Author Topic: first monifications :))  (Read 12837 times)

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Originally posted by LtNarol
ok, say you want to make a mission where you're patroling an asteriod field, boring milkrun of a mission where all you do for the first 5 minutes is fly paterns through the field following a wingman.  Wouldnt it be nice if you gave the player the option of hitting a key (say "a" for example) and the player ship automatically follows your wingman until the player hits the key again?  If it was a checkbox, the player would not be able to enable/disable this.

If you wanted the fighter to dock with a station, you hit a key and the ai takes over, pilot the ship to the thing and docks it.  Check boxes dont work so well for that.  like i said earlier, there are reasons why we have SEXPs in the first place.

While we're on this topic, it would be very nice if we can have a new ai command SEXP: follow ship.


You misunderstood what I meant by having a checkbox.  My checkbox was to allow/disallow the player to do that.  You'd have something in the control configuration of "AI Enable Button" where the player maps a button to that (requires source/engine modifications).  Then, assuming the player mapped "a" to that function, he could hit "a" to enable his fighter to be taken over by the AI (perhaps allowing his own ship to appear in the command box so he can issue commands such as "form up" to his own fighter).  The checkbox could be used to disallow that function to exist in a mission.

I guess I misunderstood what you were saying too.  I assumed you meant having a SEXP which would take over a players' ship (when Colossus is-destroyed, AI take-over Alpha 1).  That particular case (and others similar to it) seems totally useless.....but then again - we'll always find some situation where we wish we had it.  (-;  Anyway, I see now that what you meant wasn't like that situation there, having SEXP support for something like that would be useful as well.

It could be done kinda like the Invulnerable ship checkbox - it can be checked - but later disabled through SEXPs.  But instead of enabling/disabling the AI control of a players' ship, we'd be enabling/disabling the player's CHOICE to allow AI control of his ship.

Also, when I think of Wing Commander/X-Wing series games, they don't have the AI take over the ship when you get near the mothership (errr....capship).  You hit "Space" or request clearance or whatever, and then the screen goes blank.  In XWA, you watch the fighter dock in the bay - but that's a scripted sequence that's actually happening in a model that's totally different and unrelated to the model you saw when you hit the spacebar.  You'll notice in XWA that the fighterbay you see after you dock is MUCH larger than the fighterbay you see before you start docking.  (-:

Having an AI landing procedure seems kinda overrated and possibly bug-prone though. (imagine initiating AI landing procedures while there's some capship protrusion between your ship and the landing bay - WHAMMO....kinda looks stupid)  But if it were done right, it could be kinda cool.    I really don't see anything wrong with simply allowing the player to fly near the capship, hit Alt+J, and have SEXP events control whether the warp animation is displayed, or if the screen simply goes blank and the player is treated to a debriefing (indicating that he docked, similar to XvT/TIE Fighter/X-Wing/Wing Commander style).

  Sorry if that rambled a bit more than I intended originally.  (-:

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Offline LtNarol

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the advantage to a sexp is that its flexible, you can have the autopilot come into play when a ship is destroyed, a subsystem is destroyed, when something's hull is below or above a certain point, or just whenever the player presses a specific key.  i still dont see what you're trying to say with the check box, i still dont see its purpose.

 

Offline mikhael

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Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
the advantage to a sexp is that its flexible, you can have the autopilot come into play when a ship is destroyed, a subsystem is destroyed, when something's hull is below or above a certain point, or just whenever the player presses a specific key.  i still dont see what you're trying to say with the check box, i still dont see its purpose.

This is precisely why I suggest ripping out the current SEXP system, hacking in an internal scripting engine (like Python), and reimplementing the SEXPs in python. SEXPs are more flexible than simple boolean checkboxes, but being able to code new SEXPs on a mission by mission basis would be even more flexible.
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Quote
Originally posted by EdrickV


If anything, I think some sort of AI piloting system for the player's ship would be most useful for in game cinema scenes.  


For in-game cinema scenes, the last thing one would usually want is AI control of anything.  It's way too unpredictable what's going to happen.  in-game cinema scenes need to be fully scripted by the mission designer with the engine explicitly following those guidelines, even if they contradict other phyiscs things.  (For example, if a mission designer scripts two ships to fly through each other, but doesn't script a collision/explosion - then they should clip right through each other).  Such a system would give excellent flexibility to the cinematic designer, but would also require incredible discipline and attention to detail.

Furthermore -  some people (myself included) have objections to having missions where you fight for a little while and then are whisked out of your cockpit to view other things happening for story-exposition purposes.  However, that doesn't mean that scripted sequences are necessarily bad.  They could be used to provide between-mission cutscenes....basically having a completely non-interactive "mission" whose sole-purpose is providing exposition in-engine.  This is something I'm not opposed to (and have wished I could do while FREDding).

  --TurboNed
"It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars! I don't see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?" - [size=-2]Avery Brooks from an IBM commercial[/size]

 
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
the advantage to a sexp is that its flexible, you can have the autopilot come into play when a ship is destroyed, a subsystem is destroyed, when something's hull is below or above a certain point, or just whenever the player presses a specific key.  i still dont see what you're trying to say with the check box, i still dont see its purpose.


The same reason we have a "has-shields" checkbox in FRED.  There could be an "AI-Takeover-allowed" checkbox.  If it's checked, then the player is allowed to hit the button to have the AI take over his ship.  If not, then he can't.  Just for the FREDder's convenience.  The same thing could be accomplished with an event and SEXP - but sometimes it's easier to uncheck a box than to create an event saying

-when
--time=0
--disallow-ai-takeover
---alpha 1

It's kinda like some people are asking for a checkbox on capships that does the beam-free-all thing without requiring an event.

  --TurboNed
"It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars! I don't see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?" - [size=-2]Avery Brooks from an IBM commercial[/size]

 

Offline LtNarol

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but a check box will limit the abilities of this function such as when it comes into play, what if you dont want the player to decide to hand over to autopilot?  what if you want it to kick in automatically?  If you keep the sexp and the checkbox, then you have to go in and check the box if you want to use the sexp.  Its just more work for the programmer AND more work for the fredder.  it just seems kinda pointless to me to have checkboxes, sexps are so much better.

 

Offline Bobboau

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check boxes work basicly like sExps that triger when the ship enters the level, having both shouldn't be a problem
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Offline LtNarol

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well, just set it up so that you dont have to go find that check box to make the SEXP work, that would just be annoying.  The whole point of having such a box though would really only apply if all you intended to do with it was for landings and takeoffs, but thats not the purpose of such a sexp, so really, i still insist that such a box would only complicate things.  As for custom SEXPs, i agree with that, but i dont agree with ripping out the current system.  We do want nonprogrammers to be able to make missions too.

 
If one checks the box for a ship to be invulnerable, then uses the SEXP to make the ship not be invulnerable, you can destroy the ship, right?  I feel the same functionality would be used here.

(If that SEXP doesn't work as I've described it, then I think it SHOULD.  [grin])  Believe me, I'm not against flexibility, usefulness, or efficiency.  If it turns out that the way I've described is less in any of those ways, there's no reason for it to be there.

  --TurboNed
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Offline EdrickV

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Quote
I really don't see anything wrong with simply allowing the player to fly near the capship, hit Alt+J, and have SEXP events control whether the warp animation is displayed, or if the screen simply goes blank and the player is treated to a debriefing (indicating that he docked, similar to XvT/TIE Fighter/X-Wing/Wing Commander style).


Something like that is possible already. You can't change it in the mission, but you can disable the warp in/out out animation for the player's wing. (or any other wing/ship) A SEXP probably could be made to change those flags within a mission. The Robotech MOD has a landing system where you can't leave until you target your mothership's fighter bay, face the ship, and close to 200 meters. Then it lets you warpout. (And if the warp effect is disabled it'll start warming up the engine for warp out and just end.)
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Offline CP5670

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Actually, you might be able to trick FRED2 into giving that order to any ship. I've tricked it into giving an "ignore ship" order to a cap ship. Will test it out right now. :>


I tried kind of "forcing" the order on some ships once, but they didn't really do it correctly. That was only with one of the other orders though; need to try doing what you said. ;)