Lord of the Rings Plug

Industry · Post by **Industry** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:05 am

Riding dragons is possible in 1.5.1? Did I miss something in the readme? Or are we talking serious MOMA scripting and pain?

William Wallet · Post by **William Wallet** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 11:38 am

As anyone knows, 'possible' never equated to 'easy' with map making.

TopGunZ · Post by **TopGunZ** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 6:51 pm

WHOW! I was j/k. Of course it could never be done. :laugh:

carlinho · Post by **carlinho** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 7:16 pm

well actually it can be done....
just that changing the height at which the dragon flies is kind of difficult, but the dragon could be set as an artifact that when grabbed by some special unit it converts that unit into a dragon & rider warrior.
the thing is then an animation should be made from the ground to the height where the dragon flies and then voila, you have a flying dragon unit...
I did a warplane curtiss P-40 unit, so same thing could be made with a dragon....

Website · Post by **iron** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 3:24 am

Actually I was wrong. There's never been and still isn't a way to convert a unit from walking to flying or vice versa. You could still have the nazgul get on and off a horse though

lank · Post by **lank** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:38 am

i wonder if you could have a walker go to a flier... (or vice versa)

you could perhaps have a unit be removed and replaced by a projectile with negative gravity that accelerates upwards for a short time (if you could choose how fast it moved forwards it would be even better) and then promotes into one with normal gravity that lasts for exactly as long (so it ends with no vertical motion) and is then replaced by the flying version of the unit.

it'll probably be tricky, but it's worth a try.

William Wallet · Post by **William Wallet** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 10:30 am

hey that'd be doable

carlinho · Post by **carlinho** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 1:55 pm

It's been a year and a half so I can't recall how I did it, I would need to check the files in fear, but I did a plane that flew over the mesh, at a constant height, and dropped bombs as a special attack.
the bombs were dropped down til they reached the ground and exploded, and when the plane died it went down too, til it crashed and exploded....
the animations going down where done with projectiles, changing some variable in them.
so My guess is, yes you could have a flying dragon
same way I had a plane, just by changing the sprites.
now to convert a unit into a flying unit, well, basically you could create 2 different monster tags, with different objects, and when the walking monster grabs the projectile DRAGON, it upgrades into this other monster with flying capabilities.
the only tricky thing is to do some nice animations to make the transition look good, with projectiles...
now if when flying for example you press the special attack, or change inventory in the monster, then it could land somewhere...
also the downside is it would fly at a constant height, not able to change heights while flying.

skrew · Post by **skrew** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 6:47 pm

to make the dragon artifact more realistic, just make only one unit, frodo - or whatever the only person who can ride the dragon and make the dragon have a very wavy animation, make him take a dive for his norm attack which would be to rip off the heads of large masses of units, dislocating his jaw and swallowing them whole or, for an alternate animation, he makes a stomp and a huge quake erupts demoloshing all around him. and for his special make him saw high and go in a stationary vertical position and blow a huge napalm-like river of magical fire with a mana recharge bar on it, when the mana is out he blows out ash which makes a choking cloud somewhat like a smoke grenade. but to do all that you would have to make the dragon a very key unit and i dont beleive there are many key dragons in lotr.

William Wallet · Post by **William Wallet** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:23 pm

How do you stop a plane unit from 'hovering' when it stops?

carlinho · Post by **carlinho** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:22 pm

uh...don't understand quite well the question, but I had a lot of difficulties when doing this plane units and somehow I think airplanes were not made to be part of the myth universe:

1) planes always keep moving, and never stop, otherwise they'll fall.
maybe a dragon stops or a helicopter does...
So when this units fired, or in between firing and aiming, they came to a complete stop=didn't look real...

2)they were really hard to control= as to make them always move and never stop I had to give them a wandering action in monster tag=when you weren't clicking 1,000 times to make them go somewhere, they just went wherever the random meander movement took them.

but to avoid them from stop and keep hovering whenever they are not shooting= well, you just make them fly all the time through a meander action and you assign them a Myth I action to turn=they make a long turn instead of turning in the same place as myth II units do.

William Wallet · Post by **William Wallet** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:52 pm

Heh. My usual solution is to just not make a plane unit.

The Tain

Lord of the Rings Plug