Flying Enemies!

[Nexus Set]

Is it possible to create path grids on the fly in-game for a simulated flight path?

ie. Flying creatures' spawn points are in the sky, then they swoop down to attack.

[Xeivous]

o so true.... only its

 

~

*clicks on horse*

kill

*enter*

~

Same button for my keyboard... ~ is shift+`

[VileTouch]

Is it possible to create path grids on the fly in-game for a simulated flight path?

ie. Flying creatures' spawn points are in the sky, then they swoop down to attack.

 

well, creating a pathgrid on the fly, that is as needed ,would be something very dificult if not impossible. as pathgrids are actually dynamic meshes (and even calling them dynamic is arguable.[i am not even sure if it is possible to move a pathgrid node at runtime])so you would basically need to create a function that works on the whole mesh in order to preserve spatial relationships (connectios) between al the nodes (in order to edit the grid at vertex level) AND the newly created ones... that alone would require so much processor time as to not be feasible to do on-the-fly.

 

uh... reading what i just wrote, i think i managed to confuse you already...so basically if it were possible, then it would be too CPU intensive.

 

so no... i don't think its a good idea until we are able to have a C pre-proccessor running on a sepparate thread to do the math and then assign the baked results on a per-frame basis... that is...creating a whole new engine.

 

 

now i "could" be possible to have multiple layers of path grids on a single cell and then assingn entry points to connect each one with the adjacent grids... but i am yet to test that.

 

question: how exactly are cliffracers and netch/bull netch managed in morrowind? there is certainly no aerial pathgrids in morrowind, yet they manage to move freely and (more or less) avoid collisions so it's not like they are blind or anything.

 

...if you don't have access to the underlying engine to determine potential collisions easily (X units in a straight line above/below/left/right, etc.).

i think you have hit the core of the problem... we don't have full access to the havok engine. we can play around with the limited set of functions bethesda implemented, but that's pretty much it. that's the same reason why we don't have soft body deformations, even though they do exist in the Havok SDK.

[VileTouch]

wait... markers! if we place a set of markers in the air, we could make a pseudo-pathgrid and let flying creatures travel from one marker to another just like QQuix's bomber horses do. then move the markers as needed via script. that could possibly work, but how would we determine where to place the markers so it look natural, and not collide with anything is a totally different story.

[Jalak]

wait... markers! if we place a set of markers in the air, we could make a pseudo-pathgrid and let flying creatures travel from one marker to another just like QQuix's bomber horses do. then move the markers as needed via script. that could possibly work, but how would we determine where to place the markers so it look natural, and not collide with anything is a totally different story.

make invisible platforms for 'flying' creatures like imps to 'walk' on?

[TheCalliton]

i myself miss cliffracers, guars, big mudcrabs, those damn black beetles, kaougati's, bone lords, those big green thingies, hungers, dwemer ruins, daedric ruins, and pretty much most of morrowind's stuff that isnt in oblivion, like levatation, and teleportation, spears, axes being their own thing (i like oblivion's casting style though"

I MISS THEMALL

 

edit: and for flying, we could use stuff from the akatosh mount, im sure that would help