Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Bobboau on May 30, 2004, 03:21:43 am
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http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open_cloak_effect_test.zip
I have it set up to have all ships phase in and out of cloak over the course of one second to allow veiwing of the effect, I'm currently awaiting some information on how to properly integrate it with the exsisting cloaking system.
this build isn't particularly practical, its only good for showing off the effect being turned on and off (over and over again with no actual result on game play)
this isn't your standard alpha blending effect though, I used a rather complex serese of texture rendering, and scaleing /orientation matrices to get it to work out the way it is, the idea was to have a cloak that looked sort of like it was refractive, it isn't a perfict replecation of what's behind it, sharp angles will cause distortions in the immage, and this is how I intended it, in a dog fight all you'll be able to make out is a slight disturbence in the background, you sure as hell won't see anything untill it's right on top of you, and being cloaked you'r sensors will be of no use, and you will most asuredly lose track of your target, makeing it a quite effective stealth, that does not simply make the ship in question invisable. one of the bigger downfalls of the cloaking effect is that it won't show other ships behind the cloaked ship, I have no intention of trying to fix this as it's about the only way your going to be able to hit one of these things, and I always thought that this should be a limitation of a cloaking device (not able to take into acount near by objects in it's environment projection, if you know anything about optics this actualy makes a hell of a lot of sence).
so enjoy this useless eyecandy demonstraition build
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Sounds very interesting - any chance you could get some screenies of the refraction effect?
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(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic00.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic01.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic02.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic03.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic04.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic05.jpg)
(http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/cloakpic06.jpg)
I realy should have the thrusters turned off for the effect
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Well, the ships aren't completely gone. Could you make it that it can fade from this, to completely gone? Perhaps make a table value, specifying of close to completly gone it's cloack is, together with how long it can keep it, and how long it takes to cloack.
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but... what fun would completly gone be there's no eye cany at all then, it's just nothing rendered, and that just seems unimagenative. I think I'll get some sort of energy thing to flash by as it's halfway through cloaking, and I supose once it's fully to the point it's at I could fade it to an additive alpha wich would be almost totaly invisable.
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Yeah, well, totally invisible for short periods is a great tactical thing, even if it looks, well, dull.
And can you make the blending of the thrusters independent of the main thing? So that a modder can let a bit of thruster seep through, while the ship is cloacked?
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yeah, but that isn't even the part of the thing I'm working on, Phreak is the one in charge of the cloaking system I'm just takeing care of the d3d implementation of the effect.
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oh, ok.
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Bob this is way cool, but kasperl is right, the modder should be able to specify whether or not things can be blended to complete transparency or not. After all if you cloak a capital ship with this it's going to be VERY easy to see which kinda defeats the point. Maybe fighters could use that cool distortion cloak in combat to maintain play balance while capital ships would have a 100% perfect cloak controlled by sexps
This is really sweet, brings cloaked fighters in Inferno one step closer to feasibility :)
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yeah, it realy doesn't work very well for cap ships, anything biger than a freighter is probly out of luck with this.
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its a nice effect... reminds me of predator's cloaking, just not as strong... perhaps keep this eefect, and ALSO add a light transparency?
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What Drakken said. Oh, and turn of the squad logos & thrusters while cloaked :D
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I know this is sort of going on a tangent, but its always been accepted that when cloaking is finished, that it will be implimented as a tertiary device. In that instance, once enough teritary devices are coded in, a new tertiary.tbl file should be implimented that allows the modder to dictate what specific capabilities of each tertiary. Then we could say weather a cloak hides thrusters, makes a ship completely invisible, allows other ships behind them to be seen, etc. That way, for example if someone is modding star trek ships, then the cloak effect there can be true to its universe, and allow vessels on the other side to be seen through. Just my thoughts.
Later!
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It looks very sweet imho.
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More screenies plz! :D
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I think it looks real good with the thrusters showing. but that's just me. and, yeah. more screenies, perhaps cloaking infront of a beem weapon or a realy big explosion?
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make it look more like the predator effect for ultimate coolness ;)
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Keep the engine glows. Why would it make sense to cloak those? Why would the disappear when in clock mode anyway?
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Because cloaking is useless then?
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Then there should be some sort drawback if glows are not there in cloak mode.
BTW excellent job Bob. :D
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:wtf:
Cloaking should give a tactical advantage. If you make it useless, putting it iin would make no sense.
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Having never tried out cloaking before, I have to ask - how do you use it? The instructions in the wiki didn't work, it told me it was disabled and thanked me for playing. :wtf:
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probably because the higher level stuff isn't implemented, according to bob.
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I LIKE IT....even Wing Commander 3 and StarLancer have done these things. The cloak is not 100% (or try Halo which has a adaptive camoflage) and there is some associated eyecandy. Even some of the earlier Star Trek cloaks (Star Trek 3) had the cloak create some kind of visual disturbance on the viewscreen. So I like the idea and I like the implementation! Sounds great!
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I'm thinking here that if the cloaking is on the skin of the ship, it wouldn't effect teh engine glow at all... engine glow would still be visible since the device doing the cloaking doesn't cover them.
However, if the cloak were part of the shield system instead (ala StarTrek) then the engine glow would also be masked. However, I think if you make the cloak part of the shield system, then you should do the texturing to the shield mesh instead of the ship model
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Showing the thruster is stupid. Hate to be so blunt, but that's negating the cloaking. Even Starcraft cloaked the thrusters on the Wraith. But to even it out, the cloaking didn't last forever. Which is how it should be. I think so, atleast.
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IMHO:
Cloaking = only fighter size vessels
Cloaking = no afterburner possible without decloaking
Cloaking = no weapons
Cloaking = decreasing ship energy while active - when it reaches "0" it will uncloak.
And yeah, cloak the thrusters too :p
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I'd have to agree...
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I agree the thrusters should be cloaked because otherwise it makes it fundamentally useless, I'm just adding that in order to realistically cloak the engine emissions, the shield should do the cloaking, not the ship's hull... makes it a lot more logical
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well this is all something of a moot point becase I just had a lockup and the file with the cloaking effect in it just god absolutlely destroied, so I't gona be a while untill I even get a working build again.
:doubt:
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well just think Bob, the second time should be that much easier right? ;)
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
IMHO:
Cloaking = only fighter size vessels
Cloaking = no afterburner possible without decloaking
Cloaking = no weapons
Cloaking = decreasing ship energy while active - when it reaches "0" it will uncloak.
And yeah, cloak the thrusters too :p
Agree with everything....except that having a cloaking capital ship may freak someone out sometime. Remember in WC4, the cloaking electronic warfare ship.
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Or you could do the Homeworld wireframe for your cloak!:D
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
IMHO:
Cloaking = only fighter size vessels
Cloaking = no afterburner possible without decloaking
Cloaking = no weapons
Cloaking = decreasing ship energy while active - when it reaches "0" it will uncloak.
And yeah, cloak the thrusters too :p
IMO, there should be no absolutes, as (I mentioned in my earlier post) many mods would like cloaks to have different properties and drawbacks. These should be expressed in a table entry, so in theory one mod could have more than one type of cloak. Returning to Star Trek, the early Romulan cloaks would still leave a non-targettable blip on the radar, while the cheap copy the Klingons had for one episode of TOS, would leave the ship still partially visible. Furthermore, most cloaks require a ship to drop shields while its active, but some Klingon designs can retain shields during cloak (TNG episode, season 4 finale, Klingon Civil war, Kurn's BOP fires on another which is cloaked and hits its shields), or the Scimitar from the last movie. Also, most cloaks do not allow a ship to fire, but the Scimitar and the BOP from ST6 are exceptions.
My point is, that all of these factors must be up to the MODer to decide, and not the coder.
Later!
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
Cloaking = only fighter size vessels
Cloaking = no afterburner possible without decloaking
it would be more mod freindly if this could be specified in the tbl ;7
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Dude, the implementation for this is absolutely perfect. Here's to hoping you can get it working again later. :)
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I had it almost absolutely perfict before the crash, I had it so the distortion could be adgusted by a vaarialbe so it could be phased in untill it matched the backgound perfictly, from there it could start alpha blending untill you were totaly invisable, eh... it took me all day twiddleing around with assorted matrices, there's no way I'm gona have the time to retool it till next weekend, and that'll be the last week I have off (school) for two months. man I've been up for nearly 20 hours and I have work in another 3, and I just can't get too sleep, as I type I feel realy tierd but as soo as I lay down I feel all jumpy and energetic, my life sucks :doubt:
I think I fixed most of the other damage that crash caused, but sence then it's been locking like that every hour or so, I've had it do this a few times before it suddenly starts doing it then it suddenly stops doing it again, the thing starts makeing the clicking noies that sounds sort of like the click it makes when the power shuts off but it does it two or three times a second and the activity light is on full, within seconds every program stops responding and after a minute or two the mouse freizes too, the only way to get my computer back is to manualy shut off the power, if it locks when in the middle of saveing something (like d3d.cpp) the file is usualy totaly gone, it's like it gets caught in some realy low level infinite loop that just keeps drawing more and more power. but it's got to be a hardware issue with that clicking sound.
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Sounds like the classic "click of death" right before a hard disk crashes. I'd back everything up quick.
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I've only heard of "click of death" applied to Zip and Jaz drives... but I suppose since a HDD works the same basic way...
I was thinking essentially the same thing, that it's likely a dying harddrive, ost likely the controller, so rescue what you can, while you can.
Another, less likely, possibility is a short in the power supply, equally dangerous, if not moreso since it can damage multiple components within the system. It would sound similar, but I say less likely because I imagine you would have worse problems than just locking up.
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I had the same "click" with an IBM SCSI hard drive, so I guess it can happen to harddrives too - it must be some pretty rare mechanical failure that creates the noise.
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Actually with IBM harddisks it isn't all that rare. Just look at the IBM 65GXP and 75GXP series disks. Tons of failures, all starting with that click of death, which actually is the disk arm resetting into the park area intermittently due to a faulty controller.
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might i suggest the cloak (once u redo the build), appy to the awacs as well?
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DE: That's for the modder to determine. You should be able to cloak anything, from a cargo container to a Collusus.
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I think he was refering to what degree an AWACS can pick up a cloaked ship, if at all.
On the "click of death" thing, I had this happen late last year with my 30GB IBM 7200rpm drive. Fortunately for me, I had just bought a new 120GB Western Digital and had transfered all of my archive files to that drive. I did lose some of my FS2 work, but not everything. Once the "click" takes over, your drive is gonna be done for... sorry Bob.
Later!
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This would open up a lot of interesting ideas, but it should probably be up to the mod/mission designer what effects cloaking should have. Maybe it could be made into a sexp.
It's really frustrating when things like the happen. I have never had a total disk-wide faliure (before I noticed it and backed up stuff) but wouldn't want to think of what would happen if that occurred. How long do you think it will take to redo the effect?
75GXP
I had one of these die on me last year, although it wasn't so much of a click of death as a whine of death that got became very loud over a two-month period. It was sounding like an airplane when I finally disconnected it.
My current HD also seems to be having trouble as it always locks up (along with the rest of the computer) for ten or so seconds after writing about 44mb, after which everything is okay again, but I think that it's an issue with a loose internal connection (occasionally the hard drive disconnects and the system cannot read it at all during boot, but shaking the computer a bit fixes it) or the ATA controller, which I will be removing soon anyway once I get some time.
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it wasn't a total disck wide failure the only reason I lost the file with the effect in it was becase everything locked up as I happened to start the build process (I'm actualy lucky I didn't lose more), the issues had started just moments prior but I didn't notice untill it was too late, the problem isn't even with the disk the file is on, it's the disck that has my xp install thats fuxorated
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I recently had one of my Maxtors fail, it was way past due tho, thing was 5+ years old, which is a good run time for a HDD that's on 24/7/356
No click death with it, but Maxtor and Seagate are just super quiet drives so you usually don't hear them going... usually the disk goes before the controller, but occasionally the control goes first, and that's the worst kind cause you only get a couple days to grab as much as you can before it's too late
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well I never stored anything vital on the disk, other than the OS anyway
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Meh, I've got a 60GB IBM drive (IDE) that's been intermittently doing the death-click thing for 6 months but working fine atm... whenever I move the base unit it seems to start clicking again and I have to jiggle the drive around a bit to get it working again
Not really a long-term solution but there's nothing valuable on it anyway :p
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There is a temporary solution to the click of death: fdisk.
Delete and recreate the partition, and you'll be click free for a while. Not very subtle and rather painful.:(
Worked for me, until I managed to talk IBM into a replacement.:yes:
(BTW, that was IBM's advice to me)