Fun with belts
 

I've been playing around with belts lately, testing their capabilities, and here are a few things I've come up with. Might be useful somewhere.
ftp://ftp.tachyonlabs.com/pub/users/...m/funbelts.zip

Anyone else got some interesting little JCS tricks they don't have plans for? We won't steal them or anything...

hehe thats wicked! know any other kool stuff like that? i aint touched jcs for years

Sweet trick. Never knew you could that with belts (except maybe the spike ball thingy). Might be useful somewhere? Definately.

Wow, i never thought, that things like that would be possible.. ;p

work that in Multiplayer.too?

Hmmm. For some reason i cant open and run in JCS, it just gives the hourglass mouse for 1/2 sec. then dissapears. Nothing happens, its just the 1st funbelts lvl and i cant open it with JCS! Argh ><

Also i looked in home-cooked levels, i cant find it there either. Do you think re-installing JJ2 would help?

Until that problem is fixed, can you guys describe what Violet was able to do?

WOW!!!
This really works! This example with spikebolls is really good for my new Technoir level. I am happy that you came up with this cool idea!!!!!!!!!
:)

The first level shows how belts placed in mid-air can carry spikebolls. The second one does something or other really cool with triggerable collapse scenery. The last one shows that a belt can move those purple cats around.

UR probably figured this out already, but I was messing around with this and found that mid-air belts can also float pinball objects, floating pickups (food, fastfire, ammo), and bridges. The bridge toughness has to be set to an even number or you get a really weird animation bride that gives a divide by zero error if you stand on it.

You can make the falling boulders move before being triggered (weird effect). If the boulder is rolling through a set of conveyors like UR's tunnel of spikes, it will not hurt you, and will never stop moving, although it will not always roll in the direction of the conveyors. Obstructing the path of the rolling boulder will make it roll in the opposite direction without losing speed. Standing on top of the boulder has the effect of standing on a normal conveyor moving in whichever derection the floating conveyor event was set to.

I played around with that second trick and I found that it also works with distruct scenery, though it can only do that last effect (the touch that one block and watch them all collapse), and it only works well with TNT.

Lights also work with belts. I'll show you guys a level I made that demonstrates it later.

Hmmm? I can't get this to work. Could you post an example level?

That's one use for it, but there are others.... ehehehe. I didn't include destruct scenery much because I actually have ways of exploiting it already.

Ooh, that could be so cool! I can just imagine chasing a light area through the level when everything else is dark.

Yeah, that light thing does sound cool. I also notice at a larger distance the second dosen't always fully work, when I modify it to be distruct scenery.

I used your spike tunnel level, actually. Just get rid of the spike balls and place the falling boulder event somewhere one tile below the ceiling. Leave all the other belts in place. It should float along the top of the tunnel until you physically bump it from below. After that it should roll without stopping.

I found that this idea with spike tunnel is VERY useful but I wonder if you can do something that the spike bolls can moving from one side to another , like you have shown to us in the funbelts1 level the moving spike bolls, but it is possible that they will return or they will move around???
When I put this moving spike bolls to my level, they passed only one time and I want theme to passing all the time (Itryied sucker tube but it didn't work)

Probably not, because then you'd need stuff that would move'em up or down. Hmm... maybe float up works... I have to check it out. The light thing would help a lot in Devil Dash episode 5 (some time left, heh).

The only way to get the spike balls to go by again is going a distance away from them (32 tiles should do) and then coming back.

I haven't tried this, but in theorey, there is a way you could make the spike balls go abck and forth, but it would only work with spike balls, and it would have another possibly undesirable effect. You'd have to set the balls to actually swing around in 3D like they're meant to, and have the ball's path cross floating conveyors that go in opposite directions. It would go one direction when the ball is high, and the opposite direction when the ball is low. However, it would also be moving in and out of the background as it does this.

This might make levels like the Sonic CD level where you race mecha-sonic possible. in fact, it would.

I don't know if I exactely understand everything but it doesn't work :(
Thanx anyway guys, but if you have a good idea how it could work please let me know, I think that it have to work somehow -right?
(Flamepanther If this what you said does work and I couldn't do it just because I didn't do exactely what you meant -just say it inmediately -thank you)

Hmm. I can't make it work either. I did warn that I hadn't tried it yet though. It's strange, because you can make it travel in a 3D spiral in on direction. I figured you could reverse the direction by making it move across two opposite belts. I can make it wiggle a bit in both directions, but nothing that would be useful.

I think I tryied everything, but nothing works.
So I am assuming that the only way is to put the drawing of spike balls in your tileset which every second tile of spike ball is moved to right or left and then put it in animated tiles - Like this rabbits-mummies in TombRabbit.
That's too bad because it takes a lot of space in tileset and in animated tiles and you can only do it with levels which are using custom tileset which includes those animations tiles.
:(

Goose Chase in the Lost World episode was also done with belts. Load up the level in JCS to see how it works. It hasn't got a password.

I knew that ever since I played this level for the first time. Belts are good for in-motion levels.

Yeah, getting the stomping T-Rex and scrolling scenery to work was tricky though.