Constrain Monsters

keeping busy lately.. managed to tinker a little at work today. haven't tested anything.

Constrain Monsters on X axis

• Change skaarjpack.MonsterController like you did PlayerController to undo any offset for pawn in +/-Y
• Before made the change by overriding XPlayer, which is a child of PlayerController
• Specified the change in the extended Gametype ClockworkGame, with: PlayerControllerClassName="Clockwork.ClockworkPlayer"
• Monster has a line: ControllerClass=class'SkaarjPack.MonsterController'
• In the ClockworkPlayer controller I set the Y value of the pawns location to 0 everytime PlayerTick was called.
• In the 2DMonsterController I set the Y value of the pawns location to 0 everytime Tick was called.
• need to test
• :: Could stop forcing Y=0 when something dies
• :: Obviously a hack job, but we'll see what happens
• :: Need to see what can be done with Goals, paths, AI to make monsters work better in 2D
  

Working on better understanding the code needed to spawn monsters

2006-11-15 Working on better understanding the code needed to spawn monsters

Currently looking at the code for the SP framework v2 from Frag House Interactive

Class A_MonsterSpawnAtStart extends SPActors placeable;
This class is placable in the level and spawns a monster when PostBeginPlay() is called.
By default it creates a pawn of MonsterClass=Class'Skaarj' with MonsterHealth=0 (0 just makes it be the default health).

Class A_TriggeredMonsterSpawn extends SPActors placeable;
This class is placable in the level and spawns a monster when Trigger(Actor Other, Pawn EventInstigator) is called.
There are also triggered spawns for Actors, DynamicLights, and Tentacles in the SP framework.

Monster Classes (ported in SPFrame from Unreal SP game):

Behemoth	Krall	Skaarj
Brute	Manta	SkaarjAssassin
CaveManta	MechanicalSpider	SkaarjLord
EliteKrall	Mercenary	Slith
FireSkaarj	Nali	Sniper
FireTitan	Nalicow	Tentacle
FireTitan_Ammo	NaliRabbit	Titan
FireTitan_Fireball	Officer	Trooper
FriendlyBase	Pupae	Warlord
Gasbag	Queen	Zombie
IceSkaarj	Razorfly

Conclusion: Spawning monsters doesn't look like it will be very hard at all. The classes the SP framework uses to do this are very simple. =) Maybe I can finish this, make a pic with graphics for all the monsters, then figure out how we'll make the player aim and how to keep the monsters playing in 2D.

Side-Scrolling + Action :: Dec 1

On December 1 I'm going to have the code ready to add monsters into our SP levels. Aaron and I and hopefully Roger and Tim as well are going to have some 2D type levels to play around with then too, so this should be really entertaining if all goes according to plan.

Hopefully this push will get everyone back in the right mindset to be doing the work we need to do to really create something cool. I'm going to be out of town all of next week, so getting the code ready is priority 1 and then I can play in the level editor.

Also coding a better way to aim in from the side perspective would probably be a good idea too. :-D