Hiding demolisher segments?

[sparr]

I'm working on a mod to add Dune/Beetlejuice-style sandworms. I want them to burrow into the ground. For that animation to look good, I need them to disappear one segment at a time. I can't find any way to accomplish that. Assuming I haven't missed something, I posted viewtopic.php?t=136088, but I'm here just in case I did miss something.

[Bilka]

For making fancy graphics/animations it seems more powerful to me to use simple entities or LuaRendering than trying to use the demolisher itself, since it's not really set up to do anything besides what it does in the base game.

[sparr]

I am loathe to reimplement the demolisher's pathfinding, segment animations, aggro, damage handling, ...

[Osmo]

You can have the demolisher have no graphics, but still have the behaviour, and if you want, particles. Then only update the segment graphics by script and not much else.

[Bilka]

I meant what Osmo said. Though I was thinking more to hide/remove the (entire) demolisher only during the burrowing, not the whole time. Since presumably you're making some kind of custom implementation for the burrowing anyway since demolishers can't do that.

I don't know your implementation, but if for example right now the burrowed demolisher is fully invisible or removed and that is done at the end of the burrowing action/animation. Then doing the animation with simple-entities or script rendering would mean making the demolisher fully invisible/removed at the start of the animation instead, and relying on the custom way to show the animation only for the burrowing itself.

[eugenekay]

Demolisher Segments on “Out of Map” tiles are hidden from rendering: 127819

Probably not very useful for implementing Sandworms, but it does look cool while exposing some implementation details of Segmented Units. Like the fact that the segments are hollow underneath - no bottom lip!

[BHakluyt]

Sand worms you say? On Fulgora?

Its like my ideas are out there. I was spitballing with my AI back and forth and got a 33% scaled down blue demolisher on fulgora, but it was not BEHAVING how I wanted and the AI makes me tired, its like a lazy worker doing a job half when it very well CAN do it perfect...anyways, I joinked them out of the mod for a while then. This sounds better though. I had them spawn around the vault ruin...but they were destroying EVERYTHING including my patience...

[sparr]

Demolisher Segments on “Out of Map” tiles are hidden from rendering: 127819
Probably not very useful for implementing Sandworms

It turns out that this is exactly what I was looking for. There's still a lot of additional trickery involved, but this was the missing secret ingredient. Thank you!