Zones v2 tricks, tip and rip-off

[wrtlprnft]

Touching three different ships before the big one is sort of impossible because the acceleration is too little. You can touch two of them, though.

The following screenshot sort of sucks, but I died after taking it and couldn't make another one:

[ed]

Yeah, it aint perfect, or indeed working, but with some tinkering and the ability to have zones touching zones influencing things, maps like that would be possible.

Here's another. Simply reach the man.

Code: Select all

RESOURCE_REPOSITORY_CLIENT http://www.crazy-tronners.com/resource/
MAP_FILE ed/zones_v2/valley_of_death-0.0.1.aamap.xml

edit: fixed, thanks.

[wrtlprnft]

The MAP_FILE contained a typo, it should be valley, not vallet. Anyways, I thought it was totally impossible, trying all kinds of grinding tricks, until i figured out what that fortress style zone was for, after that it was easy.

[ed]

Last one for a while. It's not really finished but I have other things I need to do for a while, so I'll post it and hope someone else will do something better with it.
It does work, it's just not very good.
Really I got carried way with Inkscape, it is rather good.

A Car, A Tree, Three Butterfly's and Four Comic Hammers.

Code: Select all

RESOURCE_REPOSITORY_CLIENT http://www.crazy-tronners.com/resource/
MAP_FILE ed/zones_v2/hammertime-0.0.1.aamap.xml

[wrtlprnft]

Crazy. /me can't wait for the network stuff to work and for a zonesv2 windows binary. Crazy tronners wild zonesv2!
Anyways, I managed to beat this one on the first attempt, but I still suck at making screenshots.

[Jonathan]

You could make a recording and take proper screenshots during playback, if recordings doesn't mess up with this stuff. Or even make a movie.

[wrtlprnft]

In fact the recording exists because I have a script that always makes recordings. I pressed the screenshot button twice in there, though, and I don't want to have multiple identical screenshots (means i'm too lazy to delete them/make a new recording).
The screenshots are just there to prove that it's doable. You can't know if I was evil and set CYCLE_BRAKE to -1000 or so, though, but cheating is not the point of these maps.

[ed]

Updated the map. It may look similar to the last one, but under the hood it's all been tidied up and monified (no typo).

Code: Select all

RESOURCE_REPOSITORY_CLIENT http://www.crazy-tronners.com/resource/
MAP_FILE ed/zones_v2/hammertime-0.0.2.aamap.xml

I think I finally understand current zones version 2 (at least the non-team stuff), it's capabilities and it's limitations.
Here's a wish list. If some of these things get added, I'm happy.
Maybe they're already there, I've just misunderstood things.
Most I believe you'll be working towards anyway, it's the natural progression.

Scale and colours to work like rotation in a monitor. So as the monitor level changes, the zones size and colour can change smoothly.
something like:

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<Monitor name="moni_zone" init="1.0" drift="-0.2" low="0.0" high="1.0">
 <InRange low="-0.1" high="1.1">
  <ZoneInfluence name="zone1">
   <Rotation rotationSpeed="0;-0.35"/>
   <Scale scale="0;10.0"/>
   <Color red="0.54;0" green="0;0.2" blue="0;0.4" alpha="0.4;1"/>
  </ZoneInfluence>
 </InRange>
</Monitor>

Or even start and end cordinates, so paths could be linked with zones:

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<Monitor name="moni_zone" init="1.0" drift="-0.2" low="0.0" high="1.0">
 <InRange low="0" high="0.2">
  <ZoneInfluence name="zone1">
   <Point x="0;10" y="0;0"/>
  </ZoneInfluence>
 </InRange>
 <InRange low="0.2" high="0.4">
  <ZoneInfluence name="zone1">
   <Point x="10;10" y="0;10"/>
  </ZoneInfluence>
 </InRange>
  ...etc
</Monitor>

Zones with no influence. I was forced to make a zone influence something. It has no real influence, it's either a red herring or part of the scenery.

Monitor Influence Count. To work in the same way as target count.
On this map I was trying to allow the butterflys to influence add to the winzonetree monitor, this worked, but I wanted them to only be able to influence the monitor once each, to give you more time before the planet explodes. I couldn't do this.

Map format. This map is over 1000 lines long, I'm sure it could be done in 250 if I didn't have to repeat zones and monitor influences. Half that if zones themselves could be stored in a seperate file. And it would be a nice tidy file, not the confusing mess that is hammertime. If you'd like my idea's on this I will write them, but just logical stuff I'm sure you've already thought of.

Invincibility Zone. While I'm in it I am invincible to other deathzones, although walls and arena will still get me.

On this map, as time passes the tree will get smaller, if it vanishes before you reach it you have failed. I was trying to give the player regular updates on the time left this was in the moni_wintree:

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     <InRange low="0.99" high="1" >
       <EffectGroup owners="">
         <User user="all">
	   <Target target="all">
	     <Effect effect="setting" settingName="CENTER_MESSAGE" settingValue="You Have 20 Seconds to save the Planet. Good Luck!" count="1"/>
	   </Target>
	 </User>
       </EffectGroup>
     </InRange>
<InRange low="0.79" high="0.8" >
       <EffectGroup owners="">
         <User user="all">
	   <Target target="all">
	     <Effect effect="setting" settingName="CENTER_MESSAGE" settingValue="You Have 15 Seconds remaining to save the Planet!" count="1"/>
	   </Target>
	 </User>
       </EffectGroup>
     </InRange>

But it didn't work.
It did work if I added it to the butterfly monitor. I think this was because there was a player in the butterfly zone, me.
With the settings that are global, this needent be necessary. Maybe something like:

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     <InRange low="0.99" high="1" >
	     <Effect effect="setting" settingName="CENTER_MESSAGE" settingValue="You Have 20 Seconds to save the Planet. Good Luck!" 
     </InRange>

And wrtlprnft, I hope it offers more of a challenge this time



edit: Probably a few more idea's I've forgotten about. Rotation start and end degrees linked with the monitor was one.

[wrtlprnft]

http://wrtlprnft.ath.cx/arma/?min=631&max=633

This map is addictive! Basically you're allowed to miss two hammers in the first butterfly corner, and one in each of the other two. Oh, and there's the tail, you need to exit the car from the rear, not from the front, or you won't have a chance to get back!

I missed the ending message, though, so no screenshot of that.

[ed]

You could make a recording. Or even make a movie.

I discovered an app called recordmydesktop which will capture all or part of whatever's running on your desktop.
I set tron in a window 640x400 in the top left of the screen and ran:

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recordmydesktop --full-shots --no-sound -width 640 -height 400 -x 6 -y 48 -o zones2.avi

then played a zones v2 map. Here is the resulting file for all you windows users (and non svn compilers) to see some of the fun to be had with the zones v2. Be aware it is 15Mb.

I've had it running in mplayer on linux and windows. Although it wouldn't run on windows media player or winamp.
mplayer for windows was surprisingly simple to use. Simply extract the zip and run from command prompt (or drag the movie file onto mplayer.exe).

[Tank Program]

That's pretty cool, and a nice video showing off the zones. Maybe something worth putting on the website. Thoughts anyone?

[HellBlade]

although you might want to lower the quality due to it's size... maybe cut some of it out also...

[Concord]

cool stuff
ed

I was not
aware that zone shape
was current
I'm gotta get
in on maps

speaking of pacman. . .

[ed]

cool stuff
ed

Don't credit me, I just made a few maps. philippeqc did all the hard work on zones v2 making it all possible.
Look forward to seeing your maps.

[QUARG]

I got to thinking today about the zones themselves how they seem to get in the way while playing. Is there currently a way to set zone height or transparency in the map_file?

example:

<Zone effect="fortress">
<ShapeCircle radius="400" height="10" growth="-0.4">
<Point x="0.010" y="-0.005" />
</ShapeCircle>
</Zone>