Making a good game great: disapearing buildings etc

**Rewriter** · 05-10-2007

Hello everyone

Most of you will probably agree that FOW has the potential to be a truly great game, but (for my taste at least) it needs alot of work to get there. Since I bought the game I have spent many hours tweaking the usual/simple stuff like weapon performance, troop and vehicle loadouts, vision distances etc. to make the game more realistic. However, a couple of annoying issues I just can't seem to fix and any advice would be much appreciated.

Firstly, I hate it when your troops are trying to shelter in or adjacent to a building but if you move the camera in for a close up view of the action the building becomes almost invisible, making shooting through windows / moving around inside buildings etc. next to impossible. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Secondly, the floating health meters that appear after a soldier is hit really detracts from the atmosphere for me. Anybody any idea how to change this? I have changed the aim cursers etc. before but can't seem to find the folder / file that controls these health bars.

Finally, there seems to be no way to turn on 'friendly fire'? If you accidentally shoot one of your own troops / tanks the bullet should not just pass straight through causing no damage.

By the way, I usually play using the Random Campaign Generator, an excellant mod. Check it out if you haven't already.

Regards

SL

**kapulA** · 05-10-2007

Originally Posted by SgtLeather

Firstly, I hate it when your troops are trying to shelter in or adjacent to a building but if you move the camera in for a close up view of the action the building becomes almost invisible, making shooting through windows / moving around inside buildings etc. next to impossible. Does anyone know how to fix this?

You need to open up the map in the map editor and un-tick the "z_clip_visibility" tick-box to make buildings not disappear.
As for health meters,you could,also in the editor,set the control from user to AI but then your troops act a bit more robotic and generally listen less to your commands.
Worth a try though.

**Rewriter** · 07-10-2007

Thanks KapulA

Just done as you suggested for all the buildings in the Falaise map and it makes the game play alot better for me. It will be a chore to go through every map in this way, but I think it will be worth it, and of course most of the maps don't have as many buildings as 'Falaise'.

Regards

SL

**kapulA** · 08-10-2007

No problem mate,glad you're having fun.
Also,to make things easier,you can just select the whole map,every entity,and un-tick the tick-box.
Should speed up the process.

**Rewriter** · 12-10-2007

Thanks again KapulA

I am new to the editor and did't think of drawing a box around multiple buildings, I was clicking each building individually

I want to try to sort out the health meters issue next but i'm not sure what you are suggesting I do. Could you explain your idea in a bit more detail for me and tell me where the user / A1 control thing can be found in the editor and why altering this could make a difference to the health bars?

Thanks for your patience

SL

**HrcAk47** · 13-10-2007

You see, The difference is that the "user" controled ones are much more resilient, because they were ment to act as SP player's units. They are powerful, accurate, and quite hard to kill. If the "Ai" controled ones were used in SP as player units, they couldnt get pass a single enemy soldier.

So, lets sum this up:
"user" - Heroically strong
"AI" - gun fodder.

You can edit that property in brain-->control--->[AI/user].

I recomend that you dont put too many "users" to enemy, it gets imbalanced and your guys will probably get owned

**Rewriter** · 14-10-2007

Thanks for the reply but I think you maybe misunderstand what I want to do

I have already fixed the amount of comparative health between the player and A1 soldiers by altering the 'tactics' settings. They are now roughly equal and more realistic, for example a player soldier can take 2 to 3 hits from an SMG before dying and an A1 soldier the same

What I am trying to do now is get rid of floating health meters that pop up for a second or so when a soldier is hit (whether it is a player soldier or an A1).

Regards

SL

**kapulA** · 14-10-2007

You see,if the unit that gets shot is an AI unit,and gets shot by _another_ AI unit,there will be no health meter.
The enemy units are already AI units,you just need to tweak your own guys to be AI as well.
To do that,open a mission file you want to edit,select the infantry unit or tank you want to edit and find a box saying "user" ; just change that to "AI" and you should have no problems(for tanks and generally stuff that has a crew,you might need to remove the crew and select AI for them as well).