Rollercoaster THEORY

[Y_Less]

This is just something I thought of last night which I don't have time to develop but thought someone else may be interested in taking it further. I've outlined a few problems and possible solutions, but I don't know wether they'll work at all. Basically, I theorised that you could record a bot path in a plane taking the course of a rollercoaser (or other similar system) and then model the coaster using objects and go round it. To go round you would have to be driven in a car, but there are a few solutions I can see. First - use the flowerpot, this is the solution I'm least sure about but anyway - using this would minimise the viewability of the car, you could attach objects to the player to build what you wanted the carriage to look like, to get round the problem of seeing the driver you could try change their VW, but not the car's (I don't know if this will work at all I'm afraid). The second option is to just use a car that looks a bit like a rollercoaster carriage (you could theme the coaster to aid the effect) and pretend the bot is another rider, not actually the driver.

As I said, it's an early stage idea based on the fact that bots driving on plane paths ignore the vehicle type.

The other problem is recording the path acurately enough to look like a real rollercoaster, but I'm sure some good pilots can deal with that.

[Lewwy]

This is actually a really good idea, nice thinking Alex.
So are we talking about a first person view for the rider(s) when riding the roller coaster? If so that'd be even more cool, I know it's possible and would be very effective for visual effects and the experience.

[Y_Less]

You could spectate the bot I suppose, that could be a good solution too (is that what you meant)? If you meant constantly updating the player's camera the idea of this is that it would be pretty smooth (or should be anyway), that would loose some of the effect.

[V1ceC1ty]

omg i was think exactly this but in a slightly different way :P

[Lewwy]

Originally Posted by Y_Leѕѕ

You could spectate the bot I suppose, that could be a good solution too (is that what you meant)? If you meant constantly updating the player's camera the idea of this is that it would be pretty smooth (or should be anyway), that would loose some of the effect.

I meant constantly updating the player's camera, and I thought of it being extremely smooth, but maybe you're right about loosing some of the effect after all..
However I never thought of spectating the bot, that could work I guess?

[Joe Staff]

I've done some research before about how spectating a bot would look while he/she is in a vehicle, and it works marvelously when the vehicle isn't tilted too much. It gives a perfect First Person View of the bot no matter what seat it's in. So you could just fill the vehicle with bots, and a different person could spectate a different bot, but the bots will have to be in an animation that moves them outside of the vehicle (crack animation worked for me) so that they don't see the bots head.

Honestly this would work better for a train/taxi system, simply because going upside down won't cause the camera to go upside down, therefore, they see the bottom of the car.

[Lewwy]

In that case, spectating a bot would be the best thing to do.

[Joe Staff]

Constantly updating the player's camera is a bad idea, causes shakes that is reminiscent of a seizure case with astygmatism.

[Lewwy]

I've never actually tried constant updating myself, but I can see something like that happening and not being smooth now. at all. |:

[Guedes747]

For what ive read, this could be fun lol.