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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: StarGunner on July 12, 2003, 11:33:09 am

Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: StarGunner on July 12, 2003, 11:33:09 am
Will there be a 3rd race option added into FS2Open? or is it there alreddy?

If it is are there any bugs with it?
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 12, 2003, 11:42:27 am
:wtf:
Do you mean 4th race? There are 3 already.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 12, 2003, 11:50:44 am
How do you mean 4th race? FS2 can already handle up to 4 races at one time all fighting each other (more if races like the Vasudans and Terrans work together).

If you mean another team I'm right behind you though. I'd like to see that too (especially if we could define who hates who via a table rather than having it hard coded).

Apart from that the only race specific thing I can think of is thruster and glow colour.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 12, 2003, 12:18:44 pm
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma

If you mean another team I'm right behind you though.


That is what I mean, yes. so that the Ancients could be independant.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Black Wolf on July 12, 2003, 12:51:28 pm
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Apart from that the only race specific thing I can think of is thruster and glow colour.


Briefing Icons too.

*Adds his support*

I Know it'd probably be quite tough, but it'd be cool - Inferno has their ancients, Aldo has his nightmares, we at TI have a new race aswell (Not a pipedream I swear :) Two fighters and a Corvette are already done :)) - as the community gets better at moddibng, and the skills are more evenly disseminated, projects and ideas are getting bigger - support for this (campaign expansion) should IMHO be a SCP priority.[/color]
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 12, 2003, 12:56:47 pm
And TAP will have many races.
Taiidan Imperials
Taiidan Repbublic
Kushan
Kadeshi
Turanic
Beast
Bentusi

and so on. Many races are needed.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: elorran on July 12, 2003, 02:19:55 pm
True. :nod:
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TrashMan on July 12, 2003, 03:18:19 pm
I propoesd this ages ago. No one listened.
Good to see a good topic again. I'm all for it.
It fas better to have hostile1, hostile2 and hostile3 teams...
Or name it however you like.

Anyway it would be cool!
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: vyper on July 12, 2003, 07:47:31 pm
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: mikhael on July 12, 2003, 09:45:02 pm
consider looking at the Independence War faction system. There's like 40 factions, and the only thing that it effects is the attitude between groups and the EFF ID string (And the hostile/neutral/friendly color on the HUD).

The IWar2 system also doesn't couple things like thrusters to races.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Nico on July 13, 2003, 05:10:18 am
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Apart from that the only race specific thing I can think of is thruster and glow colour.


support ships. shivans can't even have one :doubt:
and that's annoying if you ask me.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 13, 2003, 06:29:36 am
But unless you're doing a mission where the player flies for three different races that really shouldn't matter since you can get around it with some creative tabling.

As for shivan support ships they rarely survive long enough to need one :)

That said it would be nice to see the shivans call in a support ship :)
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Nico on July 13, 2003, 06:48:13 am
yeah. anyway, I think that the availability of more than 3 species is among the most popular requests, so I keep wondering why this one is always ignored :doubt:.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 13, 2003, 07:06:15 am
Maybe it's not easy to do :blah:
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: diamondgeezer on July 13, 2003, 08:13:39 am
Engine sounds - each species gets one fighter and one bomber engine sound and flyby. Us Reci guys would like another set of sounds for the you-know-who
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Tiara on July 13, 2003, 09:01:53 am
Engine sounds are like... unimportant. At least so it would seem to me. Who cares if you here WOOSH! or WOOOOOOSH!

Do more important things first. :p
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Nico on July 13, 2003, 09:16:59 am
w/o their "Weeeeeeeeeh!!!!", the tie fighters wouldn't be as cool, Tiara :)
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Tiara on July 13, 2003, 09:30:37 am
Quote
Originally posted by Venom
w/o their "Weeeeeeeeeh!!!!", the tie fighters wouldn't be as cool, Tiara :)

Still, I think engine sound is a very low priority compared to other things. Its cool, but not important.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Sobek on July 13, 2003, 09:45:47 am
Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Engine sounds - each species gets one fighter and one bomber engine sound and flyby. Us Reci guys would like another set of sounds for the you-know-who


Could this include engine/thruster glows? combined with sounds, it would really make it unique experience for each race, instead of using terran, vasudan or shivan as a template all the time, especially if it' like B5 and u have a ton of races.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Nico on July 13, 2003, 10:05:28 am
Quote
Originally posted by Tiara

Still, I think engine sound is a very low priority compared to other things. Its cool, but not important.


all in all, I agree, but they're bound to species, so bringing the possibility to create new species would just bring that along :)
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Galemp on July 13, 2003, 10:13:27 pm
I think this is one of the top priorities for the SCP. Always have, really. Let's make things a little easier for them. The main issue here is the tracking down and isolation of every reference in the code to three races and upping it to four, then following its dependancies. What things have been hardcoded to a specific race?


I'm not sure what else there is, but this is a start. The main problem is that there is so much code that relies upon the assumtion that there are only three races, that new tables, effects and interface art would be required for the SCP build to work. If it's implemented, there would be a mandatory download of a SCP VP.

That's actually something we should have already. All required tables and art, as well as the new interface art for ballistic primaries, scrollable command briefings, the warp pof and glowmaps should be a mandatory part of the SCP.

Once the code is working, we'll need all the stuff to get it to work. Since we have a canon fourth race already, let's call it Ancients. And to keep it as unbiased as possible, the tables can reference the Terran equivalents. So the default Ancients would be indistinguishable from the Terrans, except that you would have an extra set of engine glows and flyby sounds etc.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: diamondgeezer on July 13, 2003, 11:09:05 pm
Tiara, you do notice the difference between Shivan engines and Teran stuff, right? Besides, sometimes you want a fourth race with a very, very distinctive engine sound and set of flyby efects ;7
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 14, 2003, 02:36:40 am
I still think it would be nicer to do this via a tbl. The game parses the table and sees how many races there are. If you hard code it to be 4 someone will want 5. If you make it 5 TBP will come along and say they need 30 :D

More than new races I want new teams. Again this should be handled by a table which says by default who the new team is hostile to, friendly to and who they ignore completely (and also the colour they are displayed on the HUD).
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Nico on July 14, 2003, 04:04:24 am
Quote
Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
  • Engine glows/thruster ANIs.
  • Flyby sounds.
  • Wingman personas.
  • Briefing icons.
  • Default IFF.
  • Name color in FRED.
[/B]



why do people always forget this one? :D
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Flaser on July 14, 2003, 06:37:29 am
Personally I'm in favor of a table.

Namely the species.tbl could be expanded and used to contain the data.
I don't know how those data are hardcoded, but as far as I know from my programing experience it could be easy to just reference to a variable - which you gain from the aformentioned table - or it could be real hard if there's something weird in the way :V: did things. (I can only think of problems with objects, but it could be so since I know little C :sigh:  )
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 16, 2003, 05:20:29 am
Different radar color for two different hostile teams would be useful, too. For example if somebody says that the Ancients wouldn't love Terrans, than there would be a second enemy, and if there are ships of both Shivan and Ancient races in the area, then it would be useful to see on the radar which ship is Ancient and which is Shivan.

Probably supports are always forgotten becaue it has not much use. At least of my point.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Mav on July 16, 2003, 10:09:45 am
Well, support ships would be useful for Multiplayer missions where some players fly as Shivans, for example (I'm already making one and it's quite annoying that Shivans can't call in support ships). I'd say if a player calls in a support ship, FS should check what race he plays (either the one his ship belongs to or something set in Fred) and then send in a support ship of the apropriate species.
Also, I'd like to have the possibility for one species to have more than one support ship; the default one being called in a mission should be set in Fred somewhere. :D
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Mav on July 16, 2003, 10:18:48 am
Btw for the Ancients: As long as there are no HoL or NTF forces around you can simply set the Ancients as Neutral team and set the "all teams at war"-option. Though I also would like to have more than 4 sides in a battle.
And FS should be able to handle more ships (,subsystems, submodels, etc.) - did you already look into that graphics engine improvement mentioned in the source code readme? Three times as much ships per mission without need for increased hardware would be quite fine with me. :D (Though even more would be still better :cool: ) Please  look into this!
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Mav on July 18, 2003, 10:37:58 am
Note on support ships:
In MP mode, Shivans (and probably all new races) get rearmed by the first ship in ships.tbl . Was quite funny to get a Dragon rearmed by an Ulysses :lol: . I'm working on a Shivan support ship to place there. (as for this: I do have a fully working Shivan mod [except rearming, of course], might release it in some weeks :cool: )
Still, for singleplayer (campaigns and so on) a source change seems to be needed.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: aldo_14 on July 19, 2003, 06:58:43 am
Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Tiara, you do notice the difference between Shivan engines and Teran stuff, right? Besides, sometimes you want a fourth race with a very, very distinctive engine sound and set of flyby efects ;7


Hehe.........

Could you possibly change the code to specify the thruster ani / glow based on an optional table entry or flag?
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Tiara on July 19, 2003, 07:11:29 am
Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Tiara, you do notice the difference between Shivan engines and Teran stuff, right? Besides, sometimes you want a fourth race with a very, very distinctive engine sound and set of flyby efects ;7

*idea* Make you flyby sound be "f*ck you!" as if it came from a big speaker box on the enemies tail :p
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: StarGunner on July 19, 2003, 11:56:18 am
This is too off topic I need a 4th Race with engene glows sounds and all without changing the things ingame I got a tarren race plan, and two others but the 4th is the one that would be a nasty Kill you all thing, but without the FS2 unknown goals for em stuff I hate that in the FS univerce after two full games we still know nothing about the Shivans motives lol makes me laugh.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 19, 2003, 01:25:27 pm
Quote
That's actually something we should have already.

FS2_Open 3.5.3 VP file: http://fs2source.warpcore.org/mediavps/fs2_open353.zip
Quote
All required tables

Not included, which table(s) do you mean?
Quote
and art, as well as the new interface art for ballistic primaries

Got that
Quote
scrollable command briefings

Got that, too
Quote
the warp pof and glowmaps

Check
Quote
should be a mandatory part of the SCP.

It'll add another 2.7 megabytes or so to the download, but it's possible if Inqui approves it.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Galemp on July 19, 2003, 01:58:10 pm
Good, glad to hear it. I assume the splash screens are in there, too. Are those Bob's sucky glowmaps, or my improved ones?
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 19, 2003, 04:04:01 pm
Code: [Select]

=====Contents:

- All the glow maps for the retail FS2 ships as of February 23, 2003 (By GalacticEmperor)


Yours :nod:
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Taristin on July 19, 2003, 05:47:44 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Tiara

*idea* Make you flyby sound be "f*ck you!" as if it came from a big speaker box on the enemies tail :p


No sound in space :P
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 19, 2003, 08:28:29 pm
Freespace physics :p
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 20, 2003, 09:02:07 am
Quote
Originally posted by Raa Tor'h


No sound in space :P


No oxygen in space, so no explosion or fire could be created, but there is.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on July 20, 2003, 10:02:27 am
oxegyen in ships
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 20, 2003, 10:22:22 am
But not in space, and you can see the explosions in space. I don't think we would have to discuss it in this thread.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Taristin on July 20, 2003, 01:18:13 pm
The ships are secretly made out of Magnesium... ;)

The GTVA just likes to use the codename Molybdenum... :p
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on July 20, 2003, 06:33:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TopAce
I don't think we would have to discuss it in this thread.


A convinient way of 'proving' your point which I dont think is right...

You brought it up in the first place so it looks liek your running scared...



I thought this thread was about race support in FS2 open! I need it. So it would be of great help to all! Find the time and we all be greatful! :yes: :nod:
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 21, 2003, 06:24:50 am
Quote
Originally posted by LAW ENFORCER


A convinient way of 'proving' your point which I dont think is right...

You brought it up in the first place so it looks like your running scared...


I am not scared, just I wanted to tell not this place is the best to discuss physics, if you want, we can discuss it in an individual topic.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: Krackers87 on July 21, 2003, 09:49:00 am
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
I still think it would be nicer to do this via a tbl. The game parses the table and sees how many races there are. If you hard code it to be 4 someone will want 5. If you make it 5 TBP will come along and say they need 30 :D

More than new races I want new teams. Again this should be handled by a table which says by default who the new team is hostile to, friendly to and who they ignore completely (and also the colour they are displayed on the HUD).


Yes we could have something like in age of empires with teams 1- 8 and then in an editor you could check boxes to see whos hostile to who. or to make it simpler you could just have all teams hostile to each other.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 21, 2003, 03:54:51 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Krackers87

Yes we could have something like in age of empires with teams 1- 8 and then in an editor you could check boxes to see whos hostile to who. or to make it simpler you could just have all teams hostile to each other.


The table like that may suffice! A good idea, and how about more complicated things? Like: team 1 is civilian, they want to pass by an Arcadia of team 3. team 1 transports don't want to fire upon the Arcadia, only in the case the station fires at the transports, but then the transports fire back an call in reinforcements.

This is why the chage-iff SEXP is to be modified, too.
Like:
change-iff
team 1
hostile
team 3
it means that the first variable(team 1) will consider the third var in the status of second variable.
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 21, 2003, 04:10:49 pm
I certainly wouldn't reccomend messing about with Change-iff for that. Not only would it break current missions but what you're doing doesn't actually involove changing the iff anyway. The team remains the same iff it's just that the iff is now hostile.

What you need is a new SEXP something like Change-Team-Dynamics or something.

The ability to change the sides on a team in mid game via a SEXP would be nice but to be honest even if it could only be done via a table I would be happy.

Besides the example you give could just as easily be done by using the protect-ship and unprotect-ship SEXPs :p
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: TopAce on July 22, 2003, 08:19:24 am
But protect-ship makes the assigned ship protected against ALL ships in the area, who do not have direct orders for attack, you cannot give ALL ships in an asssigned team to attack that ship if there are more ships
Title: New race support in or not?
Post by: karajorma on July 22, 2003, 08:55:40 am
I think I vaguely see what you're getting at.

Still this is something for a new SEXP rather than an alteration of an existing one.