Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Stealth[cro] on February 02, 2004, 02:44:46 pm
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Okay, here's the general idea. I have a mod/near-TC on my mind and I'm still brainstorming over it. Basically, I'd attempt creating (or just send my ideas to someone who is willing to do it) a quasi-atmospheric flight game out of FS. FS2_open engine, modified weapons, new ships, the usual. If anyone's played M$ Crimson Skies, that's kind-of the idea.
The problem is (aside from the fact I still have to do some reading on modelling and all :rolleyes: ) that, IIRC, FS2_open doesn't have movement-dependent model changes. Translated, if I bank my ship left, no ailerons will move, if I pull "up" or "down", the elevators and/or the engine submodel (in case the ship has Thrust-vectoring) won't budge.
Is there any way to make this work? If not, is there any chance this might appearn in revision 3.7 or some such? ;)
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AFAIK and IIRC, i think not. the FS source wasn;t made to this kind off stuff, really. also, if you are thinking seriously about this, you might want to note that moddeling one ship is hard, but modeling an entire atmospheric fleet is insane. also, gravity isn't implementable in this engine.
note, please, that i am no coder and these facts could be wrong. but i have been around quite long now, and these are the standard answers IIRC.
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You didnt read what he was asking for.
He was asking for WC-style movement-dependant subobjects.
I.e. you have an 'engine pod' which will move around with your ship. Just like air stabilizers and the like.
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Gravity isn't an issue here - I said it'd be quasi-atmospheric flight. Nobody mentioned anything about gravity :D
Thus spoke kasperl:
...moddeling one ship is hard, but modeling an entire atmospheric fleet is insane. also, gravity isn't implementable in this engine.
Yes, I know just how hard it is to model anything. I've been fiddling with Bryce for some time, and since that thing has no vertex-per-vertex modelling... you get the drift. Booleans kill people. :blah:
Of course, I wouldn't do it all by myself, though I already have the schematics for the ships - after all, russian plane schematics aren't that hard to come by (some export companies actually have them available for download, not to mention fansites), and somehow I hope the same will hold true for USNAF and other planes. I don't suppose anyone would try dogfighting in a MiG-29K? :D
Lightspeed: Exactly my idea. I'm talking about modern jets here - air stabilizers won't add much to the game itself, but more like an eyecandy of sorts ;)
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Maybe there could be something that links with the engine glow vectors, but is limited to a single axis, and is limited at a certain angle, so a hard right on the throttle, would cause the right 'Stabiliser' will move at the same angle as the thrusters?
The only problem would be limiting the angle so that both stabilisers work, but they don't move 'inside' the hull on opposite sides, if that makes any sense?
Flipside :D
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Among other things, the POF format doesn't allow for animation channels beyond simple rotation. You might want to look into something like Flux (I-war2's engine) for this. Source is not available though.
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yet it would be possible.
you could calculate the degrees the subobject with the percentage the axis is turned and rotate it that way.
I think it would be pretty complicated to code, though. :)
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If Kazan's uber-engine project gets going, that may give you the means. With the current engine, it'd be hard to impossible.
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This is another example of non-coders having no idea how much work it takes to add a feature. :lol:
The infrastructure for this is in place already, and I could probably have this coded in an afternoon. Not until after 3.6, though. ;)
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:nervous:
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That's thrice, now. :p
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Originally posted by Goober5000
This is another example of non-coders having no idea how much work it takes to add a feature. :lol:
The infrastructure for this is in place already, and I could probably have this coded in an afternoon. Not until after 3.6, though. ;)
How basic would it be, Goob? I'm interested in seeing something like what I-war2 has: complex motion based on channels (Ie, things triggered by player firing primary, firing secondary, pitching, banking, yawing, accellerating or decellerating, dropping a counter measure, triggering communications, triggering docking... IE: anything the player can do can be trapped and tied to an animation event). Animations is defined, in this case, as firing of special effects (afterburners cones or trails, glowing engine bits) geometry changes to the model over time (with reversal of those changes on a reversed curve, etc), appearance and disappearance of subobjects, etc.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
This is another example of non-coders having no idea how much work it takes to add a feature. :lol:
:lol: So very true... I know, the idea is a bit far-fetched.
Seriously, I didn't expect you people to jump on the idea right away, more like gnaw on it for a while first... though, the sooner it gets implemented, the better! :D
mikhael - sub-objects tied to keypresses would be very nice - for one, that'd finally let some weapons have a kickback effect on the cannon barrels. That even goes in regular FS2 - if memory serves, a Maxim cannon still acts like a mass driver. If it fires solid slugs, it should at least give some barrel recoil.
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Essentially, when I set up the lock-rotating-subsystem and free-rotating-subsystem sexps, I took a look at the subsystem code. It's very easy to start and stop rotation in response to various events. All that would be needed is to tie subsystem rotation to various keypresses.
It doesn't mean that it would be simple to actually use, though. Take an aileron for example. You'd have to specify the aileron as a rotating subobject in the POF file. Then you'd have to specify the speed, direction, and maximum amount of rotation. Then you'd have to specify what triggers the rotation (banking, in this case). And there'd be no way to scale the amount of rotation to the amount of bank. But at the basic level, it's doable. :nod:
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What about non-rotational motions, Goob? And why link it to SEXPs? That limits animations to mission based events.
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what i have suggested before was a table based system, that would add certain SEXPs in a mission, the moment the model is put into the mission. the designer could then change the SEXP's at will, and a modder could include standard stuff in the table.
but, read the siggy, i am talking out of my ass here.
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mikhael: It doesn't have to be linked to sexps. I could add a hook to link it to any AI behavior or motion. As for non-rotational motion, if it can be represented by a rotation or partial rotation, it's doable. If not, well... the infrastructure for that is not in place, so that probably won't get done.
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you can always script it using the properties box in the pof editors where you specify turret rotation and such
$rotational axis: (0=x, 1=y, 2=z)
$maximum angle:
$max speed:
$bind to:
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:nod: That's how I did the spinning barrels thing for primary weapons fire.
$pbank =
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Something like this could also do well for the SW conversion, with "s" foils and all. Would this system also allow swing doors on the hangar of a ship or instellation? I realize that sliding doors are something all-together different, but would the swing doors work?
Later!
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swing doors might, i think. rotate 90 on key press, rotate 90 the other way on key press.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
mikhael: It doesn't have to be linked to sexps. I could add a hook to link it to any AI behavior or motion. As for non-rotational motion, if it can be represented by a rotation or partial rotation, it's doable. If not, well... the infrastructure for that is not in place, so that probably won't get done.
That's what I thought. I'd rather have all animation A) in the POF and B) not restrictied to rotational effects.
*sigh*
If only PS (now Argonaut Sheffield) would release the source for Iwar2's Flux engine. All would be right with the world.
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Originally posted by Trivial Psychic
Something like this could also do well for the SW conversion, with "s" foils and all. Would this system also allow swing doors on the hangar of a ship or instellation? I realize that sliding doors are something all-together different, but would the swing doors work?
Later!
Sliding would also work.
Simply rotate the doors around their y-axis while having the center of the subobject a short distance behind the door.
It will look as if the doors would slide open, when in reality they only turn around their center points. :)
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why an aileron in space? it's just...pointless, even for eye candy.
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Speaking on this sort of things.... is it possible to have a certain subsystem rotate, say 45º, but that rotation is trigered by a SEXP?? Sort of like, a ship has retractable wings, and I want to set it up sortoff like, when is warps in, the wings are retracted, and then a SEXP would make the wings open the 45º...
Also, it would be good to "store" a certain sub-object movement (say the wings opening and closing...) in the .pof file, and then have a SEXP that would just be like DO-MODEL-ANIM => <>
Catch my drift??
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like the intrepid(star trek) warp nacells?
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dunno... I don't like star trek much, so I dunno what you are talking about...
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
why an aileron in space? it's just...pointless, even for eye candy.
To recapitulate the first post... suppose you're playing Freespace in a giant gas cloud or VERY high orbit (think Omicron Alpha in FL, if that's the one that looks like the wild blue yonder plus two suns :wtf: ). Because of the density of the atmosphere, you need some way to steer. I've never seen a directional thruster in FS, so, in order to actually see that you're steering, I suppose you'd need a set of ailerons and elevators, or maybe a rudder.
Come to think of it, even some FS2 ships would benefit from it - the Seth and Horus both look like they were once atmospheric flightcraft, judging by their tail fins anyway.
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3 questions:
is it possible now to move with a keypress the subobject back to its original position after a partial rotation? That's pretty important
is it possible to have firing points on rotating subobject? Think at the xwing, the cannons are on the s-foils. Not a big problem anyway since in all the SW games you can't shoot with the s-foils closed (probably because ti was too difficult for the coders to enable this:p)
BTW, this should allow fixed turretts on rotating parts.
is it possible to have moving subobjects on other moving subobjects? I think no, btw it could be useful in order to make some more complex animations and to have multipart turretts on rotating parts of a ship (assuming that you'll also solve the firing points problem).
An example of a more complex animation is the B-wing: the cockpit remain still and is the center of the rotation for the rest of the hull, and the wings on the hull rotate too.
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Originally posted by KARMA
is it possible to have firing points on rotating subobject? Think at the xwing, the cannons are on the s-foils. Not a big problem anyway since in all the SW games you can't shoot with the s-foils closed (probably because ti was too difficult for the coders to enable this:p)
BTW, this should allow fixed turretts on rotating parts.
Firing points are geometry independent, so far as I can tell. So, yes. You can have firing points 10 meters in front of your ship if you want*
(*actually, never tried this, so dunno if the engine does 'stuff' if firing points are outside the bounding box)
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you are right, but I expressed it badly: can we have firing points actually moving as the subobject move?
With the xwing, in the hypotesis that I want the cannons to be able to fire with the foils closed, I may have an alternative set of firing points, and the coders would "only" have to "connect" the different firing points to the different wing positions (you'll not be able to fire during the movement). But what about a turrett on a rotating subobject?
Also I'd be curious to see some effects like a vortex of fire created by a firing point on a continously rotating subobject:)
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You can get that sort of effect with the $shots and $fof tags although the dispersion is random.