Finish bubblegum shield

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Author: hikerstk

In r13444 the bubblebum branch was merged into trunk. The following issues still exists:

(1)I need to find a sound that is played, when the bubble is destroyed and make it play at the right time. (2) Create/ find a sound when a shielded kart and a regular kart crash. (The current metallic sound does not really fit.) (3) The model needs a nicer texture (in several attempts I failed to even get it transparent). The model should be replaced by a more smooth and 10% larger one. (4) The model should have two animations - one when the shield is created and one when the shield gets destroyed. (5) The texture should reflect the strength of the shield, such that the user gets to know whether the shield has several "layers" or whether the shield is about to break. (6) The debug output needs to be removed. (7) There is a weired bug. Somehow at the first 4 (or 3 or 5) plunger hits, a plunger does even destroy a double shield, where the plunger should only be able to destroy a single layered shield. This effect goes away after those first "4" hits. (8) Making a bomb that is passed to a shielded kart get defused.

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Author: hikerstk Some comments:

• I am not sure that we actually need several layers. It adds a lot of code complexity, will be hard to understand for the player (need different textures). Just use the bubblegums one after another.
• The animation can likely be done by just changing the scale of the sphere.

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Author: hikerstk (3) Samuncle added a shader for this in r13445, but it is not loaded yet.

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Author: deveee (9) AI should to use also bubblegums, not only shields. Perhaps decide when to use which one. (10) Nolok's bubblegum is green, not pink - #720

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Author: deveee Problem is also with: beastie, beagle, pidgin. Perhaps wrong layer in blender?

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Author: deveee I noticed that everything is ok when transparency in materials.xml is disabled.

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Author: auria

1. done in r14118
2. partially done, was made transparent but it's not very pretty
3. partially done, animation when shield created but not when destroyed
4. layers removed in r14118, but we could still indicate time left I guess
5. debug output mostly removed (some may have been forgotten)

Updated todo : (2) Create/ find a sound when a shielded kart and a regular kart crash. (The current metallic sound does not really fit.) (3) Make it look nicer (4.2) animation when the shield gets destroyed. (5) (maybe) The texture should reflect the strength of the shield, whether the shield is about to break. (7) (more checks needed, but the simplified shield mechanism I introduced may solve this) (8) Making a bomb that is passed to a shielded kart get defused. (9) Make AI sometimes lay down gums, instead of using shields (10) Green shield for nolok

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Author: deveee When you will disable z-write in materials.xml for bubblegum sield, it works much better with other transparent objects. In this case I see problem only with puffy - kart doesn't change color. But I'm not sure if it's right way.

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Author: auria (2) done in SVN

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Author: deveee In attachment poor workaround for scaling bubblegum shield. It solves problem with karts which have too big height/lenght. But shield is too big for some karts, for example Sara.

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Author: auria Part of the problem is that the code that determines model height is not too accurate. For instance, the height if over-reported by quite a bit for sara

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Author: deveee About scaling shield, this can be done more precisely of course. We can compare width, height and lenght and get the biggest value.

Is there any other method to get dimension of the karts?

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Author: auria This would be the main way to get the dimension.

I think it may work if we consider only height, not size; the bubble is larger than it is high, so height is usually the most important factor

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Author: deveee After last changes Gnu has lower height than Hexley :(

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Author: deveee Ok, now Gnu has good height. I found that, but Funto was faster ;)

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Author: auria Sizing of the bubblegum shield fixed in SVN

The secret, it seems, was to use not the kart's height, but its highest point. Gnu was not that tall himself, but he hovers above the ground, which means his highest point is above that of same-height karts that don't hover

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Author: auria What's left :

(9) Make AI sometimes lay down gums, instead of using shields (10) Green shield for nolok

Maybe, not release blockers :

(3) Make it look nicer (4.2) animation when the shield gets destroyed. (5) (maybe) The texture should reflect the strength of the shield, whether the shield is about to break.

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Author: auria Actually, reading the code, it seems like 9 is already done : there is code in the AI to use shields or lay down gum puddles behind.

So we're quite far along!

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Author: auria Perhaps found a bug :(

sometimes, cannot tell exactly when, the bubblegum appears to blow too early, without any apparent reason. To investigate further

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Author: hikerstk Replying to auria:

Actually, reading the code, it seems like 9 is already done : there is code in the AI to use shields or lay down gum puddles behind.

Sorry, I forgot to update this ticket: AI support for bubble gums was added in r14274 (though it could do with more testing).

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Author: deveee Auria: my mistake, fixed in svn.

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Author: auria Okay after closer observation, I think the times where the bubble would disappear early were caused by the use of parachutes. So maybe ideally we need a way to tell the user that the bubble exploded because they were protected from a parachute (not a release blocker though)

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Author: deveee It was caused by exploding cakes. When the cake exploded, the shield was removed for all karts on the map. But it was fixed in r14312, thanks for notice it :)

But that's true, there is also problem with parachutes. It's hard to see that parachute is the reason, especially when you are on the first place.

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Author: totoplus062 A solution for parachute with bubble gum is to play the animation of the parachute (without the effect of the parachute)so you see the parachute growing insing the bubble, and to cut this animation at half before the bubble explode.

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Author: deveee Bubblegum shield could be also attached to the center of a kart rather than bottom. Then it could be smaller and probably look better.

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Author: hikerstk I am closing this ticket now, since bubble gum works good enough. Any other bugs or improvements, please open a new ticket.