Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: OverKill on November 24, 2005, 11:24:31 am
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First of all hello this is my first post, i have been making mods for myself (not that much only tbl changing and maybe some maps and effects) and reading HLP forums for some years now and i have an idea i wish to share with you.
I dont know how hard it would be but i think it would be cool if we could set AA beams to be a slashing type in maybe two fashions
- a slash that will fallow the fighter along the axis the fighter was heading when the shot was fired and maybe the other way (shot fired some meters in front of the fighter and the beam directing towards the fighter on that axis)
- a slash that would cross the path of the fighter
I dont want anything like a beam that would trace a fighters patch only a slash type.
i think this would create more variety in anti-fighter weapon types (not only flak and beam bursts)
and gave us a slite chance to evade the beam :) and this would look cool ingame
I`m not a programmer but i think it can be made with not that much work by using some of the slash beams code.
Oh and sorry for any typos and errors in my writing, english is not my native language (i come from poland)
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AAA slashes were possible in the golden age of vanilla FS. So it has always been possible.
But it doens't look that cool... Fighters are so small that the beam doesn't really get to "slash" around so much.
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i never saw aa slahes in any vanilla mod and i dont know how to do this except maybe making a slash weapon and making it fire upon a fighter by a sexp
i dont really think that slashes on vanilla without any changes in the code would look that good thats why i`m asking here :)
plus it would be nice if we could change such values as how much degrees the slash will "slash" and the distance form the fighter when its firing =]
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I remember making AAA slash back in the days when I was exploring ways to bend the engine with the tables... I think the problem with the weapon was that it would either "slash" off target completely, or it would hit the target all the beam duration. My memory is a bit hazy when it comes to this, so please someone correct me if I'm wrong. And I don't remember anymore what beam type it was, but you are welcome to try it yourself, there's only 5 types :).
(You do know how to modify the .tbl files, don't you?)
And about the idea itself... I'm not sure what it would look like if a beam would swing all over the place trying to catch a fighter, but I would like to see it... I think TBP would perhaps get a nice Shadow slicer from it...
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I made a quick test and it seems that the star and end points of a slash are calculated at the beginning of the warmup time resulting in beams (type 1 - slash) constantly missing fighters.
Slowly rotating multipart turret with type 4 beams can perhaps give sort of the effects of beams chasing fighters. Type 4 beams act quite like the swarm weapons, they use turrets 'barrel line' = firepoints normal. It causes total failure with singlepart turrets but good effects with functional multiparts.
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Yes but as we have learned from no-homing swarm weapons, the beam would still miss constantly...
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I use on all multipart turrets non-homing swarm weapons... Just as accurate as any other weapon when swarm is set to 1. And from my own test with type 4 & multipart i got far too accurate beam as my turret's rotation set too high. It simply carved each and every fighter out from the game one at the time never missing even an inch.
IMHO it couldn't be any more accurate than that. Accuracy for such beam weapons can be controlled with limiting turret rotation and by adjusting velocity&lifetime pair (AI uses these for aiming with turrets -> proper values cause AI to take too much lead).
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Oh, I see...
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There are sometimes problems with AI firing against other capships and missing but then again all the turretted weapons keep missing the target (from point-blank range) when that happens. I have seen on many occasions when capships fire large barrages one ship's lenght off the target.
This is however no related to swarm or to multipart turrets as i have seen weapons fire from both multipart and singlepart turrets (with both swarm flag and without) missing the target when even a blind gunner should have been able to hit. Also the type 4 beams were missing the target when this happened while type 0 and type 1 beams kept firing to a different direction then the rest of weapons (and therefore kept hitting the target). But for some reason even the beam that missed Stratcomm's Chimera from 1000 m was able to take down a fighter from 4000 m while hitting with every shot, so there might be some sort of AI targetting code issues...
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type 4s look cool on multipart turrets as it actually looks like the beam is being aimed, but doing this has piss poor accuracy. perhaps make the misfactors work on type 4s that are used in multipart turrets.
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You actually have to set the beam velocity into a scale of 200000 or higher and adjust the lifetime accordingly. From what i have seen i have come to the conclusion that in this case the ai takes lead with instant weapons and therefore misses the target unless the target is flying directly towards or away from the beam turret.
I didn't see any effect with the missfactors, same accuracy with values from 1 to 10. As the turrets accuracy is controlled with two very odd switches something unexpected can happen... This often result in either inaccurate beams or 'autohitting' superbeams. For example turret rotation limits the close range accuracy while high velocity (no lead) results in extremely high long range accuracy so beam accuracy increases as the range increases... IMHO This might be best used for short range beams with damage attenuation.
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this is why i suggest making a dedicated beam and parameters that can be set for it like
how fast it goes
accuracy
etc.
becouse what we have now cant be made into a really cool slash AA beam
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You actually have to set the beam velocity into a scale of 200000 or higher and adjust the lifetime accordingly. From what i have seen i have come to the conclusion that in this case the ai takes lead with instant weapons and therefore misses the target unless the target is flying directly towards or away from the beam turret.
I didn't see any effect with the missfactors, same accuracy with values from 1 to 10. As the turrets accuracy is controlled with two very odd switches something unexpected can happen... This often result in either inaccurate beams or 'autohitting' superbeams. For example turret rotation limits the close range accuracy while high velocity (no lead) results in extremely high long range accuracy so beam accuracy increases as the range increases... IMHO This might be best used for short range beams with damage attenuation.
thanks for the tip