Ninjas!

[Smoke39]

I am still working on it. I just started working on a ninja-to. Slicing someone's head off up close is rather satisfying, especially with the new headshot bloodspray effect. I'm still trying to think of a good secondary fire.

How would I differentiate the bakuhatsugama from and balance it with the ninja-to?

I d'know how I'd code tekagi.

Samruai v. Ninja might be cool. Anyone know how I could make a GUI for selecting your class? Maybe I could just make it decide based on your team color.

 

[debucode]

Does UT have spider physics? That would be the way I would expect to do climbing. It's really a different kind of wall climbing than the usual grapple, plus you could have a melee attack using the claws.

I assume chain weapons would work more like the chain knives in God of War - not sure how that fits into the UT code base. Or, they could be more like the grapple but would pull the enemy like Scorpion's Van Dam spear from MK ("get over here"), or maybe just hold the enemy so they can't attack.

 

[Neuroflare]

Remember folks, the plural of Ninja is Ninja.

 

[Smoke39]

Spider physics work all... weird.

Grabbing someone with a chain and pulling them toward you to kill them with a melee attack sounds pretty slick. I once tried to allow the kaginawa to disarm people if you hit them with it, but it was really hard to actually hit anyone with it.

I know, 'Flare, I'm sorry. D:

 

[Postal]

What if you hit someone with the grapple, they are wrapped up(ie Batman style), and cant attack, hit the grapple key again, and then you pull them in.

 

[Smoke39]

How would I make it possible to actually score a hit with it?

 

[Smoke39]

Ninja-to third person mesh. :O

 

[debucode]

Sword looks nice and shiny - one question, do you want it that big?

If the kaginawa grapple was fast / had a homing component, it might be easier to hit someone with the tip (probably hard to hit weapon in hand w/o some kind of homing assist). Alternately, if the tip were moving in an arc, maybe UT will let you do traces between the tip and the thrower to see if it hits stuff (I think the "ninja rope" mutator does something like this)?

 

[Smoke39]

I might shrink it a bit, but the range is pretty long so I'll probably leave it a bit big.

Homing might work. It could pick it's target by firing a trace, and if the hook moved fast enough the homing might not be too apparent to seem weird. I'll see if simply increasing the speed makes it sufficiently easier first, though.

The problem with doing traces between the hook and the thrower is that small objects could be missed due to insufficient frequency of traces. The kaginawa's physics aren't very realistic, but it's fun to use.

 

[Kangus]

Unreal 1 mod?!? Good gravy! It's a reason to update old WoD! Why didn't I think of this a month ago when I first saw?

 

[debucode]

The hook could just try to lead the target based on the target's velocity after the initial trace is done. That way it will always hit (without obvious homing) unless the target deviates from the line of fire...

 

[Smoke39]

I tried increasing the speed. Besides still being difficult to aim, anytime you missed you got pulled toward the wall behind your target. I think any chain weaponry would probably be better-suited to being its own weapon rather than an extension of the kaginawa.

I'm experimenting with the ninja-to. Right now it works kinda like the light saber in the Jedi Knight games. Not attacking allows you to automatically defend. Secondary is a vertical strike that defeats defense, but leaves you open longer. I think bots are too stupid to test it against; they rarely get close enough to you to engage in close combat, even with SuggestAttackStyle() returning 1.

 

[debucode]

I suppose it's true that dedicated fighting games generally don't allow constant running at deathmatch speeds - and enemies tend to stand still to fight.

 

[Smoke39]

I looked at how the suggested style functions work, and 1 isn't in any way the limit. So I think I got the bots to get close to people with the sword. I'm working on teaching them how to use it skillfully. The idea is to make them only use secondary fire if attacking someone who's currently defending with a ninja-to, to hang back a bit after attacking while they're open, and to only attempt to attack when they're actually close.

 

[Smoke39]

Bots are predictable and inhumanly in-tune with your mistakes, but they know how to use the ninja-to pretty well now. I think all that's left now is to set up the rating part of RateSelf().

My plan for the kusari-gama is to make primary a short-ranged melee attack, and secondary throw the chain out to grab people and pull them in. Pressing secondary fire while the chain's out without having grabbed anyone will allow you to twirl it around and smack people with the weight. Once you do hit somone, you'll have to throw it out again to start twirling it again. People'll be released once they reach you, but maybe secondary fire while you're reeling someone in will release them early.

 

[Smoke39]

The melee attack and chain reeling functionalities are in. The sickle's range is so short that you really pretty much have to use the chain to get people, which is pretty fun. If you do score a solid hit with the sickle you're pretty much garaunteed a kill. I think I need to make the chain release people once they get real close to you, so if you do screw up with the sickle you'll have to hit them with the chain again before you can try again. I'll probably also have people released automatically if they somehow get too far away, like stuck against a wall in the way or something, mostly to prevent the chain linked list from killing Unreal with "infinite" recursion.

I've changed the kaginawa's chain back to the old rope model I made a while ago for it to better distinguish it from the kusari-gama's chain. I still need to make a weight mesh and figure out exactly how to make the chain twirling work. Right now I'm thinking of making it an actor with a big collision radius and short collision height that positions itself above your head and hurts anything it touches. Alternatively, I could have it periodically iterate through all visible actors and damage them as long as they're in range. I guess which method I use depends on whether I want the chain to stop twirling upon impact with something. My plan for the mesh would be the chain with maybe a blur-type effect with a spinning animation. I think that'd be better than trying to make the actual weight projectile orbit you and dealing with colliding with level geometry.

Here's a shot of the sickle the first time I tested it. :b

 

[Neuroflare]

So I think that the forums are pretty much the whole WoD website now.

We should do something with that

 

[Smoke39]

I finally got a chance to test this on our LAN again. A bunch of stuff is totally ****ed up on the client side.

 

[Postal]

Who says we need a website. Just offer all the content on the forums.

Oh, BTW, I will be gone for a nice long while. I'm going to Iraq.

 

[debucode]

So, I only have UT2k3,4, but I'd like to see more ninja one way or another.