hull_down ability

Hi.

Have been testing a bit with the "Hull Down" ability from the Osther faction, I want my rear echelon troops to be able to Hull down AEF and British vehicles. Have been cloning upgrades, abilities and commander abilities, but somehow I'am not able to fortify my tanks.

I do have the ability ingame, and have added the ability to the rear echelon, but when I try the ability on a tank it just says "too far away" or something.

What am I missing? have someone done this before?

Hi.

Have been testing a bit with the "Hull Down" ability from the Osther faction, I want my rear echelon troops to be able to Hull down AEF and British vehicles. Have been cloning upgrades, abilities and commander abilities, but somehow I'am not able to fortify my tanks.

I do have the ability ingame, and have added the ability to the rear echelon, but when I try the ability on a tank it just says "too far away" or something.

What am I missing? have someone done this before?

Hey,
the problem is that only some vehicles support hull down. So for USF you can't just clone the standard animation but you would need to make your own "animation".

Regards,
RagnarTheGamer

Hey,
the problem is that only some vehicles support hull down. So for UKF you can't just clone the standard animation but you would need to make your own "animation".

Regards,
RagnarTheGamer

Thanks for the reply RagnarTheGamer, ok so it is not possible to have the "Hull Down" ability for the British.

But the issue applies also to AEF vehicles, my echelon troops are not able to create hull down on shermans.

It sure is possible to add hull down for all vehicles , although the sandbag animation won't fit perfectly for all of them.

1. To enable the animation, you have to put one of these line in the abp file of your vehicle:
(https://www.coh2.org/topic/35797/tutorial-editing-abp-files)
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_m\\west_german_hull_down_m",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_l\\west_german_hull_down_l",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_xl\\west_german_hull_down_xl",

2. In ebps\type_ext, add 'hull_down' to the list. (I think this solves the 'too far away' issue)
3. Copy the 3rd action from ebps\races\german\vehicles\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161_mp
action_apply/actions/3. requirement_action. This applies the bonuses when hull_down is enabled.

I think that's all. The hull_down ability itself doesn't require any changes.

It sure is possible to add hull down for all vehicles , although the sandbag animation won't fit perfectly for all of them.

1. To enable the animation, you have to put one of these line in the abp file of your vehicle:
(https://www.coh2.org/topic/35797/tutorial-editing-abp-files)
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_m\\west_german_hull_down_m",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_l\\west_german_hull_down_l",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_xl\\west_german_hull_down_xl",

2. In ebps\type_ext, add 'hull_down' to the list. (I think this solves the 'too far away' issue)
3. Copy the 3rd action from ebps\races\german\vehicles\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161_mp
action_apply/actions/3. requirement_action. This applies the bonuses when hull_down is enabled.

I think that's all. The hull_down ability itself doesn't require any changes.

Hmm ..., well that makes things easier then. Didn't know it was possible but I would still prefer making my own to make it fit on point.

Sorry for confusing you.

Thank you all for replying, awesome if it works, will try to add it.

Update: Got it to work. Thanks for helping out with my first try I cloned probably to many fields.

Hmm ..., well that makes things easier then. Didn't know it was possible but I would still prefer making my own to make it fit on point.


Sorry for confusing you.

How do you make your own animation?

@sneakeye Thank you sr. for your expertices. In Wikinger we have our own hull down system but I think the vanilla one could be usefull too.
The info is welcome

Cheers

How do you make your own animation?

Well its actually quite simple but it can get complicated.

First what you want to do is to design your vehicle/building in World Builder to give you an idea of how it will look after executing the ability or action to trigger the animation. You also need to do this to know where you will be spawning the new entities.



Ok, so now let's go step by step.

1) You need to make sure your main entity(the entity that you are creating the animation for) has its x and y coordinates are as close as possible to 0. In the picture above, you see that I have x = 0.15 and y = -0.16.

2) Place your objects around your main entity.

Now, let's open the Attribute Editor.

3) We make a new ability (a toggle ability in this example).

4) In action_list > start_target_action, we will add apply_modifiers_action. To the modifiers, we add move_enable_modifier and set the usage_type to enable and value to -1. We do this to disable the movement of the vehicle while the ability is active.

5) Another action we add to start_target_action is delay. To delay_actions we add change_target_action and set the change_target_type to entities.

6) Now in change_target_action to actions we add spawn_entity and we set duration to 0, entity_blueprint to entity we want to spawn and offset to the x, y, z coordinates to match the coordinates from the World Builder.
NOTE: If z coordinates in World Builder are equal to 10 then the z offset will be 0 in the spawn_entity action.

And now you should be good to go just to double check your delay action should look like on the picture below.



To make the animation better looking we spawn 2-4 entities in one change_target_action. And then just add another delay action to the original delays delay_actions and repeat what we did.

I hope this helped you and if I made something unclear or you need more assistance feel free to ask.

Regards,
Ragnar

It sure is possible to add hull down for all vehicles , although the sandbag animation won't fit perfectly for all of them.

1. To enable the animation, you have to put one of these line in the abp file of your vehicle:
(https://www.coh2.org/topic/35797/tutorial-editing-abp-files)
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_m\\west_german_hull_down_m",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_l\\west_german_hull_down_l",
"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_xl\\west_german_hull_down_xl",

2. In ebps\type_ext, add 'hull_down' to the list. (I think this solves the 'too far away' issue)
3. Copy the 3rd action from ebps\races\german\vehicles\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161\panzer_iv_sdkfz_161_mp
action_apply/actions/3. requirement_action. This applies the bonuses when hull_down is enabled.

I think that's all. The hull_down ability itself doesn't require any changes.

Hello again. After adding this line to my pershing .abp file, the Pershing now has a big blue box in-game that says missing rgm.

"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_l\\west_german_hull_down_l",

I was going to try extracting the .rgm from the archive and including it in my mod but I don't know where to find it.

Hello again. After adding this line to my pershing .abp file, the Pershing now has a big blue box in-game that says missing rgm.

"..\\..\\..\\west_german\\structures\\west_german_hull_down_l\\west_german_hull_down_l",

I was going to try extracting the .rgm from the archive and including it in my mod but I don't know where to find it.

The Archive Viewer can be used to view the paths to the referred file. I assume you are familiar with this since you extracted the .abp file already. All paths in the .abp are relative and should be carefully checked if they are valid from the directory where you saved the .abp. There is either a typo or wrong path that causes the blue box.

The Archive Viewer can be used to view the paths to the referred file. I assume you are familiar with this since you extracted the .abp file already. All paths in the .abp are relative and should be carefully checked if they are valid from the directory where you saved the .abp. There is either a typo or wrong path that causes the blue box.

Yes to the Archive Viewer. I have other changes in other .abp files and don't have this problem. Must have just been lucky. I am sure it has to be a relative path problem. I'll sort it out. Thanks Sneakeye.

.............
1) You need to make sure your main entity(the entity that you are creating the animation for) has its x and y coordinates are as close as possible to 0. In the picture above, you see that I have x = 0.15 and y = -0.16.
................

Is there a way to rotate the spawned entity? X, Y, Z only gives us so many options.

Is there a way to rotate the spawned entity? X, Y, Z only gives us so many options.

Sadly not. Only X and Y cords.

Sadly not. Only X and Y cords.

Thanks.

Is there a way to rotate the spawned entity? X, Y, Z only gives us so many options.

spawn_entity Y must have no moving_ext in ebps

Rotating entities can use target
refer to usf_medic_squad_mp abilities medic_auto_heal
I used this ability to achieve rotation, moving entities to track targets.