Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: karajorma on October 13, 2005, 06:59:26 pm

Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 13, 2005, 06:59:26 pm: Figured my arsing about was worth it's own topic now that I'd spent more than a few minutes on it. Due to a error with the ship-create SEXP although I meant to create a single Herc I ended up accidentally creating over 250 of them :D

So I decided to play about with the mission a little and see what would happen :)

Here's the first two from the first and second time I ran the original mission.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/HercSwarm3.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/HercSwarm4.jpg)

Then I tried the high poly Herc. Not as good cause the FPS went down so it didn't generate as many (I got 50-70 hercs and about 0.3 FPS for a good 3-4 minutes!)

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/HercSwarm5.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 13, 2005, 07:00:02 pm: So I swapped to the Loki cause it's low poly.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/LokiSwarm01.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/LokiSwarm02.jpg)

I decided to randomise the starting location using the rand-multiple SEXP and I got a much nicer shoal

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/LokiSwarm03.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/LokiSwarm04.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/LokiSwarm05.jpg)

Then on Goobers suggestion I tried something bigger and created the Super Mentu.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MentuSwarm.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 13, 2005, 07:00:38 pm: And then finally I tried the Ursa and Ares

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/UrsaSwarm01.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/AresSwarm01.jpg)

And this is what I got when I told them all to form on my wing!

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/AresSwarm02.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: achtung on October 13, 2005, 07:04:11 pm: Now you may be able to recreate that .ani from FS1 where the ships flood out of the lucy.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Galemp on October 13, 2005, 07:05:48 pm: Whoa...

...is anyone else reminded of the E3 Mario demos for the Gamecube?

And Kara... try Dragons. ;7 Make yourself invulnerable, and throw in an invulnerable Aeolus too.

Or pit two fighter swarms against each other. :eek:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: StratComm on October 13, 2005, 07:08:42 pm: I wonder if they'll replenish once some of them die.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 13, 2005, 07:13:17 pm: From the bug, it looks like they will more than likely continue to create until the game crashes.

However, there might be a way to control the number that is spawned. By attaching the creation process to a variable and using the bug, you could probably spawn Hercs for around 50 seconds, and then change the variable with a chained event. Then you have 50 or more hercs, exactly like you wanted :D

:drevil:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 13, 2005, 07:14:35 pm: Try a bunch of Colossuses. ;7
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: StratComm on October 13, 2005, 07:16:01 pm: Actually the problem was with the way Kara used the SEXP (he used it as a conditional rather than an action, so it's always "evaluated"). That aspect of create ship actually does work properly. And the game actually doesn't crash, it caps out when somewhere between 250 and 300 ships get into the mission.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Nuclear1 on October 13, 2005, 08:19:41 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
Try a bunch of Colossuses. ;7

In the country of England, a large explosion was detected...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Retrosynthetic on October 13, 2005, 08:21:24 pm: i agree try the colossuses and tell us your fps =P
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 13, 2005, 08:26:54 pm: Actually I fixed the 'bug'.

But no worries, shoals will still be possible with the every-time SEXP.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: ZmaN on October 13, 2005, 08:34:28 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Retrosynthetic
i agree try the colossuses and tell us your fps =P

Yes please!!!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: MrBig101 on October 13, 2005, 08:44:09 pm: Wow..... Just wow..... :jaw:

How did you do that??? Lol. I want to try it out myself.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: StratComm on October 13, 2005, 08:44:42 pm: Actually the big C would have less of a FPS impact than the high-poly Herc does, since you'd have many fewer of them in the mission. The HTL Perseus would be the other point of potential interest, since it's got a similar complexity to the Hercules.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Retrosynthetic on October 13, 2005, 08:53:17 pm: well what happens if 50 colossuses do beam cannons at the sametime
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Deepstar on October 13, 2005, 08:54:02 pm: What happened when all these ships explode in the same time? :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: MrBig101 on October 13, 2005, 08:54:21 pm: Um.......

CTD?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Retrosynthetic on October 13, 2005, 08:54:38 pm: lol true that to
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: FireCrack on October 13, 2005, 09:42:10 pm: Man.. if that ursa pic was rotated so the ursas were "up-down" in respect to the camera and the hud removed (and using high poly ursas) it would look epic... definitley would be my new wallpaper
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Mongoose on October 13, 2005, 10:20:58 pm: That Ursa pic needs Ride of the Valkyries as its soundtrack. For that matter, a pic with actual Valkyries would work even better. :p
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Carl on October 13, 2005, 10:35:11 pm: i wanna play the mission!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Cobra on October 13, 2005, 11:45:21 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/UrsaSwarm01.jpg)

Terrans: We have an invincible FSNA-ish Ursa armada! No one can stop us now!
HoL: Oh crap, it's an invincible FSNA-ish Ursa armada! We're doomed!
Shivans: S***.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: achtung on October 14, 2005, 12:28:16 am: Can anyone record an in game video of this?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 14, 2005, 02:26:32 am: Just as soon as I download the build, I'm going to :drevil:

And i'm putting flight of the walkyries as well :drevil:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 14, 2005, 02:59:29 am: kekekeke ursa rush!!!!11111
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 14, 2005, 04:13:02 am: I'll post the mission later today. I don't actually have the mission on the PC I'm typing from at the moment. (Although it's only one event and the code is in the SCP forum if anyone wants to play with it)

The current version of FRED won't work so you need to open the mission in notepad to change things :) I used the 12th October CVS build I think the bug has been fixed in the 13th October so you need a build from sometime between 9th and the 12th to make it work.

The problem with capships though is that they don't move much so they look kinda boring in comparison to the shoals of fighters. That's why I gave up on them after the Mentu.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: ChronoReverse on October 14, 2005, 10:38:30 am: *Imagines all those Ursas launching helios at a Sathanas =D~
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: TrashMan on October 14, 2005, 11:05:36 am: One very fried McSath burger coming right up!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 14, 2005, 12:13:23 pm: Surprisingly no. The problem is that the game is running out of collision pairs and once you include the fact that there are 250+ helios bombs in the mission as well as all the laser bolts and the ships themselves the game decides it's had enough and the bombs fly straight through the sath.

I did manage to blow up a ravana by warping it in so that only 50 or so Ursas were close enough to target it and go after it simply by a fluke. The ravana lasted less than 30 seconds (The bomb flight time)

Anyway here's some more pics and the mission itself.

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals01.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals02.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals03.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals04.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals05.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals06.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals07.jpg)

Code: [Select]
------------------------------------------------ $Formula: ( when ( and ( has-time-elapsed 3 ) ( = 2 ( ship-create "Ship 2" "GTB Ursa" <----------------Change this line to have a different ship (rand-multiple 0 100) (rand-multiple 0 100) (rand-multiple 0 100) ) ) ) ( do-nothing ) ) +Name: Create Ship +Repeat Count: 1 +Interval: 1 +Team: 0 --------------------------------------------------
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 14, 2005, 12:23:24 pm: Wow, that fourth one looks almost epic. :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 14, 2005, 12:25:17 pm: I agree the fourth one is the best-looking. Not to say that any of them aren't good-looking.

I also particularly like the fifth. Kinda always wanted to do something like that in a mission...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: vyper on October 14, 2005, 12:51:19 pm: Let's admit it, that's how we all envision the FS2 story in our heads.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 14, 2005, 12:59:01 pm: :lol:

I especially like this one. It looks like the Moloch has a birthday balloon of Ursas: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals02.jpg
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 14, 2005, 01:00:52 pm: Tried the Colossus but the game just crashed on me. Probably to do with me exceeding the limit for the maximum number of subsystems. The Fenris also crashed the game unless I rigged it so that I was looking at the ships as they were created (in which case I got 17-18 of them).

My best result was with the Mentu I got ~43 of them which I promptly sent up against the Shivans :D

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals08.jpg)

Thing is that beams don't seem to work. Any chance of getting that string concatenate SEXP Goob? I really want to see a fleet of cruisers open up on the Sathanas :D

EDIT : Nevermind. Just realised that I may be able to do it using when-argument :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: aldo_14 on October 14, 2005, 01:12:02 pm: Can you set them to kamikaze?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Triple Ace on October 14, 2005, 01:57:43 pm: WOW! Its like looking at a school of fish.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 14, 2005, 02:41:55 pm: Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14
Can you set them to kamikaze?

Hadn't thought of that :) I'll try that next. For the meanwhile Here they are using beams!

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz01.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz02.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz03.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz04.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz05.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz06.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Beamzzzzzzzzzzzzz07.jpg)

They managed to kill the Sathanas in about 8 minutes :) Not bad for a ship armed with the SGreen! :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Retrosynthetic on October 14, 2005, 03:23:43 pm: lol wow
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 14, 2005, 03:34:35 pm: Awesome...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Corsair on October 14, 2005, 05:01:37 pm: :lol:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals06.jpg

This one almost looks like one out of those comics that Dark_4ce made a while back...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 14, 2005, 06:37:25 pm: Okay last one for today :) Here's what happens when you get about 30 Aeoluses to kamikazi a Sathanas :)

Click me (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Aeolus02.gif)

And while I'm at it here's what Bearbaiting should have looked like perhaps.
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals10.jpg)

And a picture of a lot of ships shooting at something :)

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/MoreShoals09.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ulala on October 14, 2005, 09:54:42 pm: That's awesome. I could never get kamikazi to work right...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 14, 2005, 10:09:02 pm: odd....I tried using the 10-14 build on this, but recieved an error about the sexp. Do you have the 10/9 build on hand, Karajorma? :/
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Charismatic on October 15, 2005, 12:31:14 am: This ***t should be highlighted. This is sweet ***t.

Try a few colossus vs a sathy.
Also, have like 5 shivan corvetts in defence formation, vs like 500 loki or Ares. I think pics would look better with more enemy contact shooting back.

Can u do multiple friendly\hostile fighters in same mission vs eachother?

Get some good Ares shots. Ares is da bomb. And Diemos.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 15, 2005, 03:06:19 am: Quote
Originally posted by Singh
odd....I tried using the 10-14 build on this, but recieved an error about the sexp. Do you have the 10/9 build on hand, Karajorma? :/

Like I said (rather abiguously when I look back on it) you need to use a build from between 9th October and 12th of October. WMC has changed the SEXP into an action operator and fixed the bug so the way the mission is set up will give you an error and even if it did work all you'd get was one ship.

The 12th of October Build is available from here (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/latest/October2005/20051012-redmenace.rar).

Quote
Originally posted by Charismatic
Try a few colossus vs a sathy.

The Colossus crashed the game every time I tried it. That might be different if I make sure I'm looking at it when it gets created.

Quote
Originally posted by Charismatic
Also, have like 5 shivan corvetts in defence formation, vs like 500 loki or Ares. I think pics would look better with more enemy contact shooting back.

The mission is there if you want to play with it :)

Quote
Originally posted by Charismatic
Can u do multiple friendly\hostile fighters in same mission vs eachother?

Now there's an idea...... :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: DaBrain on October 15, 2005, 06:09:35 am: This is really cool!

I thought I could take on those bombers, but I was wrong...

... just the right time for the Shivan Super Laser. :drevil:

(http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/554/screen54896be.jpg)

(http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6119/screen54592za.jpg)

They are using their turrets only!

I'm convinced. I think BoE style missions might be cool.

And this also reminds me of a benchmark test. I've just learned my CPU is the limiting factor in my system.

Turning on AA and AF doesn't change the fps...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 15, 2005, 07:32:11 am: I take it back. THIS is what Bearbaiting should have looked like :)

(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting01.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting02.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting04.jpg)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting05.jpg)

Incidentally I accidentally called in an Orion by mistake and got this shot :)
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting03.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 15, 2005, 12:21:36 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Like I said (rather abiguously when I look back on it) you need to use a build from between 9th October and 12th of October. WMC has changed the SEXP into an action operator and fixed the bug so the way the mission is set up will give you an error and even if it did work all you'd get was one ship.
Bah. Go look at my warp drive mission... it shows you exactly how to achieve the same effect in any newer build using every-time.

But your Bearbaiting version looks awesome. :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 15, 2005, 01:44:30 pm: Pity that can't be done ingame and still be really playable. 'Cuz it would be awesome to do Bearbaiting like that.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 15, 2005, 04:22:06 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
Bah. Go look at my warp drive mission... it shows you exactly how to achieve the same effect in any newer build using every-time.

Not quite. The advantage of using the builds with the bug in them is that I don't need to supply the name of the ship. Without that bug I'm going to have to supply the name for 200+ ships (Which without the string concatenate and Int > String SEXPs means a very big every-time argument SEXP with a list of over 200+ names (BTW When-argument seems to break down when the list of arguments is over 200-300 arguments. Not that anyone else is likely to be doing anything crazy enough to justify a bump but I thought I'd mention it :D )

The other disadvantage is that the bugged version of the SEXP seems to hit a limit and stop when you're looking at the spawning point. When I was spawning ships and looking away I ran the risk of spawning too many and crashing the game.
Using a method of determining how many ships I'm going to get other than letting the game determine it at runtime is likely to cause me more crashes if I set the number too high and get me less ships than I could otherwise if I set the number too low.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 15, 2005, 07:06:17 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Not quite. The advantage of using the builds with the bug in them is that I don't need to supply the name of the ship.
Whoops, I forgot about that. Fixed: you can now specify "<none>" for the ship name and it will auto-generate them. :)
Quote
The other disadvantage is that the bugged version of the SEXP seems to hit a limit and stop when you're looking at the spawning point. When I was spawning ships and looking away I ran the risk of spawning too many and crashing the game.
Using a method of determining how many ships I'm going to get other than letting the game determine it at runtime is likely to cause me more crashes if I set the number too high and get me less ships than I could otherwise if I set the number too low.
I'm not sure why that is, but whichever way you use the sexp shouldn't matter to if the game caps the limit or not.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Taristin on October 15, 2005, 07:15:21 pm: Why did I get an email about this being nominated as newsorthy? :wtf:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: StratComm on October 15, 2005, 07:19:42 pm: Maybe 'cause you're a moderator for this forum?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ghost on October 15, 2005, 09:55:43 pm: In response to the guy that thought they couldn't be done very well:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting04.jpg

His FPS is up at 20. That's somewhat playable. Just use lower poly models with lower res textures(not too low though :D ).
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: deep_eyes on October 15, 2005, 10:52:29 pm: Nice Deployment BUG LOLOL!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2005, 02:59:32 am: Quote
Originally posted by Ghost
In response to the guy that thought they couldn't be done very well:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/GrizzlyBearBaiting04.jpg

His FPS is up at 20. That's somewhat playable. Just use lower poly models with lower res textures(not too low though :D ).

The FPS is 20 because I'm taking a screenshot. It was actually smoother than that before I pressed the PrtScrn button :)

The problem is that once you get too many ships the game stops registering impacts so none of your shots actually hit anything.

That said spawning ships appears to have a lower overhead than putting them in manually so I may see if it's possible to push up the number of ships in a mission like bearbaiting. :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 16, 2005, 03:54:24 am: I just played around with the mission - pretty neat stuff, to say the least!

Some pictures, followed by a video (and yes, it does have Wagner's Flight Of the Valkyries! But it only covers 80% of the video, as opposed to all of it)

Apologies for the sucky compression artifacts. Xvid codec required to play it.

www.game-warden.com/singh/Flight1.avi
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 16, 2005, 04:00:38 am: Screenshots:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight2.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight3.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight4.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight5.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight6.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight7.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v107/anandraj/Flight8.jpg)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2005, 04:05:48 am: Great screenshots Singh :) I'm downloading the video as we speak :) I've already seen the effect in action in the game of course but I'm interested in seeing what you've done with it :)

(BTW for those who didn't notice I have posted the mission on one of my posts with a load of pictures in it. :) I'm guessing that most people were too busy looking at the pics to spot that :D )
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 16, 2005, 04:08:08 am: I've actually done nothing special with it, with exception of changing the background. But I did manage to get a few worthy angle shots of the Ursas as they attacked the Ravana :drevil:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: DaBrain on October 16, 2005, 04:16:06 am: Wow, the video clip is awesome! :)

I love this thread. :yes:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2005, 05:37:19 am: Then you'll love this even more.

Bearbaiting!

There's a bug in the current version of CVS so I've included two versions. The should-work version is for when the bug is fixed. The does-work version is playable now though you will need to use the 14th or 16th October CVS builds. The mission is certain to crash with anything earlier.

There are bound to be collision detection problems but what the hell it's Bearbaiting with more than 120 extra ships in it :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Singh on October 16, 2005, 05:39:20 am: holy sweetness!!

Time to take more Fraps videos!! This is soooo gonna be cool! :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 16, 2005, 05:42:55 am: BTW I should mention that due to the bug there are about 5-10 friendly shivan mara's in the mission.

ummmmm......... They're SOC operatives on a secret mission that went horribly wrong. That will explain it :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 16, 2005, 05:45:06 am: Or bi-curious Shivans.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: taylor on October 16, 2005, 09:14:53 am: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Bearbaiting!

Hmm, not as bad as I thought performance wise. It never dipped below 23 FPS on me and was pretty playable. We might have to see about making the collision pairs dynamically allocate though, in sanely sized batches, to get around that particular problem.

For performance during that mission:
Code: [Select]
compute_num_homing_objects(): calls: 4,962,496 CPU time spent: 108.27 seconds percent of mission time: 21.63% time per execution: ~0.0000218176 seconds ship_name_lookup(): calls: 3,299,491 CPU time spent: 25.9 seconds percent of mission time: 5.18% time per execution: ~0.000007849696 seconds collide_remove_weapons(); calls: 24,999 CPU time spent: 14.05 seconds percent of mission time: 2.81% time per execution: ~0.00056202
vm_vec_mag() was 16.80 seconds, but with 313,809,411 calls. Everything else was less than 10 seconds.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: DaBrain on October 16, 2005, 09:27:57 am: This would be great for SoL. I'd like to see a lot of enemies at the same time. Low-poly+low-res of course. ;)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 16, 2005, 01:32:11 pm: The only problem with ship-create is that not all the sexps are guaranteed to work properly. The reason is that none of the ship-create ships are on the arrival list for that mission, and some sexps check the arrival list to determine whether a condition is true, false, known true, or known false. So these sexps could possibly have weird behavior.

The good news is that if you run into this sort of sexp problem, chaining it to the sexp that created the ship should solve it. :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 16, 2005, 03:38:25 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma

The FPS is 20 because I'm taking a screenshot. It was actually smoother than that before I pressed the PrtScrn button :)

The problem is that once you get too many ships the game stops registering impacts so none of your shots actually hit anything.

That said spawning ships appears to have a lower overhead than putting them in manually so I may see if it's possible to push up the number of ships in a mission like bearbaiting. :)

'xactly. I'm fairly sure that there's shots visibly passing through a ship in that screenie.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: ChronoReverse on October 16, 2005, 04:20:46 pm: And thus, despite all claims to the contrary, it is proven that we all really like BoE style battles deep inside =)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: delta_7890 on October 16, 2005, 04:43:30 pm: So...freaking...awesome.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: taylor on October 16, 2005, 10:24:00 pm: Well, dynamically allocated collision pairs (on the plus side of 99,000 of them) later and the good guys get their butts whooped. Actually they get utterly stomped, very quickly. About 2 minutes into the mission and I was alone. Around 14 kills later and it was deathroll time for me too.

But it was still cool. :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ghost on October 16, 2005, 11:41:58 pm: I'm definitely playing this tomorrow. Those screenies look effing sweet.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: TrashMan on October 17, 2005, 08:19:18 am: How big is hte normal ship limit (ships in mision at once - not counting waves)?
I recall making a few highly intense missions myself with TONS of ships and fighters, but I don't recall hitting the limit...yet
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 17, 2005, 09:37:44 am: Well I've bounced off the hard limit of 400 ships in the game a few times while making these missions. However I doubt FRED will let you place anywhere near that many ships. I only got away with it cause I'm spawning them.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Galemp on October 17, 2005, 04:02:42 pm: Bearbaiting? Fa. This should be High Noon. ;7
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: TrashMan on October 17, 2005, 04:15:40 pm: You don't need that many..in theory, with waves, you could put thousands of shps in the mission - the thing is, only 100 or so of them would be in the area at once.
Which is still significant.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 17, 2005, 04:37:30 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Galemp
Bearbaiting? Fa. This should be High Noon. ;7

I said I'd be doing that one next :) I've heard about the same number of complaints over the years about both missions :)

With luck I should be able to control the number of ships I'm spawning now that the SEXP is (hopefully) working properly which means I can balance the mission so that it's playable. :D

I should even be able to split the ships up between the two capital ships so that each one has a swarm of fighters over it :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Charismatic on October 17, 2005, 08:32:58 pm: Quote
Why did I get an email about this being nominated as newsorthy?

That probably was me. I think this has great potential. Amazing eyecandy.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Desert Ease on October 17, 2005, 08:39:05 pm: Thats pretty orgasmic if you ask me, oooh the potential.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Cobra on October 17, 2005, 09:20:44 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Charismatic

That probably was me. I think this has great potential. Amazing eyecandy.

why would an SCP error be considered as news? :wtf:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 17, 2005, 10:21:15 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Cobra
why would an SCP error be considered as news? :wtf:
*smacks Cobra*

It's a feature. Haven't you read the thread?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Fenrir on October 17, 2005, 10:57:32 pm: Not to mention that since things like the Horribly Wrong Idea pic make the news, therefore anything can. :nervous:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 18, 2005, 08:02:12 am: Quote
Originally posted by Cobra
why would an SCP error be considered as news? :wtf:

It's not an error. I first discovered what the SEXP could do due to a bug but the fact is that now the bug has been fixed I should still be able to do the same thing with it via proper SEXPing.

Besides bug or not the reason why people were suggesting the highlight is cause it allowed for some nice pictures :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 18, 2005, 01:15:43 pm: Bugs can be features too.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Mongoose on October 18, 2005, 03:40:33 pm: Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Bugs can be features too.

Definitely :nod: For example, the trichording speed boost was originally a bug in the original Descent installment, but it became an essential element of gameplay and was included deliberately in the other two games. There are a lot of other cases where bugs in games have become legitimatized by frequent use.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Fenrir on October 18, 2005, 03:42:41 pm: Then there's wavedashing in SSBM. Its discovery transformed the way the game can be played. And countless other examples like you said.

And that edited Bearbaiting mission is a blast! Sure, there's so much on screen that half the time your lasers don't even show up and having bombs actually hit anything is out of the question, but who cares? The eye candy rules.

But one thing I am wondering: is the collision detection going to be (or even capable of being) revised to allow missions of this sort?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Goober5000 on October 18, 2005, 05:00:13 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Fenrir
But one thing I am wondering: is the collision detection going to be (or even capable of being) revised to allow missions of this sort?
Yes and it has, courtesy of taylor. :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 18, 2005, 06:02:52 pm: Funny thing is that I tried out the should-work (i.e bug free) version today and the Shivans got their arse's kicked but the Taurets. Maybe the collision errors were in their favour but I had been expecting it to go the other way :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Setekh on October 19, 2005, 09:51:50 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Okay last one for today :) Here's what happens when you get about 30 Aeoluses to kamikazi a Sathanas :)

Click me (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Aeolus02.gif)

Dude. That's freaking awesome. :jaw:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Osiri on October 19, 2005, 10:57:31 pm: preeeeeeetttttty
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ghost on October 20, 2005, 04:46:28 am: @ Karajorma and his .gif: is that the sort of framerate you got, or is that just as fast as you could take good screenies?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 20, 2005, 07:03:34 am: It was the taking screenshots that caused the slowdowns. The game is perfectly playable normally :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ulala on October 21, 2005, 07:59:13 pm: Three words:

Battle of Endor.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WeatherOp on October 21, 2005, 08:56:27 pm: Hey Kara, make another big pile of Aeoluses and put them in front of a Sath, and have the Sath jump out.

Roadkill.:drevil: :lol:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Charismatic on October 22, 2005, 01:46:01 am: Need more pics! :D
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Cobra on October 22, 2005, 02:34:42 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Ulala
Three words:

Battle of Endor.

the battle of endor with nothing but fighters. :p
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Turambar on October 22, 2005, 03:03:20 pm: i see fleets of aeoluses and deimoses flying into each other, beams and flak and little plasma bubbly thingys flying everywhere

it'd be sweet
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: WeatherOp on October 22, 2005, 06:25:47 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Turambar
i see fleets of aeoluses and deimoses flying into each other, beams and flak and little plasma bubbly thingys flying everywhere

it'd be sweet

And stick the player right in the middle, could he survive?:drevil:
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Ulala on October 24, 2005, 03:38:17 am: Quote
Originally posted by Cobra

the battle of endor with nothing but fighters. :p

jiggawha?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Starks on October 24, 2005, 04:28:42 pm: Quote
Originally posted by WeatherOp

And stick the player right in the middle, could he survive?:drevil:
Of course, he's Alpha 1...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: FireCrack on October 24, 2005, 06:17:53 pm: What if we make him...

Beta 2!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: SuperCoolAl on October 26, 2005, 03:24:13 pm: nah, lets make him Hook 4 ;7

Or Red 3!
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Taristin on October 26, 2005, 03:31:05 pm: Battle. Of. Deneb.
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: FireCrack on October 26, 2005, 04:23:38 pm: What about deneb? The GTA lost half their fleest, but alpha1 survived...

Or are you suggesting soeone make a battle of deneb mission? As i interpret it it was sevral isolated engagements (The galetea, the eva, the minnow, the leigon... none were near eachother...)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: pyro-manic on October 26, 2005, 04:33:03 pm: You've seen the intro sequence to FS2, right?
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Taristin on October 26, 2005, 05:23:11 pm: Big ships were far apart, but fighters were _everywhere_...
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: FireCrack on October 26, 2005, 08:49:50 pm: Oh... yeah... it apears i'd totaly lost the context of the thread....
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 27, 2005, 04:36:03 am: Funny thing is that I'm usually against BoE missions :)
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: Mongoose on October 27, 2005, 11:34:11 am: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Funny thing is that I'm usually against BoE missions :)

Oh, just admit it: as much as many people say they hate BoE missions, at heart everyone would give anything to fly in that scene from the movie. :p
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: SuperCoolAl on October 27, 2005, 02:04:37 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Mongoose

Oh, just admit it: as much as many people say they hate BoE missions, at heart everyone would give anything to fly in that scene from the movie. :p

And those who bought Rogue Leader or X-Wing Alliance can :p
Title: And The Sky Full Of Hercs [IMG HEAVY]
Post by: karajorma on October 27, 2005, 04:09:51 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Mongoose
Oh, just admit it: as much as many people say they hate BoE missions, at heart everyone would give anything to fly in that scene from the movie. :p

Depends. My objections to BoE are that they can make fairly boring missions unless done well.

Adding the extra fighters to Bearbaiting for instance looks very cool but it didn't actually add that much to the gameplay.