Motion Tracker code question

[Boltersam]

A question, since I know nothing about coding, but would it be less laggy if the motion tracker only checked rings of tiles (bear with me here.), such as:


Tile Tile Tile
Tile You Tile
Tile Tile Tile


Then, it stops tracking those tiles, and moves onto the next ring. And the next, until reaching the edge of your screen. One ring per 1-2 ticks.

Question number 1. Is this possible,

Question number 2. How effective would it be?

[apophis775]

It's... complicated. But that would result in several hits for the same person, or people avoiding hits. Imagine, your moving from the west to the east. If your on one tile during a tick that it's not checked, and moving to the tile that was just checked, then the scanner missed you completely. Basically, you'd almost never catch anything moving towards you unless it was stopped (and thus, not generating motion).

[monkeysfist101]

Motion ignorers when?

[Boltersam]

Motion ignorers when?

Marines would use this tool to find AFK Aliens and larvae, as well as cloaked hunters in the weeds. Every advantage must be used.

[Desolane900]

I know Citadel uses a motion tracker in their mining vendors now. It works by utilizing Meson scanners and the motion tracker, making a mob show a green dot whether they're moving or not. I'd say ask them because they got it to work lag free somehow. Just fun for annoying people though since you're rarely going to be actively looking for xenos scum through a wall and a player character would know if someone was using it to find them since it beeps loudly for everyone nearby to hear.

[apophis775]

It's not lag free, they only have like 2 or 3 of them being used at once.

[TopHatPenguin]

It's not lag free, they only have like 2 or 3 of them being used at once.

Couldn't we in-theory then just have one motion tracker then? (I mean I know it would probably stil lcause lag but not as much as having 4 being used at the same time), for instance the motion tracker could be held at requisitions until a marine asks for it.

Or alternately you could make it orderable by requistions but only once and there is only one motion tacker which comes in the shipment.

(Just throwing a few suggestions out there)

[InterroLouis]

Would it be possible to, instead of using the original, lag causing motion tracker code, give the person using the motion tracker something like the pheromone vision?

[Sailor Dave]

That wouldn't really make any sense. You don't know what you're seeing with a motion tracker, just a thing that is moving.

[Bob]

Would it be possible to, instead of using the original, lag causing motion tracker code, give the person using the motion tracker something like the pheromone vision?

I recently made a post in Suggestions that might be similar to this comment. I know this thread is several months old, but in interest of reusing them than creating more... viewtopic.php?f=59&t=11759

"And I was thinking like with the Drone pheromones that effect every alien on screen, instead of increasing stats, it would apply a little sprite onto every character "on screen", even if you can't see their personal sprite at the time, that "shows up" or "lights up" only when the character is moving."

[Bob]

Seems like motion tracker would be pretty high on the list, but I've not played marine. Maybe you guys aren't always petrified with fear....

[KingKire]

Hmm, Yah, so why cant we just use a diffrent filter. We dont need to code up some crazy stuff, we already have all the parts

-We use a "xray" filter. all mobs become visable through tiles, up to 20 tiles away
-We use a "scope" filter/ viewers range extends out to 30 tiles
-All mobs are given a "blue sprite" overlay for this character when using the motion tracker
-All solid objects are either given a "dark blue" sprite overlay, or just not even rendered.
>all mob sprites blink invisable/visable every 4 seconds which is a basic sprite animation, not very code heavy.

It might be like the "darkness vision" but instead of turning every tile to be lit up, all mobs are lit up with a blue dot sprite overlay.
Hell, if we want to be fancy, we can just have every mob with a sulaco ID = a blue sprite, and all mobs without an ID = red sprite.



Were changing the motion tracker from an active piece of code that is looking to change stuff, to a passive piece of code that just allows the player to view a diffrent state. Is it the exact same as aliens? nah, but it achieves the same feeling and purpose.

Possible things that would be nice to add:
-Range finder: which could be, check for nearest red sprite mob, return distance.
-Beeping noise: Beeps with the same tick the sprites are changed from invisable to visable
-


Yah, i think this would be a nice low cost solution. Just putting a light filter and a sprite change thats only visable when viewing through that filter.

[KingKire]

Hell, the fun part about using just a passive light filter is that you can have a bunch of motion trackers popping off at once, they dont add any extra work to the computer scince all the calculations are:
-Hey, is this mob a blue or red sprite?
-Hey are we all visable or invisable sprites? (i.e they all tick on the same beat, so we dont even have to carry diffrent speeds of animation)
-Scince we have the code to make vision filters that only effect one player, people can enjoy looking at diffrent screens and not effect each other with the code calculations... i think. idk, could be stuff thats not being known and what not codewise..

[Rocco Ward]

It's... complicated. But that would result in several hits for the same person, or people avoiding hits. Imagine, your moving from the west to the east. If your on one tile during a tick that it's not checked, and moving to the tile that was just checked, then the scanner missed you completely. Basically, you'd almost never catch anything moving towards you unless it was stopped (and thus, not generating motion).

I don't think making the MT would cause a lot of lag. I've outlined why and how it could be done here:

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=10914&p=115762#p115762

The biggest thing is that you'd need to tranfer the momentum code from the crusher to all the xenos under the hood.

[Crab_Spider]

What exactly was the motion tracker for?

[KingKire]

Motion trackers were used as a wallhack for people equiped with it. You see a foe behind a wall, and you can suprise them before they suprise you. pretty much what its main purpose is.

[Bob]

I mean, I don't know why you guys want to make it complicated and think it should differentiate between Xenos or what have you. In the first alien movie it supposedly detected their cat....

[Crab_Spider]

I mean, I don't know why you guys want to make it complicated and think it should differentiate between Xenos or what have you. In the first alien movie it supposedly detected their cat....

...

[Bob]

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/M314_Motion_Tracker

"While Colonial Marines were equipped with an Identification Friend Foe (IFF) transponder as part of their armor, designed to render them "immune" to the Motion Trackers carried by the USCM and thereby preventing false detection of friendly personnel,[...]"

[Crab_Spider]

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/M314_Motion_Tracker

"While Colonial Marines were equipped with an Identification Friend Foe (IFF) transponder as part of their armor, designed to render them "immune" to the Motion Trackers carried by the USCM and thereby preventing false detection of friendly personnel,[...]"

What..? You realize you brought up Alien right? That... what?

[Bob]

I found a potential answer to my own question.