[Feedback] Towing

[Qeus 198]

Hi guys,

I've added our towing system to a higher dev priority.

The first improvements to the system have come today, to make it less buggy and more playable.

To help with development, play around with it and suggest changes/improvements/etc here.

Specifically:

• the act of towing has been smoothed out (no more setvelocity loop),
• the act of releasing a towed vehicle has also been overhauled (detects collisions), 
• also switched to a system which uses the mass of the to-be-towed vehicle to determine if the tow vehicle can move it, instead of one which uses class names of the vehicles.

 

How to tow:

0. Be an engineer

1. Use one of three tow-equipped vehicles:   CRV Bobcat, HEMTT Mover, Offroad (Repair)

2. Back up to the vehicle or crate you wish to move

3. Use the Tow scroll action

 

Current mass limits per vehicle:

Offroad (Repair) - Max tow of 5100 kg

HEMTT Mover - Max tow of 80000 kg 

CRV Bobcat - Max tow of 80000 kg

 

 

As the roll-out of the FOB system nears, we want to have some well rounded logistics options for the soldiers to use, including ground-based, such as towing.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Qeus

[shift597 178]

Did some testing just now. Noticed a few things that could do with a fix.

The main thing is release height. So when you release a few of the vehicles, the drop actually damages them. For some of them its no noticeable and for others it only takes two drops to completely destroy them. These tests were all conducted on flat ground (salt flats) and using the Bobcat as the towing mechanism. The list of vehicles whose release height needs to be tweaked is as follows:

Wipeout

Ghosthawk

Hummingbird

Greyhawk

Assaultboat

SDV

Orca

Hellcat

Another tweak that may need to be made is when you release a vehicle on a steep incline the vehicle will release in a flat state, sometimes glitching into the ground and then catapulted back out into the air. This only happened on occassion and releasing a vehicle on an incline usually resulted in the vehicle releasing in a flat state and then conforming to the incline without any repercussions. The glitch was worse with large vehicles as more of the vehicle would glitch through the ground, for example the wipeout was really bad.

Other than that, thats all i noticed after about an hour of testing but ill try and use it tonight in a gameplay platform to uncover any hidden bugs. I also tested deploying into water and found a cool little trick to get the bobcat out of the 'stuck in water' phase by using the power of the speedboat whilst towing. other than that the water deployments were smooth as butter.

thanks again quik, keep up the awesome work!

[Qeus 198]

thanks, will address that stuff over the next couple days. Both should be reasonably quick fixes, utilizing the below:

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/isTouchingGround

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_(geometry)

 

The attachment position of the towed vehicle is on the to-do list, for aesthetics and functionality. Think igiload. The hard part is that it has to be customized for every combination of vehicle type to make it look good, so applying to the full library of vehicles we use will take some time. Guess we'll start with the most common and go from there.

As an interim fix, at next restart will apply a 2-3 second invulnerability (cant take damage) on towed vehicle as its released.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Qeus

[Qeus 198]

Another update to Towing has been applied this morning to the server.

 

[FIXED] Player disconnects while towing would lead to vehicle stuck attached.

[FIXED] Vehicle released on a slope will conform to the angle of the slope.

[FIXED] Vehicles would get damaged by the slight drop on Release.

[ADDED] Towed Vehicle will disconnect if a collision is detected.

[TWEAKED] Towed Vehicle should no longer collide with players (and subsequently kill them) while its being towed.

Will take effect at midday restart.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Qeus

[Zombine45 177]

As a suggestion for the HEMTT Mover, i think it would make it a lot more viable having towed crates (Like the huron crates) super imposed over the rear of the truck, like on the HEMTT Repair, with a much lessened movement penalty (Sick drifts are fun but super annoying)

[Qeus 198]

yep you're right that would be a bit cleaner.

away for the weekend, will start chipping away at custom attachment points on ~tuesday.

If anybody would like to dabble in some scripting over the weekend, can help.

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/attachTo

towedobject attachto [towtruck,attachment point];

Edited March 24, 2016 by Qeus