Problem with telephone poles.

[sztartur2]

I have laid on almost all of my maps telephone poles with wire. They look very good and seem to be a must for the landscape. There are problems though.

1. If I put 5 line long row of poles with has height sometimes the tanks are lifted up and fall down after passing a pole.
2.If I put 5 line long row of poles without has height no vehicle can go under the wire and all the five poles will be knocked down.
3. Using poles without wire. Too much and too fiddly for me to put each pole one by one.
4. They should be taken completely out.

What do you suggest can one bear with option 1. or shall I take them off? Option 2. and 3. is not viable for me.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: sztartur
1. If I put 5 line long row of poles with has height sometimes the tanks are lifted up and fall down after passing a pole.
2.If I put 5 line long row of poles without has height no vehicle can go under the wire and all the five poles will be knocked down.

Do not use poles with hasheight. Right now the poles have a bounding box that takes into account their wires. A bounding box is data that lets the program know the outer dimensions of the structure so it can draw the terrain map color in MM and determine object collisions. I built the poles with the bounding box the size of the footprint of only one pole. So nothing like this would happen.
Before going out the door someone ran an auto bounding box program on all the structures in the game and bollixed this up.

1. You can fix the poles right now by using a paint program and changing the terrain type under the poles to clear or some grass. Hasheight=false
2. To permanently fix this I would have to make an entire new set of poles that have not been auto bounding boxed or the data for current bound box for poles changed. (I don’t know where this is stored or how to change it.)

Don't even get me going on the knockdown feature...[:@]
Hopefully the programmer will fix this or take it out of the game.

[sztartur2]

Mobius I see no impact of the poles' positions in map.bmp. How can that be or am I misunderstanding here something?

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

ORIGINAL: sztartur
1. If I put 5 line long row of poles with has height sometimes the tanks are lifted up and fall down after passing a pole.
2.If I put 5 line long row of poles without has height no vehicle can go under the wire and all the five poles will be knocked down.

Do not use poles with hasheight. Right now the poles have a bounding box that takes into account their wires. A bounding box is data that lets the program know the outer dimensions of the structure so it can draw the terrain map color in MM and determine object collisions. I built the poles with the bounding box the size of the footprint of only one pole. So nothing like this would happen.
Before going out the door someone ran an auto bounding box program on all the structures in the game and bollixed this up.

1. You can fix the poles right now by using a paint program and changing the terrain type under the poles to clear or some grass. Hasheight=false
2. To permanently fix this I would have to make an entire new set of poles that have not been auto bounding boxed or the data for current bound box for poles changed. (I don’t know where this is stored or how to change it.)

Don't even get me going on the knockdown feature...[:@]
Hopefully the programmer will fix this or take it out of the game.

I don't believe changing the terrain type will help with the knockdown. I tried that. I think that just leaves option 4. I think the units going to the top of the wire and coming back down is pretty jarring. and when it's vehicles, you can also see tracks.

Thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

OK off they come then. Heavy xml editing is to follow. [8|]  When the poles will be done right I will update the maps with them.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

OK off they come then. Heavy xml editing is to follow. [8|]  When the poles will be done right I will update the maps with them.

Another option is to turn off knockdowns. this affects all knockdowns though.

Thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

I have lots of fences on my maps they cannot act as tank barriers they have to be able to be knocked down. There are a lot of alignment problems with the poles as well. The issue reached the point of not being feasible any more. It is simply not worth the effort. You do the poles right and I will update the maps later.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

I have lots of fences on my maps they cannot act as tank barriers they have to be able to be knocked down. There are a lot of alignment problems with the poles as well. The issue reached the point of not being feasible any more. It is simply not worth the effort. You do the poles right and I will update the maps later.

The models don't stop tanks. The animations of the fences falling over is what is turned off.
That is the way I would solve the problem. Just turn off the knockdown feature.

I have rebuilt some of the poles using a different name. This requires new models to be added to my Media/Mods folder so anyone using your maps with these new poles would need the new models so that isn't feasible.

This shows what has happened. The new model is on the left. It is given yellow fence terrain and produces only a spot under one pole.
The current model is on the right and was set to fence terrain. It blocks the entire length of the model.

[sztartur2]

I understood that.

I believe the best would be that these models would get into the "official" release and then I will update my maps. I have now 6 big maps with lots of objects but in reality it's 10 maps as 4 of the original maps have a second version for special future campaign use.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

I understood that.

I believe the best would be that these models would get into the "official" release and then I will update my maps. I have now 6 big maps with lots of objects but in reality it's 10 maps as 4 of the original maps have a second version for special future campaign use.

This doesn't solve the problem.

Thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

How do you turn knockdown feature off?

[sztartur2]

I examined the Hungary 1 map where one can go under the poles. The problem is I do not see any difference in the xml data structures of my poles the the object in Hungary1 map. I see no effect in the map.bmp for both. I do not understand why is it different though.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

I examined the Hungary 1 map where one can go under the poles. The problem is I do not see any difference in the xml data structures of my poles the the object in Hungary1 map. I see no effect in the map.bmp for both. I do not understand why is it different though.

In the media file there is a line resource filename="UseKnockDown" value="true"
This should be set to false.

Rick did some testing and found that it isn't the bounding box size which is causing the long structure to be knocked down. It looks like the game program is calculating the size somewhere else so me making new power line models won't fix them from being knocked down. It is in the programmer court to fix.

[sztartur2]

OK I set this ant put the poles back where I erased them.

[sztartur2]

I set the UseKnockDown to false and they still get knocked down. Why?

[sztartur2]

I would like the poles to behave like in the Hungary 1 map but I have no clue how to do it. I that maps's media file I have not found the knockdown variable. How should I proceed now?

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

I would like the poles to behave like in the Hungary 1 map but I have no clue how to do it. I that maps's media file I have not found the knockdown variable. How should I proceed now?

You have to actually delete the line in the Medial.xml that says:
<resource id="UseKnockDown" value="true"/>

If I recall, this also affects knockdown of trees. Units will drive through trees, which was the behavior in PC:Kharkov. Units will still drive around larger trees.

thanks
rick

[sztartur2]

It works!!!

Nothing is knocked down not even fences but they do not block either. Everything in order to provide telephone poles for the masses. [:D]

Rick, Mobius, thank you for your help!

End of story.