Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Fineus on September 16, 2003, 12:35:28 pm
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Calm down, I'm not asking for IW2 style gameplay. This is a graphical effect to simulate inertia / other stuff.
Right, now that's clear. I was thinking about ships and their engines. Lets take an Orion, it's sitting there - its engines at idle and it's not moving Its engine graphic sticks out a fairly long way. Set it moving and it goes even further out (to normal level - which is fine). As it stops the graphic reverts to its engines at idle.
The thing is, I think the stick out to far. What I'd like to see is:
A) When not moving, all ships using capital ship engine graphics do not have an engine glow effect of any kind. The engine is off, there's no need for anything to be shunted out of it... whatever tech the engine uses.
B) A fade on / off effect for capital ship engines. Thus when a ship starts up initially it begins a (fairly rapid) fade on/off of the engine graphic to simulate the engines being started. The engine graphic then gets longer once its completed fading in or indeed, disappears when its' finished fading out.
This is purely graphical, but I think it'd be pretty nice to show that engines are not "on" the entire time, and that they take time to heat up / shut down and to grow from idle levels up to full length trails.
This is especially the case for Bobs engine trails (which look great, but rediculous if the ship isn't moving - because it looks like it's still pushing the ship forward when infact it's not).
Waste of time? Something for later? Something you want to see right now?
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[kosh]Yes.[/kosh]
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Very funny :p
But seriously, like it? Dislike it? I can't code myself - I'm just being an ideas monkey.
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old idea, but still a good one. should be done, but probably won't be. anyway yeah, of course, I'm all for it.
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great idea, and it doesn't seem all to hard to make, but hey, i don't even know C, let alone the code of FS2.
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I agree, to a limited extent. Firstly, engine glows must be on even when a ship is at rest. Not having the engine glows is an obvious visual indicator that the ship's disabled.
As far as Bobboau's engine tails go, why not link them to the same code that regulates thruster flame length? That is, if a ship's at rest you can't see them at all, and they extend depending on the speed of the craft. Having them extend according to the ship's actual speed and not its engine setting is a great idea, because you can see the ship's acceleration.
While we're at it, can we implement the turning off of specific engine glows when that particular engine subsystem has been destroyed? That is, when you take out one of the engines on the Sath's arms, the engine glow there stays until all the engines have been disabled. Since each glow is already linked to a specific engine subsystem the groundwork is already there.
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I agree, to a limited extent. Firstly, engine glows must be on even when a ship is at rest. Not having the engine glows is an obvious visual indicator that the ship's disabled.
Nah, as for visual indications whether a ship is disabled... Notice the big D next to a ship and the DISABLED in the status bar :rolleyes: :)
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I agree, to a limited extent. Firstly, engine glows must be on even when a ship is at rest. Not having the engine glows is an obvious visual indicator that the ship's disabled.
I think this is important, too. keep in mind the engine glow doesn't actually have to be thrust, just...glow. maybe it's the light from the fuel that's sitting right behind the engine? i don't know. but i think getting rid of it completely when the ship is stopped isn't a good idea.
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Originally posted by Carl
I think this is important, too. keep in mind the engine glow doesn't actually have to be thrust, just...glow. maybe it's the light from the fuel that's sitting right behind the engine? i don't know. but i think getting rid of it completely when the ship is stopped isn't a good idea.
i agree, disabled means the engines are damaged/destroyed, meaning that it would look different from just being turned off.
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Engines dead: no glow
Engines in standby: faint glow
Simple ;)
Cheers
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Works for me :)
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I like the faint glow idea too, however I think the engine trails have to be controlled by the engine settings.
When you set full speed the engine actually tries to go full power, but it takes time to reach max speed - which has nothing to do with reality BTW.
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Hasn't some of these just been implemented in the latest build?
I might be going crazy, but when I was testing some stuff out yesterday on Shipyard-completed ( you know the FRED2 tutorial one ), when the NTF Aeolus came to a halt, it's engine glows stopped, then again the Sobek might have blown em off. I know this subject was mentioned recently, I think Bobboau brought it up and was saying he'd put it in or was considering it at the least - don't quote me on that though. I think I'll have a search for it.
Robin.
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I agree with this idea for capital ships, I think it should however be limited to capital ships. Fighters would probably look better if they just kept theirs on.
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Agreed with Thunder (can't spell the new one :D)...lets do it :)
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Originally posted by IceFire
Agreed with Thunder (can't spell the new one :D)...lets do it :)
New one? His name is Thunder.
I agre with Carl and GE...
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Nah, I think the engines need a glow of some kind when not disabled... I bet you can't turn an Orion's propulsion system on and off with a flick of a switch. Surely it'd need to warm up or something for a ship so big.
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Well, perhaps the glow could shrink in radius - it doesn't need to be at full size, it could go right down small.... like turning the flame down on a bunsen burner...
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Perhaps even a different type of 'standby' glow would be apt. :)
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In summary, I like how it is in my code, where an engine generating no thrust (ie, full stop) does not have a glow, as though it were disabled. Looks better IMO. Since this appears subjective, I guess I'll have to make a command line option. :sigh:
Originally posted by Kalfireth
Right, now that's clear. I was thinking about ships and their engines. Lets take an Orion, it's sitting there - its engines at idle and it's not moving Its engine graphic sticks out a fairly long way. Set it moving and it goes even further out (to normal level - which is fine). As it stops the graphic reverts to its engines at idle.
The thing is, I think the stick out to far. What I'd like to see is:
A) When not moving, all ships using capital ship engine graphics do not have an engine glow effect of any kind. The engine is off, there's no need for anything to be shunted out of it... whatever tech the engine uses.
Fusion drive, which probably means shoving plasma from a fusion reactor out a really big tailpipe. Anyway, I did this in my code; size of the engine glow is dependent on thrust instead of velocity (yes, ships have a 'thrust' field in their physics info, along with actual velocity and such), and if there is no thrust then the engine glow disappears completely, as though the ship were disabled. (On a related note, engine wash is also turned off when there is no thrust.) This applies to all ships, not just big ones.
B) A fade on / off effect for capital ship engines. Thus when a ship starts up initially it begins a (fairly rapid) fade on/off of the engine graphic to simulate the engines being started. The engine graphic then gets longer once its completed fading in or indeed, disappears when its' finished fading out.
A fade effect for turning engines on/off would be neat. The speed of the fade effect should probably be determined by the ship's size/mass/thrust required/whatnot. Maybe apply a fade effect to the size of engine trails, too. Why limit this to big ships, though?
Waste of time? Something for later? Something you want to see right now?
Already done, so it doesn't matter if it's a waste of time or not. :P
Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I agree, to a limited extent. Firstly, engine glows must be on even when a ship is at rest. Not having the engine glows is an obvious visual indicator that the ship's disabled.
It's unrealistic. Not having the engine glows should be an obvious visual indicator that the ship's not trying to move anywhere, be it because it doesn't want to or because it can't because its engines are toast.
By the way, I did this in my own code. It doesn't look half bad. Plus it gives you an indication that you can fly right up next to a big ship's engine without getting washed. :)
As far as Bobboau's engine tails go, why not link them to the same code that regulates thruster flame length?
Probably already is, but I haven't seen it.
That is, if a ship's at rest you can't see them at all, and they extend depending on the speed of the craft.
Thrust, thrust, thrust. Having engine glows based on the speed of the ship has a good chance of looking very bad.
Having them extend according to the ship's actual speed and not its engine setting is a great idea, because you can see the ship's acceleration.
Unrealistic again. You can see it accelerating by its movement. Having its engine glows change as it accelerates would look wrong.
While we're at it, can we implement the turning off of specific engine glows when that particular engine subsystem has been destroyed?
Needs table entries for mapping engine subsystems to individual thruster glows.
Since each glow is already linked to a specific engine subsystem the groundwork is already there.
...Or not?
Originally posted by Carl
I think this is important, too. keep in mind the engine glow doesn't actually have to be thrust, just...glow. maybe it's the light from the fuel that's sitting right behind the engine? i don't know. but i think getting rid of it completely when the ship is stopped isn't a good idea.
Um, when you spew fuel or any sort of propellant out of an engine, it is because you are attempting to generate thrust. If you don't want to generate thrust, you don't do that, because you will anyway if you do.
Originally posted by Robin Varley
I might be going crazy, but when I was testing some stuff out yesterday on Shipyard-completed ( you know the FRED2 tutorial one ), when the NTF Aeolus came to a halt, it's engine glows stopped, then again the Sobek might have blown em off. I know this subject was mentioned recently, I think Bobboau brought it up and was saying he'd put it in or was considering it at the least - don't quote me on that though. I think I'll have a search for it.
I put it in, but it got rolled back along with a bunch of other stuff because of breakage. Maybe you grabbed the code before it got rolled back?
Originally posted by SadisticSid
Nah, I think the engines need a glow of some kind when not disabled... I bet you can't turn an Orion's propulsion system on and off with a flick of a switch. Surely it'd need to warm up or something for a ship so big.
Fine, but it's still going to go out once the engine warms down (a la warmdown for big ship beam weapons).
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For generatign nuclear thrust you should either use a fission reactor or a hot fusion reactor (as Descenterace explained to me a couple of weeks ago).
However it's not the nuclear matter you should be expelling - that would be far too wasteful, instead some other propellant that was heated using the nuclear reaction.
The problem with prolusion is that to gain more thrust you have to accelerate the propellant more - and create better nozzles. The problem is that you have a limit as of how much heat a nozzle can handle, however the faster the propellant goes, the hotter it has to be.
Using electrically charged propellant seems a solution - you can steer that matter with magnetic fields alone, so you need no actual nozzle to come into contact with the gas.
Ion engines work like this - they use ions as their propellant.
I think for a fuison engine using plasma would be ideal - however it doesn't have to be the same as the one iside your hot fuision reactor that creates the heat. It would be also easier to use a low temperature plasma compared to the high temperature inside the reactor.
This is why you have a separate engine and reactor subsystem.
So it's not a tailpipe showing plasma out of a reactor, but a range of magnetic coils venting plasma from a secondary aparatus, that gains its heat from the fusion reactor.
For a very basic engine you could even use the reactor, but that would be quite dangerous - it your engine is hit, your spacship would blow up, as the high temperature plasma would rot you alive.
You could have a some ghostlight coming from this "plasma condenser" to indicate that the ship is on-line, however you only need a small glow.
The effect would be nice if it were inside the thruster models of capships.
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Originally posted by Flaser
You could have a some ghostlight coming from this "plasma condenser" to indicate that the ship is on-line, however you only need a small glow.
I don't like this. It gives various sensors, including human eyes, a pretty big target to lock on to. Even if it's dim, it can easily give away a ship that is otherwise not detectable (eg, a stealth ship). Any light is a sharp contrast to the vast blackness of space, and is therefore easy to spot.
This also gives one a tactical advantage in (currently nonexistent) multiplayer: if you are flying a stealth ship, but someone has spotted you, you can kill your engines and play dead, and they might lose track of you. A mission designer might also direct AI ships to ai-play-dead, to make them try and hide from the player, or wait in ambush by not using their engines until the player has flown into the trap.
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Hmm, there's a difference between a shut off engine and an idling one...and focus here is on eye-candy, less on realism. This is a game intended to be fun, and part of that is for it to look pretty.
It's also a pain in the butt to have to cycle through a list of targets to see what's mobile and what is broken, especially when there are more than a few ships in mission.
Light may be a fairly sharp contrast in the blackness of space, however even interplanetary distances are huge - in order to spot even a vessel lit up like Christmas you'd have to have a good idea where to look, and be actively looking for it. Even then there is a good chance you'd miss it in the background clutter of space - which though a cold, hard vacuum is far from devoid of sources of light.
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The engine glow bitmap is mapped onto a poly, isn't it? What about scaling & changine the opacity of it based on the %tage thrust or something.... so the engines are fairly dull and look kind of inactive when still, but then begin to glow brightly as the ship 'powers up'?
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Originally posted by Hellbender
Hmm, there's a difference between a shut off engine and an idling one...and focus here is on eye-candy, less on realism. This is a game intended to be fun, and part of that is for it to look pretty.
I'm thinking about both realism and tactics here.
It's also a pain in the butt to have to cycle through a list of targets to see what's mobile and what is broken, especially when there are more than a few ships in mission.
Why do you need to know if a ship is mobile or broken?
Light may be a fairly sharp contrast in the blackness of space, however even interplanetary distances are huge
But FreeSpace battles aren't at interplanetary distances, now are they?
Even then there is a good chance you'd miss it in the background clutter of space - which though a cold, hard vacuum is far from devoid of sources of light.
Again, I'm thinking of FreeSpace tactics here. The starfield backdrop is pretty much pitch black, so an engine glow against it is plainly obvious.
Originally posted by aldo_14
The engine glow bitmap is mapped onto a poly, isn't it?
If the ship has a thruster trail mesh, then a thruster trail animation is drawn on it. Whether the ship has a thruster trail mesh or not, each thruster has a thruster glow bitmap drawn on it.
What about scaling & changine the opacity of it based on the %tage thrust or something....
That's already how it's done, though the engine glows are only barely dimmer at idle than they are at full throttle.
As I've said on this thread already, the way I've modded FS2 for my own purposes, the engine glows go out completely when the engines are idling. IMO it looks better that way, and doesn't have any interesting effects on gameplay in my experience. Maybe if others actually played the game with this modification, they would see how it really affects the game, rather than making these "it's bad" remarks without actually knowing how it looks and affects gameplay.