Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Inglonias on March 20, 2012, 12:44:52 pm
-
With the release only two days away now, I was curious: What sort of new features, if any, has WCS created for FSOpen that have found/will find their way back to the SCP?
I haven't really been following this project too closely, admittedly, so now that I find you're all so close to finishing (Congratulations, by the way) I have noticed you and the astonishing things promised in the release trailer.
-
I believe WCS forked from the SCP codebase a while ago.
-
Right now, none of the work the WCS people did after the fork is in FSO. Whether anything of what they did can be ported over remains to be seen.
-
Wasn't being able to land instead of jump out a WCS feature that is still in the SCP?
-
Nope, landing has to be SEXPed in FRED, the "landing code" (runway touchdowns) was in fact for Diaspora.
-
Wasn't being able to land instead of jump out a WCS feature that is still in the SCP?
simple distance less than triggering mission end SEXP, iirc they are all FS retail features
-
Wasn't being able to land instead of jump out a WCS feature that is still in the SCP?
simple distance less than triggering mission end SEXP, iirc they are all FS retail features
Precisely.
-
Oh, nevermind.
But wait, in the only WC named game I played though, you actually had to be inside the bay before the mission would end. That was Prophecy, admittedly, but still, you had to actually get inside the bay before the mission over event would trigger unless it was one of those missions where if you didn't get inside, the TCS Midway was going to jump out and leave you behind if you didn't get there in time. In which case, the mission could end with you watching the Midway and any support craft she might have around jumping out.
So how do you make it work if that was the dynamic for all the Wing Commander games and not just Prophecy? Pick a point and make sure you can't get close enough without going into the bay by careful design of the models and setting of the SEXP?
-
simple distance less than triggering mission end SEXP, iirc they are all FS retail features
Precisely.
Except the last part. The end-mission SEXP was added by SCP, though it was quite long ago. It still wasn't for WCS, which didn't even had a demo at the time (IIRC, I don't really remember when exactly this SEXP was introduced).
-
Will the WCS source code be publically available eventually? There are a certain key features implemented since the fork that I would like to backport over such as some rendering optimizations, collision code optimizations, soft particle rendering, and my world famous font fix. :D
-
Don't forget the widescreen support.
-
Will the WCS source code be publically available eventually? There are a certain key features implemented since the fork that I would like to backport over such as some rendering optimizations, collision code optimizations, soft particle rendering, and my world famous font fix. :D
They promised it'll be, so I guess they'll release it at some point. It'd be more useful too port WCS features to FSO. They're suprisingly few of them (that I noticed), BTW. A lot of them seems to be in the HUD code, which would fit nicely into your HUD_gauges.tbl system. There are some lighting improvements, most likely some new SEXPs, some new AI Profiles and AI.tbl stuff and... I don't really know what else.
-
Optimizations, better shield code and a lot of other stuff I forgot.
-
If possible, I wonder if we can eventually merge most of the new WCS features into trunk, so that future FSO builds will be able to run WCSaga.
-
That is going to be a huge undertaking. We changed the behavior of several sexps, fixed numerous bugs in the code and introduced several new sexps.
-
Optimizations, better shield code and a lot of other stuff I forgot.
Optimizations are always welcome, though the trunk has also gotten plenty of them recently. I hope they'll be compatible.
What exactly is the "better shield code"? Anyway, I don't think that anything was done to shield code in trunk, so it should be possible to port.
As for SEXPs, those are among the easiers thing to add to FSO. The only concern is changed behavior of the existing SEXPs, as they can't be changed in trunk for backwards compatiblity. There are ways around that, but they'd require modifications to WCS missions (though they'd be small ones in most cases).
-
I for one am going to be enjoying WCS on its own terms before worrying about how to cannibalize features that will probably never end up used in FSO anyway.
-
Aside from fixing a bug in the shield code, which would allow random shots to penetrate shielding? Shield rendering is now particle based - simply compare the FSO behavior as seen in the 2010 trailer with the recent footage. The difference is mostly visible on capital ships.
-
Aside from fixing a bug in the shield code, which would allow random shots to penetrate shielding?
Man, this bug annoyed me so much in freespace. (though using the surface shield flag gets around that)
Shield rendering is now particle based - simply compare the FSO behavior as seen in the 2010 trailer with the recent footage. The difference is mostly visible on capital ships.
I'm intrigued, How does this new system work?
-
Table-wise there's no change, but it looks much, much better.
This definitely needs to go into trunk.
-
I think that's just visuals taken from the Wing Commander shield visual style. Not necessarily better or worse, IMO.
-
The visuals are from Mediavps. Which is a mild disappointment, I hoped there'll be a new effect. The way they're rendered is vastly improved.
Oh, and there's one thing I missed earlier. Ships may have more secondary banks (I don't know about primaries). At least up to 6.
-
The visuals are from Mediavps. Which is a mild disappointment, I hoped there'll be a new effect. The way they're rendered is vastly improved.
Oh, and there's one thing I missed earlier. Ships may have more secondary banks (I don't know about primaries). At least up to 6.
which ships have 6?
-
The Longbow.
-
So it does, certainly would be a handy thing to have in
-
Also, I think they've added a minimum bomb range, so that bombers don't launch torpedoes within a certain distance. I noticed this during one of the escort missions.
-
I think I know which one you're talking about. They also decided to use those bombs against the Dralthi flight that was attacking them.
-
Also, I think they've added a minimum bomb range, so that bombers don't launch torpedoes within a certain distance. I noticed this during one of the escort missions.
I don't think they actually added it. Such feature was in FSO for quite some time. +Weapon min range: or something like that.