11 replies to this topic

[FS-21]

Just one day ago I had a little idea to use Ares SW clones & this is the result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z4bd7stNps

Now I haven't time to investigate if I can or not but if is possible I would like to replace the Lighting Storm of the existing TS maps with this experiment & if is necessary create a clone of the Lighting Storm SW & replace the original with the Ion Storm in those maps.

Edited by FS-21, 16 June 2011 - 07:06 PM.

[nathancnc]

I like the idea of Ion Storms, Yeah for TS Features!!!

[FS-21]

Oh no!, now I noticed that I made a mistake on the first 5 seconds of the video showing the message from the last video I uploaded on Youtube, (this isn't a 3vs1 AI test sorry by the possible confusion)

[OmegaBolt]

Looks as good as an Ion Storm can look. In order to have these triggered in maps you'd need to replace the original Weather Storm with the Ion Storm and use a clone for the Weather Controller, as you can't trigger any new Ares SWs in maps.

[Allied General]

I'm not sure if Ares allows more then one instance of a weather storm to exist at the same time as you normally get that error txt string.

Nice video though - shame music can't be disabled when ion storm plays but I suppose you can add a report sound.

Edited by Allied General, 18 June 2011 - 11:13 AM.

[OmegaBolt]

Well I don't think it'd make sense for Weather Storms and Ion Storms to happen at the same time anyway.

[FS-21]

Looks as good as an Ion Storm can look. In order to have these triggered in maps you'd need to replace the original Weather Storm SW with the Ion Storm I made and use a clone for the Weather Controller, as you can't trigger any new Ares SWs in maps.

Yes, exactly is what I have done, cloning the Lighting Storm & use that cloned SW in Weather Controller building & in scripted maps call the Lighting Storm SW (in reality Ion Storm SW) in the center of the map and covering all the map with that Ion Storm. Only I haven't edited those maps due to the free time that I'll not have until the 24 of this month (so I don't know if it works in that map Action so in few days I'll know the answer and in my personal opinion better that the original ).

I'm not sure if Ares allows more then one instance of a weather storm to exist at the same time as you normally get that error txt string.

Nice video though - shame music can't be disabled when ion storm plays but I suppose you can add a report sound.

No, I tested it yesterday & Ares can't allow multiple instances of Lighting Storm at the same time so or the Allied SW is activated or the Ion Storm is activated but not both at the same time (you will get the message that the lighting/ion storm is in the process).

About music, yes depending of the type of music the Ion Storm theme can be mixed :S & consider too that there is no way to add an ambiental sound while the SW is enabled & I don't know if this is by design but I can't use the original Ion Storm wav file as sound in-game because is too long, 34 seconds (independently of it is a YR Game or Ares limitation, I'll report these problems when I'll have free time).
So to reproduce the Ion Storm theme while the SW is activated I cheated & I cut the theme into sounds of 5-6 seconds, I created 1 entry in soundsmd.ini & I limited the max. reproduction to that sound entry to only 2 instances & each Ion bolt has attached that Ion Storm theme.
Reducing the delay between random bolts it does a nice ambient effect in whole map while the SW is enabled, and in addition, each Ion Storm theme will be unique and in my opinion I thinnk that is better in this way than the original theme .

Edited by FS-21, 18 June 2011 - 03:04 PM.

[Starkku]

You can actually swap the music theme playing by using appropriate map trigger action. Considering that Ion Storms are probably done through map triggers, this should work pretty well apart from the fact that timing the length of music track according to the length of Ion Storm can get little problematic, with different game speed options factored in.

Altough to be fair, having the lightning sounds as actual SFX instead of ambient music track is much better option.

Edited by Starkku, 18 June 2011 - 09:43 PM.

[OmegaBolt]

Well he could simply stop the music from playing, but then in order to start it again don't you have to pick a specific track to play? Which would simply get repetitive and annoying IMO and could possibly cause issues online.

[Starkku]

Well he could simply stop the music from playing, but then in order to start it again don't you have to pick a specific track to play? Which would simply get repetitive and annoying IMO and could possibly cause issues online.

Well considering there isn't an option to actually stop the music playing using map actions AFAIK, only thing you could do is start playing an empty music track. Once that said track is finished playing, assuming that the music theme has Repeat=no and the repeat music track option has been toggled off, it will start playing the first track available in normal playlist. Don't know if there's any issues with online games, haven't tested at all.

As I said above, it's probably better idea to just stick to using actual SFX for lightning sounds and let the music play as is. Plus this thread probably isn't the best place for any further discussion of how stuff works in this game.

Edited by Starkku, 19 June 2011 - 02:30 PM.

[assasing123]

why can't the original functionality of the ion storm be restored totally? i know weather storm replaced it, but since you have replaced the Weather storm already with a clone, means you can use the original again for stuff... right? by the way, what about meteor showers?

[FS-21]

why can't the original functionality of the ion storm be restored totally? i know weather storm replaced it, but since you have replaced the Weather storm already with a clone, means you can use the original again for stuff... right? by the way, what about meteor showers?

You can see meteor showers as in TS in maps like Tiberium Garden Redux since always in RA2 mods.
Each Lighting Storm trigger for maps are hardcoded & don't use the Allies SW to generate it (in the future Ares "could" add a new trigger to launch any new SW at cell XX to solve it). Now I don't remember (sorry) if I tried simulating Ion Storms using tags from rulesmd.ini into maps & if I had problems with the range limit of the SW but I'll leave it for future experiments, the code for this is done & will be available in the ini file but I'll not use it (for now).

Edited by FS-21, 02 August 2011 - 02:53 PM.