Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Scripting Workshop => Topic started by: 0rph3u5 on January 08, 2020, 10:24:57 am

Title: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: 0rph3u5 on January 08, 2020, 10:24:57 am
Some time ago I was pondering the Infyrno and how to make it a bit more useful (tl;dr the canon Infyrno was too little range to be useful in a "jousting" situation); I settled for an increase in range by upping the lifetime (as you can see in Walking on Ashes).

While that basically "solved" my issue with the weapon's functionality, it not a very user friendly solution - unless you are firing the missile into a formation that is in front of you and travelling in the same direction as you you will have to guess how the shot will work out.
I kinda like that in a part masochistic, part "thats how you reward skill"-way, going forward that might be limiting issue as it would impact how readily "skill shot" missiles like the Infyrno would be accepted (make them easier to use = more readily accepted).


So I was thinking, it should be possible to give the player better information as to what effect a weapon with the "remote detonate"-flag has - the engine already gives you your distance from the missile and you have the your distance from any intended target along with its speed on your HUD. While that's some of the basic information right there, howver the blast range of the weapon is of course nowhere to be found (except when you actually write it the description of the weapon, which is not accessible in mission).
(Side Bar: this wouldn't be any help with the Infyrno, the Piranha, FS_Port's Havoc or BP2's Slammer as they also spawn child weapons - which comes with a different set of issues.)

So couldn't it also be possible via scripting to highlight any ships that are currently in the blast radius of an active "remote detonate"-flag weapon?
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: Nightmare on January 08, 2020, 10:39:54 am
Couple ideas:
-make the info about the weapon range accessable in-mission (if any player banks has them put a training msg there)
-compensate lack of info through limited heat homing
-replace remote detonate through this: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Arm_radius:
-Scripting sounds possible but you'd have to find somebody to volunteer
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: 0rph3u5 on January 08, 2020, 11:05:53 am
-make the info about the weapon range accessable in-mission (if any player banks has them put a training msg there)

As far as Pendragon is concerned I already have plans to add "Missile Stats window" as a custom HUD gauge - I just have to find time to make a final decision on where all the HUD gauges will finally go - you know, the step is on the board but I've not gotten around to it yet.

-replace remote detonate through this: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Arm_radius:

Replacing "remote detonate" would make it less about the player controlling the weapon. - What I want is to work out another niche between homing missiles and dumbfires, esspecially at medium to long range (2500m and beyond), and using "remote detonate" seems to be good candidate to utilize here.
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: 0rph3u5 on January 08, 2020, 11:23:45 am
An additional explaination might be neccessary:

Right now I am not working on new weapons for any Freespace-related project, but I am pinning down weapon concept for Pendragon so I have a fully compliment to balance against each other in testing. Pendragon I am aiming for more agility focused gameplay compared to FS (with high strafe and reverse speeds relative to the foward velocity as well as Glide).

So you can guess that I am actually considering weapons with which after you have fired, you then move your ship in revese and wait for it reach a point where you would want to detonate it.
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: 0rph3u5 on October 19, 2020, 03:31:37 pm
The page-to-game transition of all my current "remote detonate"-weapons is has been completed, so a *bump* to remember that I'd really think this is a good idea.

Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: Nightmare on October 20, 2020, 05:44:09 am
Seeing the Käfig thing, does FSO now support negative/reverse spawn or did you worked around that?
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: 0rph3u5 on October 20, 2020, 06:29:36 am
$Minimum Spawn Angle is a recent addition which is what makes reverse spawning possible; EatThePath told me that is a reality since the nightlies of early June (20200609).
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: Colonol Dekker on October 20, 2020, 08:14:23 am
These are interesting.  Looking forward to seeing them implemented / expanded.
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: Nightmare on October 20, 2020, 08:23:21 am
Oh that's a nice thing~
Title: Re: [Request] "Remote Detonate" Assistance
Post by: Kiloku on August 27, 2021, 09:25:34 am
I don't know if you found a solution, but I thought it was an interesting problem and tried to solve it myself.

It required me to make a custom build of FSO to expose the explosion's radius to the Lua API, though, so it'd still depend on it being accepted and merged into the core FSO repository.


Enemy ships within the "Outer Radius" value for the weapon's explosive are highlighted in yellow (it looks white in the video but that's just because the recording isn't very high quality).
My build also exposes the "Inner Radius" value to the scripting API, so one could theoretically highlight in different colors depending on how much damage is expected, and even do a gradient.