Hi, So I have recently started planning out an idea of a small SP mod for the source engine which i plan to make over the summer and release around October. Without going into the intricate details of the mod it's self Im toying with using either hl2's npc zombies or ideally having slightly modified versions which act slightly differently than they currently do.
Of course the latter needs code work which as an artist is way out of my league, but im wondering if anyone here would be willing to help me out, or at least give me an idea how hard it would be, from a coders point of view, to implement it into a mod. To give you an idea of exactly what im looking for here is a basic description: A way of LODing out the AI if the zombie is at a certain distance from the player. For example: Once the player is 2048 units away from the NPC it will cease all AI and just play an idle animation remaining in a 'sleep state' until the player is within 2048 units radius of the NPC. The reason for this is that im thinking of ways to have alot of zombie NPCs spread over a large area without clogging up the CPU on pointless walking and pathfinding stuff like they do now while they idle. Secondly, I recently played the latest version of SMOD and noticed they they added a pretty cool new type of zombie as shown in this video from SMOD: Tactical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIArug7ENk&feature=related It seems like a pretty simple AI modification to an NPC citizen or something, where they are idle until they see or hear the player then just run straight at them causing damage if they come into close contact with the player. They also seem to run to random path nodes whilst searching for the player also which also crude looks pretty convincing! If you're now thinking "why dont you just use SMOD?" its because they have no source code to implement the zombie LOD system which is more important atm and SMOD is not very mapper/modder friendly (it doesnt even have a FDG entity file for hammer). I also need to use some Orange box specific features for the mod to have some outstanding visuals. Anyway any advice or help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Robert Briscoe www.littlelostpoly.co.uk __________________________________________________________ Sent from Yahoo! Mail. A Smarter Email http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
