Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Ashrak on September 23, 2002, 11:52:04 am

Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Ashrak on September 23, 2002, 11:52:04 am
ok umm i got idea off VWBB:

well first lets make rank in FS2 actually usefull how about make an interface for capship flying a bridge (something like ST: Bridge Commander) and give the player ships depending on rank like you can choose to fly a fenris at rank of liutennant in multy or singleplayer as you gain rank you gain better ships aeolius etc etc


now you ask turrets they currently aim at multiple targets right...
well there is a way out make something of an automatic turret controll but the player flying the ship can allso override it and target targets that he wants manually....


to make the capship flying more interesting lets offer an upgrade solution come up with interface to upgrade (say we are a captain got orion right) the ship so you can stick available stuff like ultra anti fighterbeams on the ship....

now you ask why not stick mostly all ultra antis on ship.
well we could make a weapon type flack, anti fighter beam heavy beam types slots. so you cant stick all anti capship beams on a single ship but you can allso make the ship more powerfull as you advance through rank


there ARE a lot of things like what do you upgrade for how to jump to battle zone etc etc. i didnt figure those out and this idea probobly wont go through EVER...


but still whadda ya think it would give a new perspective to FS2 :)
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Bobboau on September 23, 2002, 12:05:12 pm
nah
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: vyper on September 23, 2002, 12:27:27 pm
as someone else is fond of say:

Drugs are bad 'kay?
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Ashrak on September 23, 2002, 12:47:16 pm
so my suggestion is THAT bad? :(
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Nico on September 23, 2002, 12:58:10 pm
it's not bad, but you need another game for that.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Bri_Dog on September 23, 2002, 02:20:45 pm
It'd be easier to make a FS mod for BC
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Solatar on September 23, 2002, 02:21:46 pm
Yeah, I think that would be absoutely awesome. I love the idea. I just don't think it could for Freespace2 unless you really worked at it.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Fury on September 23, 2002, 02:40:38 pm
Slow down there!

We have the source code yes, but that does not mean that we will actually make FS2 a multi-genre game.

It is utterly insane attempt to carry over features from say, Bridge Commander and Battlecruiser (3000AD / Millenium / Whatever).

FS2 is good in what it is now, but we can make it better in it. FS2 is about pilotin fighters and bombers, not cap ships. Few exceptions there will be, for example the big bomber from BWO and Whitestar from TBP. But they are not "pure" cap ships so to say.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Solatar on September 23, 2002, 03:24:13 pm
Yeah, but if he wants to do what he wants, let him. I'm not stopping him.

As for Battlecruiser Millenium, that game is screwed up. Whenever I open up the options menu the game crashes, I've NEVER flown a fighter with the keyboard.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: RandomTiger on September 23, 2002, 04:25:32 pm
Basically as coders we want our efforts to be worthwhile. This is dependant on two things.

1. We finish then
2. Some uses them

The biggest jobs that we seem to be willing to consider are things like DX8 and hardware T&L. These should benifit all users and modders. Even the smaller jobs tend to be based on popular opinion or mods that look like they might come to something.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Solatar on September 23, 2002, 05:12:50 pm
Yeah, I think the DX8 upgrade is probaby the first thing on the list, and should stay that way.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: DTP on September 24, 2002, 12:22:35 am
the thing with people would like the ability to do a "LIVE" jump between two areas of battle during any given time, would create an enourmous stress on performance, hence Memory requirements.

you would actually have to have a Virtaul mission that is taking place in memory only and not on screen. and if player decides to leave that area again, then you would have to move the current mission area to the virtual mission area, and vice verca.

so thats way out in the future, if there at all.

Would be ackward if everything was as it was when you left that area upon your return. you would expect the battle to have progressed.

regarding flying capital ships. yeah could be fun, but then again for how long.

with bobboau`s beams you could already try and get the feeling

by making some really sluggish ships and begin fighting it out.

anyway FREESPACE is a space fighter simulator, not Battlefield2930.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Darkmage on September 24, 2002, 02:51:25 am
jump drive ala privateer would be possible. you'd have to recode the way in which missions are handled. basically each star system would have it's own dataset with backgrounds and planetary bodies predefined. then you would have randomly generated ships if it were an open game like privateer. or you would have scripted ships in each system. I know a guy who plans to do this with the sourcecode but I don't know if he has a website yet.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: IPAndrews on September 24, 2002, 05:05:19 am
Well you could add a bitmap cockpit overlays based on a table entry. Make the player's own ship visible from his eye point (so if you were on the bridge of a Star Destroyer you'd see the front of the ship out the window). You could even have a cockpit geometry sub-object in the .pof
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Ashrak on September 24, 2002, 07:50:02 am
Quote
Originally posted by DTP
the thing with people would like the ability to do a "LIVE" jump between two areas of battle during any given time, would create an enourmous stress on performance, hence Memory requirements.

you would actually have to have a Virtaul mission that is taking place in memory only and not on screen. and if player decides to leave that area again, then you would have to move the current mission area to the virtual mission area, and vice verca.

so thats way out in the future, if there at all.

Would be ackward if everything was as it was when you left that area upon your return. you would expect the battle to have progressed.

regarding flying capital ships. yeah could be fun, but then again for how long.

with bobboau`s beams you could already try and get the feeling

by making some really sluggish ships and begin fighting it out.

anyway FREESPACE is a space fighter simulator, not Battlefield2930.
'



umm why dont you use tachyon style stuff you jump it shows an animation of you flying by and loads at same time...... then you get to to place to place without needing loads of memory and preloading....
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: aldo_14 on September 24, 2002, 05:06:39 pm
Quote
Originally posted by IPAndrews
Well you could add a bitmap cockpit overlays based on a table entry. Make the player's own ship visible from his eye point (so if you were on the bridge of a Star Destroyer you'd see the front of the ship out the window). You could even have a cockpit geometry sub-object in the .pof


Maybe a tbl specified cockpit pof?
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Solatar on September 24, 2002, 06:44:27 pm
Yeah, that I might actually like. That would be nice.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Galemp on September 24, 2002, 06:46:36 pm
Nooo! You can't do that! I always turned off the cockpit view and used the HUD anyway. Now, a targeting reticle that gives the gunpoints, like in Descent 3, would be nice...
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: LtNarol on September 24, 2002, 07:17:17 pm
All i think that is needed is the ability for players at Rear Admiral or higher to be able to give commands destroyers, and only those at Commodore or higher to give orders to corvettes...
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: DTP on September 24, 2002, 07:47:29 pm
i know they do it in B5 and such.

but really picture this.

A rear admiral giving orders from a fighter, with absolutely no tactical displays.

The rank thing is there so that ppl can compare theire skills, not to have some function in-game.

And it would be hell for mission designers if players could order destroyers around. ofcourse this could be done so that mission designers could disable this feature, but then all would do it in order to have a "controlled" battle and then we are back to square one.

so i say it is to much for to little.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: athropy on September 25, 2002, 12:52:55 am
I've been thinking about this a bit (commanding a capital ship). I really dont think it would be that difficult to add a few interesting features if someone familiar with the source code would have time to look into it. I think these are at least my wish list, and we've got a crude solution for these for our live roleplaying project

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,8599.0.html

We need
  ¤ To divide control over more than one people, that means we need several players to control one ship. That may sound boring, but some people enjoy the tactical side of fighting and not the constant laser show. We have a screen and some control for captain, navigator, tactical, pilot, engineering and crew. As is, because we desided best not to mess with the source code (too much work), we've accomplished this with multiple keyboards and non-freespace engine huds for everyone except the pilot.
  ¤ To have a "big ship feel". The actual flying is pretty good actually, the freighters we've tryed acted out nice and slowly, but it still doesnt feel that you're actually flying an enormous vessel. The collisions for example could be more realistic. But then again, its good enough.
  ¤ More control over the functions designed for the AI, like turrets, docking, waypoints, beams. We've done this with really heavy scripting and it works well enough.

But all in all, we've pretty much made it possible at least in our project to have a relatively believable 'big ship'. Its not a capital ship, we though it more entertaining to have a smaller, more vulnerable ship. But our problems could also probably be solved in a more elegant way, especially a way to really multiplay one ship would be excellent.
Title: might sound utterly INSANE
Post by: Stryke 9 on September 25, 2002, 04:09:09 pm
Emperor: The reticle isn't code, it's graphics. If you want only one type of gunpoint positioning, you can do it yourself in Paint. Any code-based solution would mean a hell of a lot of work for a buggy result, for an advantage not even you would be likely to notice without looking really, really hard.

I think the idea of a loading ani with some kind of warp, rather than, say, the Red Alert briefing screen would be excellent. It's all you really need, and it doesn't seem the sort of thing that'd be too much of a stretch- after all, movies ALREADY can play immediately after jumpout, and it'd simply be a matter of finding a way to eliminate the briefing part and skip right to the mission. Has a lot of applications, actually, and need not be some special function, simply a setup like red alert- player jumps out normally (or even not), movie plays, next mission loads and starts.