A way to get thousands of units

[DBR_ONIX]

Hey
Right, me and Thomas were talking on msn and had an idea..
Right, basicly you have, say, 100 low poly people in one model, that you can give waypoints to etc(Config it as a normal OFP person)

The biggest problems I can think of are
1. animating them
Maybe if each unit's arms/legs etc were defined as the same name, it might work.. Acctualy I doubt it
2. getting them to attack
I have no idea.. Other than make one point, and when it fires, make hundreds of other bullets appear randomly around it to simulate the others firing

If you have ever played Command & Conquer Generals, and played as the GLA side, you'll know what I mean
Theres a group of civvilans who you control as you would a single soldier (You can order them to move and fire on certain targets etc), but there is hundreds of them (Amusingly dealy when you make about 20 of them, and make them run into the enemy base ;D)
Anyway, enough of C&C
I'll try and get a screenshot of them (In C&C)

So, is this possible?
It could be usefull for many things.. Like an ending to a mission where you see hunders of thousands of enemys advancing over the hill on your teams positions, and it fades to black, you hear screaming, end of mission.. Maybe you didn't disable a radio and someone reported your team or something..
Or simulation huge landing forces etc

Thoughts, anyone?
- Ben

[DBR_ONIX]

Here it is :
[link=http://www.dbrweb.co.uk/hosted/angrymob.jpg]Kinda big.. 200kb[/img]
Thats the best pic I can find of them
Ever 20 or so units is haneled as 1
I'll try and get a better one
- Ben

[dmakatra]

The problem will be the radio.

1: "CONTACT"
3: "14 PLATOONS, 12 O'CLOCK"
1: "7, ENGAGE 14 PLATOONS 12 O'CLOCK"
6: "OH NO, HALF BATALLION, IS DOWN"

Hehe. I agree it would be cool in cutscenes though.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[DBR_ONIX]

Ah, now, good point..
You have each unit a selection.. If it's hit, you use hiddenselections (Or setobject texture them), and (possibly) create a corpse in the right place
Any idea about the do-ablity of this?
- Ben

[General Barron]

I really don't see why it is needed. You can have 64 (or around there) groups per side, at 12 units per group. That is 768 units per side. I don't know of many maps that even come close to hitting that limit. If you really want to push it, you can, for example, make east units that are on the resistance side (but look like east units), which would give you 1536 units on one "side". And if all you cared about were cutscenes, you could also use the civillian side, which would then up it to 2304 units on one "side". And on top of that, you obviously can camcreate units. That makes them act like static objects instead of units, which means they have no side, and despite the lack of AI, they can still be animated via playmove.

Why would you possibly need more than (or even close to) 2,300 units on the screen at one time for a cutscene? Who's computer could handle a battle between 2,300 units? And you want even MORE than that, via an obscure addon? Again, I don't see how it would be worth the tremendous effort, even if it could be done.

[dmakatra]

The reason was to make less lag. 100 low-res objects with 1 AI instead of 100 high-res objects with 100 AI.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[rOk]

I imagine "junk upgrade" would be fairly easier and more useful.

IE if you kill a bmp then you'd roll up to the remains and strip it of it's Maljutka launcher which would then miraculously appear on your vehicle...

The only big problem I see here is that you would have to define almost every possible weapon to  hidden selections in order to make it really universal.

Though angry mob was one of my favourites when playing GLA-someone should dress Gimbal's tossers in Arabic clothes and turbans.

#edit
typos...early morning here...without coffee...boss whining

[General Barron]

I still don't see why you would need more than 1536 units on one side. Even if you could make one "unit" that looks like 10 units, and you made all the animations for it, it still wouldn't function like a regular soldier. It would only shoot 1 bullet, it would have gus floating in the air on hills, it would have a rigid formation, it would look REALLY weird when it turned, etc etc etc. There are a million problems I can think of, and in the end, what would you accomplish that couldn't have been done by easier methods (that I already stated)?

[DBR_ONIX]

Sorry
Think about it.. 1000 induvidual people causes a LOT of lag..
But if you have 10 "100 block-o-people", all low res, it will only have the "lag" of 10 people..
As for shooting, you could check when it (The block of people) fires, and make other bullets parralel to them..
But it would mainly be for background enemy activity and ending cutscenes.. So they won't fire/be fired upon anyway..
Anyway, what if all the units ares legs heads etc in the same selection.. Will it screw up?
- Ben

[Tomasz]

Hey,

what about making a clone of a unit. There would be the original soldier, and there would be its clone that would do exactly the same things as the original ( so there is no AI there ) only from .5-to 2 secs for example behind him.

Or you could also devide one AI into three individual soldiers. Sometimes the AI would react to soldier #1 causing the other two soldiers to do the same thing and sometimes to soldier #3.

cheers

Tomasz

[DBR_ONIX]

Like I've said on msn, the scripts needed to anim the other guy would be just as much lag as using another ai..
I don't know how it would be done at all acctualy.  
- Ben