Bubble-Gum

[Tuxfan]

Hi Joerg!

I would appreciate if you can merge the project in its current state in the trunk.
However there are some things that need to be discussed first.
The projects state reminds me of the state of the swatter item, when it first was merged into the trunk. (It works, but it basically looks ugly.)
What works:

• Protection against offensive powerups and bananas of a player that is shielded.
• Multiple shield "layers". Using a bubble gum as a shield while still having a shield will increase the time the shield is active. A hit will reduce the shield time by the standard amount of time a shield lasts.
• Destruction of the shield when an offensive weapon is used by the shielded player or when the shielded player is attacked.
• Displaying a basic model of the shield.
• Playing a basic (and not that nice) inflation sound when the bubble gum shield is created.
• When receiving a bubble gum powerup, the AI will use it per default as a shield. In the special case that another kart is close behind an AI kart, the gum will be used as a weapon. In the special case when the an AI player is shielded, it will not use an offensive weapons that would destroy the shield.

What does not work/ needs to be done:

Sounds:

• I need to find a sound that is played, when the bubble is destroyed and make it play at the right time.
• Create/ find a sound when a shielded kart and a regular kart crash. (The current metallic sound does not really fit.)
  Model:
• The model needs a nicer texture (in several attempts I failed to even get it transparent.)
• The model should be replaced by a more smooth and 10% larger one.
• The model should have two animations - one when the shield is created and one when the shield gets destroyed.
• The texture should reflect the strength of the shield, such that the user gets to know whether the shield has several "layers" or whether the shield is about to break.
  Miscellaneous:
• The debug output needs to be removed.
• There is a weired bug. Somehow at the first 4 (or 3 or 5) plunger hits, a plunger does even destroy a double shield, where the plunger should only be able to destroy a single layered shield. This effect goes away after those first "4" hits.
• Making a bomb that is passed to a shielded kart get defused.

Recently I did not find enough time to really bring the project further. :-( A part of the reason is that I still did not dare tackle blender - the other reason is that I am currently a little bit more busy than expected.
But merging the project in the current state will both boost me to get the project finished and probably encourage others to help me.

In my opinion my project is still not finished even after all those steps are done. That 's because making the bubble gum a dual use weapon will automatically reduce the traditional usage - as a bubble gum on the road. And thus the item swapper weapon gets less attractive. As a quick fix I suggest to make the gum item to be able to last for two times instead of one. As a nicer fix I would suggest to make bubble gums to be replaced (once) by a model of half the size that has a little weaker effect and will be turned into a small nitro bottle by the item swapper.

Then I would say that the shield became well integrated in SuperTuxKart.

[Totoplus62]

I would appreciate if you can merge the project in its current state in the trunk. [...]
But merging the project in the current state will both boost me to get the project finished and probably encourage others to help me.

Yes it should be better to test and improve it.

[*] The texture should reflect the strength of the shield, such that the user gets to know whether the shield has several "layers" or whether the shield is about to break.
Miscellaneous:

Yes it has to be clear for the player ! As i said some time ago ->
Level 1 --> Appearance:Small bubble (1 bubble item activated)
Level 2 --> Appearance:Bigger bubble, less transparent (2 bubble item activated)
Level 3 --> Appearance:Bigger bubble, (even more) less transparent (3 bubble item activated)

In my opinion my project is still not finished even after all those steps are done. That 's because making the bubble gum a dual use weapon will automatically reduce the traditional usage. This is just more tactical.

But it still there with swapper and as you said there is 2 way to use this item. This is just more tactical. Maybe we could make the traditionnal usage of the bubble gum be a bit more powerful, so a bit more interesting.

[hiker]

Hi Joerg!

I would appreciate if you can merge the project in its current state in the trunk.

OK, I've started to merge trunk into your branch, though I have a few conflicts to take care of first, so (since I have also some other stuff to do) it might take a day or two.

More update when I am finished with that.

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

Hi,

I've just merged all trunk changes to your bubble gum branch. There were quite a few conflicts (looks like you didn't merge with trunk too often ), so might be worth checking if everything still works as expected.

I've opened ticket 1038 to keep track of the outstanding work.

Thanks a lot!
Joerg

[samuncle]

I made a quick and dirty shader for the shield so now it looks like a real balloon/bubble.



Of course tomorrow I will update to use a texture instead this plain color.

[Tuxfan]

@ Joerg: Thank you for merging my changes to the trunk. I will check if everything works as intended today. The problem why there are so many issues during the merging process is that I needed quite a long time. Studing and other away-from-keyboard issues can be very time consuming. Or the other view: STK is under active development and still improving fast.
I try to create a new branch from the current trunk to continue my work without affecting the trunk's state.

@ Samuncle: I am impressed of the quickness of your contribution and the resulting effect.
As far as I can see it, the shader is applied to the texture of the shield-model - right? Then I wonder why the shield model does not seem to be centered in relation to the kart. Without transparency I was not able to test this so far.

[NeonKnightOA]

This was a very necessary addition for STK. I'm glad it was finally implemented, and that it also serves as a blocker for the damned bouncing ball/basketball. The game is now well balanced IMHO.