Board index ‹ Clones Communities and Discussion Groups ‹ Clones Level Designers
particle help
Share level design tips, problems, and solutions
by cpunks » Wed Mar 16, 2011 6:59 pm
I made a particle collecting map but if a clone dies and the particle drops in the water it stays in the water and makes it impossible to recapture. What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to make the particle reset automatically if it gets unreachable like that?
cpunks
Re: particle help
by tom » Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:33 pm
There is a game mode option for Procure the Particle game mode (see Level Settings->Game Mode Options->Lost Particle Stays Lost) that controls if the particle is re-spawned if it falls off the map. So if you have water, lava, or acid, then make sure that there is no land below it so that the lost particle can fall through and fall off the map, and then it will respawn. If the particle gets trapped in the water, then it's trapped for good. I would say this is a bug. We'll fix it for the next version.
by CCX » Wed Mar 16, 2011 8:01 pm
tom wrote: If the particle gets trapped in the water, then it's trapped for good. I would say this is a bug. We'll fix it for the next version.
Technically, it's only trapped for good if the terrain at bottom of the water cannot be removed to allow the particle to drop further down. So it would be somewhat of a behavior change if the particle respawns based on being in water (either as soon as it hits water, or as soon as it stops dropping but is still inside water), though probably no levels are depending on the current behavior, so it's probably a good change. There are also other hazards to consider as well in general, making it likely that the game might not always be able to cover all such situations. Thus it might be worthwhile to also consider an "admin failsafe" option where the admin can explicit issue a command during the match to reset all dropped particles.
[edit: I guess another solution would be to add a new type of object that can eat dropped particles, and then together with the respawn option, it would solve the problem w/o admin intervention, in cases where it's too tricky otherwise for the game to try to detect the need to respawn]
As a temporary workaround, if you can't simply have the water be at the bottom of the level and make use of the respawn option, you might still be able to fix the current situation by making the bottom of your pool of water be a "bridge" contraption (those floors that can automatically set to open and close on regular intervals), instead of regular terrain that may not be destroyed. Then the particle will eventually fall off the bridge and out of the water the next time the bridge opens itself. It may be a little sketchy aesthetically but should be a workable solution for now, and you can further try to cover up the aesthetics by overlaying some background image over the bridge so the players don't see the actual bridge object.
Clones Junior
by rt » Wed Mar 16, 2011 9:16 pm
A heuristic for the respawn-water-particles method would be to check the position of the particle to ensure that it hasn't moved for a while (~1s ?) and then check if it's contained by a water trap.
Although.. i think i like CCX's suggestion to make a particle-eater trap (or enable a particle trigger mode for the proxy trap) because the level designer can then control exactly when the particle should be reset.
@cpunks - you should download and install the Clones Multiplayer Jam Level Pack (http://clonesgame.com/node/1096). The "Touchdown" map is a multiplayer Procure The Particle map which you can examine in the level editor. The game mode options are set to allow particle tunneling (hand off) and there is a clone spawn trigger at the bottom of the map which creates a new Light Clone when a clone jumps into a block from underneath, like Mario
Return to Clones Level Designers