points to set all troops within say 7 feet of a cannonball impact to 0hp. Problem is that even though they have 0hp they won't fall over dead until hit by another troop.

There is only one projectile in M&B, and while making it larger might work, it would also affect the basic firearms.

You can't make several NPC's fire at once, or at least not by any way I know of.

Click to expand...

all true - but I'd suggest the following way out:
that you make one cannon prop (either as a horse or as body armour) and 2 cannon weapons:
1 x canister + 1x solid shot.

canister (and shrapnel) would rarely kill, becasue the projectiles are small and unaimed.  Therefore, using the agent set hitpoints script is a VERY GOOD approximation of the effect:  lots of wounds, and, if you have other ranged weapons too, their added fire would soon turn these wounded to dead.

Solid shot would be basically the same as a giant rifle - it would have enough damage (150+p) to kill every time, but only kill one enemy.  Again, realistic, as M&B AI will almost always assume a looser formation akin to a skirmish line.

For canister, if you make the weapon THROWN, then you can give it a weapon length of 150 or so, which means it will hit things very easily even if it doesn't go close to them, thus triggering the agent set hitpoints script.....


edit - maybe make the canister BLUNT so that it will also knockback those it hits?

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into the latest version (0.903) It does kills troops

all good then - BUT

I just trialled a horse-prop for the cannon: WRONG!

The 'gunner' just dismounted and walked off with the rest of the infantry, leaving a 'cannon' at the edge of the battlefield.
Very unsatisfying.

Can anyone explain or pm to me HOW exactly the agent_set_hit_points script should work?
I don't know how to identify the target/victim troop....