How do you produce THIS effect?

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Cammy

Cammy

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I'm trying to put a few stone slabs floating in mid-air in a UT level I'm building. Not hanging still in mid-air, but hovering -- you know, going up a little, then sinking a little, then going up a bit again, and so on indefinitely. And I would prefer that they're not triggered, but going through the motion of hovering in mid-air right from the start. My idea is to create a floating magic stairway. Is this possible, and if so how do you do it? I understand they will have to be movers, and I already have experience building workable doors and elevators with switches. Will I have to build my stone slabs as LoopMovers, and if so what settings should I work on for them?

Some people told me the LoopMovers had to be triggered, but I could make the triggers real large by changing the triggers' collision radius and height so they would cover the whole level and at the start of the game they would then be immediately triggered and the stone slab LoopMovers would kick into motion right away. I tried what they said but it didn't work; the LoopMovers hung still and would only budge when I go over them (I placed a [normal] trigger just above each mover before changing the collision height and radius -- and I rebuilt everything, too), and then only for a while before hanging still again until I go over them again. Could there be some settings I need to work on for the movers and triggers, which I didn't? Or is it that Ued just doesn't like it when I have too many such movers (and triggers) too close? (I placed 12 of them in my level, quite close to each other. And actually they didn't look right when I played my level, sometimes even disappearing from sight when viewed from certain angles [though I didn't leave any craters when walking over them]... Maybe I'll just have to drop this idea of a floating stairway?)

Also tried dispatchers. They just didn't work. In fact I never saw any red lines connecting the dispatchers to the movers when I set the event and tag fields in Ued.

Also noticed the movers' properties have things like 'bBounce' and 'buoyancy'. Played with those but the movers remained dead still...

Help please, anyone? Thanks! :tup:
 
quitgrin1

quitgrin1

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Hi Cammy,

You should cange the initial state of the movers to TriggerToggled, and I think you should change the move time to each of the movers. Make them different for each mover, like with 1 or 2 seconds diffence The StayOpenTime setting should be 0 for some of the movers, and leave it low (1-1.5 secs) for others.

I also think the movers shouldn't be Loopmovers, cause let me explain:
- Normal movers do their movements like this: key 0 - key1 - key 2- key1 - key 0.
- Loop movers do their movements like this: key 0 - key1 - key 2 - key 0

They dont return backwards to their respective keys , they just reach the last key and start all over from the beggining, from key 0 without returning.

I think you should use dispatchers. The purpose of dispatchers was to eliminate all the red lines that would be necessary to create complex events. So you shouldn't worry about them not appearing :D Normal triggers do show lines, so if one appears when you place the dispatchers tag in the triggers event field, then it should work. If I'm not mistaken you should do the following.

- Put a normal Trigger & a Dispatcher in to your map. The trigger should have a very large radius, and be set to TriggerOnceOnly. If you want the trigger to work when the game starts, then place it near a Playerstart or something. The normal trigger should trigger the first Dispatcher (Dispatcher1).

In Dispatcher1, do the following.

-Leave the Outdelays to 0.

- Put the movers tags in the OutEvents. If you run out of OutEvent Slots, place another dispatcher (Dispatcher2) in your map, and leave the last slot of Dispatcher1's OutEvents list free & put Dispatcher2's tag in there.

In Dispatcher2, leave the Outdelays to 0, and place the remaining movers tags in the OutEvents list. Now to achieve a continuose "loop" effect, just place in one of Dispatcher2's outevent slots Dispatcher1's tag.

That's it! It should work when you test it out.

Please try it out and tell me what happened.

Later,
GriNGoLoCo
 
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Kyouryuu

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Is it accurate to say that the state of movers is also transmitted in Unreal's netcode? I mean, when a mover goes into motion, does its present location and state get sent as packets to everything, or just the signal that it has been triggered and then the actual movement is on the client-side?

The reason I bring this up is that, to a newbie like me, it seems conceivable that if you had too many movers, you would cause more lag, couldn't you?
 
Cammy

Cammy

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Actually, I used only two keynums for each mover. And I also gave each of the movers slightly different movetimes.

Anyway, I'll try out what you recommended, Gringo. Thanks! :tup:
 
Waffnuffly

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uhh... Gringo, why do all that extra work when you could make it simple?

1) Set the Movers (just regular movers will do) to bTriggerPound. This makes them repeat their keyframes as long as the player is within proximity of the trigger that activates them.
2) Add a trigger somewhere in the middle of the map with a giant radius (as big as you need to cover the whole area). You're gonna have to do this; but it's not really a big deal because unless you set the radius to like 10,000 or more, it wont lag or anything.
3) As soon as you start the map, you'll be within the radius of the trigger, and the movers will be moving on their own. If the trigger encompasses the whole map, the movers will never stop moving. It's a lot easier that way... only 1 trigger and a different setting in the mover.

[Edit] A few more notes:
-bBounce .... well, I honestly have no idea what the hell that does. I don't think it works.
-Bouyance is only applied to actors, not brushes. Specifically, anything with a mesh (decoration, projectile, pawn, etc).
-Dispatchers never draw lines to their event targets. Don't know why, but as long as the tag and event fields are the same, it will work.
 
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Cammy

Cammy

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To Gringo:

Your suggestions worked beautifully :D -- except for one thing. My suspicion is that Ued just doesn't like it when you have too many movers close together; that would explain why the stairs never looked right (blinking out of sight etc). Well, I decided I had no choice but to settle for second best, namely a small number of floating platforms, requiring the player/bot to jump from one to the other. This time Ued was happy and everything looked normal.

Thanks anyway for the great help, guys. I luvvvv ya all! :p

P.S. Finished your epic, huh, Waffnuffly?
 
Cammy

Cammy

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Waffnuffly said:
1) Set the Movers (just regular movers will do) to bTriggerPound. This makes them repeat their keyframes as long as the player is within proximity of the trigger that activates them.
2) Add a trigger somewhere in the middle of the map with a giant radius (as big as you need to cover the whole area). You're gonna have to do this; but it's not really a big deal because unless you set the radius to like 10,000 or more, it wont lag or anything.
3) As soon as you start the map, you'll be within the radius of the trigger, and the movers will be moving on their own. If the trigger encompasses the whole map, the movers will never stop moving. It's a lot easier that way... only 1 trigger and a different setting in the mover.
Click to expand...

A question, Waff. Since there's more than one mover, there'll have to be more than one trigger also. If all the triggers are given a large collision height and radius, won't the overlapping of their area of influence cause any problems? Just curious.
 
Waffnuffly

Waffnuffly

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Cammy: Epic? Uh... you mean my story? No, that probably won't end until I die :p
if you mean my post... well... yeah.

Regarding your question:

No, you don't need multiple triggers for all those movers. You also don't need to worry about overlapping. If two triggers overlap, that won't matter. There's just the possibility that they can both be triggered at the same time (which can be useful sometimes if you don't want dispatchers everywhere).

You only need one trigger for all your movers. Just change their move time / delay time / stay open time, etc. and they'll all be moving out of order before long. :)
 
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