A two part update. GP03 and the AI

So I was hoping to have pics of the new GP03 with all my changes up for you guys to see on this update, but I've been really busy with the AI so the pics will have to wait until later this week. Still, I promised more details and have been waiting to tell everyone about it, so at least you'll get to read what I'm thinking.

First GP03. When Doug and I decided that since we're going back and fixing things up anyways one last time I personally wanted to take a crack at making GP03 something truly special. Something larger than life. Something that your enemies will fear and you will honestly go "that's what I'm talking about."

And how to pull this off? Well, the first question came down to how should the unit work. There were 3 locomotor choices to choose from. 1-Come in and attack then leave, 2-Be built and constantly move, 3-Be built and hover. Also GP03 has 3 major ways to attack. 1-Mega Beam Cannon, 2-Rockets, 3-Beam Sabers.

As you all know our GP03 model didn't have the beam saber arms on it. It does now, I went in and added them in. It was a patch job, but it works. Then I looked at the locomotor choices. We had it originally set up at option 2, but the weapons just were not firing properly there. I switched it over to option 3 and everything clicked weapon wise. So to use all the weapons I would have to have it set up to as a hovering model. This ment adding some sort of "positioning thrusters" onto the body. Again, I went to the model and threw something together. Overall it looks rather nice I think.

I then took a good hard look at the code and the way the weapons worked. My biggest problem was GP03's mega partical beam cannon. There simply isn't a good way to make the cannon avalible to the player in a way that it would both be true to the actual power of such a weapon of that size AND constantly useable without being overpowering. So this is what I did.

I went in and combined options 1 and 3. GP03 will now fly in from the side of them map and make an attack run at it's target "location". When it gets close it will fire the Mega partical Beam cannon off once, doing MASSIVE damage to the location/target that gets hit. GP03 will continue flying forwards and stop over the smoldering ruins of it's target. It is then selectable and able to be used as normal.

But I didn't stop there with the unit. The Beam Sabers were given a good distance and set up so they only attack air. This makes GP03 a very dangerous anti-air unit. Enemy targets that get too close like Firehawks and Vertigo's that like the fly past their target after firing their missiles will get a nasty surpize against GP03. Orcas do the best against them with their quick hit and run tactics.

And then I went to the Rocket Pods. Sure, I could give the unit some missiles and call it a day, but that's not how GP03's rocket pods were designed to work. After 3 days of testing different things I came up with this - GP03 fires out 4 missile pods. As the pods fall they suddenly gain their own orintation in the air and take off on their own flying very fast. The pods will fly around the area and fire off 2 vollys of missiles from themselves, firing special micro missiles. Then the pods explode in the air. GP03 is timed to have at most 8 of these missile pods flying around it. The effect is quite awsome to witness and I can't wait to show you guys/let you play with it and see. There is no other weapon in CNC3 like this, and it has opened up another realm of possibilities to us. It all came about thanks to me making a mistake on the code by the way, GP03 at one point was firing missile pods that acted like jumping beans, bouncing from one target to the next killing everything and anything around it. That was just funny to watch lol.

So thats the update for GP03. Now the AI. I've had a problem recently where the AI just simply refused to work properly for me. The game would crash 5 minutes into a battle every time. I've narrowed it down to a couple of buildings, I'm not sure which structure of mine is causing this conflict that is doing all this but that has taken a lot of my time. Once I have this fixed I should have something that Doug and you guys will find a bit more challanging to face other than the current "wow..... that was just sad." AI that the EF currently uses. Here is hoping I can come up with some more evil plans right? :)