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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 08:45:44 pm

Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 08:45:44 pm
one of three projects i wish to do this weekend, other than drinking too much, and setting up a domain server in my bedroom, will be to test the ballistics code from a modders perspective. now im not sure how far the effect goes, but i will try a few things. i will be on tomorrow so if there is anything you want me to test, then let me know. i have a gatling wielding ulysses fighter ive been dying to test.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 09, 2003, 08:50:03 pm
Cool.  Thanks!  AFAIK it should be implemented and 100% working all-around, except in multiplayer (only single-player is supported).  Especially test red-alerting... I want to make sure I implemented it correctly. :)
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 08:55:10 pm
do they have diflection angles and alternating gunpoints yet?
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 09, 2003, 08:57:58 pm
:wtf:

They work exactly the same as regular lasers, except they have ammunition.  They don't bounce off ships or anything.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 09:12:36 pm
its a start. though id like to the deflections, the alternating gunpoints and gatling physics (accel/decel of fire rate). if you coders really have some time, id like to see submodel sync with the gunfire. possibly different barrel models for different guns.

will they work with energy weapons, or do all primaries have to be one or the other?
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 09, 2003, 09:16:37 pm
eh, point-blank ( :ha: ) you're probably not going to see anything like that any time soon.  That's a little complicated.  (Except for the alternating gunpoints - that can be done with a little POF editing.)

But yes, you can use lasers and ballistics at the same time.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 09:26:44 pm
just keep the ideas on the board for later review, they have promise. how can you do that pof tweak thing, that would be cool.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 09, 2003, 09:41:13 pm
just adjust the order of the firing points: the order of their listing in the POF determines the order in which they fire
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 09, 2003, 09:46:21 pm
is this in the code yet?
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 09, 2003, 09:50:47 pm
the ballistic thing?

sure, it's in 3.4

if you mean the order of the POF things, you'll need a POF editor...such as ModelView
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nico on January 10, 2003, 02:25:27 am
Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
eh, point-blank ( :ha: ) you're probably not going to see anything like that any time soon.  That's a little complicated.  (Except for the alternating gunpoints - that can be done with a little POF editing.)

But yes, you can use lasers and ballistics at the same time.


nah, that's not so difficult ( well, as a modder point of view, not coder I mean ), just make the gatling bullet spawn another ullet on impact, you'll have bouncing that way. That's how I made the descent2 bouncing weapon: main laser spawned another laser wich spwaned another laser which spawned another laser: 3 bounces :). but don't expect anything accurtae, it's for the look more than anything else.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 10, 2003, 10:28:35 am

ALL primaries in Freespace are and always have been ballistic. :rolleyes:
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Inquisitor on January 10, 2003, 10:56:59 am
Jesus, not this again.

Yes, very pedantic.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 10, 2003, 10:57:29 am
space kinda makes bouncing weapons pointless. if shots hit something, its usually something you want to blow up, there is not much else to use to set up a bankshot.

now id like to see a flag similar to spawn, except that it spawns things that travel twards the same vector (give or take a degree or two, for a slight scater effect) of the weapon doing the spawning, instead of going in every which direction at random. this could be used with a proximity detonation flag to create missiles that have shrapnel or for fighter flak. you would actually also have a way to have shotguns and weapons with deflection angles with this as well, make a weapon with the life of 0, meaning it would detonate as soon as it leaves the gunpoint and scater out, the children being the actual effect that you see.

im an experienced modder, so i know how to order gunpoints. but is there a flag yet thet will make the wepons alternte gunpoints? id like to see a points per shot option so i can set the number that will fire at one time. for example the first shot fires from points 1 and 2 and the second from 3 and 4. not sure if this fits here but it wouls also be cool for a beam time, similar to 3 that will alternate gunpoints for a cooler effect on turrets with more than one firepoint. it would need a delay factor so that one beam could fire while the other was already half way done, for that b5 effect.

im thinking you can branch new flags off of old ones, and have the code deviate to an alternate function that is simmilar to not not identical to old stuff. thats what i did in quake to initially implement functions i created. i put if statements at the beginning of old weapons that checked an impulse (essentially a binary flag that you could bind to a keystroke through a cfg file) if it was true it would return the function and run mine instead. it held me off untill i figured out how to redo the weapon usage code. id try it myself if i had the time.

i played with it a little last night and it worked, though there were several bugs. id like to give the coders as much info about the crashes as i can, but im not sure what they need. im not very familiar in debugging practices, a bruief explanation would be usefull.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 10, 2003, 02:06:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Inquisitor
Jesus, not this again.

Yes, very pedantic.
Actually knowing what words mean can be a curse sometimes. 'Tis my cross to bear. :(
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Shrike on January 10, 2003, 02:11:54 pm
Quote
Originally posted by ZylonBane

ALL primaries in Freespace are and always have been ballistic. :rolleyes:
Except the Targeting Beam!  ;7
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 10, 2003, 02:16:28 pm
Since beams are composed of a stream of unguided, unpowered photons (or whatever), then technically beams are ballistic too. :thepimp:
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Inquisitor on January 10, 2003, 02:27:45 pm
You'll have a hard time convincing me that that is NOT an overapplication of the term.

Anyway, so, we're testing ammunition based weapons this weekend? Cool, let us know how it turns out and be sure to use bugzilla!

:)
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 10, 2003, 02:29:43 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Inquisitor
You'll have a hard time convincing me that that is NOT an overapplication of the term.


Me too. :lol: Are flashlights ballistic? ;)
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 10, 2003, 02:34:07 pm
They are if it knocks a hole in the wall when you turn them on. :D
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 10, 2003, 03:06:18 pm
i don not know bugzilla.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 10, 2003, 03:08:11 pm
See the first post of the fs2_open 3.4 release thread. :nod:
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 10, 2003, 04:01:04 pm
thanks
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 10, 2003, 05:17:53 pm
You're welcome. :)
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 13, 2003, 10:06:59 am
i dont have any usefull debug data as of yet. i never got around to cleaning up my freespace folder, so freespace is loading a lot of my mods and stuff that i know cause crashes. there are a few changes i think need to be made though.

- elemenate the ship flag for bulistic primaries, weapon compatibility is better set in the '$allowed pbanks:' section.

- in +pbank capacity: allow modders to set 0 on banks that do not have ammo capability. that way i can have a 6 gun bank for energy weapons and forbid the use of ammo weapons in that bank. the loadout screen should not allow the player to place ammo weapons on banks with the capacity of 0.
note: if implemented we should use yellow brackets on loadout overhead graphics, indicating ammo weapon compatability.

- weapon energy gauge does not disapear when using only ammo weapons.

- enable fire point rotation, allow firing points to fire an x amout of points at one time. you could fire one point at a time or two or 3, dependant on a tag. if your ship has six firing points and will fire two at a time, then 1&2 fire first, 3&4 fire second, 5&6 fire next, then back to 1&2 for the fourth shot. enable this option on all types of primaries.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 13, 2003, 11:02:52 am
Quote
Originally posted by Nuke
- elemenate the ship flag for bulistic primaries, weapon compatibility is better set in the '$allowed pbanks:' section.


I thought about this - in fact I changed it and committed my changes - but then I thought better of it and rolled it back.  From a coding standpoint, I think it works better the way it is - and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. :)

Quote
- in +pbank capacity: allow modders to set 0 on banks that do not have ammo capability. that way i can have a 6 gun bank for energy weapons and forbid the use of ammo weapons in that bank. the loadout screen should not allow the player to place ammo weapons on banks with the capacity of 0.
note: if implemented we should use yellow brackets on loadout overhead graphics, indicating ammo weapon compatability.


Hmm... that might be a neat thing to try.

EDIT: It doesn't work that way.  You'd need the separated SBanks mod for that, and nobody's gotten around to that yet.

Quote
- weapon energy gauge does not disapear when using only ammo weapons.


This is because even ammo weapons may consume energy.  If you really want the bar to disappear, set the ship's weapon energy reserve to 0.

Quote
- enable fire point rotation, allow firing points to fire an x amout of points at one time. you could fire one point at a time or two or 3, dependant on a tag. if your ship has six firing points and will fire two at a time, then 1&2 fire first, 3&4 fire second, 5&6 fire next, then back to 1&2 for the fourth shot. enable this option on all types of primaries.


Eh, too complicated for now, but I'll keep it in mind.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: EdrickV on January 16, 2003, 02:29:49 am
Quote
Originally posted by Nuke
- enable fire point rotation, allow firing points to fire an x amout of points at one time. you could fire one point at a time or two or 3, dependant on a tag. if your ship has six firing points and will fire two at a time, then 1&2 fire first, 3&4 fire second, 5&6 fire next, then back to 1&2 for the fourth shot. enable this option on all types of primaries.


Turrets can actually do something like that. (And there are flags that modify that behavior a bit.) Possibly some reusable code there.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 16, 2003, 10:18:54 am
As opposed to Nuke's overcomplicated suggestion, something I've been wanting in FS practically since the start is the ability to set banks to ripple-fire instead of burst. X-Wing had this ability, and it's sorely missed in FS.

Wouldn't require any table mods either. Just let players select ripple-fire mode ingame (SHIFT - . seems like a logical choice), then have the engine calculate the shot spacing as $Fire Wait divided by the number of gun mounts in the current bank. For when both banks are selected, ripple through both of them in parallel.

Hopefully the toughest part would be adding the appropriate indicator to the HUD.
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Goober5000 on January 16, 2003, 10:25:08 am
Huh?  How does ripple fire work?
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: Nuke on January 16, 2003, 12:14:44 pm
cough, cough

while your solution woule be a little easyer to implement, it would make the patterns in which the guns fire kinda dull, kinda like the tachyon ripple fire system. im kinda looking for thar cfs2 effect. you have six brownings, 3 on each wing, and they cycle their firing between the 3 guns on each side and kinda make the tracers dance around the sky. kinda shwaggin' i think
Title: Im gonna test the ballistic stuff
Post by: ZylonBane on January 17, 2003, 02:06:03 am
Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
Huh?  How does ripple fire work?
Currently if you have, for example, 3 gunpoints with weapons that fire once a second, holding down fire will give you a burst of 3 shots every second. Enabling ripple fire would instead give you 1 shot every 1/3 second. Like so--
Code: [Select]
BURST MODE:
time ->
1    1    1
2    2    2
3    3    3

RIPPLE MODE:
1    1    1
  2    2    2
    3    3    3
Same amout of firepower, just evenly distributed over time. In the X-Wing games this is actually the default state, with "link fire" modes giving you half and then all of your guns at once.

I suppose that the order of gunpoint progression would be the order that they were defined in the POF.