Hello! Welcome to a tutorial.. about drones.
Lets imagine you just made a really cool map! Or, just want to add some movement to an old one, Ill tell you how to make a drone, set it up, and create paths.
So im going to assume you know how to model things? Well if not go back to the Cared tutorial, then come back eh :P Probly best making a car first tho.
Ok so You have your new drone model, Make sure its not too high poly, Ive never had it myself. But I have heard of droens with a coupel thousend polys crashing the game when you touch them.
So here is a drone, as you can see its built just like a car,
Now, All the wheels should be named as usual.. FLWHEEL, FRWHEEL, RLWHEEL, RRWHEEL. or the same for however many wheels you want ( works the same as wheel actors for cars)
The first thing we want to do before compiling the car is move the wheels directly to the center of XYZ
Heres a little something I do with my drones (you purists may not like this) But since the rear wheels only spin, and therefore allways stay in the same place I usually dont move them horizontally, This way I can jsut drag it into place in Plaything easyer.
Totally up to you if you want to put ALL the wheels exactly in the center, but to me it really makes no diffrence unless the wheel is steerable.
So Now compile the model. and you have the usual files.
Now take the car folder (in this case it is DEV_DRO1) and coppy it into your carmageddon folder DATA/DRONES
Then you can go ahead and delete the .WAM .TXT Shell and other stuff that is not needed.
I know we just deleted the car.txt file, But Its pretty much useless here, I usually use a template one that started out as an orignal C2 drone, I will also provide you one. jsut click
THIS LINKSo lets do the Text first, First, pointing out the odbvius, Rename the BLANKDRONE.TXT To the same as your car, so in this case. DEV_DRO1.TXT
Now open the txt file and change the name of the drone to the same, Like so. -
Now we need plaything!. Load up plaything and import the drone just like any car or map, using the Act file.
I probly dont need to show you.. But just incase..
So now we have the model loaded, go ahead and make whatever changes you need to for the cars textures, chrome bits, double sided textures, (if you are not sure on any of that check the Car making tutorial I made)
After all your little bits are done go to the cars main .ACT file (the one with the same name as the car)
go to Options, Change object name, Rename
Ive had some case sensative issues here before, so one rule I allways stick to with drones is keep it in CAPS, I have had drones refuse to work with lower case names.
Now just arange the wheels into place, Like you would with a C1 car, or car with more than 4 wheels.
Like so.
Now just save the car and you should have a working drone there.
Last thing to making a drone is you need to add it to DRONE.TXT in the drones folder.
VERSION 1
EST02YEL
EST02BLU
EST02RED
CABLECAR
ROLLERCAR
747
HATCH01
ESTATE01
MOVER01
SEDAN01
F14
SPAMTRAK
LOGFLUME
GRUNDON
JAMS
DR_FORDC2
DR_FORDC4
DR_DELIV2
DR_CARAVAN1
END OF DRONES
As you can see they are all in caps, so just add yours to the end making sure the drone name is the same name as the model, and file name of your drone, Wich should be the same if you were listning
So in this case we will add. DEV_DRO1 to the end of the drones. so it will look like this
VERSION 1
EST02YEL
EST02BLU
EST02RED
CABLECAR
ROLLERCAR
747
HATCH01
ESTATE01
MOVER01
SEDAN01
F14
SPAMTRAK
LOGFLUME
GRUNDON
JAMS
DR_FORDC2
DR_FORDC4
DR_DELIV2
DR_CARAVAN1
DEV_DRO1
END OF DRONES
Now save, and thats that, Done working.
But now we need a place to put it?
Well you can put droens in your own maps, existing C2, maps, Converted C1 maps, Or anything you like really.
So here is a map.. of some sort.
So ok the next step is to add the drone to the map right? Well You can get the coordinates from eaither Plaything, or Cared, For the purpus of this im just going to show you me doing it in cared.
Now I just want for now a drone to drive around the inner lane there, so I placed down 4 points in cared (in a seprate component) And chose wich order they should go in.
Make sure your points are level with the ground, Drones will follow the points no matter where they are,
Im sure you know that when you select jsut one point, cared tells you in the component windo what the coordinates of that point are,
So my points for the drone paths I set are. as marked on the map.
1: -2.568, 0.135, -2.580
2: 2.4909, 0.135, -2.580
3: 2.4909, 0.135, 2.472
4: -2.568, 0.135, 2.472
So now to add this to the map go to your maps folder. and open the txt file, now find the drone paths section wich will look like this.
START OF DRONE PATHS
2 // Version
0 // The number of path points
END OF DRONE PATHS
If you look into another map, the drone paths should look something like these.
// 0:
-2.568, 0.135, -2.580 DEV_DRO1 0
1
1, 0, 0, 0The rest of the stuff I have no idea about.. but.
The coordinate of the drone pathThe name of the drone that spawns hereI dont know what its called, but this number tells the drone wich point to folow.Now, here is what it looks like with the 4 points, Note that some of the points say none in where the drone name goes, This just means that the drone will folow this point, but nothing will spawn there.
START OF DRONE PATHS
2 // version
4 // n_nodes
// 0:
-2.568, 0.135, -2.580
DEV_DRO1
0
1
1, 0, 0, 0
// 1:
2.4909, 0.135, -2.580
none
0
1
2, 0, 0, 0
// 2:
2.4909, 0.135, 2.472
none
0
1
3, 0, 0, 0
// 3:
-2.568, 0.135, 2.472
none
0
1
0, 0, 0, 0
END OF DRONE PATHS
So you can kinda see how that works right? You my have spotted how the path numebrs go..
1, 0, 0, 0
2, 0, 0, 0
3, 0, 0, 0
0, 0, 0, 0
It allways needs to start at 1, and end at 0, with all the other correct numbers inbetwene, Easy right?
Here I put it in game.
I know.. Its too low, dont freak out, just tweek your settings untill it looks right.
For the purpus here ive sped up the drone faster than I would normally have them.
