Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Nico on October 23, 2002, 04:57:37 pm
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Alright, I have a request:
I don't think I'm the only one to do this: when I attack a capship, if I want to destroy turrets, I have to stop right in front of them and keep shooting till it dies. Doing a regular strafing is just useless. You don't deal enough damage, and either you try and aim right and you end up bumping against the ship, either you miss about every shot and deal ridiculous damage.
I want to do strafing like in movies, I want to fly like mad past the enemy ship and shoot everything I can, and still deal damage.
SO! here's my request: you push a key, and your gunpoints are lowered of about 15, 20 degrees. so you can fly along the capship and still shoot at it. With the increase of size of capships, that could make for some cool strafing runs, no?
failing that, an alternative way can be done, ala wing commander: when you push that key, your ship is locked in the curret direction, but you can face the way you want, so you fly along the capship, but can rotate down/etc to aim more accurately. you can also use that in dogfight, you keep going forward, but you can face back and shoot at the guy who is behind you. That can be quite good for the tBP campaign, too, somehow simulating those cool moves they managed in the series.
well, that's all.
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You mean like Tachyon: The Fringe had? Where you could travel in one direction, but rotate your ship around?
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Originally posted by Killfrenzy
You mean like Tachyon: The Fringe had? Where you could travel in one direction, but rotate your ship around?
yeah ( tho I don't know for tachyon, never played it ).
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A basic physics change like that would change the whole feel of the game.
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Just imput strafe controls in the tables. That should fix your problem easily enough.
ALTHOUGH I'D REALLY LIKE TO GET THOSE CONTROL CONFIGS CHANGED!!!!!!!!:mad: :mad:
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Yeah, in the tables you can make a ship have a top speed and acceleration in all directions except reverse. Just increase these values.
Of course it would take a while to get used to using them.
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You know, being able to change the weapon hardpoint normals would fix this. And add bombing chutes, too!
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you know all you have to do is hit the vericle slide button and point down a little, if you havn't been keeping up you can now do this, I binded the slideing controles a while ago
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Just stick some short-range, medium-arc turrets under the cockpit. No real source change needed. Alternately, change the maneuverability ratings on some bomber so that it can twist about and still be traveling in the same direction for a few seconds (I know there's a table entry for this, I messed with it a while back, but it's been a while and I still don't have access permissions to my dev stuff, so I can't point it out).
You COULD have something like I-War's gimbal system, where you basically just have to be able to see the ship to shoot it accurately, but that'd make it too easy, in my opinion.
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Actually I'm in agreement for this thing where you can shoot 15-20 degrees downward. The (nice and cool) way it'd work would be you have a second reticle circle around your primary. Hit a key and your gun sights go loose and you can adjust your aim within this circle.
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This is fine for capships but readjusting it quickly to engage fighters might be a problem.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
you know all you have to do is hit the vericle slide button and point down a little, if you havn't been keeping up you can now do this, I binded the slideing controles a while ago
I could do that from the begining ( + numpad ), but sorry, I miss a third arm to use the keyboard when I'm doing a strafing...
Originally posted by Stryke 9
Just stick some short-range, medium-arc turrets under the cockpit. No real source change needed. Alternately, change the maneuverability ratings on some bomber so that it can twist about and still be traveling in the same direction for a few seconds (I know there's a table entry for this, I messed with it a while back, but it's been a while and I still don't have access permissions to my dev stuff, so I can't point it out).
You COULD have something like I-War's gimbal system, where you basically just have to be able to see the ship to shoot it accurately, but that'd make it too easy, in my opinion.
Nah: the turret thinguy is no fun, and you couldn't control it anyway. I also don't want that to be available only on a couple ships. the damping factor in the tbls does that, more or less, yeah. but you can't control anything. try a dogfight with high damping...
drop the gunpoint angle switch, the WC like strafing is much more interesting, can be used for a lot of other things.
edit: for those like IPandrews who think it would change the FS2 feel ( which for my part I don't care, FS2 doesn't have much feeling "piloting" wise ), we could just add a strafe tag to add in the ship tbl, if the tag isn't present, the key won't work ingame, that's all. So you can't strafe with normal FS2 ships ( excepted if you give them the tag of course ).
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Originally posted by venom2506
I could do that from the begining ( + numpad ), but sorry, I miss a third arm to use the keyboard when I'm doing a strafing...
So re-map it to your hat-switch. Now that Bob has made it possible to do so, you can put them wherever you like.
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Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
So re-map it to your hat-switch. Now that Bob has made it possible to do so, you can put them wherever you like.
all my joystick buttons are remapped already. the hat is used for everything about targetting. Anyway, you don't get what I mean.
When I talk about strafing, I don't talk about doom-like strafing ( so sliding left/right etc), I talk strafing ala starwars, when you fly past a stardestroyer and shoot everything you can at it ( which seems super easy in movies, but is not in a game ). It's not a problem of key or anything, it's a gameplay request.
haaaaaaaaaaargh!!! ok, let's do it again:
forget about attaking capships, about straffiong about everything said before:
I just wanna know if it's possible to lock the direction of a ship w/o locking it's rotation at the same time when you push a key.
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Ah. That would involve a major overhaul of the physics. Heavy duty code work, I'm sure.
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Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Ah. That would involve a major overhaul of the physics. Heavy duty code work, I'm sure.
why? I don't see any physics change... or maybe I'm wrong?
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Originally posted by Wildfire
Yeah, in the tables you can make a ship have a top speed and acceleration in all directions except reverse. Just increase these values.
Of course it would take a while to get used to using them.
You can do it reverse, too. Just hold down Z in-game, once you set it up in the tables ;)
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Originally posted by venom2506
why? I don't see any physics change... or maybe I'm wrong?
As it is now, engine thrust is always dependent on the direction the ship is facing. To make the changes you want, the trust vector would have to be divorced from the model and tied to the world, which would involve writing a lot of new stuff besides, I'm sure.
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Or just make it so that the fire points can rotate. Or an even easier solution is to make traking lasers! I have done it for FS1 in the tables.
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Ok, new idea - we add a switch to all the fighters called the 'Gravitic Field' switch or something else that's equally cool. The theory is that in order to more easily train pilots, all fighters have built in gravity fields which alter their space flight characteristics. By turning off the field, advanced pilots can engage in more complex tactical manoeuvers. Basically, you get a form of newtonian motion when you hit this switch.
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her... if I asked for that, it's for a reason, i didn't ask for alternative ways :P
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Originally posted by venom2506
Nah: the turret thinguy is no fun, and you couldn't control it anyway. I also don't want that to be available only on a couple ships. the damping factor in the tbls does that, more or less, yeah. but you can't control anything. try a dogfight with high damping...
...thus making bombers more dedicated anticaps, and fighters the dogfighters. I don't see the problem- this seems like an advantage to gameplay for me.
I think it would require revamping the physics engine to do it the other way, making it at least halfway Newtonian, and I doubt many want that- Newtonian dogfights are no fun at all.
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Guys....its just like Wing Commander. Anyone here played the venerable Wing Commander lineup? Lets use WCP as an example.
If you hold a certain button (I think its CAPSLOCK)...your ship will continue at its current set velocity and set course. When you tap the joystick around while holding the button (or toggled the button) your craft then manuvers on its axis without changing direction.
Its sliding. Your ship slides one way, you control your crafts direction along the same path for the entire way. Go play WC!! :) (note: Panther, Vampire, and Pirahna had this ability, other craft did not).
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I've been only playing WC: Privateer and WC2 full versions. :)
I have also tried WC3 and 4 demos or whatever they were.
Never have had a change to play WC Prophecy tho... :(
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we the problem is that unlike other games much of FS's physics is held in the fighters frame of reference, velosity is in terms of speed it travels along it's three axes
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Ah-yup. Bob's got it- it can't do what those games do, because it's not built in the same way. Even the small degree of it there is (the whole inertia thing) is simulated. If you can substitute one set of table data for another by puching a button, you might have a way, and if you figure out a way to do that, all power to you- that'd be one of the coolest source edits ever. But you can't just sit down, reengineer the whole flight engine, and plunk it out in a week, centered around a new modification. If there was some glaring problem, then I could see someone attempting it, or if everyone wanted a completely different mode of gameplay, but to fix some little thing like this, which can be done in several ways already in the game...
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
If you can substitute one set of table data for another by puching a button, you might have a way, and if you figure out a way to do that, all power to you- that'd be one of the coolest source edits ever.
this has been already done, wake up :P can even change pof that way. The robotech mod coders did, btw.
btw, the strafing key was in wing commander4 too (dunno for wc3 )
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'Ell then, ye've got yer bleedin' solution right there, now eh?
Just make an extra table set with nothing changed but the inertia. Go wild.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
'Ell then, ye've got yer bleedin' solution right there, now eh?
Just make an extra table set with nothing changed but the inertia. Go wild.
but the damping in fs2 makes weird things, try by yourself, you'll understand quickly what I mean.
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Can't. File's corrupted. Folder's no-access. Like what?
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Can't. File's corrupted. Folder's no-access. Like what?
? take the herc2 entry for exemple, and put a bigger value for the damp factors. and try ingame. and try to follow a dragon :P
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Which is why you'd only have it on momentarily, while strafing. I think we've been over this.
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you maybe, not me. I wanna see programmers say: no, it's not possible, at least.
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*flips out*
ok....this is reallly easy to do....from what I understand that venom wants, alls you need to do is lower the normal on the fireing point by say .2!!! simple, no? Add a function (strafe_on() and strafe_off()), a boolian to see if we are strafing (logic issues, so that you can't keep raising/lowering your fireing arcs...). When the strafe_on() function is called, lower all the primary firing point normals by some #define or a const int...when strafe_off() is called, raise it by that amount....geez...
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is this what you want some sort of ability to controle the normals, keep in mind once you have them off center there realy isn't any way to use the reticle acurately
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Only have this on when the strafe key is pressed. You don't need to reticle to attack a capital ship. If you miss a capital ship at point blank range, then you shouldn't be here.
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Suggestion: If/when this is implemented, make it controlled by a flag on the ship so that some ships will have the capability (Bombers), while others (ie the Perseus) will not.
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Doesn't sound like that'd be impossible, just needs some maths. While you hold down this button and rotate, the game adjusts the ratio between the different axis of movement.
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There is code in the FS2 source for changing a ship's type on the fly (It's actually used in things like multiplayer respawning, FRED2's ship editor, the main ship selection screen, and other stuff.) that I believe Ronin used for the RT MOD's transformation system. However, that system was a bit of a mess (the number of ships and transformation order was hardcoded and we were going to recycle the no_warp flag to tell if a ship is transformable) and Ronin and I want to replace that with a table based transformation system that we could get put into (or built within) fs2_open. I can't do a lot of code work though because I can't compile the source. (Though I wrote a function that, hopefully, would be able to read in the table data. I couldn't test it though and I don't know how far along Ronin is right now.)
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Hmm - well hopefully it'll get put in as a basic feature. I can see a lot of use for ships with transforming parts which also swaps their flight characterisitics and such - you could make interceptor fighters that behaved like the F-14 Tomcat with the wings and such.
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Originally posted by ##UnknownPlayer##
Hmm - well hopefully it'll get put in as a basic feature. I can see a lot of use for ships with transforming parts which also swaps their flight characterisitics and such - you could make interceptor fighters that behaved like the F-14 Tomcat with the wings and such.
you can make cloakable ships.
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back to the topic. If you have two sets of thrusters. on glued to the ship and one on the world's axis then you could switch between them to add the strafing ability.
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I think the lowering of the normal would be the best way because if you think about it as if these ships were real then adding an extra set of thrusters would mean that other stuff like firepower or if the ship was made bigger then menuverability would be sacrificed and if the same effect could be achieved without sacrificing anything then they would just make it so the angle of the guns could be changed.
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I don't think thruster subobjects make a difference in what directions a model moves. The model moves towards it's front, which is decided by which way the model faces.
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I was meaning game engine engines not the thruster models. The ones you add to the model in PCS.
Ok let me explain more. The ship rotates around the center. which is the strafing engine. But when the button is released then the ship falls back to it's plain forward pushing engines. While the strafing engines reset to the ships rotated cordinats (not spelled right I sure).
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The engine subsystem has nothing to do with movement direction. It has to do with things like max speed, whether a ship can warp or not, and whether or not to show the thrusters.