How to make triggerable auto cannons?

[Grimpast]

I need your help folks.

I've searched high and low, but I can't find a tutorial, on how to make triggerable cannons in UnrealED!
So here is my plan:

By pressing one button I want 14 cannons to unleash a massive volley-firing. I imagine the cannons very similar to that mortar in the official map AS-Overlord. They would fire 14 flack cannon shells.
Also I need it to be desynchronised, I mean I don't want to fire all of them simultaneously. Like a broadside fire.

And I need it to be repeatable, but only after 3 or 4 minutes later!

Can you help me or tell me how can I achieve this goal? It would be very important for my map!
Thank you!

[Grimpast]

It would be great if you only show me some link to tutorials.

[papercoffee]

Ok Guys do someone have a clue or hint for this man ??!
come on ...there must be something.

[Creavion]

Needs scripting.

[Grimpast]

Needs scripting? So I am asking it at the wrong place? I have tried to understand it by watching that AS-Overlord in Ued, some mortar spawner trigger actor here, special event trigger actor there, surely must not be so difficult. Just for me to understand.

But if this topic is the question of scripting and not mapping, please dear admins could you be so kind and put this whole thing over there?

[papercoffee]

Then lets move this thread to the scripting section... maybe there is more luck.

[>@tack!<]

ehm i think this is doable without any added scripting? All you need is a thingfactory with the flakshells as prototype, some spawnpoints, make the button trigger a dispatcher that triggers the thingfactorys, with some delays ( i cant tell you specificly im busy atm i just have what we call here study avoiding attitude so i checked the forum :p )

edit: and for that 3-4 min repeat delay you just give the button a 3-4min opentime

[>@tack!<]

hmm i tried this only i dunno how to stop the thingfactorys

[Feralidragon]

I always found the thingfactories too complicated for a mapper to manage, they could be more simple and yet have more relevant features.
Honestly, I don't really remember if that's possible with the retail mapping actors (as Creavion said, it might need some custom scripted actor).

The only thing I attempted close to what you want I made in a map called CTF-Perdition (a very old map and very laggy at some spots, specially if you have dynamic lighting and fog enabled lol), but I am not sure if I scripted something or used the retail stuff, but either ways you would have to check for yourself and if you see I made an actor for it, you're free to rip it and use it, if not, you can simply replicate the same effect in your map (with perhaps help from other mappers, as I can't open the map right now in Ued).
http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1291&p=11610

Open the CTF-{W}Perdition one.

[bb_drac]

Maybe I'm too late with an insight?
As far as I know after extensive testing is that a a thingfactory can only be activated through a player inside it's collision radius or a trigger.
The thingfactory will not deactivate by any other trigger except by a player leaving the thingfactory collision radius if bStoppable is true.

You could put the thingfactory themselfs where the buttons should be to "cheat" as it's the spawnpoints that actually "throw" out the object.

[JackGriffin]

There is a nice cannon in MH-DefendingMars that shoots a cannon-type volley on a timer. It would be easy to set it to be triggered and it would fit closely with what you want. Take a look at it and if you are still interested I'll fix it however you want it done up. Send me the map and what you want it to do and I'll whip up the scripting for you.

BTW Thingfactory can spawn anything (I've used it to spawn everything from monsters to boxes). It can be set to any trigger (or event) and doesn't have to have a player entering collision with it. The factory needs spawnpoints though and that's what goofs up most people. In this case you could script the spawnpoint to spawn the cannonball with some plusZ and PlusX to fling it whatever direction you like and tie it to a nice BOOM sound.

Did you guys ever play MH-MHMVillage? That's the map where it's DeadCity on one side and the private MHM village on the other. Well near Ice's house there are boxes that spawn all over for you to shoot repeatedly (and a hidden room full of them in her house). I used factories to create and control the spawning of these. Here's a video demo of what I'm talking about:
[youtube]QCytV9GhECc[/youtube]
You can see that the first boxes that line outside the house (the small ones) are on a normal trigger. The ones inside the hidden room are started by shooting the black and white box above. (Ice loved blowing up boxes and wanted a room full to shoot as much as she wanted so that's what this was for)

I like doing this sort of thing, it's simple but makes a nice effect and adds some real ambiance to a map.

[MrLoathsome]

Cool stuff there.

[bb_drac]

Yes, you can activte a thingfactory by etiher at trigger or entering the thingfactory collision radius.
However, it is not possible to turn the thingfactory off with a trigger, which is what Grimpast needs.
You can only control it with the thingfactory itself.

[papercoffee]

Ok ... soooo this thread is revived.
But with very useful stuff...

I got a question too:
Here in my map dm-gangwar-rocketfight are two cannons ... Walldorf and Stadler ...How can I make them hunting every player disregarding any team-play ...right now they only fight back if a redeemer blast hit them. But I want them to start fireing by intervisibility.

[JackGriffin]

There's a bool variable that's called bStoppable that can be used to halt the factory. It works off the 'untouch' but you could easily tie that to a check for trigger on/off. To be honest thingfactory is a good base class but I'd almost always make minor tweaks to it in a subclass depending on what I wanted to do with it. In the case of a cannon it's not really where you want to go. You'll be much better off just spawning the projectice from the cannon as firing code (think oversized Flak cannon here) set to be fired from some sort of trigger source.

If you just really wanted to go thingfactory you could subclass it with a small check inserted that created a break when you wanted it to stop production. This might be a good thing to make anyway since I can see the need for it to have a few more checks inserted to add flexibility when dealing with non-scriptedpawn spawning.

@Paper: I'm on it bro. Shall we go to email or make a new thread?
BTW, here's a tracking cannon I made for a redeemer training map I was mucking around with. It's supposed to help you get used to incoming missile fire and not get all freaked out by it. The cannon doesn't track very well (by design) but you can clearly see it follows me around and spams hell out of rockets. Is this kind of what you are thinking of doing?
[youtube]u3tJZLF9N-k[/youtube]