Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: WS-Thunder on December 06, 2001, 03:18:00 pm
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Ok, I am very interested in cloaking lately and here are some procedures and thoughts and questions I have on the procedures. Please, if there are any missing, post them here.
1. The green sphere.
It was thought up by Warlock and a few others and seems to be the most popular method. You create a green sphere to go over your shield orb. Then you add a special subsystem that can be destroyed to disable the sphere and you can disable and enable the subsystem for AI controled fighters. However the downside to this is, will it disable the shields or effect other shield orbs? Would the sphere just show up as see through or would it actually hide the model under it as well?
2. The green skin.
What about creating a skin of a ship by just taking the cob fighter and creating a sub-model of the ship where it uses the green texture that replaces the other model when the cloak is active and it is triggered by a sub-system? How do sub-systems work exactly?
3. The black sphere:
This is the same as above but instead it is a black sphere and you can't see through it. The only problem is that the black sphere will show up in nebulas or with nebula backgrounds.
4. The black ship:
The same as the green ship theory, however the texture is black and can be seen in nebulas.
5. The blue sphere:
This one I came up with. I think if I am correct that engine glow textures you can see through. I have seen a comet model made using this to it's advantage. Why not create a sphere for cloaking with this but the shield glow part would have to be made a very very very light shade of glow so that it almost can't be seen.
6. The blue ship:
The same as the green ship theory, however you use a the light engine glow to texture the model with instead.
Black beam cannon glow:
This is where you place a beam cannon in the center of a ship. You color the glow black so that it covers the whole fighter. However it can be seen in nebula backgrounds and could potentially effect other beam cannon glows.
All of these can be triggered for the player by useing the keypress to his advantage. However the enemy AI would see them. They also can all be triggered in AI players with the use of subsystems.
Here is one that is only for AI ships and was thought up by myself:
Take a ship and mark it as having no warp effect and mark it as red alert carry status.
Make it a reinforcement unit and tell it to warp out when triggered by being either fired upon or by time limit with no warp effect. Then tell the reinforcement to come in after the first one warps out. I am hoping with red alert status that it would show up again with the same shielding and hull integrity as it left with. However, it would probably return in the same spot that it appeared the first time so it would take some coordination for it to work. Also it is untested so far and remains a theory. It also wouldn't be as cool as the others but it would be a working alternative. Also it could be made better by the use of coding it but we don't seem to have many coders to do this.
Any help in this area and anyone that would be interested in helping me make a cloaking effect. Please help me. It is crucial to my campaign. Also, any discussion here would help so there isn't any obliagation to anyone to help. Just please do if you can. Thanx!
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Whoa... talk about comprehensive.
I don't know anything that hasn't been said here already. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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Originally posted by WS-Thunder:
Here is one that is only for AI ships and was thought up by myself:
Take a ship and mark it as having no warp effect and mark it as red alert carry status.
Make it a reinforcement unit and tell it to warp out when triggered by being either fired upon or by time limit with no warp effect. Then tell the reinforcement to come in after the first one warps out. I am hoping with red alert status that it would show up again with the same shielding and hull integrity as it left with. However, it would probably return in the same spot that it appeared the first time so it would take some coordination for it to work. Also it is untested so far and remains a theory. It also wouldn't be as cool as the others but it would be a working alternative. Also it could be made better by the use of coding it but we don't seem to have many coders to do this.
I suppose this is a variation on the above idea, and again only works for AI ships; how about two versions of the ship, one invisible and the other one standard. Give each version a fighter launch bay path. When the cloaked ship is required to uncloak, have it launch the standard ship and then warp out the cloaked version (and vice-versa to re-cloak the ship). I haven't tested this yet, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work, and it keeps the last position of the previous state of the ship, because the 'warp in' point moves with the ship.
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*holds spinning head*
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The Green sphere over the shield wouldn't work... it'd just be transparent, leaving the main hull up to see.
Your best shot would be to make the maps of a fighter hex 00FF00 (neon green). FS2 recognizes these maps as transparent, although, I don't know how you would get the player to reappear in the same mission...
As for the AI detecting your invisible fighter: You can set up s-expressions that tell all hostile AIs to ignore the player, etc.
I wonder if it would be possible to have the main hull of a fighter be a seperate subsystem and when the subsystem is destroyed with s-expressions, the player looks invisible. Then you can use s-expressions to make the AI hostiles ignore the player.
I need to test this stuff out sometime. It'd make a great fighter in theory.
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Ummm buddy...I told ya..the SHPERE wasn't my idea lol
Mine was simply texture the SHIP,..not shield,..ship...in all green...thus making it invisible...now find a way in game to have the gameengine swap between two POFs without much notice,..have two of the same exact fighter as two seperatly named POFs,..one all green to be the "cloaked" version..one normal. Poof you'd be set. Except players wouldn't have control of cloaking their own fighter.
Just didn't wanna lay claim to anything i didn't actually say (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif) No worries
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I wanna create a heavy bomber/blast boat, that is completely independant. Does not need cap support, can hold a crew of say 5-15 and can cloak and can take out Cruisers(takes alot of time) and still dogfight, and then recloak!
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I agree, texture the ship in green, or whatever color FS2 uses for transparency.
Also, say it is permanitley cloaked, like Wonder Woman's jet.
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well....
to be honest i'm a newbie modder here,
and what i'm thinking about is not exactly "cloacking"....but.....
what about a ship that can be visibile only at certain distances?... so for example u can see the ship only when really close, or at the opposite when little far....
both the solutions may have some certain strategy reasons/pseudoscientific explanation to be used in a campaign....
i don't know about transparent textures (reading it for the first time on this post) but some ways to create it may be for example using non solid models..or faces not flat..with "existing" faces... this could create a mix of void/textures that may give the idea of a ship cloaking... something like the startrek cloacking effect.... the only problem would be that you will not only partially see through the model but you will fire too....(maybe mixing black textures, distorsion textures maybe flipped and void areas only in low percentage may patially solve this problem).....
maybe can be used two or three lods switching at very close distance one after another to give the idea of a ship cloacking/declocking
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I don't think so, because if I understand you correctly, the model would still be visible in nebulae.
P.S. Just so you know, a transparant texture is a texture of a certan color in which the game reads as transparant, or sort of, "not there", however it's different in every game, for instance, in Jane's WWII Fighters, the texture is purple, in Fs2, I think it's green.
That's the simplified version (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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The invisibility at a distance thing could be achieved by texturing the LODs progressivly more invisible.
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You know, that could be done fairly easily...
Different LODs for different cloak levels. It wouldn't be TRUE cloaking, more of just a stealth effect, but it would be darn cool.
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With the Shield invisibility thingy its cool, itl be temporarly uncloaked when its hit!! maybe a new type of AWACS can be buildt around that can illuminate these cloaked vessels with an ultra wide low power beam. Kinda like shining a spot light on the enemy!
Anway! does anyone know how to make an invisible cloak (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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This invisable talk is just coonfusing! just give me a gun and point me in direction of guy who won't let us have the source code!
(I don't really want lots of guns, so don't send me your old down grades from when you moved up to High school...)
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Originally posted by Anduril:
You know, that could be done fairly easily...
Different LODs for different cloak levels. It wouldn't be TRUE cloaking, more of just a stealth effect, but it would be darn cool.
Hey, you're right! Clever thinking, dude! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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*downs an entire bottle of asprin*
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Does anyone have any pictures of these cloaking effects?
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Just for the record, has anyone actually tried making a "shell" cloak as a subsystem to see if it can be turned on/off with SEXPs?
And I don't think anyone should worry about making a cloak effect that will work under ALL circumstances. Give us lowly FREDders credit enough to know when and how to use the toys you modders come up with.
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ZylonBane's opinions do not represent those of the management.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane:
Just for the record, has anyone actually tried making a "shell" cloak as a subsystem to see if it can be turned on/off with SEXPs?
And I don't think anyone should worry about making a cloak effect that will work under ALL circumstances. Give us lowly FREDders credit enough to know when and how to use the toys you modders come up with.
Yep. Physical subsytems (radar dishes, turrets) can't be repaired after they've been destroyed. Once the cloak is deactivated, it's down for good.
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Okay, how about a black engine glow? Or would that just be invisible?
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Originally posted by ZylonBane:
Okay, how about a black engine glow? Or would that just be invisible?
it would be akward...you;d have to reassign glows for (eg) all the Vasudan ships so they weren't black...and I'm pretty sure black is ignored by the FS engine in glows.
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In fact, for glows (and for explsion anis), the darest the colour, the more transparent it will be.
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Yep, FS uses an addition layer for its effects. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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Then I suppose a black thruster ani wouldn't work either.
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Nope, sorry. You'll notice the black areas of the current thruster anis don't show up. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)