[karajorma]

Are you planning on tube launches for multi as well?  Sounds like a nightmare combination.  Respawns, bay launches, player AI, etc.   I can probably break that just by thinking about it. 

We'll have to see really.

But we can't use command briefs or cutscenes there anyway.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

No command briefs in multi?  Could have sworn I did that once in testing. 

Anyway I know the scramble/red-alert briefing works in multi.  Just hit a mission last night that used it and I've done it before to get by that old 3 primary loadout bug that's since been fixed.  Might be a little flaky on the client side at the start of a mission do to players hitting accept at different times though. 

[Angelus]

The respawn won't bring you back to the launchers, I think...

Could this be done via coding? Define a point on a model, say point X for the starboard pod and Y for the larboard pod ( and X1 for the first tube, X2 for the second...), add SEXPs to let the player spawn always at this specific point or randomly between these points.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

One of the big problems is the AI go nuts in multi if you put them anywhere near a bay.  Believe me I tried to get this working for weeks and it wasn't a small bay either.  You'd probably be looking at AI behavior changes to get it working. 

[Akalabeth Angel]

The problem with takeoff sequences is when you're taking off for the 11th time on the same mission you start to get a little ticked off in teh same way a person gets annoyed for too much dialogue before the action (for which I am very guilty)

[a50callovenote]

well take offs would only be... a few secs long? (also seen as a penalty for death?)   if its a whole state of the union address before gettin to it. I understand, i dont like those ether.

[General Battuta]

I think it might get a bit aggravating.

[Adalla]

But until then I'd far rather see a proper in-game tube launch than some pre-rendered cutscene.

Amen to that!...ahem..I mean So Say We All!

Why deprive the player of the incredible experience of being launched from a tube, as well as the experience of landing (and hopefully, also hangar operations, going up and down on the lift etc).

I personally will be playing this game to get a taste of the EXPERIENCE of being a Viper pilot. That means I want to be the one giving the thumbs up that I am ready to launch and feel the 6 second rush as the Viper shoots into the coldness of space.

We have had enough "observer" role by watching BSG on TV. We dont want the game to be another TV show. We want to BE in the BSG universe and experience it.

THat means, cutscenes, in my personal opinion, shoudl only exist between missions and not in-game at all.

my 2 cents at least

Adalla

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Again you are not taking into consideration multi-player.  Maybe a cutscene  would be good for single but even if it were possible in multi after playing the same mission 50 times in multi it will get old.  Actual tube launches would be OK if they could be done reliably.  Landings can be done (well faked) already. 

[Adalla]

I hope there is nothing to "fake" about a landing.

If Diaspora is really going to call itself a simulator, I believe realistic and challenging landings should be part of it.

After all we dont see Cat and the other nuggets have such a hard time with combat landings for nothing

Granted that whole episode where she was on stims and couldnt do the combat landing was silly. Why not deactive/reduce the grav field/magnetic field and have her come in like Apollo did in the Miniseries on his first landing on the Galactica.

I never really understood that episode.

[General Battuta]

Galactica doesn't have an autoland system, remember?

You can't really do a realistic BSG landing in the Freespace 2 engine. The closest we could get is flying a ship into the flight pod doors. We can't easily simulate HUD elements for landing, from what I know.

[Mobius]

You can do that with scripting. Two vectors appearing on the HUD should be enough...like in Ace Combat.

[Flipside]

Thing is, it needs to be a game also, and that means accessibility to nuggets, people are going to lose interest somewhat in a game where they spend ages getting a mission right and then kill themselves landing. Remember Space Shuttle?

Whilst it would be nice to have something that made landings challenging, what most people want to do is get out there and frag toasters, and that is what will be on the plate, in heaps

[Mobius]

No riskful landings but something worth some attention that "giudes" the player and doesn't turn all landings into hands-on ones. Even messages would be nice ("You're too fast, pilot!", "You're on the money, carry on!", "Welcome back!")...

IMO it should give the feeling of a true "Land on the Galactica" and not an usual and poor "Get close to the Galactica's hangar".

[Cobra]

Uh huh, blatantly disregard that it's not possible to do at the moment, and the best we can do is stick a waypoint in a massive hangar and fly into that (a la Wing Commander Saga).

[karajorma]

I wouldn't be too sure of that.

[Enki]

I agree, but I still think some short cutscenes should be added. Ok, let's exclude a cutscene showing the take off/landing, but what about stuff like a Raptor jumping in or Cylon Raiders being sortied from a Basestar?

It's a matter of immersion, of course, but it's also a matter of getting the game closer to the show.

For the Raptor, why cutscene it?  Just dynamically pick a jump-in point ahead and a little to the side of the player so they can't miss it and have the 3d model jump right in! 

It's not the sort of thing that will happen in the middle of combat, so a mission parameter could be go to a waypoint, hover and wait for ______.  Then it jumps in in all its glory! Right there!  No cutscene, fully in keeping with in-cockpit immersion.  That pattern would work for a Demetrius jump back into the fleet Vipers flailing to miss mission event too.

If you kept the Raiders cutscene to pre-mission brief or maybe while sitting in the bird before getting stuffed in the launch-tube I think you could have the sexy scenes while avoiding immersion kill.

[Enki]

No riskful landings but something worth some attention that "giudes" the player and doesn't turn all landings into hands-on ones. Even messages would be nice ("You're too fast, pilot!", "You're on the money, carry on!", "Welcome back!")...

IMO it should give the feeling of a true "Land on the Galactica" and not an usual and poor "Get close to the Galactica's hangar".

Instead of trying to compute angles in the hud, use a fixed reference to the landing bay and lights that look something like this.

make the drop and attitude lights dim red on left, gree on right yellow drop light along centerline and white box w/centerline around the landing area. 

Wrap bright emissive lights in a small one-end-open box that is angled to mask their visibility --> When you are off centerline you see light light up corresponding to how far off centerline you are. The pic shows 2 bright green indicating 2 units (xx degrees) right of centerline.  The meatball can be simulated similarly.

Maybe provide a fixed lading mode Hud cross "+" symbol that can be used for pilot attitude comparison to the lineup-lines.  Vertical down centerline and horizontal parallel to the lineup lines but visually aim the cross center point onto the flight deck, not at the red/green/yellow/white conjunction.

I'm a retired helo-bubba and I can land a high-end Hornet simulator using that proposed system after the second try. Not much practice needed to compensate for a 135kt higher difference in landing area closure rate compared to what I'm used to.  It's pretty damn brain dead and that's why it is looking at being put into USN fleetwide use.  That should make something like it nugget friendly in-game.

This method also means no in-game real-time math calculations needed to do any light or glide slope computations.  It is all be pre-baked into the angles of the masking polygon boxes.  The polys and lights could be SEXP'ed "on" so they don't take up computing resources during combat when not landing.

[Adalla]

Thing is, it needs to be a game also, and that means accessibility to nuggets, people are going to lose interest somewhat in a game where they spend ages getting a mission right and then kill themselves landing. Remember Space Shuttle?

Whilst it would be nice to have something that made landings challenging, what most people want to do is get out there and frag toasters, and that is what will be on the plate, in heaps

That's why MSFS and IL2 and many other sims have Options ------> Settings -------> Realism Settings ------> I like to pwn (for IQs less than 65)

No but seriously, most sims solve that problem by having variable difficulty/realism settings.

[Mobius]

With scripting it's possible to use textured particles.

Al we need is a series of lights intended to guide the player to the hangar, or at least messages.