[Everglide]

I would love to see this implemented into a Freespace 2 Mod

Macross: Do You Remember Love? - Opening Battle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpnXSPaRyu4
Seen at 3.22 and again at 4.11

So, can multiple targets be done? 

If yes, this would create a huge drain on your ships power!

But there's nothing like watching multiple targets and streams of missiles fire at one time.

[JGZinv]

The search function... it will guide you young one.

[General Battuta]

This is a thing that gets requested a lot for mods and would be fun to have.

[NGTM-1R]

Spoon has hacked it in sort of.

[-Norbert-]

But only with heat-seakers, not with an actual aspect lock.

Apart from that, there are better scenes with multi-lock in the different Macross series, particularly in Zero and Frontier.

[General Battuta]

Spoon has hacked it in sort of.

My good companion Spoon has worked out how to do it with heatseekers, which is brilliant, but not the same thing at all.

[Spoon]

Spoon has hacked it in sort of.

I have done no such thing. All I ever did was use the "untargeted heat seeker" flag which a coder (I dont even know who to give credit for that flag) implented somewhere in .11

Swifty (by my request) has been working on multi locking aspect seekers since last year january but he kept running into a bunch of obstacles that makes it hard to implent the feature.

[Enzo03]

I implemented the heat seeker version in like 2 seconds because of the untargeted heat seeker flag.

I was indeed wondering if multiple aspect locks could be done like in that video.  I found getting a lock on to be much more fun even with lots and lots of missiles but watching them all travel to only one ship is as boring as it is funny.  I want them to go everywhere!

But I can only do that with heat seekers.

I'm not a coder or scripter.

[Thaeris]

Nuke said he had a working system a while back, but it was hard-coded for a specific weapon type. I'm not sure what sort of script it was in or where it was at.

[Swifty]

The gigantic challenge right now is allowing the system I wrote to fit nicely with the multiplayer code. I had rewritten a portion of the lock code to be a bit more elegant and allow for more interesting lock types. However, the engine communicates lock information via packets in multiplayer in order to verify who is firing what at who.

If you have multiple aspect seekers, the process that's responsible for running the gameplay needs to know which targets those seekers are locked on to so people can't just spawn a bunch of weapon fire packets unfairly set to home in on a player. I have to make sure the engine somehow sends network lock data for each and every seeker. It's doable but tricky.

A good question is why even bother getting this working in multiplayer and just make it a singleplayer feature. Well, then that would mean that I have to develop and maintain two different codepaths for the lock code and the lock-weapon interaction. It's more overhead, could introduce a whole slew of bugs, and just messy if someone else needs to do modifications to the weapon and locking code. Plus, this isn't just for multilock missiles, this work is also for a bunch of new locking behavior I'm planning on implementing.

[Reprobator]

That sir is interesting!

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Wow...good luck, Swifty! You continue to amaze me, along with all the other coders, with your dedication. I'm really hoping to see this make its way to the game soon.

A random but related thought: it might be worth looking into to restrict it to certain ship types as well as certain weapons, like interceptors...it might finally give them a role-defining edge to be able to lock onto entire bomber wings or groups or warheads. Or, Swifty, is there a way to set the max number of targets on a per-ship basis in your implementation? Or is it a hard coded limit?

[starlord]

I recon there were several attempts at a robotech/macross mod under freespace! The worst I believe was not to dump the models when this project went under...

[-Norbert-]

I think there are bigger problems for any mecha-themed setting than multi-lock. If a Macross mod would be made (or Gundam, or whatever), the mechas would just be oddly shaped fighters, without the ability to move their arms and legs or aim anywhere else but at the retice (which is set to straight forward).
Just search for the Gundam mods for Homeworld to see how stupid it looks to have completely statick mecha models buzzing around with AI intended for fighters...

I also imagine that it would be hard to implement transformations between mecha and fighter shapes (or the "chicken-mode" in case of Valkyries... gerwalk or something... can't remember the exact term for sure).

Don't get me wrong, I too am excided about multi-locking, especially since it can be used for far more than "just" a Macross mod, but I don't hink that multi-lock alone with static models would make for a fun Macross mod.

[JGZinv]

There were Macross and Gundam mods... go take a stroll through Game Warden.
Better Robo / Star Dragon headed up the Macross one and he did a lens flare effect between switching out the models to do that.
They were hoping for the model animation scripting system to get better over the years to do more articulation.
The gundam mod had a few models and the staff working on it vanished, probably because they got in over their heads, it was archived.

And yes it was gerwalk mode... not chicken walker... those are AT-STs.

[-Norbert-]

I know it's not officially called chicken mode, but nontheless most people will know what you mean by that. I guess "tori no hito mode" could also work if you speak japanese and/or seen Macross Zero (or the episode "Memory of Zero" of Macross Frontier).

[JCDNWarrior]

I'd certainly love to have Macross type lock-ons added, even if hard-coded into a specific weapon for now, and like everyone else would love to have it added on to my own (Macross unrelated) project if such is made possible. Good to hear that there's work being done on it though, hope some breakthroughs will come for implementing it in FS2's weaponry.