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I've been looking into adding biodegradable (sp?) projectiles so as to prevent the proj limit from being hit on certain meshes.

From some research I've done, and questions asked, I think its done in Fear, under the projectile tags. The key is, I guess, opening up tags for the the dead body parts/dead body projectiles and adjusting the Lifespan...? I'm really not sure if this is even what needs to be set and if it is, if I need to adjust anything else. Can anyone clue me in on this? heh

Any info is appreciated!

Yes, give them a lifespan and that should do it for dead bodies and body parts.

I like to also give them a detonation - i.e. a small blood explosion or puff of dust or something - and then mark the detonation to occur at the end of the projectile's lifespan. That way it doesn't just vanish into thin air.

Well, first of all I personnaly hate biodegraders on monsters... For most non-mazz style maps its not really ever a problem. If theres a proj limit (1024) being hit, its probably the monster attacks or scenery doing the damage, not neccesarily the number of enemy dying at once. So unless you make the monster parts biodegrade immediately after creation, while they have lifespan they are counted as proj (1024) until they burst to become nothing, which may cause more problems if your hitting the proj limit. If you leave "becomes dormant at rest" checked in the projectile, as soon as it stops moving it becomes an object (8000+ limit). If you are running into that object limit (8000+) and its not a scenery problem, then a biodegrade might be a good idea. Or, my favorite, scripting a bunch of tiny little spiders to run around to old battlefields and pick parts up as artifacts that expire after a few seconds.

I've seen two simple suggestions in this topic for keeping things on the map from overloading the myth engine and am not sure how they interact.

1) Give things a 'lifespan' so they will dissapear when their 'time' is up

2) check the 'becomes dormant at rest' flag so (for example) projectiles turn into objects when they stop moving.



Is there going to be a problem if someone checks BOTH of these? e.g. if a projectile turns into an object at rest is it ever going to hit the 'lifespan' limit and dissapear?

Yea if theres a lifespan you should also uncheck "becomes dormant at rest" and check "promoted it at end of lifespan", or they will become non moving "objects" and never expire if they stop moving before lifespan ends. I highly recomend keeping the lifespan between say 5-30 seconds depending on action intensity. But I think your problem is likely elsewhere, unless you just want to be able to see the ground or something...

to avoid any problems ever occuring I made every single proj in SF2(except pickups) biodegrade. This way my pgrps can have more proj in them without ever having nonappearing issues. Sure it would be nice for everythign to remain on the map but at some point (if the game goes on long enough) youll run into a limit issue. This is why I always suggest using a bio. If you want to check information on multiple tags I suggest using Chaos --- OSX version or the PC version...