Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Dragon on July 28, 2009, 05:22:50 pm
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I'm making a mod based on WC style gameplay and amongst things I want to make close to Wing Commander is colision system.
The problem is, the Prologue doesn't contain such data, it served me well when basing flight and damage models on it, but all ships have density set to "1", with is rather not interseting.
So I would like to ask you, can you publish some kind of formula, or maybe set of guidelines, which you're using for making WC style colisions, (for example, ramming enemy fighters is not as bad idea as it may seem, given that you fly a heavy fighter and your enemy don't fly heavier one).
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surely the collision things are the same as they are in every other FS2 mod? as in, surely the code is in the source engine?
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in that case i suggest trial and error so first step would be to set a light fighter to 1 and a medium to say 5 and see what happens (i suggest the gap to allow you to make a slightly heaver light fighter in the future) and work on from that, probably only take a few hours to get a basic table setup
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Since when has colliding with fighters on Wing Commander ever been a good idea? Even a Raptor Vs. Salthi would end in two very flat, very dead pilots.
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i think i have a bigger ramming issue in FS than WC unless it was a destroyer or cruiser then in WC1 and 2 i often misjudged the range visually
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Since when has colliding with fighters on Wing Commander ever been a good idea? Even a Raptor Vs. Salthi would end in two very flat, very dead pilots.
Have you ever played Wing Commander?
Ramming a Salthi (or even a Dralhti, Salthi were very hard to ram due to their speed) with Raptor was really useful tactic in critical situations in which you needed to eliminate it quickly, for example when defending something vurnable.
I recall that I once scored Gratha this way in WC1 when defending Tiger's Claw, though I don't remember if I won the mission in the same playthrough (it took me multiple tries, this mission was very though).
Well, anyway I for sure managed to smack other Gratha in said mission directly into Tiger's Claw.
I repeatably seen my father preforming this tactic on Talons (he was flying a Centurion) in Privateer.
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Uh...yes, I have played Wing Commander, and I recall what I said being what would happen if there was ramming of two fighters of any sort.
If you needed to eliminate it quickly, why not just go full guns? It's not that hard to hit them, I know this and the Mass Drivers and Neutron Guns pound their shields to nothing and the rest of the shot kills them.
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I always flown with full guns and sometimes even that wasn't enough.
The trick with ramming was to have full shields and armour on front, while enemy had them weakened by gunfire.
It frequently cost me my front armour, but it really worked in some cases (and sometimes by accident :) ).
It's even mentioned in Privateer II handbook, though I never tried it there, as I didn't played any Privateer.
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Ramming is a last resort thing and even if you kill your enemy that way you are killed afterwards by someone else because your shields and armor are gone.
Its also mentioned in some of the novels that younger recrutes are forbidden to do the "stop" manouver to let your enemy flyby overhead and get them into your crosshair because to many people died of collision damage, that comes from bad reactiontimes by the enemy pilot, resulting in him crashing into you.
In the games you received quite some damage to your own ship when ramming into anything at full speed. It was very likely that you damaged not only your armor but also destroyed some subsystems like guns or reactor in the progress.
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I guess I simply was lucky enough to don't break anything essential when ramming, as I frequently survived it (and even completed the mission after it), as for my father's trick with Talons I guess that the fact he played Gemini Gold, not the original Priv may have something to do with it.
Anyway, my purpose isn't really making ramming reliable tactic (as FS shields cannot take collision damage, it would be extremally dangerous and nearly surely lethal), but rather to get more realistic collision model, in which ships won't bounce of the ground (I have atmospheric missions) or capship's surface, but rather explode into pieces when colliding. (note that it would enable doing Wronsky Feint using ground or capship structures to get rid of attacker, or destroying enemy fighter by forcing them to crash).
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Don't see what this is going to accomplish ... apart from making the game insanely difficult.
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Well, that's a matter of taste. Personally I always liked that you been killed or heavily damaged when you ram a capital ship. The FS collision sucks a lot.
Unfortunately I wasn't really able to change the tables to my liking (didn't invested too much time into this though). Playing with the $densitiy value seem to have no or only very little effect. Only thing I noticed is that collisions with asteroid are giving quite a lot of damage, don't know why
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Don't see what this is going to accomplish ... apart from making the game insanely difficult.
Well, that depends. X-Wing had instant-death collisions, and it played just fine. Arguably, instant-death collisions will actually make some things easier (since the AI is so stupid about ramming things).
IMO a good solution would be a $Collision Damage Multiplier flag in AI_Profiles. That way, you could turn collision damage up (or down) however you wanted.
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Yes, that may be a good idea, as I think that collision damage is also affected be difficulty level.
Maybe setting this equal to insane on all levels would accomplish what I'm trying to do.
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Well, that's a matter of taste. Personally I always liked that you been killed or heavily damaged when you ram a capital ship. The FS collision sucks a lot.
Unfortunately I wasn't really able to change the tables to my liking (didn't invested too much time into this though). Playing with the $densitiy value seem to have no or only very little effect. Only thing I noticed is that collisions with asteroid are giving quite a lot of damage, don't know why
Ooo, that sounds like it would be neat if it worked correctly... but wingmen AI would be incompetent and would explode.
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Ooo, that sounds like it would be neat if it worked correctly... but wingmen AI would be incompetent and would explode.
Well, that's the other side of the medal. To achive that, it would be necessary to make it "player only" feature while leaving the AI as it is :)
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tbh i suspect increasing the AI's priority on avoiding collisions would probably provide a majority fix for that
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Don't see what this is going to accomplish ... apart from making the game insanely difficult.
Well, that depends. X-Wing had instant-death collisions, and it played just fine. Arguably, instant-death collisions will actually make some things easier (since the AI is so stupid about ramming things).
Not the X-Wing I remember playing... I used to ram ships with the B-wing as it has superior shielding to nearly everything.
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I didn't played X-wing, only X-wing Alliance and I never tried ramming there (3D models and precise collision detection make it much harder and are main reason why ramming is much less useful in WC3).
Anyway this discussion sounds like you simply don't have any formula for density and all ships have it set to "1" just like they had in Prologue.
When I can really use any colission model I want in my mod, it would be a flaw in WCS, which is suposed to feel "WC-ish" and should have collisions setup similar to original WC games just because of that.
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Ooo, that sounds like it would be neat if it worked correctly... but wingmen AI would be incompetent and would explode.
I still remember a friend of mine ordering his wingman (Stingray, if I remember correctly) to "form on my wing" in WC2 and then said wingman crashing into him on full afterburners, killing both... Apparently that wingman took the order a little bit TOO literal. *rofl* ;)
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Don't see what this is going to accomplish ... apart from making the game insanely difficult.
Well, that depends. X-Wing had instant-death collisions, and it played just fine. Arguably, instant-death collisions will actually make some things easier (since the AI is so stupid about ramming things).
Not the X-Wing I remember playing... I used to ram ships with the B-wing as it has superior shielding to nearly everything.
X-Wing didn't have insta-death at all. It was common for Tie Fighters to fly right into you on the initial attack run. And an X-Wing or Y-Wing could survive. Not sure about the A-Wing.
Tie Fighter was another matter, but then again anything that collided with that would kill it. Z-95s were particularly heinous. Though weaker opponents than most Rebel fighters, when they died their burning fuselage would often fly straight back, not uncommonly into you.
As for Freespace. Well, I agree that it would make the game very hard. I don't think the AI is that smart. Getting in a dogfight with a Basilisk for example and it's almost guarenteed you're going to run into it. Not only that but AI is going to run into things on their own. Enemies and allies alike will be exploding everywhere (see any mission around an Arcadia).
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AI should definitely be smarter when it comes to avoiding collisions.
Also, I think deadly colissions are important part of Wing Commander feeling and should be recreated in WCS.
On a side note, I noticed that collisions are much more destructive on higher difficulty levels, so maybe it's not density that should be changed, but rather a collision damage multipiler should be made controlable via AIProfiles (and set to the same level as on insane on all difficulties).
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AI should definitely be smarter when it comes to avoiding collisions.
Yeah but they're not going to get smarter. Not unless someone re-writes teh code or something.
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Which utterly breaks the feeling of FreeSpace which a lot of people don't seem to like.
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I think this can be triggered as AIProfile flag (like $impoved colission avoiding:).
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well the collisions in WC were not always fatal and there was a skill to using collisions with an other ship as a weapon and surviving. it been a while so i forget it which characters explained it in WC1 in the bar but it was a combination of a few over several dialogs . it wasn't a complete explanation but it was described as a Kilrathi tactic that gave you a hint if you payed attention on how to observe the Kilrathi doing it. although it would require a good bit of programing to replicate it, and some player skills to execute it. the trick is in a combination of shield strength, angle, and impact location on both ships. you see its not the impact its self that you use as a weapon but your shields :bump:. what you had to do is a glaceing blow in critical spots on the enemy ship with a change of angle (by pulling away at the right time) in the process. the goal is to graze one quadrant of the enemy ship with two quadrants of your own shields, there by draining the one quadrant of the enemy shields and doing damage to the ship itself. insistently this method even works better when flying light fighter against a heavier fighter because the better maneuverability and usually smaller size of the light fighter makes it easier to preform the maneuver and harder for the heavier fighter to avoid. It is always a risky last resort maneuver best used only when all of your weapons are destroyed, although i will admit to impatiently using it when taking out a heavy fighter with just a light fighters guns took too long. Ive used that trick in almost every WC game effectively and on many more than one occasion used it to rack up several kills after all my weapons were destroyed and successfully landed at the end of the mission (usually with the eject alarm going off or at least very close to it).
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Ramming in any Wing Commander was only really a viable tactic after pressing Alt + O and togglini certain options. But that removes all skill development and more importantly, fun.
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Or weakening your target with guns.
Me and my father used it as an opening move, the sequence: missile kill the first, ram the second and gun down third while your wingman plays with the fourth (I even learned to hog his kills with either a missile or gun fire) was great for quick dealing with 4 fighter flights, one of the largest formations you encouncered in WC1.
It often damaged my hull a little, but the enemy always exploded into a giant fireball, so it was worth of it, I just had to be carefull not to execute head-on with the next enemy.
Of course, when the quick elimiantion of the fighters was needed the most (while escorting the captured Ralari) you faced Jalthis which were too heavly armoured to kill that way.
But at least one transport crew owes it's lives to this tactic used on Dralthis.
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I actually believe them to be grathas, which have one of the most annoying target profiles in the game IMO...
Whatever I do, I can't lodge all my shots into them, and they take forever to kill.
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Indeed, those were difficult to kill.
Ramming them was risky, because of their armour, but I did it from time to time while in a Raptor.
This tactic allowed me to defend Tiger's Claw in the final mission, as it was vital to take them down quickly.
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Ramming in any Wing Commander was only really a viable tactic after pressing Alt + O and togglini certain options. But that removes all skill development and more importantly, fun.
I don't think WC2 had that option and I know WC1 didn't. I think you are referring to the invincibility mode that they introduced latter I never once turned that on. I was talking about shield scraping and that definitely is a skill.
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Ramming is ok in prophecy i think... I remember the last level with those squid things firing those o shapped guns constantly ramming into them.
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That was good, but getting into position where you could ram the enemy became more difficult when WC moved to 3D.
Breaking Stingray formations was pretty much the best application of that in 3D WC games, since they were slow enough to get rammed and armored lightly enough for the player to survive a hit.
In WCS, ramming would also not be easy, but I think it should be introduced anyway.
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I recall that in WCP those... Lampreys (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wcplamprey.shtml) I think kept ramming me. A lot.
Anybody else made that experience?
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I recall that in WCP those... Lampreys (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wcplamprey.shtml) I think kept ramming me. A lot.
Anybody else made that experience?
Yup those were the ones.