Trouble with Bridges

[Saddletank]

Hi Guys

I am seriously struggling with getting the physics settings correct for bridges. The collision radius sometimes seems to work in a reverse way to what is intuitive - that is increasing the value reduces the distance at which sprites collide with the model.

Top height and bottom height are also confusing me. If top height is the height above model origin that sprites pass along it, what does bottom height do? Is this an unused value in SoW? Might it control a gap under the bridge roadway for animated water traffic if a game used such a feature?

I also assume that if you change the X-Y-Z values of a bridge then the collision radius and heights get changed too... but I am having real trouble working out the relationship between, say doubling the value of X and the increased collision value.

Are there any map makers/modders out there who have worked out the easiest/quickest way to get sprites to collide with a bridge at the ends and walk across the roadway? I've managed to get it to happen in a few instances but these seem to be pure chance and if I replicate the values in another case, it is not consistent.

The bridge models I am most commonly using are the Waterloo single arch stone bridge, the repainted Middle Bridge from the Antietam map as supplied in Crikey's Russia.dat and the Spanish bridge from his Rio Espanol map.

[Little Powell]

Yes bridges are very tricky and it never seems like you can get them 100% right. Have you looked at the values set for the bridges on the Waterloo maps? Those seem to behave pretty well. It also helps to turn on the collision wire frames in Lstudio.

[Saddletank]

Thanks LP. I'll look again more closely at the WL Maps.

I think the numbers needed change if you change the axes of the bridge model, or push it down into the ground surface - I have been successful with some bridges on another map but when copying those values over to the same bridges on my current map the sprites behave differently.

I haven't tried switching the collision wire frames on, no. How do you do that? That sounds like it will help a lot.

BTW, while you're here, a big thank you to the team for releasing these tools. I'm having a blast with them. I get stuck into a session, time flies by and before I know it, its daylight outside!

[Little Powell]

In Lstudio, View, View Collision Wire Frames.

BTW, while you're here, a big thank you to the team for releasing these tools. I'm having a blast with them. I get stuck into a session, time flies by and before I know it, its daylight outside!

No problem. We've been wanting to release them for years. It felt good to finally get them out there and I can't wait to see what you guys create with them.

[Saddletank]

Thanks, I thought that would help but the frames shown in LStudio are nowhere near where the collision points are. Here's one of the bridges in question. The frame is shown to be within the dimensions of the model itself but the actual collision point is well beyond it, out where the red line is. Likewise collision frames around very small objects like wooden crates placed at the side of roads extend right across the road yet the actual collision radius is nowhere near that far and sprites can pass along the road beside the crate without colliding with it.



My two maps done so far are mentioned in the KS Mod Questions thread on the WL forum:

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/waterl ... -questions

I am now converting the great Chickamauga map to represent a fictional part of Germany. Another guy in our group, Phil, has converted the new 9mi GB map to Germany and one of the Pipe Creek maps to Spain. The KS team is churning out stuff ATM.

[Crikey]

Check the word doc I sent you yesterday.

- Ensure the collision radius is shown (via the view menu)

- In LStudio click on the 3d object and then right click and choose its properties.

- Choose physics.

- You can adjust the radius of the collision wire frames here, but it may be that you'll never get it perfect due to differing terrain heights etc. Your screenie may be one such example. But you may want to extend the radius in your example. Bridges are a pain.

In general, collisions don't seem to work they way they used to in TCM2. Perhaps this is a side effect of NSD's tweaking of the map tools.(see my post some time ago about collisions on the SoW forum)

Going forward, personally I would disable all collisions for small objects and set the radius and other collision settings to zero at the same time, as they do nothing useful. Fences being a prime example. This can be done for individual objects in the properties menu mentioned above or for all objects of a certain type via their specific .Ls file (a text file) which accompanies each 3d object .pro file (in the .dat package) Ideally amending the .Ls file should be done before you start placing the objects in Lstudio.

Just retain them for buildings and bridges. For the former, they can sit within the footprint of the building, as in game your troops just seem to edge around the perimeter of the object itself as long as a collision is enabled.

Bridges, as you've seen, are more tricky because they allow you to amend properties to allow troops to walk across them. This is because they have additional traits - the ontopof- interger ((which I won't try and explain here).

I fear there'll be a lot of revisiting of maps whilst people get to grips with these tools