Lets Optimize Balloon Race!

Rizz

L5: Dapper Member
Dec 18, 2009
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I've been playing a little bit of Balloon Race lately and I noticed that a lot of people bug out on the map. They fall through the ship, the ship jags back and forth while on it's course from A to B, etc. I'm far from the mapping expert as my expertise's lies with 3d modeling.
So, I propose (hopefully with the permission of the original creator) to make a 3d model of the ship, and add a few brush volumes such as glass windows, "buildables here" volumes, etc).
I don't want to change or add to much to the original creation, but I would like to add one fun feature. I'd like to add an area where you can build in the cargo area of the ship. It would act as a platform for a sentry. It would be the only area you could essentially build on the ship. Once it's built, any player can press a button and a door opens in-front of the sentry and the platform extends partly outside the ship. These openings for the sentry platforms would be on the sides of the ship and would act as a traditional cannon.

I want to keep the layout for the ship fairly canonical to the creators original version of the ship.
Here is what I have thus far.
http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/749/shipc.png
 

Vincent

&#128296 Grandmaster Lizard Wizard Jedi &#128296
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Sep 5, 2009
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That idea with the moving geometry would require your model to have animation. And if I remember correctly, the sentry would stay in place if you moved something under it. Even if you grouped it.

But if someone can figure out a way to get it to work then It'd be relatively easy to make it so that only a certain part of the ship could be built on.

Do you know how to make the collision mesh for the ship? That's kinda important.
 

Rizz

L5: Dapper Member
Dec 18, 2009
210
21
Not with SDK, but the internet is full of useful information. I know how to make a collision mesh with UDK, so I'm sure it's somewhat similar.
Regarding the animations and the door.
Inside the basement area of the ship will be a platform that's beside the wall. The engy builds a sentry on the platform. Beside the platform on the wall is a button. If a player presses the button, a door opens up and the platform with the sentry still on slids outside the ship, extruding outwards. Press the button again and it brings the platform back in.


iirc moving vphys collisions are even worse than brushes
It doesn't seem that way with payload cart on pl_frontier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXJErvFfdE
 
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Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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Moving things an Vphys is generally a really bad idea with TF2, it just doesn't work (this is why you very very rarely see Vphys items in TF2 maps... and this is why the beachball/soccerball in tf2 suck)...



Mangy worked around this on frontier just some interesting clipping/brushwork iirc.
 

Kiddnils

L3: Member
Sep 2, 2011
140
224
Same as FrOZ3n said Mangy made the platform (for the players) out of brushes. The real train is a prop with additional clipping. But I think you can't optimize it much because the ship moves too fast. So there is no real reason for a remake. The sentry(cannons) would just kill the players and don't add fun to the gameplay.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
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Nov 2, 2007
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"If you jump off that cliff, you'll die!"

"Let's leave that up to gravity to decide!"

/me puts a trigger_gravity at cliff.


But, to reiterate what has been said. Nothing can really done to make it better, and it isn't even a TF2 thing. Source networking does not perform player prediction properly when they are on a moving object, hence the jittery behavior. If you play local, everything will be buttersmooth even if you are riding an elevator that moves at thousands of units per second.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
5,441
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Seconding Boojum here, this is more of an engine/networking issue, not a map issue.

There's a reason most TF2 maps, up until recently, included no moving platforms... And even those that have been introduced in the past couple months, after several engine improvements, are very limited in function and significance.

It's like tic tac toe. If you don't want to play a buggy map, the only winning move is not to play balloon race.