Gary L. Simmons  rev 03/16/06  http://webwonks.org/Marathon/Forge/hastursworkshop/puddles2.html
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Water Cannons? That is correct. A cannon made out of water, no, a cannon that uses water, yes. A water cannon is a device that uses a media to propell a player to great lengths, or to move a player along a desired path. It can use water, sewege, lava, or even goo... they all do the same thing, yet lava and goo will hurt the player in the process.

Grendel searched high and low for a correctly used water cannon, and found Hata "ha-ta-la", a map by Randall Shaw. This map will be used for the demonstration of this thing.





Parts List for the Hata Water Cannon
  • 9 Polygons
  • 1 Light Switch
  • 1 Platform Switch
  • 1 Light
  • 1 Media
  • 1 Sound (Alarm)
  • 1 Platform
    		•

    Refer to the parts list above for what you will need, to make a Water Cannon just like the one in Hata. You can also Download (Courtesy of the Battle Cat's Litterbox) the map pack that Hata is in, so you can see how it really works, but the map pack is large.

    An interesting thing this Hata water cannon has, is the ability to turn it on and off, as well as open and close the entry point. A siren also chimes in when the cannon is active. Grendel also keeps wondering who the hey does Hata mean? Mental note, bug Frigidman...



    Initial steps, make the extras - light and media.

    The light will be used to control the height of the media and the volume of the sound, and the light of the room.

  • Make its Active section Intensity of 100.
  • Inactive's Intensity of 0.
  • Do not make the light for media pulsate or flicker etc, so don't mess with the Secondary settings for both the Active and Inactive.
  • Make the speed for Becomes Active and Inactive, medium. A period of 100 is good.
  • Make it initially INactive, so the light is off to begin with, which means the sound will be off, and the media will be down.

    That will do it for the light. Nothing more needs to be changed on it from the default settings.

    The media will be used as the flow force in the cannon. It drops below the surface floor of the cannon when the light is inactive (like it is turned off). It then rises up a bit to fill the floor of the cannon, to grab the feet of players and fling them out.

  • Make its High-tide 0.08 over the floor height of the cannon.
  • Make its Low-tide 0.05 under the floor height of the cannon.
  • Put the direction of flow to go out of the cannon.
  • The flow set for Hata is 0.293 so that it flings the player just right, so they land out on the hill.
  • Set the tide light to the light created above.
  • And make sure that the "Sound is obstructed by the floor" is checked, so you do not hear water, or sewege, when you step into a turned off cannon.

    That will make the media needed for the cannon. It's a simple concept really, it just takes some tweaking to get the flow and height and speed of movements just right, so the cannon will be useful instead of just an annoyance.

    Making the polygons for where to put the cannon depends on a few things. The first is you need to make it far enough from its target so the cannon is useful. Also you need to set the polygons to be higher than its target to compensate for gravity. After those, pretty much any design or style can be used for the cannon. Simple.


    A few things were done in Hata that help the look and feel.

    One was the lip at the end of the cannon. This was made to make sure that no media-edge-smearing would occur. This lip is just .002 beneath the High-tide of the liquid, so that even if you tried, you would not see the smearing during game play. In Hata, you can never walk UP to the outside of the cannon and look into it (too high off the ground).

    Here to the left shows that the last chunk was raised up. It was set to 4.961 (which is .002 below the surface of the media when the cannon is ON).

    Also to the left it shows what the edge of the cannon looks like when it is on. The thin white line is where smearing will occur during the game (forge shows bleached white for any areas that smear).

     


    The light used for the media was also set on the walls of the entry chamber, so when the cannon is turned on, everything lights up. Also the light was used for a few 'Alarm' sound points set in the chamber and outside to notify others that the cannon is on.



    Last small things: Put a few puddles on the floor of the cannon, so when the water gets turned off, it looks all wet in there. Also some random water drop sound areas could be added, and then flickering lights on light panels. Just a few suggestions Grendel likes to see done, even if it is a netmap.




    Some Dont's:

  • Don't make the water cannon be filled up so high the player has to completely submerge to go through it. These are noisy, and bothersome, and just don't feel good. You can't shoot while traveling through them, unless you have the kkv, or fist.
  • Don't base a level to having a hundred of these things everywhere. Two is plenty enough, and three just gets in the way.
  • Don't allow the smearing. Use the technique above to prevent frontal smearing (Grendel no like that term).






     

     

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