[z64555]

Here's a couple of completed and WIP powerups for the FringeSpace Mod:

Mega Powerup:





Energy Powerup:


Shield Powerup (WIP):



For the most part they look good, but I'm having a bit of trouble with the transparency and double-sided textures.

[Quanto]

Well, glad to see somebody got those powerups goin, cause I have to be honest, I was shocked by the mega number of them.

[z64555]

They're actually pretty simple geometry and tabling wise... the hard part is getting the right material settings.

I present to you, the (nearly) completed Shield Powerup:  







Now just have to get it rigged and check if the transparency settings in Max will transfer over... Once that is done I'll start looking into getting the mapping set up for baking (Right now it's pretty much face mapped only).

[Mongoose]

I'm not really familiar with Tachyon, but these power-ups are something you'd fly over in-game to pick up, right?  If so, how are you planning on implementing them in FS?  I've toyed around with the idea of attempting a Descent mod at some point, and one thing I've wondered about is how to handle spawning and acquiring things like shield and energy power-ups.

[JGZinv]

Originally Shadows of Lylat needed them before we came around.
Karajorma also invented a King of the Hill mode that he discussed in the FRED
section ages ago... both gave rise to how we'll do it.

Essentially, it's all in FRED'ing.

Set your powerup model in place.
Set it up so the model will disappear when approached within a certain distance.
On that event, produce the effect on the ship that was within the trigger zone.
Have a respawn time set for the powerup, run a check before the powerup is to
respawn that the space isn't occupied already (camper), if not - spawn model.
Repeat sequence.

That's the basic idea, although I can't quote sexps.
Basically the player ship never touches the model, it's just the source of a event trigger.

[Quanto]

That sounds like a lot of steps for something so basic, but such is the way of freespace modding. -_-

[General Battuta]

It's not that bad to implement. FRED is very powerful.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, but it would be nice to have some sort of built-in "power-up" system that would alleviate the need to specifically FRED out the actions that each and every item causes.  I could see that becoming a real bear when you're talking about fifteen or twenty items scattered throughout a mission.  Being able to say, "Okay, this item here spawns every thirty seconds, and it gives +100 health to the ship that flies over it" in some sort of external table would seem like a much better option.

[JGZinv]

Or once you get the first one setup.. you copy and paste the relevant parts however many times...

[General Battuta]

Yeah. Could probably make it pretty simple with when-arguments too.

[z64555]

Quick update on the Shield Powerup status:

Exported it over to the PCS2 and was disappointed that the sexy transparency and specular highlighting settings did that transfer over.

But, there is hope! I'm looking into the creation of shine maps to tackle the spec highlights, as well as toying with the idea of duplicating and inverting the tri's to get that doube-faced look seen in the Max render.

[T-Man]

I think the FS2 engine can do transparent textures, since the Jump Nodes work (no idea how though; always wanted to know so i could go crazy with 'Augmented Reality' stuff!).

I don't know much about advanced FRED, but if i'm thinking right you'd need an argument that reads the ship that has touched the powerup and add its name to a variable, then you can trigger arguments with every-time-SEXP-true (or somesuch) with the actual boosts that uses the variable as the target. That way one SEXP will work for any ship that touches the powerup. You can then copy and paste that SEXP over in FRED or via notepad as JGZinv said.

[JGZinv]

You can find karajorma's KotH guide here:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=49360.msg1108731#msg1108731