I've seen examples in the current engine where ships have model parts that appear or disappear depending on the status of the model (debris and destroyed subsystems for example). Gave me another of my crazy ideas and I wanted to consult the oracles (i.e. people who actually know the engine
) and see if there's potential with it.
Could this condition-based part display be extended to whole model segments, with their collision meshes, turrets and subsystems etc? So for example if you were using an Arcadia and a shipyard module, the POF included the station with the module attached, but ignored it if the player didn't specify an Arcadia in a mission has it (so the Arcadia would appear in-game as one without the module).*
The above of course could be done today with separate models and multiple table entries, but if the above was possible it would allow all a stations variants to be done in a single entry and save spaces. Also there'd be the option of having turret models on ships change depending on the type of weapon equipped, which might be handy for ships like the Fenris/Levi and Orion (I vaguely recall people might have discussed this few years ago, don't know if anything was looked into on it).
The big flaw of course would be tableling becoming a total nightmare (especially when there's lots of turrets and subsystems on the optional segments), as you'd have to have segmented subsystem lists and condition-based functions that loaded specific chunks of the entry depending on what the player wants to have**; perhaps a system of variant numbers of names, so the player has a drop down box to pick the variant he wants to use during FREDing and the functions read which variant has been chosen and loads up the appropriate model chunks.
Also, Assuming the above even was possible, the clincher would be if having massive model files with tons of ignored chunks drains on the game/hardware in any way (such is beyond my understanding, but it may do) or results in larger total file size than the sum of several POFs would be.
So yeah, totally barmy idea (i'm a trained concept designer i can't help it!
). Shall now hand over to those who know the engine; possible or impossible?
Cheers.
*Incidently, if your reading this Goob, was this what you were discussing with Nuke in
this thread? (found it during a forum search)
**In the case of turrets, a similar but simpler condition-function could be added to each turret, which reads which type of weapon (or even specific weapons) is being put on a turret and, select a turret model to suit.
