Originally posted by Fulgrymm
I have made a one-use cloak without any code changes, basically using three shells; a visible fighter, an invisible cloaking level and another visible fighter. It works reasonably well, and WS-thunder is using it for his campaign.
There are two things that could be done to improve this system; firstly, the creation of an invisible texture that can actually be shot (the existing 'invisible' allows gunfire through) and second, make it so that when a subobject is destroyed and gone, the object returns if it is repaired. If both these things are implemented, then the cloak should work with just two shells (visible fighter, invisible cloak) and it could also be made usable more than once.
I'm no programmer though.
Heh, I am a programmer, but I ain't a modder
An easy
way to do it would be when cloaking is enabled, set the alpha value of all the model's textures to (say) 10%. (Alpha is pretty much the same as transparancy... 100% = opaque, 0% = complete transparency) Then whatever textures are on the model would show up very faintly, especially against a bright background, like the nebula -- in dark space, it would be very hard to see at all.
A problem would be the model would look like it was a hollow skin made of cellophane -- you would be able to see the textures on the
other side as well, I think. But there are probably ways around this, and it might not be too noticable in play.
And if you wanted to get really clever, you could tie the subsystem damage to the alpha level:
- fully functioning cloaking subsystem = 10% alpha;
- 50% damage to subsys = 30% alpha
- 70% damage = 50% alpha
- subsys destroyed = 100% alpha (no transparency)
Or you could make it flicker between cloaked/visible if it's damaged, that would look cool
*sigh* So many ideas, so little time...