A Couple of Questions

[Arkay]

Hi, it's been a while but I was messing about with a custom settlement and couldn't find a way to add an invisible non-working gate to a "village". Forcing a frontal spawn while preventing the enemy army to use siege equipment. But is it possible?

Secondly, I'm experiencing heavy lag in this settlement only when it rains and only while moving in certain parts. Could it be something to do with collisions?

[makanyane]

Hi, it's been a while but I was messing about with a custom settlement and couldn't find a way to add an invisible non-working gate to a "village". Forcing a frontal spawn while preventing the enemy army to use siege equipment. But is it possible?

Invisible is possible via texture/alpha though beware of cast shadows - one method is stick a proper gate model in where you want it - add animation/collision etc. When it's all working write the structure file back to ms3d - replace the gate objects with small objects hidden underground, but using same group names in file and replace structure with ms3d - don't renew the collisions etc so AI should 'see it' but you shouldn't. It will need to be assigned to perimeter 1 to get the frontal spawn to work.
& unfortunately I think you need to let the AI use siege equipment unless it really is used at actual village level.

I did bodge 'villages' for EB where they have wall-less towns/large_towns - to try and solve the problem of AI not sallying out of wall-less settlements above true village level. They used a blocked perimeter (in pathfinding) around the settlement with 'bridges' crossing it and hidden gates - but the gates did need to have 'docking points' for the ram - to solve the problem of ai rams coming up close to settlement on their own I stuck the docking point way out on a large offset to the gate so it was more-or-less where the ai deployed - so you get a bit of silliness at the start of the battle where the ram attacks invisible docking point & a gate breached message, but everything else should work OK... Trying to stick the actual gate out near the AI deployment zone results in AI defence of the settlement being screwed up and/or your deployment being impossible (everything kind of ends up stuck at 0,0)

Secondly, I'm experiencing heavy lag in this settlement only when it rains and only while moving in certain parts. Could it be something to do with collisions?

Possibly - large objects with collisions can definitely cause lag - hadn't heard of the only with rain thing before, but maybe it makes it worse if the graphics engine tries to show it bouncing off the collision (?)

[Arkay]

Invisible is possible via texture/alpha though beware of cast shadows - one method is stick a proper gate model in where you want it - add animation/collision etc. When it's all working write the structure file back to ms3d - replace the gate objects with small objects hidden underground, but using same group names in file and replace structure with ms3d - don't renew the collisions etc so AI should 'see it' but you shouldn't. It will need to be assigned to perimeter 1 to get the frontal spawn to work.
& unfortunately I think you need to let the AI use siege equipment unless it really is used at actual village level.

I did bodge 'villages' for EB where they have wall-less towns/large_towns - to try and solve the problem of AI not sallying out of wall-less settlements above true village level. They used a blocked perimeter (in pathfinding) around the settlement with 'bridges' crossing it and hidden gates - but the gates did need to have 'docking points' for the ram - to solve the problem of ai rams coming up close to settlement on their own I stuck the docking point way out on a large offset to the gate so it was more-or-less where the ai deployed - so you get a bit of silliness at the start of the battle where the ram attacks invisible docking point & a gate breached message, but everything else should work OK... Trying to stick the actual gate out near the AI deployment zone results in AI defence of the settlement being screwed up and/or your deployment being impossible (everything kind of ends up stuck at 0,0)

Ah yes! I did a quick test and seems to be working decently enough, might experiment a little more.

Possibly - large objects with collisions can definitely cause lag - hadn't heard of the only with rain thing before, but maybe it makes it worse if the graphics engine tries to show it bouncing off the collision (?)

I think that was it, I deleted all collisions in that area and it works just fine now. Oh well.

Thank you so much mak.