Spotlight problems Options

[CommanderSpartan]

Now I was testing my mod and made the spotlight tower, when I realized that the spotlight only stayed on the right, doing 180s and not 360 degrees, I was wondering what would have caused this, I've never had a problem like this.

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

the original spotlight settings don't make the spotlight move a 360° circle
you can use these

CODE

; Some spotlight controls
SpotlightSpeed=.01; speed in radians
SpotlightMovementRadius=0;2000 offset of center of arc sweep
SpotlightLocationRadius=1250; offset from building
SpotlightAcceleration=.01;.0025; acceleration in radians
SpotlightAngle=360;.5 maximum suggest angle of arc sweep

i know that my SpotlightAngle isn't exact 360° since this is calculated in rad. With this it makes several full circles to one direction when suddenly changing to the other direction.

a full circle would be 2*pi, but since the spotlight doesn't goes in circles and instead moves from 0 to SpotlightAngle and then back to 0, you have to use a very high value to make it move several full circles.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 24 2008, 08:22 PM

[CommanderSpartan]

Well you know how when modded to be created the tower makes the spot light go around the entire structure, well for me it goes from North east, to south east, I understand but what I just don't know is why my towers do this.

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

because in your mod the spotlight still has the setting SpotlightAngle=.5 what makes it move from NE to SE.

Or a different setting was done in the map you're testing the tower.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: May 24 2008, 10:41 PM

[CommanderSpartan]

I don't think its a map, cuz its one I always use and never had this problem there before.

[Team Black]

if you put the spotlight directly on the map (which is really the best thing to do IMO) you can choose which direction it will face and if it rotates vs. going side to side. You can also trigger it to activate an alarm when it spots an enemy.

Buildable light towers are kind of useless and silly IMO

[Arsenal 121]

In relation to towers, I was wondering if there's a way to make the spotlights track targets. Y'see I was trying to make the towers illuminate a target an open up with a weapon, probably an LMG like the original Guard Towers in Tiberian Dawn.

[Bittah Commander]

This is not possible without the use of map triggers.

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

but you can do a workaround, by removing the spotlight and giving the tower a dummy weapon that creates at the target a glowing light.

The glowing light could either be done using a new explosion anim that is just a white circle with 75% translucency or an alphalight applied to a particlesytem on the weapons warhead.
But i never tried alphalights on particlesystem so i don't know if they even work. If they work, the particle system would be necessary to make the alphalight glowing longer than just a millisecond.
Maybe you're also able to make it work like the emp effect where the anim follows the unit even while it moves.

[Bittah Commander]

Yeah, I thought of something similar, but then you still won't be able to have a light beam coming from the tower properly... The only possible way I can think of to create the light beam would be by using the disruptor beam... But I really don't think that'd look any good.

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

or you create a 32 facing shp turret anim of a beam and try to make it transparent.

[Bittah Commander]

But then it would only work for 1 specific range...

[SeekSomethingNew]

...Or i could find out how it works and add it to the spotlight code