Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Turnsky on December 29, 2004, 11:39:42 pm
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okay, this is just a little fun to shoot a few ideas involving the SCP, who knows, some of them might actually work, either way, it's just a little harmless fun, and discussion.. as well as fanciful requests, could give the guys in the ferrium project some thoughts as well. :nod:
i'll start
large-destructable parts of warships.. (like blowing the "wings" off a hecate)
engine flicker-multiple explosions- then burnt out derelect hulls, instead of having big lumps of debris floating hither and yon..
the "bloom" effect.. if you've played bridge commander, and halo2, etc.. you'll know what i'm talking about..
transforming vessels..as well as swing-wing desgined..
more advanced beam charge-up animation, like the endgame movie when capella goes boom, the energy crackling along the "spires" of the ship.. or something like points of energy moving up to meet in a point where the beam fires, like with phaser strips in star-trek, etc.
in-engine, character-based cutscenes! (yes, like freelancer)
higher-poly debris, this might seem like a minor gripe, but the currant debris only look like asteroids with a bit of hull texture applied, not actual chunks of obliterated spacecraft...
with debris, dead people to float about said debris.. like in starlancer.
"turreted" and auto-locking/tracking primaries, like in S:AAB, as well as starlancer, primary fire will track your target within your target reticule, should be toggled..
different huds, for different ships.. i know this may seem a little silly considering how well our current one works, but given how diverse the species' ship designs are, you'd think that it would influence the design of the HUD, too.. like you have your classic hud for terran ships, something with a vasudan influence for well, vasudan ships.. and when you fly shivan vessels.. you get the idea.
a more diverse, and richer "universe" as far as freespace is concerned
the option to be able to upgrade/redesign your own fighter...? :nervous:
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I especially like the large-destructible part. That's what I like to see when I watch (or play) sci-fi. The in-game cutscenes would definitely be useful for FREDers and story-telling, hopefully by pausing the action and letting the cutscene take over. It'd make Derelict a lot more easier to enjoy (hint: watch Gorgon Cannon fire without being distracted or watch the Argentus do its thing at the end).
Good ideas all around. :nod: :yes:
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Originally posted by Turnsky
.......transforming vessels..as well as swing-wing desgined.....
*imagines a Sathani transforming into a huge battle mech* :p
:drevil:
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i do have another couple of ideas..
Since the SCP have so kindly implimented Skybox, i want to see somebody model an entire cityscape with it, say, the size of manhattan, vasudan, and make it the fall of vasuda prime...
more advanced beam impact effects.. like, a dusting of particles around the impact point, as well as the current impact animation, also, when a beam cuts through a ship, a small explosion to signify that it's just gone straight through the ship..
a long beam scar would look kinda nifty too.
Smoke.. like, real smoke.. or at least a better looking particle effect, when a ship is heavily damaged, or scripted to do so..
with skybox... another idea or two... Rain.. like, a shower, or a thunderstorm..
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1 major thing that would looks soo good.
Burning debris!
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Screw that - I think ships themselves should burn. ;) You know when a ship gets down to critical hull strength (~30% IIRC) and they get that lightning arcing over the hull? Well, I think that there should be an option for ships to catch fire and burn. It'd basically be a new particle effect, I suppose, but it'd have to be bigger than the current one, and look really good. I have a mental image of a shot-up Orion limping away from an engagement whilst on fire from torpedo strikes...
It'd be cool if that was implemented with the destroyable chunks and smoke effects, and the hulk-death option, rather than always having a huge explosion followed by a few lumps of stuff shooting off at high speed. Would make for some amazing scenery and eye-candy, if nothing else.
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the "bloom" effect
I played Deus Ex 2 with that option turned on for about 10 minutes and hated it. I couldn't see a damn thing.
I think ships themselves should burn. You know when a ship gets down to critical hull strength (~30% IIRC) and they get that lightning arcing over the hull? Well, I think that there should be an option for ships to catch fire and burn.
Basicly like that Apollo in the FS1 intro?
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Originally posted by Kosh
I played Deus Ex 2 with that option turned on for about 10 minutes and hated it. I couldn't see a damn thing.
Basicly like that Apollo in the FS1 intro?
DX2's bloom effect was overdone, something with a bit of subtlety to it would suffice, like the nacelle/deflector glows from ST, that sorta thing..
and i'm guessing yeah, traling a long plume of smoke from an engine instead of a thruster glow, i'm guessing.
okay, how's this one.. a more accessable active camoflage/cloaking system, i haven't heard anything about this for quite some time.
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Originally posted by Turnsky
i do have another couple of ideas..
Since the SCP have so kindly implimented Skybox, i want to see somebody model an entire cityscape with it, say, the size of manhattan, vasudan, and make it the fall of vasuda prime...
http://www.sectorgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1119
(why am I advertising other peoples campaigns? Oh well, c'est la vie)
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Has anyone played "Space Interceptor:Project Freedom"? It´s a small but nifty little game. I heard one guy alone made it or something. Anyway, they have a great way how ships blow up. After the big boom, all that remains is a twisted, scorched heep of metal. Looks realy good. The hull doesn´t go flying off in little debris, it stays there, full of holes, smoking and *burning*. Maybe i should take a screeny of it...
And destroyable ship parts is what it should have been all along. Blowin´ up an engine, a nacelle, a wing, or whatever, would look and feel more realistic. Like blowing off a Sathanas arm, instead of just the tip. Or the Colossus breaking in half by the neck.
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Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
Has anyone played "Space Interceptor:Project Freedom"? It´s a small but nifty little game. I heard one guy alone made it or something. Anyway, they have a great way how ships blow up. After the big boom, all that remains is a twisted, scorched heep of metal. Looks realy good. The hull doesn´t go flying off in little debris, it stays there, full of holes, smoking and *burning*. Maybe i should take a screeny of it...
And destroyable ship parts is what it should have been all along. Blowin´ up an engine, a nacelle, a wing, or whatever, would look and feel more realistic. Like blowing off a Sathanas arm, instead of just the tip. Or the Colossus breaking in half by the neck.
Both of those can be pretty much done already, though.
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A neat thing that may never happen: for cutscenes, how about simply removing the 'game' elements almost totally, and instead just using the Rendering engine to it's max.
The principle with most rendering engine is the same: have a camera, mod special effects into the hull as this light source travels here (which appears like a beam) to here.
However, in FS2 the game pretty much does that all for you. The rendering engine is there, the capabilities are there. All that is required is to further enhance FRED to incorporate the facilities, as well as FS2. For example: if a different version of FRED was created to make .fs2 (or maybe a different format alltogether) files with a 'cutscene' check in them, it would hold all the tools necessary to place and move around objects as you visualize it in a scene. Want a diemos to take a special path? Fly it around with the keyboard and have waypoints auto-generated as it moves. The camera would have it's own course. Lighting and effects could all be generated in-game, with only the placement of the main sun source and background nebula being an issue. Beam effects, weapons, engine glows everything is already generated in-game! SexPs could be used to trigger and time events, and the flexibility here for large-scale battles would be massive.
Once FS2 loads this file, rather than go into the game, it would go to a 'render' mode, where the output would be put frame-by-frame at the specified FPS or into an .avi movie format in a selected folder. The output would be viewable, and with all the ub3r features that FS2 is known for. It'd work quite a bit faster than most renders as well I wager, and it would also be ever-improving as the SCP guys add more and more stuff to it over the years, unlike most renderers now, which are pretty static.....
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Originally posted by Turnsky
large-destructable parts of warships.. (like blowing the "wings" off a hecate)
Already doable with Bobbau's non targetable subsystems.
engine flicker-multiple explosions- then burnt out derelect hulls, instead of having big lumps of debris floating hither and yon..
the "bloom" effect.. if you've played bridge commander, and halo2, etc.. you'll know what i'm talking about..
Dunno about the bloom, but the other stuff sounds good. Variable debris would be very cool, too, so that the ships don't always have the same debris...one capship explodes more or less totally, leaving only a few chunks behind, the other one leaves a burnt out hull behind.
transforming vessels..as well as swing-wing desgined.
Yeah moving parts would be cool for vector based engines(that means that the engine mounts are moveable to further increase the ships maneuveability)
in-engine, character-based cutscenes! (yes, like freelancer)
I could imagine that being incredibly hard to implement, but yeah it'd be cool, especially WCS could need something like that, otherwise the download size would be larger with prerendered cuscenes an all that.
Ther are free or abandoned shooter engines out there that could be adapted and implementedfor that...Quake1 with source mods could do the job .
with debris, dead people to float about said debris.. like in starlancer.
That's one odd request. :wtf: And AFAIK the people in SL weren't dead but ejected pilots in their spacesuits
different huds, for different ships
Should be doable with WMC's HUD_gauges.tbl. What I'd like besides are HUD gauges that aren't restricted to the HUD color palette(I want a multicolored gun energy counter FFS!)
.. i know this may seem a little silly considering how well our current one works,
That's boubtful, IMO the FS HUD is one of the worst HUDs I've seen in any space shooter/flight simulator. It's cluttered with useless stuff, is incredibly ineffective, and on the technical side it could use some work too:
The HUD transparency: I like to play with a deep blue HUD but due to the transparency I can't see **** most of the time because the background always shines through. The gun energy counter doesn't need to to be transparent because usually there isn't *anything of interest* behind it.
FS HUD uses multiple guages that could be combined into one without loosing information: A targeting VDU might be nice and fancy, but it serves no real purpose. All the information in it like ship type, name and health could be put over the shield indicator, the ship graphic in the shield indicator serves already the purpose of identifying the ship type(at least I know shipsfrom their silouettes), and it could change color according to damage status(green -nominal/ yellow-moderate damage/ red- heavy damage) and simply put the damage counter from the VDU in the middle of it if you want to know it exactly.
The same with that mini shield/HP icon. You already have a gauge that indicates all that info. Why do you need another one saying exactly the same?
Communication window/menue: You abviouly can't communicate while you receive a comm, so there's no need to spread those things over the HUD. I'd put them on th same place on the screen to save screen space.
That ring thing around the HUD: I don't know about the others, but I don't pay attention to any of the warning indicators there, I even only discovered them when working on the HUD. To me, they are useless andserve no other purpose than to block my view.
Speed gauge: Why do you need a large indcator going up and down when the speed changes? A single numerical counter in the edge of the screen does the same without blocking my frontal view.
weapon/afterburner energy counter: The same. Why fo they have to sit near the reticle? Visibility would be better if they were at he boreder of the screen left and right to the radar.
Kill counter: Useless. I can always check in the pilot room how many kills do I have.
See, the HUD is far from perfect.
a more diverse, and richer "universe" as far as freespace is concerned
Not sure if SCP can do that :p
the option to be able to upgrade/redesign your own fighter...? :nervous:
There should be borders..FS is a mission based space shooter and not Privateer. Too much freedom is not good for gameplay, the player needs certain leads/rextrictions.
If you give Joe Average the ability to do something stupid he does and complains afterwards.
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Plus the fact that last one would involve rewriting half the game.
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Usoing SEXPs and Model subsystems would allow for v/g wings.
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I love the Freespace hud, the VDU is essential for attacking cap ships, the warning indicators are esential in dogfights etc...
Mabye if you play at 800x600 it's cluttered but at 1024x786 the hud is fine.
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Frankly, I prefer the FS-styled HUD to that of any of the Wing Commander games or that of Starlancer. This is mainly because it's easier to keep track of your gun and afterburner energy states, because they're closer to the reticule, which is where you spend most of your time looking.
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there's always streamlining the current HUD
y'know, use little icons instead of words for various things..
have the power meters closer together.. or smaller/somewhere else.
you get the idea.
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Yeah, liking the HUD is mainly a personal matter and you are all used to it....but think about it as if you see it for the first time. As said, there areo two or even three gauges which tell you the same which is pointless, and some could be easily combined into one Gauge without loosing any information(likeshield counter+VDU data)
As for the stuff being close to the reticle, matter of taste, but I think all the elements should be on the screens borders, obstructing your view as less as possible.
To me, the ideal HUD would initially only have reticule, radar, gun/afterburner energy, speed counter and weapon selection visible, the rest of the HUD gauges would be only activated by keypress, because you simply don't need them most of the time.
the VDU is essential for attacking cap ships
Not quite. The targeted subsystem has a bracket around it on the main screen, same as in the VDU(--->again, two gauges that tell you exactly the same). Only thing you'd need is a tiny readout which subsystem has been targeted, but you don't need a whole VDU just for that.
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VDU is useful if you can't see the ship you're attacking though; i.e. if you've just done a strafing run and want to set up to turn round.
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I would really like to see Beam effects like someone said. Maybe when a beam shoots thru a warship it leaves a Huge hole, kinda like the FS2 intro with the Orion. And you can fly thru it. Another cool thing would be to dock in ships Fighter bays to complete a mission. Or for a brief moment when a mission begins you start off in subspace than warp in. But these probley won't be made into the game.:(
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Originally posted by WeatherOp
I would really like to see Beam effects like someone said. Maybe when a beam shoots thru a warship it leaves a Huge hole, kinda like the FS2 intro with the Orion. And you can fly thru it. Another cool thing would be to dock in ships Fighter bays to complete a mission. Or for a brief moment when a mission begins you start off in subspace than warp in. But these probley won't be made into the game.:(
1st can't be done without geo-mod or a specially designed ship.
2nd can already be done, just need the end-mission sexp and set the ships flags to have no-collide-invisible so you can physically fly in.
3rd can be semi-done already with the red-alert, and I think there is some work done to further support it with autopilot, although it probably won't be exactly what you're asking for.
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It would be nice to have a turn on/off subspace sexp
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It would be nice if I could tell a wingman to ignore a specific wing instead of ignoring an idividual fighter would save alot of time.
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How about flickering lights when a capship is under heavy fire?
This could be done easily - simply turning the glow effect on and off for the duration of the heavy attack.
Of course, that wouldn't work for parts mapped with no glowmap parts.
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another idea... in missions with gaseous substances in it, like nebs, or atmosphere for all those skybox missions, anywho, the beam leaving a vapor trail when it stops firing, then dissappates.. can be done using the particle system i think.
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Enhanced electrical sortages that happenes when a ship is severly damaged. Like having sparks shoop up over the place and stuff.
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oooh... remember FS2 endgame? with the moloch and deimos?
now imagine that scene in normal FS2 and instead of sparks on both ships separately you have sparks jumping from one ship to the other and vice-versa...
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nah, that would look too much like some sort of weapon...
i do liek the beam-trail idea though...
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Sparks on low integrity ships could be thicler and more menacing.
Those ar jut drawn lines right? no texture?
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why not grimloq?
if the ships were close enough the sparks would jump between them
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Originally posted by Grimloq
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nah, that would look too much like some sort of weapon...
i do liek the beam-trail idea though...
electrical arc charge-up sequence for some weapons.. like the saths in FS2 endgame.
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Any damage effect that's not those fiery particle trails we have now, they are the magnification of total crap. If I chase I fighter I want ot see it and not being covered by a cloud of glowing sh!t.
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oh and you like blasting ships up close :D
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I always wondered if that happened to somebody. The only time I've ever had that problem was a hit right on the upper tip of the nose of my Herc...and it only got in my view when I was sitting still.
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I meant the particle trail on the hit ship, not my ship. sometime the silouette of the enemy fighter is completely covered by those particle trails. If you hit a ship a little debris and some sparks should fly away but right now they are ****ting out a trail of fire for half an hour.
Oh, and those fire trails look like ****.
As for ideas, some advanced ingame cutscene sexp's would be nice.
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Hey, I have a cool idea.
Wouldn't it be great if someone fixed the thrusters?
:drevil:
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
Hey, I have a cool idea.
Wouldn't it be great if someone fixed the thrusters?
:drevil:
:lol:
that, and intermittant thruster activation when heavily damaged, like, say on a herc, one thruster out, one more activating randomly, the other two on full afterburn to take up the slack from the other malfunctioning two.
it's a cool idea, mind you..
i do have one more idea..
a high-poly../canon/ orion i've seen a few attempts that have been either left unfinished, or too wide, or don't have the true feel and scale that the destroyer has...
as well as high poly turrets.. perhaps even an fs1 version, and a fs2 version, one with better looking turreted beam cannons. 'cuz the ones it has now, are more suited to plasma weaponry, like it was in fs1. :nod: it's not /exactly/ canon i know, but, it'd fit better with the upgraded weaponry of the fs2 era warships.
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yet another idea.
a different take on the main Freespace 2 campaign.. with the Retail campaign, you were in the shoes of a terran pilot. so, what about a different perspective on this?.. like, start out in the same timeline as a vasudan pilot?.. or NTF?... or even more boldly, Shivan.
as well as having a simular style campaign/chapter selection per species ,etc ala starcraft
also.. a Medal box per campaign/mod.. so one can use the same pilot, and have a medal box for each one you are in..
"on rails" missions.. where you're a turret gunner for a ship.. and somebody else is piloting.. could be interesting.
and... we all remember descent, what about complex flying missions where you have to say, blast a door apart with a bomb, then haveta shoot stuff up inside.. like a reactor or fuel/ammo dump, ai might need to be upgraded in order not to have your wingmen try to fly through rock or steel.
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*coughHiddenTerrorlivesAFAIKcough*
A Vausdan version of the Main Campaign would be interesting, but I'm not so sure about an NTF one; mainly because the NTF loses, after all.
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Originally posted by ngtm1r
*coughHiddenTerrorlivesAFAIKcough*
A Vausdan version of the Main Campaign would be interesting, but I'm not so sure about an NTF one; mainly because the NTF loses, after all.
well, what happens to the NTF after they surrender?... the pilots, that is. would they be absorbed into the GTVA under some special conditions?
and i remember hidden terror, but i've head so little about it recently.
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Originally posted by Turnsky
and... we all remember descent, what about complex flying missions where you have to say, blast a door apart with a bomb, then haveta shoot stuff up inside.. like a reactor or fuel/ammo dump, ai might need to be upgraded in order not to have your wingmen try to fly through rock or steel.
yes...thaT would be a really good Idea. i hOpe someone Works up somethiNg like that Soon. You cOuld pUt the player pretty much anywhere you wanted with a system like that.
:nervous:
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l4m0r. :p
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Originally posted by Turnsky
well, what happens to the NTF after they surrender?... the pilots, that is. would they be absorbed into the GTVA under some special conditions?
What NTF? They pretty much all got killed in the second act. Only two ships made it through the Knossos and from the sounds of it everything else got wiped out IIRC.
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okay, since i've been given a few ideas, i figured i'd post 'em here..h
here goes..
For "mercenary" type campaigns:
-Quick Load menu system where one chooses the mission, and for what reward... could be experience, could be ships, weapons..money, you get the idea..
-mission "templates" like if you have to visit the same system repeatedly and has to be the same bar a few variables in it... like frieghter A docked at station C, and so on. could save on tedium when designing, too.
- Co-ordinate/destination/autopiloting call it what you will, but the option to choose your ultimate destination between various mission areas.. just choose a destination, and jump out.. fairly easy
-player "inventory" kinda like your standard mission loadout, only it keeps track of the ships that you have, weapons, etc..
using this kinda system, somebody with a lot of time could theoretically map the ENTIRITYof GTVA space (and then some), in fred..
i do realise that some of these would require extensive reworking of the SCP code.. but hey, better to have hard to reach goals, than to have none at all .
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How about flickering lights when a capship is under heavy fire?
I think this could be done by simply turning the glow effect on and off for the duration of the heavy attack.
Of course, that wouldn't work for parts mapped with no glowmap parts.
So...aynone know if this is possible?
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Of course, that wouldn't work for parts mapped with no glowmap parts.
If it doesn't have any glowmaps you'd have no lights to flicker on and off anyway :p
As far as I can see you can do this pretty easily using Goober's new conditionals and a repeating event. Since I've only got a limited number of capships in SoR I think I might try this one out in my campaign :D
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Originally posted by Turnsky
i do realise that some of these would require extensive reworking of the SCP code
Not really. I did Freespacelancer in FRED retail alone; and you can do everything you proposed quite easily with persistent variables. All that's needed is a mission designer with the time and motivation to do it.
As for quick mission loading... have you tried 3.6.5 yet? Thanks to taylor's IBX code and caching, the missions load very quickly.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
As for quick mission loading... have you tried 3.6.5 yet? Thanks to taylor's IBX code and caching, the missions load very quickly.
i was referring to... dock at station, loads up loading/mission choice screen, pick one, it loads the one you choose, and off you go. :)
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If you want that then you might as well play Freelancer :p
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Originally posted by Turnsky
i was referring to... dock at station, loads up loading/mission choice screen, pick one, it loads the one you choose, and off you go. :)
It's still possible with 3.6.5. When the player docks at the station, display a training message with the choices. Then have the player press 1, 2, 3, or 4, trigger the end-mission sexp, and branch to the mission you selected. :)
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Glowmaps flickering off (meaning they actually go out finally) during a ship's death-roll would be hella cool. Also there should be more and more persistant "flame" particles (see Lucifer destruction in FS1).
Aand last but not lest...
Thrusters? *sobs*
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Ok - I tought of a good thing.
To have all ships and weapons in the Team Loadout in FRED turned OFF by default. Or at least the -D versions!!!!!
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here's another..
multiple IFF designations
currently we have Friendly, Enemy, and Neutral.. expand that (especially the enemy field) to allow for crossfire between different warring factions... for example
Shivans vs Terrans vs Vasudans vs Ancients vs NTF and so on, something like that would make for one helluva impressive furball..
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I was saying that ages ago....
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right, this one's less of an idea, and more of a thought on if/when the high poly colossus is made, if you wanna still keep the overall design of the ship the same, but want to keep it as canon as possible, try angling the ventral engine tower towards the stern a bit, that way, it looks a bit more "faster" and hopefully, less like a gun. ;)
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IIRC, the concept art for the Colossus had that a bit....it looks way better then the final model for sure.
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Originally posted by Turnsky
here's another..
multiple IFF designations
I'm *cough* working on that. :nervous:
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Originally posted by Goober5000
I'm *cough* working on that. :nervous:
IFF table?
It would be useful if we could set the IFF so one faction is hostile towards another - while the later remains neutral and will only fire if fired upon.
So we can have a NxN table (N:= number of factions) and set the IFF a faction will handle the other with.
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YAY! thanks Goob..
B.t.w. - while you are at it, can you make that Team Loadout fixage (all -D weapons turned off by default or ALL weapons/ships turned off by default)?
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it'd be cool for each IFF to have an own color for the dots on the radar.
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okay, another one... for atmospheric missions in skybox... turbulence, i think this could be achieved by using the same effect as what you get with engine was from capital ships, 'cept it doesn't damage your ship...
why?.. i hear you ask... two things, one, realism.. two, the fact that periodic gusts of wind buffeting your little fightercraft would make it hard to aim, and thus, more challenging. :nod:
also, engine glows as lightsources. very faint ones at that, just so it'd light up the hull near the engines, it'd be cool to see the light from other ship's engines casting a faint light against your fighter, and any other ship that would be in range.
another cool effect... Lightening, yes, we have that, but, having them strike a large ship's hull would be just cool to see.
heck, it can happen to jet airliners all the time, why not a destroyer?
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falling slowly, i see, okay, one more, then i'll shut up :p
battleship style salvos, where all the weapons on one side of a ship fire precisely at the same time at a given target (salvos, anybody?), or a ripple effect EG: gun 1 fires, then immediately, gun 2 fires, and so on.
also, from what i heard with model animation, how 'bout with models that support it, portions of which move depending on your speed, and when you turn (imagine the little wings on a horus moving when you change direction, like a plane's flaps would)
you get the idea.
also, just a random thought, but when the SCP modelers make a full upgrade of all the ingame models to HTL, what about the cutscenes using the older models?.. wouldn't that look out of place?
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Originally posted by Turnsky
battleship style salvos, where all the weapons on one side of a ship fire precisely at the same time at a given target (salvos, anybody?), or a ripple effect EG: gun 1 fires, then immediately, gun 2 fires, and so on.
I think TBP was working on something like that. They may actually have it done by now...
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Salvos are cool....