[CaptJosh]

In regards to the gattling turret feature, aren't the flak turrets already gatling style, at least in rate of fire?

Beyond that, I'm guessing that this feature request might be related to The Babylon Project, based on what I remember of B5's armaments and defense grid?

[Nuke]

no, flak turrets dont have cool spinning barrels that tell whoever they are pointedat that they are about to die. the rate of fire of the flak guns in this game cant even match a browning .50 cal, let alone a gau-8, wich has a fire rate of about 70 rounds a sec. i mainly want the rotating barrels when the turret fires, they looked cool in descent3 and freespace should have them to. and this feature request is for nukemod, wich is accidently turned into a major campaign, im sure there are many other mods out there that would use them..

[CaptJosh]

Dude, do you have ANY idea how many polies it would take for that? You'd end up killing the framerates for any mission in which a capship had those. It's why all the turrets in FS2 have so little detail. During development, they had some high poly turrets and it didn't work well at all.

[FireCrack]

During development they didnt have HTL.

[Prophet]

During development they considered people who don't have supercomputers.

[CaptJosh]

Regardless of that, I'm just not sure that it's terribly practical.

That's some fancy animation you're asking for combined with very high polygon counts in an object that not only has to spin its own barrels, but also has to move in alt/azimuth fashion on its base. This is asking a lot from the game and from players' machines, even from the top end ones.

[aldo_14]

4-barelled gatling, using intersections (rather than a single solid welded set of faces) would take, I dunno, about 50-100 faces?

(4 barrels, diamond shapes, is about 4*4*2 = 32.  Assuming we have a pentagonal or hexagonal base... well, I can't be arsed working the exact value, but 100 would be a reasonable budget.  Using submodel loding for high detail at close range, with sensiby high smoothing angles, and you'd be able to easily do it)

NOTE/EDIT; that's assuming each barrel is individually modelled, of course, rather than the usual method of just texturing an xx-sided cylinder (which would be the most sensible way for turrets IMO).

[CaptJosh]

Yes, but four barrels wont work for a gatling. Even a minigun has six.



And the bigger the gatling, the more barrels you need to maintain rate of fire, because a larger size means it's harder to rotate them as fast.

[aldo_14]

Still not a significant problem.  Especially with sub-object Loding.  And I'd note with that many barrels, you can quite easily have a textured cylinder fill in for it with virtually no visual difference at any sensible viewing range.

Physics of a gatling gun don't matter, of course, because it's a game.  Set in space.  3 centuries in the future.

(I have actually looked into this, y'know.........)

[Flaser]

Oh no!

Noobs complaining about performance degradation - what has the world come to? (exasperated sigh)

Check out the specifics the SCP boys already managed, or take a look at Omniscaper's Death Star model.

The engine is really capable and a lot of LODing methods were introduced that make even very high poly models efficient to render.

[CaptJosh]

Reasonable distance, now there's a fascinating but ultimately meaningless concept.

"Why?" you ask.

Well, I know I can't be the only one who skims the surface of enemy warships blasting turrets at point blank so that I can't be shot down while I'm destroying them.

[CaptJosh]

Originally posted by Flaser
Oh no!

Noobs complaining about performance degradation - what has the world come to? (exasperated sigh)

Oh no! Jackasses who don't know the difference between a n00b and an experienced beta tester voicing legitimate concerns based on his experience.

The problem is not in the standard but in the specific type of model.

Even if he's willing to do a textured cylinder for the purposes of keeping the polies down and making the animation easier, sooner or later, someone's going to decide to go nuts and do a full detail gatling because they can't stand what they consider the half-assed job done by the original modder, never bothering to consider that maybe there was a reason he didn't go with a full detail turret model that didn't include laziness. Then that person is going to b***h about how their game goes really slowly when there's a capship around that has gatling turrets. What's more, said person will never willingly admit that he has the custom model in there because of course, it couldn't be anything he did...

[Axem]

But, the modder could just use the cylinder as the lower poly model as a default turret, and then use subobject LODing so the higher poly one appears once your within like 10m of it. Far away it'll use less polies, but once you get right next to it, you'll be able to see the whole high poly thing.

[CaptJosh]

Now that's reasonable. Unfortunately, you also get n00b modders who don't understand the concept of distance dictating detail levels. Still, it eases concerns that someone would feel the need to create a full detail model and never bother to crank down the detail at distance.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by CaptJosh
Reasonable distance, now there's a fascinating but ultimately meaningless concept.

"Why?" you ask.

Well, I know I can't be the only one who skims the surface of enemy warships blasting turrets at point blank so that I can't be shot down while I'm destroying them.

Submodel loding.

Also, skimming implies speed, which implies a reduced ability to view the full detail of a highly detailed model; this goes back to using cylinders rather than individual (discrete) modelled barrel tubes.

Originally posted by CaptJosh


Oh no! Jackasses who don't know the difference between a n00b and an experienced beta tester voicing legitimate concerns based on his experience.

The problem is not in the standard but in the specific type of model.

Even if he's willing to do a textured cylinder for the purposes of keeping the polies down and making the animation easier, sooner or later, someone's going to decide to go nuts and do a full detail gatling because they can't stand what they consider the half-assed job done by the original modder, never bothering to consider that maybe there was a reason he didn't go with a full detail turret model that didn't include laziness. Then that person is going to b***h about how their game goes really slowly when there's a capship around that has gatling turrets. What's more, said person will never willingly admit that he has the custom model in there because of course, it couldn't be anything he did...

And we can't restrict features because of what might be done with them.  Some daft bastard might want to make a series of 20,000 poly, unlodded destroyers; that doesn't stop HTL and increased limits being a good thing.  If you take away responsibility for addressing these types of issue from the artist, you have to take away a lot of their freedom.  I'm not some daft bastard who assumes he can make anything he wants and blames problems upon the game; I'd rather not have my options constricted by those who are.

Not to mention - we can choose what mods to use.  In your little example, that mod would simply never be used (or indeed adopted for the HTL packs if it was a stock remake).

[Nuke]

freespace already supports gatlings through the vwep system, they already work in my mod, i just want to make it possible to put them on turrets. they dont slow up the machine much at all. i can make a good looking gatling gun model with less than a hundred polys but make em 2-3 times more detailed for cool factor.

i was also curious about lod-ing on vwep models, i know they have a detail distance but i was wondering if lod model for them were posible, it would alow for a smoother transition.

[CaptJosh]

My opinion is that a balance needs to be struck between feature availability and the capability of an artist outstripping her wisdom in using that capability. Reach exceeding grasp is all well and good, however, without direction, you end up with problems. Perhaps this isn't a very popular view.

I suppose another approach would be to have a sort of modeler's bible, a document having basic guidelines for making models for FS2 Open, including things like a request for courtesy to those with less capable computers by including level of detail mapping or whatever it's actually called(You can tell I'm not a modeler). A statement to the effect of "While this may take more work, the results are more than worth it, and you'll avoid being nagged to go back and do it later," would be a good include it the end of that section of such a document.

[aldo_14]

AFAIK no-one forces anyone to use mods, so I don't think feature availability should ever be compromised.  

It's not the job of the coder to tell a modeller what not to do any more than it's the job of a modeller to tell a coder what not to do.  This is not some application being designed for the lowest common denominator, after all; there's an inherent basic understanding that can be reasonably expected from people making any kind of content.

[CaptJosh]

Still wouldn't hurt to have some sort of docs so as to let the old hands pass their wisdom on to the new guys. That way they can learn from the mistakes of others. After all, you can never live long enough to make every mistake on your own.

[Inquisitor]

No more.

Going to split out the idiots replying to the idiots.

Be civil or don't post.