[Sticks]

I'm so tired of banging my head against 3.6 that I've decided to rest for a minute and start looking toward what will be implemented after 3.6.

Here's what I know for sure I'm going to be doing:

• Bumpmapping
• Dynamic Shadows
• 3D (or 2D) Cockpit Model
• Overexposure and Glare Effects

RT has said he will be cleaning up the texturing system to make it more resource friendly. Goober's got a couple of additions I think, like loading background templates in FRED.

Any suggestions are welcome. Just don't expect a whole lot of explanation if they get a "Nay" vote, I'm sure this thread will get cluttered enough very quickly.


I'll insert comments as-needed for the requests that can be answered by a yes, no, or elaborate.  The others will need more discussion by one or more other coders. // Goober5000

[Trivial Psychic]

Allow the escort list display to show possibly as much as 6 entries, rather than the current 3.
Would require new HUD art... probably nay.

Allow FRED to assign non-pilot personae heads.  I'm tired of giving an order to a cap ship and having a pilot's head replying to me.
This is already possible.  Take a closer look at the messages editor.

Get cloaking usable.
Talk to Phreak.

SEXPs
change-alt-name, including an option to disable and revert to standard name.
Post it on the sexp thread.

Include a sexp so that any object listed in it will have a series of changes applied to them, but individually.  Like mines, which detonate when any friendly ship gets within a certain range.  Giving each mine its own event, realy sucks up the events.
What? Can you elaborate?
[Edit]
Alright, here's how I got to this idea.  I was FREDing a mission where fellow pilots are fighting against each other as part of a training mission, using simulated weapons.  When any ship is damaged below 5%, it is restored to full strength, made invulnerable, changed IFF to friendly, given a protect-ship sexp flag, and ordered to depart.  The mission had a total of 17 fighters, a science cruiser, and a Fenris, and I had to have events for the neutralizing of each and every ship in the mission, which realy ate up my events.  I'd like a way to have a single event for all the hostile fighters, that will apply the above changes to each, but separately.  If I just use a bunch of "or" branches to it, it will apply the changes to all the fighters at the same time, when only one of them has been damaged below 5%.  While I'm on the subject, it'd also smooth out the repair process if there was a sexp that says repair-all-damage, that will restore the hull and all subsystems, rather than having to identify every subsystem and the hull.  This would help when coupled with the previously proposed sexp, since I found that not all ships have the same subsystem (I found the Athena doesn't have an engine subsystem), and it could confuse FS2.  That was a bit long but I hope it clarified things a bit.[/Edit]

subsystem-invulnerable, subsystem-guardian and their opposites.
Post it on the sexp thread.

allow-hull-repairs, assigns a specific support ship to be able to repair hulls.  Such support ships would need to either have scripted arrival times and a name other than "Support x", or select say "Support 3" so that the 3rd support ship used in mission, can repair hulls.
Already possible.  Read the readme.
[Edit]
I just looked through the readme, but it only allows hull repairing support ships to be enabled with a mission flag.  That will make all support ships repair hulls.  I'd like a way to make it so only specific ones will be capable of this, not all of them.

As far as most of my sexps, I've already posted them in the sexp thread, I'm just bumping them so to speak.[/edit]

Later!

[Flaser]

If it's possible stuff _avgr posted if the code is still availible.

- Armor plate simulation - it was suggested before, but if there's a way (there could be since we saw stuff like this in the whole MW and other mecha games) then it would be worth the effort

- Extended damage system using plate simulation - get rid of the hull and let use make cheesecake out of capship - they may barely function, but those ships should be able to take quite a beating.

[redmenace]

recoil and other turret options
Not feasible at this stage of the game.
Haha Goober, thought I would try but I still think the trails need work. I guess this is more of a visual bug than anything but when missles are initially fired I see the beginning of a trail go at a sharp angle.

[Flipside]

My own choices would be......

Definable explosions for subsystems.

Subsystem Ambient sounds.

Distance Fogging

These would all be great for TI

Edit : Not Distance Fogging, sorry, area fogging, though the odds of it happening are Zilch, but what the hell

[Snowden]

Would adding support for triple displays be possible?
Elaborate, please.

Edit: Never mind

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Trivial Psychic

Include a sexp so that any object listed in it will have a series of changes applied to them, but individually.  Like mines, which detonate when any friendly ship gets within a certain range.  Giving each mine its own event, realy sucks up the events.
What? Can you elaborate?

Is it so hard to understand Goober?

What he's asking for is brilliant.

You would have a SEXP that would be called something like "apply-to-all":

apply-to-all
      +Alpha1
      +Alpha2
      +Alpha3
when
      hits-left
          +$Ship
          <
          50
--> set-shield strength
          +$Ship
           0

This would have the following effect: Once Alpha 1, 2 or 3 have less than 50 hits, they will have shield strength 0. You can set a ship list, then specify a normal SEXP which applies with placeholders for any ship in the list above. You could do it without the SEXP but you would have to do one event for EACH alpha 1, 2 and 3; however, by using "apply-to-all" you can all whack it together in one SEXP.

[Flipside]

Just a quick thought, but was AI being able to use Dumbfire implemented, or maybe have a 'AI_Dumbfire' tag on weapons.tbl so the AI will only use specific dumbfire missiles?

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
Is it so hard to understand Goober?

What he's asking for is brilliant.

You would have a SEXP that would be called something like "apply-to-all":

Thanks Lighty. Actually some of the idea behind that goes to _argv or whatever his name was.  I listed my problem and request in the sexp thread, and he refined it to that.  His idea kinda helps out people in more than just situations like mine.  I decided to edit my above message with elaborations, so you can see why I wanted it.

Later!

[CP5670]

Allow the escort list display to show possibly as much as 6 entries, rather than the current 3.
Would require new HUD art... probably nay.

Are you sure about that? I just looked at the escort list graphics in the vp files and it looks like the top, middle and bottom parts of that escort window are separate files. Copies of the middle section could just be placed next to each other to get a larger escort window. You'll see what I mean if you look at these anis; they are in the hud subdirectory of the sparky and sparky_hi vps and are named escort1 through escort4.

The only other thing, aside from the cloaking feature, that I would really like to see are a few adjustments to the AI. Namely, something to prevent the AI from shooting at passive asteroids, and making the AI ships capable of firing Tempests (already mentioned) and Trebuchets, neither of which they ever seem to launch for some reason.

Of course, it would also be great to fix up the whole memory usage issue, but that would probably be difficult.

I also found a few minor bugs in the last few days; will submit to Mantis in a little while.

[demon442]

Since I cant play until I get a new comp, how about throwing out the HUD graphics and rendering it in-game.

[Black Wolf]

Urgh. I know I'm going to forget cool stuff, but...

Table defined Hud Guage positions - ala mainhall.tbl, the ability to define where a certain guage is displayed on the hud through its pixel coordinates. The ability to have multiple configurations (perhaps even defined through ships.tbl) would be a major bonus too

Custom guages - Probably controlled by sexps, these would be able to flash up either PCXs (for warning messages) or counters indicating information that could be returned by a sexp (Hitpoints, distance, time etc. etc.). Sexps could also allow them to flash, flick on or off etc. They would probably have to be set up previously in the HUD positions table, and may also need some sort of numerical or size limits, and would of course need new artwork (though this could be provided by the campaign designers who want to use the feature.

Import background button.

"Big Guns at Front" tag.

There's a lot more I'd like to see, but I can't think of it all right now

EDIT - Tractor beams

Oh, and

Originally posted by CP5670
and making the AI ships capable of firing Tempests (already mentioned) and Trebuchets, neither of which they ever seem to launch for some reason.

I can get my AI to fire trebs by using a good-secondary-time sexp - one of the TI missions I'm doing depends on this.

[Deepblue]

For tractor beams use a beam with no damage and a negative mass.

[CP5670]

I can get my AI to fire trebs by using a good-secondary-time sexp - one of the TI missions I'm doing depends on this.

That works nicely under certain conditions, but it applies to the entire "team" and only allows firing upon one ship. It would have been better if they made that sexp the other way around.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Deepblue
For tractor beams use a beam with no damage and a negative mass.

Be my guest. Test it, then send me a working Table file. The TI team will thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by CP5670
That works nicely under certain conditions, but it applies to the entire "team" and only allows firing upon one ship. It would have been better if they made that sexp the other way around.

Now there's a good one.  Change the good-secondary-time sexp so that you can have it only apply to wings or even to specific ships, as the FREDer may require.

Later!

[karajorma]

I like the Apply-to-All idea a lot.

The other thing I'd like to see was my idea about having the Loadout using persistant variables so that you could set a campaign on a destroyer and slowly have it run out of fighters.

[KARMA]

what's the status of persistent variables on ship loadout? (edit: missed kara's post)

mod specific request:
after viewing episode1 I noticed that in the films there isn't an "energetic" shield hit effect, you just see small explosions at close distance to the hull, when shields are down you see instead explosions ON the hull.
I don't know if this would be easyer to be implemented than shield hit effect on the hull polys, but it coul be very very useful for the SW conversion, in addition to _argv's virtual shields.

the rotate subsystem sexp working in both directions (to open/close xwing's foils).

A very very secondary thing would be to have a subsystem rotating randomly (forward and backward) for a random amount of time at a defined speed.  I'd use this to have R2 rotating left and right randomly, but it could also used by others to simulate a damaged rotating subsystem

AI behaviour. But I don't have time to elaborate this now, maybe it's stuff for another thread.

custom ship sexps?
This came out in a thread in the modding forum, the point is that there are ships (like xwing) that will need specific sexps whenever they will be used. It could be useful to have the possibility ot define a certain number of ship specific sexps into a table (or something else), with the game loading those sexps whenever this ship will be putted in a mission, whoever will create this mission. It will make it easyer when you release to public single ships that needs specific sexps

[karajorma]

I wouldn't do that as ship specific SEXP's personally.

I think having a SEXP called Ship-Action-1 and then adding the info on what that does to the standard ships table makes more sense.

That way you can replace a ship with another one very easily (If you decide that gold wing should be Y-wings rather than X-wings for example).  If the ship had no action defined the SEXP could just be ignored.

[Drew]

Get Spec-lighting to work in HT&L mode on a Radeon 9000

then ill be happy