Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Star Dragon on April 03, 2003, 06:38:19 pm
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I did a search and on 11/09/2002 Hades was the only one to respond agreeing the limit should be removed.
My original question was is there a way to remove the limit easily or does it take a coder? Also if it can't be removed can it be made larger? maybe double?
I ask cause there is marked increase in the size of ships/stations as mods are being made and in some situations we might actually need more elbow room then currently available (let's see gigas is now like 37.5 km?) and who knows how big the Death star might end up being if they get it to work... Plus I have plans of my own involving a black hole and the need for a fleet to be some distance away otherwise it's not as feesible... they get picked off by a monster in the acceleration disk with a tractor beam dragging them into teh grasp of the black hole (muhahaha)..
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For the record, I agre with you.... However I disaprove of the term "can't"
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As with many things the 60Km box is there for a reason. It's to stop the player flying off and exploring how things were done ruining the mystery. An example of this are the missions where the sathanas fleet are surrounding the sun. The mission becomes a lot less impressive if the player decides to fly off and sees that the models that are representing the sathanas look like big red chunks.
That said it isn`t really a problem in most missions and the few where it is can be changed by creative use of the < distance SEXP's.
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make it so we can set the bounding box in FRED. If nothing is set, then it goes to 60km.
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I actually made a mod where this was a problem once :p
My Acceleration mod, where you can reach 2k m/s :p
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I once made the afterburners "hyper-drives". You went 1.5k m/s...you couldn't shoot because you went faster than the lasers...
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*steals Solatar's idea*
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as far as i can remember from an old post regarding this, the limit can expanded how much as you want BUT the bigger=the more memory required.
i'm not a coder and if i'm wrong correct me
btw i think that venom's planets are bigger than the actual box, so i don't think it is a prob to put big and unuseful (for the mission) objects little out the distance limit, again, i may be wrong
personally i think that (if there aren't problems with huge objects) a little bigger limit may be good, but a mission that require you to fly straightforward for uh 30 km or more (assuming you start in the center) is a very bad mission, since you will spend a lot of annoying time just going from one point to another (it was different in case autopilot was present), fs2 is an action game, it is not "elite style",althought i'd like it to be so:)
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Originally posted by KARMA
as far as i can remember from an old post regarding this, the limit can expanded how much as you want BUT the bigger=the more memory required.
i'm not a coder and if i'm wrong correct me
btw i think that venom's planets are bigger than the actual box, so i don't think it is a prob to put big and unuseful (for the mission) objects little out the distance limit, again, i may be wrong
personally i think that (if there aren't problems with huge objects) a little bigger limit may be good, but a mission that require you to fly straightforward for uh 30 km or more (assuming you start in the center) is a very bad mission, since you will spend a lot of annoying time just going from one point to another (it was different in case autopilot was present), fs2 is an action game, it is not "elite style",althought i'd like it to be so:)
Unless the mod included some kind of faster, non-combat mode of travel, like LDS drive from I-War.
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I reckon FreeLancer had the whole cruising/combat speed thing worked out fairly well...
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Can the Source Code project members the limit make up to infinite ?
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as far as i can remember from an old post regarding this, the limit can expanded how much as you want BUT the bigger=the more memory required.
If this is indeed correct, infinite is a bit too big. At least for me, I forgot to buy infinite memory last time I upgraded my system :p Also remember that it's a 3d environment. So if you, say, double the distance limit, the volume of the box increases to 8 times what it was. What impact that has on memory requirements I can't say, it sure won't lower them...
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Originally posted by Free Terran
Can the Source Code project members the limit make up to infinite ?
Why would you want it? It would take so long to get anywhere that it would be stupid. If there were two battles with about 210km between them, unless you had those I-WAR odd drives, it woudl take all day.
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hmm.... 210 km is ok.
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Terran, read Petrarch's post again - IT WOULD TAKE ALL DAY if the bounding box was 210km.
For one thing, as IceFire explained and as I have discovered, the AI on fighters goes to hell much above 140m/s. Thus, fighters are to slow to make use of a box bigger than 60km (even 60km never gets used to its limit, methinks).
Also, as Exarch pointed out, the fact that we're talking about a cube means that system drains would increase exponentially. Doubling the width of the cube would increase the volume by eight times.
I'm thinking that this is another '16 million colours' scenario...
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From 60km to 210km would mean, give or take a bit, 42x as much space and, presumably, resource drain from that aspect of FS (note, from just that aspect - not 42x as much drain from FS as a whole). Even upping it to just 100km would more than quadruple it. Not having looked much at the FS2 source, I can't say exactly what the impact of the limit being changed would be. But I have to assume that since it's there, it's there for a reason. I hate the limit myself, just out of principle since I don't like being limited in where I can go, but I have never really had it affect me while playing. So basically, I can live with it.
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Terran, read Petrarch's post again - IT WOULD TAKE ALL DAY if the bounding box was 210km.
For one thing, as IceFire explained and as I have discovered, the AI on fighters goes to hell much above 140m/s. Thus, fighters are to slow to make use of a box bigger than 60km (even 60km never gets used to its limit, methinks).
Also, as Exarch pointed out, the fact that we're talking about a cube means that system drains would increase exponentially. Doubling the width of the cube would increase the volume by eight times.
I'm thinking that this is another '16 million colours' scenario...
:mad2: I don't read the post again !
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There really is no hope for you, is there?
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Originally posted by Free Terran
:mad2: I don't read the post again !
I suggest you do.
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alright...as far as I can tell from what I know about programming, the only thing that is up with the bounding box is something like if(player.x > 30000 || player.y > 3000 || player.z > 30000) { kill(player); }. So, essentially, by removing the bounding box the game would actually go faster, albiet probably not noticeably so. Some coder correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to be the way it would work.
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No, cos a bigger box means the game has more space to think about. Granted most of it is empty, but the engine still has to be mindful of it. Therefore more = slower =bad
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Wait wait wait - why's the engine got to be mindful of empty space with nothing in it? I'm writing my own space sim game, and right now I don't have any sort of a bounding box or anything like that and there's no problem. Because its a space sim, there is zero cost to making the game arena open ended, since the computer only fills in places where there is something to fill in. And its impossible to fly past sky spheres (unless FS2 implements them weirdly).
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Given the fact that objects can and are often placed outside the 60 km limit, the bounding box obviously does not have anything to do with what objects are and are not kept track of. The amount of space is irrelevant to the engine. All the engine cares about are coordinate numbers, and 999 999 is the same as 9 as far as it is concerned. The "space" is not an entity, it is quite literally nothing.
Therefore, the bounding box can only be an imposed limit, as Analazon says.
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*shrugs*
You guys are the experts. Perhaps, then, this is just another limit V put in for no real reason other than to annoy?
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
*shrugs*
You guys are the experts. Perhaps, then, this is just another limit V put in for no real reason other than to annoy?
I already explained why they put it in. It's so you can go off and see what the sathani around Capella really are :)
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FS2 renders all objects, including weapons fire, outside of the 60km bounding box, essentially, it treats things outside the box the same way it treats things inside the box. That one if statement is all there is to it, and while I don't mind the limit, I'd like to know how that distance is measured. Is it from the absolute origin?
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Well, if it's only there to prevent players from exploring, then yeah it's pretty pointless to have. Any mission designer worried about the player running off where he shouldn't be can deal with that easily enough with the tools available in FRED. Guess I was a bit naive thinking that it had to be there for an actual system related reason, and not just because they didn't want to bother taking sightseeing type players into account when making the campaign :wink:
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OK, so what about ship speeds - like I said earlier, fighter and bomber AI just goes to hell above 140 m/s, so you couldn't have combat at the speeds necessary to justify a bigger box. Unless you're going to make some sort of hyperdrive as well... that all just seems like a lot of effort which could be better directed elsewhere...
And FREDding would be a headache at the distances we're talkng about - looking at a mission spread over 30K is dizzying enough as it is...
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Oh, agreed, DG. Exceeding the 60 km radius is bad Fredding, plain and simple.
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At 100m/s (which is pretty fast) it takes 10 seconds to cover 1km. That means it would take you 5 minutes flying in a straight line to cover the distance from the starting position to the nearest face of the bounding box.
Remember guys. You can put OTHER ships outside of the 60km box.
I can guess exactly how most of you who have a problem with the 60km box come across it.
Mission Designer : Okay, just started FRED. Lets plunk down a copy of my super ship. Yep Looks Uber. Oh. Alpha is right in the middle of it! hmmm. Select alpha move him to X = -60,000.
Next time move the big ship and you`ll be fine. If you`ve got a got a mission where you`re having problems simply select everything and move them so that alpha is at 0,0,0 and your mission will probably work fine.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Mission Designer : Okay, just started FRED. Lets plunk down a copy of my super ship. Yep Looks Uber. Oh. Alpha is right in the middle of it! hmmm. Select alpha move him to X = -60,000.
Next time move the big ship and you`ll be fine. If you`ve got a got a mission where you`re having problems simply select everything and move them so that alpha is at 0,0,0 and your mission will probably work fine.
Heh, FREDding for idiots. Best include that in the FAQ.
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Originally posted by Solatar
make it so we can set the bounding box in FRED. If nothing is set, then it goes to 60km.
Thats actually the best suggestion I've seen in this thread.
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to finding a way to eliminate the unnecissary restriction...
Seems like you forgot my original argment...
Alpha1 is at 0,0,0 problem is in the alliance battle the Borg push ships around all over the solar system and you have to chase them down. By the time the mission ends there are two major battles left each over 30km from the original spot in opposite directions (natural flow of battle).. Now as far as fredding goes are you suggesting use of a sexp distance limiter to a nav point at 0,0,0 so nothing goes farther than 30km from the centerpoint? My fredding skillz are poor (if any) and I haven't fredded in a year (too busy converting models). So if that sounds like a noob question sorry.
now any suggestions of altering the ships involved is unacceptable because lack of control or pay balance is critical to seeing the differences between them. If everything ws balanced it would be boring and unrealistic. This also helps to create the feeling of helplessness and desperation in the beginning of the skirmish.
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Hang on a sec SD. Do you only want the player to be involved in one of the battles or do you want them to be involved in both? Remember that at 100m/s it would take 10 minutes to cross from one battle to the other.
If the player is only supposed to be in one battle you can just shift the players starting point by 15 km and keep the whole thing in the middle of the box.
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or split the 2battles in two missions if you want the player to be involved in both...
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To the person who said the AI doesn't handle speeds above 140m/s, you're wrong. I've had the AI go at 1000m/s, and the only noticeable difference is that everyone depends a lot more on using missiles to kill the targets speed, and then ripping them apart with primaries.
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Yes, but not everyone has 'Improve_AI_Bias_Speed = true' set
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To the person who said the game works fine at 1000m/s - hey, I'm just telling you what IceFire told me. Certainly seemed to all go a bit wonky when I ran the game at around 250-300m/s, and 140 was the magical number IceFire quoted me.
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This is my test out new stuff battle everyone against borg...
The battle I posted pictures about on my pic site like 8 months ago. Borg vs. Earth...
This was not meant as a real mission, just what happens in the natural flow of the battle where half the borg cubes attack teh atlantis station (and drag it off 30 km) and the other half wanders through the fleet and somehow manages to make them break off from defensing the station (cause it also floats away as it explodes over the next 5 mins, why does it do that instead of making a shockwave at the point of death???) and they end up duking it out 30 km in the otehr direction while I finish of a cube and sphere that stays relatively close to 0,0,0 enagaging the fighter squadrons that launched in the beginning from all the ships and station.
Oh and BTW the time factor is not an issue (Getter 1 - Me max speed is 300) Only the borg can blow by me so far... This is intentional from the robot later (see the anime series and you'll understand).. L8tr!
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do NOT put the box to infinite, ever! a couple of times when I was bored, i set a ship to go millions of meters per second. Something like... Max speed as 100,000, max speed with all power to engines was around 100,000,000 and afterburners was in the billions. try that out... its really... freaky. the game behaves VERY odd when you fly out to those distances. FIrst... primaries fly off in seemingly random direction... and they change direction if you change the time compression. missiles dont go anywhere, they just appear as a hexagonal polygon on the screen somewhere, as if the missile appears at the player's "eye" point, but goes nowhere. also, i called in a support ship and then destroyed it, and the debris just continually floated around me, circling me in different directions. also, as you bank and move around, the entire HUD moves around, and the outside camera shifts around, almost as if it is running at a really really bad framerate... like a slideshow.
that concludes the report on what I did.
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So let's see.... 1000-2000 = works, 10000 = very bad.
(As a note, I did not turn up turn speeds, I only turned up the actual speed. This may have affected how the AI handled it)