Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: BigDamnHero on December 19, 2008, 01:38:46 am
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I'm just curious if they prove to be useful or not in game? I've got my 360 wired controller am using it for the game. Right now I've got my right analog stick set to bank control as well as equalizing shields and matching speed. I was thinking about mapping the entire thing to thrusters but I'd like to hear from peeps if thrusters are actually any use or if I shouldn't bother with it, thus freeing up my analog for other things.
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What do you mean by thrusters? Do you mean increasing/decreasing speed manually, setting throttle to one-third, two-thirds or full, using the afterburners, or what?
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the thrusters that move the ship laterally and vertically while still facing a certain direction. I already have decrease speed, max, afterburn and full stop set to a button :)
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I don't think the default Freespace engine had those vertical and lateral thruster controls. Also, flying in one direction whilst facing another isn't possible in the retail version of Freespace 1 or 2 (would've been cooler if it was, but meh).
However FSO has a "glide" function that you would need to have enabled in the key settings on the options page (the default is Alt-G), but if you're wanting that to work in the FS1 or 2 campaigns, you need to edit some tables to get it working, I think. Hopefully someone else who's more in the know about such stuff will tell you how.
The Babylon Project has some ships which have lateral and vertical thruster controls though, together with the glide function, but not all playable ships have these controls.
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the thrusters that move the ship laterally and vertically while still facing a certain direction. I already have decrease speed, max, afterburn and full stop set to a button :)
that only happens on the special mod of BtRL as far as I know, are you playing the battlestar mod?
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I was thinking about mapping the entire thing to thrusters but I'd like to hear from peeps if thrusters are actually any use or if I shouldn't bother with it, thus freeing up my analog for other things.
If it's the BtRL mod, then from my experience yes, they can come in handy. I use the keyboard for them as I only have one joystick and not enough buttons on it. Experiment with the key bindings and see what feels right for you.
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Yeah I played it for a bit. It was cool but hella hard - asteroids kept killing the damn mining ship. I only ever made it to the ace twice and once I ran out of bullets, the other I was gliding, doing alright, then glided right into an asteroid.
Well, if it doesn't work in FSO then that solves that :)
Now I just have to work on an optimal controller layout for the game and xbox 360 wired controller... figure out what I'll be using most and map it to the controller.
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Certain ships in TBP have glide ability as well. Actually you can use glide and thrusters on them so you can be moving one direction, sliding another and facing a third.
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Flaming Sword's Shivans! mod also allows you to pilot Shivan craft, and these have glide capabilities if I remember correctly.
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I don't think the default Freespace engine had those vertical and lateral thruster controls.
It did actually. But the Terran Mara was the only ship the player ever flew capable of using it, so since the controls were never explained most people assume the feature was added in FSO.
If you watch the Shivans even in retail you can quite clearly see the Mara's making use of slide though.
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Glide speed is a bit slow, though. 15 m/s is warship movement speed.
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How are the thrusters controlled in FS? I recall it being really annoying to use when I tried it in TBP. But when I played the demo for this other game, Starshatter, the directional thrusters were linked to the Joystick's hat which made perfect sense. Normally the hat is used for looking but that's of marginal value in an actual battle I Find.
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You should be able to assign thrusters to the hat switch, but the catch is that FS2 doesn't seem to recognize diagonal hat input. I ran into that when I was fooling around with tables for a Descent-style flight model; I'd assume one would have to wait for the distantly-planned controller updates to get that changed.
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It's something crazy like shift-1 shift-2 not even sure what the others are.
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Too complicated to use in a dogfight I guess.
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Too complicated to use in a dogfight I guess.
You've never seen me type QFT, but here it is. :nod:
As if pitching, rolling and thrusting isn't enough to think about on top of shield management, energy transfer, weapon toggling and ordering wingmen during a dogfight...
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You'd never hack it in Descent, my friend. :p
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Descent is different, Mongoose, and while my efficiency is about 29/100 in multiplayer (average is about 45 to 50/100, I can actually get by pretty well on a keyboard using only pitch, thrust and roll. I have keys for gliding, but I hardly ever use them. Besides, Descent doesn't place much emphasis on shield management with energy transfer, and it completely leaves out ordering wingmen unless you're in multiplayer.
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True, but wingmen can usually be handled one-handed while you keep your business hand on your stick (lulz). If you use the hat switch for sliding controls, you can incorporate them without making any other control concessions. As for shield management, I plopped the equalize shield control on my stick as well, so as to always have that easily available; anything more detailed than that can be handled just as communications would.
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So I guess ordering around wingmen in game is actually pretty important huh? Is that how they stay alive? Mine seem to be dying quite a bit, lol.
Also, I'd like to eventually see and use thrusters. I have an xbox360 controller so I'd just map thrusting to the right analog stick if I really wanted to.
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Joshua made a "RealFlight" mod for FSO that makes all the playable ships in FS have glide control, lateral and vertical thrusters (IIRC) and that inertial squishyness that you notice in BtRL whenever you change direction while moving. Ship and weapon speeds were increased somewhat. I can't remember if the AI knows how to use the thrusters and glide feature though. Due to the changes to the ship and weapons speeds, when playing the official FS2 campaign the missions become somewhat imbalanced.
You can read about it in the thread below. Note that the links to the files in that thread don't work, but I have the 1.1 and 1.2 versions as well as the one compatible with the FS Port if you want them. I don't know if they'll work with 3.6.10.
RealFlight thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,47069.0.html)
There's also Sushi's Velocity Mod that the above was partly based on but I think all that does is increase ship speeds. Haven't tried it myself but it's on FreeSpaceMods for download.
So I guess ordering around wingmen in game is actually pretty important huh? Is that how they stay alive? Mine seem to be dying quite a bit, lol.
Wingmen do tend to die often. On higher difficulties (hard and insane) they become more effective.
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God BtRL physics in FS1+2 sound hella fun. Too bad the DL links are dead. Anyone have those mods and can get them working for 3.6.10 and FSPort and ST:R? Oh and giving everyone a DL link would be nice.
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What I'll do is give the RealFlight mods a try under FSO 3.6.10 and the new FS Port release to see if they work. I'll try and upload them on FreeSpaceMods soonish.
Or in the meantime ask Joshua for them. I sent him the ones that I'd saved after he lost his originals a few months ago, and he might have worked on them since.
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OK I have added the following to FreeSpaceMods:
RealFlight for FS Port:
- v.1.11
- v.1.11B
RealFlight for FS2 SCP:
- v.1.1
As for v1.2, I've tried uploading it twice but it hasn't appeared in the list yet. I'll look into this later.
I _hope_ I've provided the correct installation instructions...
Link to download page: http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?list.46 (http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?list.46)
I also have another RAR file called Inertiamod but I'm not sure if it relates to FS Port or FS2 SCP. Joshua would know. I might upload it once I figure out what it does.
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I don't think the default Freespace engine had those vertical and lateral thruster controls.
it does.
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Ah crap, forgot about uploading those after I got them for my own studies.
They seem to be broken anyway. For example, the GTF Perseus should have 160 MPS, but it has a weird random number last time I checked. It wasn't always so, and I do not know what changed it.
Anyway, I usually set up all the flight controls at the number-pad. 8 is thrust up, 2 is thrust down, etc. Enter is the afterburner, and * is the counter-measure. Combined with the Joystick I find this a rather usefull setting in dogfights...
I also have another RAR file called Inertiamod but I'm not sure if it relates to FS Port or FS2 SCP. Joshua would know. I might upload it once I figure out what it does.
That should either be the original 1.0 one or a beta I released... somewhere. The beta sets all the damp valeus to 1.0, and is rather suckish...
Wingmen do tend to die often. On higher difficulties (hard and insane) they become more effective.
If you look carefully at how FS handles difficulty, you could actually say that you become much less effective on higher difficulties settings. on Insane setting, you are just as vurnrable as your wingmen are...