Specifically for Quib, but anyone can take a crack at it.

I'm looking for a grappling hook cog that uses Zeq's new technique.

The grapple wouldn't be shot, instead it'd be thrown, like the thermal det. The longer you hold down fire, the further it goes. What'd be really cool, is if this could be attached to the STRifle, so that secondaryfire of the ST shoots the grapple, then the below things would take control. Meaning, switching weapons would break the line, and your usual STRifle fire would ascend you, rather than descend.

What I'd like, it for the grappling hook to only be able to connect to surfaces that are flagged 'sounds like metal.' (If you could also make a version that attaches to any surface, that'd help)

As well, I'd like this hook to be unlike other grappling hooks. It'd stick to a surface, and then pressing secondary fire would descend you. First fire would ascend you.

Again, unlike other grapples, I'd like to be able to swing, rather than just ascend and descend. So after grappling, you'd jump towards the grapple, and swing under it. I'm hoping that once in the air, hitting spacebar or maybe jump again would break the line. If at all possible, 'rocking' would be awesome. Pressing foreward and back to rock back and forth on the line.

Lastly, the part utilizing quib's technique would be that the player could WoW on the wall that the grapple is stuck to. That means, if I am in canyon oasis, and I stick to the edge of one of the walls, I can walk up to that wall, and perhaps by identifying the surface, or by rocking the player back and forth slightly, the player would hop up on the wall, and walk towards the grapple.

All of this is difficult, and I severelly doubt all of it is possible, or easy to do. If something can't be done, or is far too difficult, just leave it out, or perhaps add it in later. If the whole thing is too difficult, oh well. I just thought this'd work well for most modders.

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

Since I'm gonna be doing a hook for Shockaz I might as well take a crack at this one too. Here are my comments on it.

Arc trajectory on a grappling hook is easily possible. The way I suggest would be to apply an upward velocity upon firing, then, using a pulse, gradually push the hook down. Using a hook based on a thermal det template (with the weapon affected by gravity cog) likes to "explode" at odd times. By using this method, you can also decide if you want the hook to be able to latch onto flat walls/ceilings, or have it drop to the ground before attaching. A minor drawback, is after a projectile "drops" too far it "explodes" so you'd need a removed catch (only if you want) to recreate the hook, teleport it and continue it's path if this occurs. You could still control it's firing distance by having the hold-to-fire duration affect it's initial velocity.

Having the hook be weapon base would be cake. Switching weapons to break the line is not a problem.

As for only connecting to surfaces with the metal sound flag, it should be possible to do. If the afore mentioned arc trajectory method is used, you could even make the hook slide off non-metal surfaces.

The ascend/descend thing would work... but then would that mean the only way to detach is by swapping weapons? I'd suggest primary fire be a normal gun 'til secondary is pressed to fire the hook, then primary becomes to "ascend" button, and secondary disconnects. This will also apply to the "swinging" part I will be mentioning next.

To make it so you swing, simply don't remove gravity from the player while using the hook. Make it so you're only reeled in while holding primary, and if you let go it reels out. Having gravity on AND reeling in/out and remaining equidistant the rest of the time would be nearly impossible due to some physics being framerate dependent. If it's done in this way, rocking back and forth should be fine.

To make you walk on walls would probably also be possible, and gravity could still apply while you're aligned with the surface. The code would have to decide when it's proper to align you with the surface, possibly utilizing new "touched" code people have been working so hard on. Things might get messy after you've aligned with a wall and before you detach the hook though... might take an annoyingly large amount of error-checking code to decide when to stick you upright again.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea, and I think I have all the code at my disposal to make it work. After I get Shockaz little project outta the way, I'll take a shot at this. I have some ideas on how I might make a rope that would properly bend around corners that I might try out, though I'm worried about the thing cap. Ropes aren't exactly thing count friendly.

QM

I like all of your suggestions, but I was hoping that you'd be able to completelly stop. Crouch, or maybe pressing jump again would disconnect you. As well, how would the 'rocking' be handled. By rocking, I mean to get the swinging momentum going.

The sliding off of non-metal surfaces sounds like a good idea. I'm only worried about levels not made for this. Is there some way to make it so that a person couldn't just stick to a flat surface way far away and just glide over to it, then continue on that way? The idea, is that I want them to use the grapple to get to higher places, as opposed to force jump. I think jet packs are overpowered, and as well over rated, and I don't want people to use it as a combat factor.

Last thing, is that the line should stop if you descend too far. That is, let's just say the JKU equivelence of 20 feet. 20 feet of cable sounds reasonable.

I almost forgot: After I've climbed the wall, I want to be able to get onto the surface above me, the normally aligned surface. As well, could descending and ascending while walking up a wall be more realistic? Granted, the player jumps backwards when descending, and baby steps upwards when ascending? I'll be able to obtain animations for these things, easily.

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

[This message has been edited by jEDIkIRBY (edited August 31, 2004).]

I just realized that having it attached to the gun doesn't make much sense at all. Especially when it's being thrown.

I wonder if you could make 2 grapples, then. They both act the same, but there's the thrown one, and then one that shoots out strait, but can be effected by gravity after a while. Think the grapples seen in Ep 1.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the sudden change.

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

Ok, I'll see what I can do. I think I can do that. I mean, it should be possible, even if I leave gravity on for the player... hm or maybe I can swap gravity on/off to keep the player at the right distance. I'll play around with this.


Easy to make crounch disconnect, impossible to make jump do it. So crouch it is.


Everyone likes 20 feet for some reason... but yeah, limiting the distance is cakewalk. I can even make the hook stop dead in the air after being thrown/shot 20 feet out and drop straight down.


This will be a pain in the butt to do. When you're aligned with a wall, jump still makes you want to go straight up.

I won't be messing around with coding this 'til I work on Shockaz hook tomorrow. I don't expect it to be real tough though, just a little clever code here and there and some double checking to make sure it works properly in MP.

QM

Well, they wouldn't really jump, as much as take long sequential movements downwards.

Oh, and I believe Zeq came up with a method of changing the player's physics to the currently WoW'd surface. Zeq, care to pop your head in here?

Oh, and as far as stopping, I don't mean that they'd not be effected by the physics, but that they wouldn't have to hold a button to stop. That if they pressed nothing, that they'd just sit there, swinging. Pressing foreward and back to swing back and forth.

Thanks a lot, again.

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

[This message has been edited by jEDIkIRBY (edited September 01, 2004).]

See this is why I love MotS...those player action verbs would make all of this easy .

Quote from Quib Mask: impossible to make jump do it

Ouch! Be careful when you say "impossible". Read on.

Quote by jEDIkIRBY: Oh, and I believe Zeq came up with a method of changing the player's physics to the currently WoW'd surface.

Drat! I guess I did tell jEDIkIRBY that, didn't I? When I told him, the method was using the "entered" and "exited" messages of a surface, which worked well, but linking *all* of the surfaces in a level would be a pain.

Not to fear, fellow coggers, I have actually been working on a different method (which uses the new "touched" message--hmm need a cool name for it) for allowing a player to jump on other surfaces as if they were floors. (This is for my unnamed space station level.)

I haven't had time (yet) to contemplate what jEDIkIRBY wants, but I would guess from my initial reading of this topic, that the method should prove useful. In brief, the method uses a pulse and the "touched" message to detect a jump, redirect the player's jump, and change the appropriate physics flags.

Quote from Wave_Of_Mutilation: player action verbs would make all of this easy

Well, not *all* of it, just the detection of jumping.

To Quib Mask: Thank you for taking on this cogging. I will enjoy seeing (and learning from) your handiwork.




[This message has been edited by ZeqMacaw (edited September 01, 2004).]

Thanks for that guest apperence, Zeq ;-) And sorry if I let any cats out of any bags :-/

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

Well damnit Kirby - go and round 'em all back up again

But I agree totally with Zeq's main point: you do need a cool name for your revamped "touched" message implementation... "RTMI" maybe...

I am also interested in Quib's code - I've designed a couple of different, alternative hook-shot type cogs but I've never been happy with the "feel" of them. Similarly in other programming languages, sometimes you can get "things" (yes, a rather non-descript term, I know - maybe "aspects" or "algorithms" would be better...) to work, but the overall effect just ... doesn't seem to be quite right, or just off. Maybe it's that perfectionist streak in me but hey... . Does anyone else know what I mean/feel, or am I just confirming my odd-ball status (I blame Massassi)?

-Jackpot

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"lucky_jackpot is the smily god..." - gothicX
"jackpot is an evil evil man... so evil, in fact, that he's awesome." - Seb

"Life is mostly froth and bubble, but two things stand in stone,
Kindness in another's trouble, courage in your own"
("Ye Wearie Wayfarer" - by Adam Lindsay Gordon)

^^^ yeah, i know what you mean. I'm always trying to perfect my stuff as well.

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nytfyre m0d || f33l t3h p0w3r || t3h l0st c0gz || OMF > *

Eh, I suppose I was generalizing, but as far as I know, without the playeraction MotS stuff, there's no way of detecting if the player hits the jump button when he is in the air. That's what I meant when I said "impossible," crouch works best since it's detectable at all times (except when in water if I remember correctly).

QM

You could detect jump in JK if you were willing to rewrite jump as a cog. I mean, what is jump besides a little boost of upward velocity anyway? Write a cog that makes you jump in as similar a manner as possible and bind a hotkey to it. Its not perfect but its an idea.

SavageX used a trick in SS3 Beta9.something to detect a players jump...but it wasn't really that effective. I think it just compared whether you were attached to a surface or not in a pulse and basically guessed when you had jumped. (Which can obviously return false positives) It was for a trick jump so its imperfection wasn't as big of a deal there.

uh idea... how about making it only attach to magsealed surfaces......

I'd assume any flag type would be a symple change of a flag number in the cog, so I'll just see what works best. He's also going to do a version that attaches to anything just in case.

Any way, if pressing crouch could make the player hop downward, than that'd work well. Let's say that pressing down/backwards makes you baby step (Maybe walkspeed?)down , just like pressing up/foreward makes you baby step up, but pressing crouch while on the wall makes you push off and slide down like in all those cool movies :-P

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

Bump-a-dump

How does a grappling hook stick to metal and not like...wood?

Just waiting for some 3do's from Shockaz. After I finish his hook .cogs I'll do this one.

Emon, magnets!

QM

Emon, I basically wanted to be able to give a surface a flag that would make it so the hook only sticks to it. I'll probably use the flag on corners of walkways, and other specific areas I want the player to use it at, as well most platforms or whatnot will have the flag anyway. There's not much wood in the levels this will be used in.

JediKirby

Sounds like a great idea. Especially since I actually thought about doing it this monday :p

Massassi freakes me out at times, how we all get the same ideas at once.

Unfortunately I don't know enough in the way of real world physics yet to make it look good. So, I couldn't figure a way to keep the distance between the player and the hook the same while swinging.

What if the surface doesn't have iron in it? :p

Then it'll have nickel or cobalt in it. Or maybe it's one of them new-fangled ceramics that exhibit magnetic properties.

QM

Just bumping these grapple requests up. Will you need models for this, too?

Nah, I'll just spit out cog using basic JK models for this. It'll be more of a template for others to build complex hooks on.

QM

If I do give you models, could you make it work in game? I'd really like to be able to download a gob and play, since getting cogs to work isn't really my strong point.

Also, are you going to do the bendable rope thinger?

Oh, if I can get someone to make a swinging rope animation, can you also impliment that?

JediKirby

bumpityshumpityshoo

bing?

*Bump*

You know, I'm interested in this hook project too. This sounds like the 'grappling hook' from Zelda: Wind Waker. Just out of curiousity, is that where you got the idea from? :p

Nope. Always had the idea, but your thread inspired me to ask it of quib.

JediKirby

bumpt

*bumps it for Kirby*

*Bumps again*

I noticed QuibMask is back, so *BUMP*

Thanks.