Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: TrashMan on October 05, 2005, 05:53:50 am
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About that engine thing - I jsut tested in 3.6.7. - doesn' t work
I took out the Molochs main engine - it was still glowing and the ship was still going at 30m/s.
Who's hte one who said that engine damage was properly implemented?
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Um, if it's going at top speed already, taking out a single engine, assuming it has more than one, isn't going to slow it down. Engines are for acceleration. Technically, I shouldn't slow down when I throttle down in space. I should just coast, and for a long time. Virtually no friction.
Of course, that would mean that there's no real top speed for fighters. THey'd just keep going faster the longer you have the engines throttled up. To do what happens in Freespace and Freespace 2, retros have to be built in and tied in to the throttle control, logically. Well, at least for the throttle down behavior. It doesn't explain the top speed thing.
Really, the physics model in this game isn't right, but the fun is great, so who cares? The only thing I can think of that needs an accurate physics model right now is The Babylon Project, and they're making do without it.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
About that engine thing - I jsut tested in 3.6.7. - doesn' t work
I took out the Molochs main engine - it was still glowing and the ship was still going at 30m/s.
Who's hte one who said that engine damage was properly implemented?
Then it's broken and needs to be addressed.
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I think there may have been a ship flag or something.
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I don't think it's broken. AFAIK that kind of behaviour wasn't seen in retail and as such shouldn't be the default in SCP either.
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Taylor was working on it (the engine stuff) but there were still a few more problems last I heard.
As for Newtonian physics, FS is an arcade game, not a physics game. Nevertheless, the physics module is there and pretty well compartmentlized if anyone wants to take a crack at it.
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Well, it would be needed if anyone ever wanted to do a mod for combat with atmosphere fighters. And like I said. TBP would probably appreciate it if there was a newtonian physics mod as well. So I do hope someone takes a crack at it. I would, but it's beyond me right now. Maybe when I can actually take the time to study coding, I'll have a go at some work of my own on this game. Until then, I just have to hope someone else will like an idea and run with it.
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Continually asking for newtonian physics as if we're retards who never thought of it is unlikely to gain you support though.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't think it's broken. AFAIK that kind of behaviour wasn't seen in retail and as such shouldn't be the default in SCP either.
Actually, if ANY of you had run an actual test, you'd see that it does work. Just not in the way Trashman expects. If a ship has three engines, blowing one out doesn't slow it down. However, blowing the second out reduces speed by 1/3. Speed then drops for any additional damage you do to the third engine. If the ship's only got two engines, again there's no speed reduction for destroying one, but as the second engine takes damage speed gets reduced. If the ship only has one engine, slowdown begins to incur at 50% damage or so. It's scaled like this so average combat damage doesn't actually effect mission timing, only specific attempts to disable a target (or really weak engines) will let you observe the slowdown. Don't believe me? Go disable one of the corvettes in The Great Hunt and watch their speed as you do damage to their engines.
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I thought Trashman was referring to when the engine glow is still present even if the engine's destroyed. AFAIK taylor hasn't finished the code for that yet.
As for the speed issue, that's been the same since FS1 (as StratComm says) and we don't intend to change it. If it has changed, it's a bug.
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Yeah that's been my point as Trashman wants it changed. The engine glow issue is still inconsistant (it works on the Deimos in the build I'm using) but that's not the concern I was trying to get across anyway.
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Erm..why such a strange engine system? For mission timing?
If you tie your evenets with proposed ship speeds than that's bad FREDing in my oppinion...
so by what I gather, in order to actually slow the Sath down even a bit you have to blow 5 engines totaly and damage the sixth?
Rubbish!
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Hrmm...I wonder what would happen if you disabled the Sathanas in "Bearbaiting" (assuming it's even possible). I bet the mission wouldn't end.
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Just try and disable 5 juggernaut class engines, even flying an eryinies wilth all guns switched to bfreds you'd be hard pressed.
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Originally posted by StratComm
If the ship's only got two engines, again there's no speed reduction for destroying one, but as the second engine takes damage speed gets reduced.
Now re-read how Trashman tested this feature. Blowing up one engine on a ship with two engines.
As I said that wouldn't have had any effect in retail and shouldn't have any effect in FS2_Open either.
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You know what? F*** retail!
This is FSO! Retail didn't have armor. It didn't have ballistic primaries! It didn't have a lot of stuff.
At leat make it a turn on/off feature if you fear it might break some campaigns (alltough that must be some sloppy campaign if they can be broken so easilly)
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The mandate of FSO is to not break backwards compatability. If you've never timed a mission so that a ship arrives at a designated point at a designated time, then you obviously have not FREDed many good missions. Mission timing is a fairly fundamental concept of making it, you know, playable.
Hell, it would break half the retail campaign to do it in such a way. And I sure don't consider the FS2 retail missions "sloppy" (well, I can think of one that is. But not the ones that this would break). That's reason enough alone to not do it.
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It was definitely in CVS at a certain point.
(http://fs2source.warpcore.org/wmcscreenies/desperation/fightingback.jpg) (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/wmcscreenies/desperation/fightingback.png)
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It's still there. The Moloch does not work correctly, but the Deimos works fine. And the Moloch is never going to work unless someone splits the engine glows; right now it's got two engine subsystems but only one engine glowbank. There's absolutely no way to resolve that.
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If you want new features, how about making armor system that would enable different armor to different submodels (turrets / radars / etc.) or even to different subystems (sensors etc.). This would make possible to table heavily armored capships with weakly armored turrets (that player can destroy) or to enable 'weak' points in the design.
As an added extra: As these (subsystems) are also cpu targettable even the AI 'could use' this feature, well atleast to some extent...
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Originally posted by Wanderer
If you want new features, how about making armor system that would enable different armor to different submodels (turrets / radars / etc.) or even to different subystems (sensors etc.). This would make possible to table heavily armored capships with weakly armored turrets (that player can destroy) or to enable 'weak' points in the design.
All that's been there since retail. :) In the ships table, for each subsystem (turrets, radar, weapons, sensors, engines etc) you have two numbers after the subsystems name - this one's the radar dish from the Fenris: $Subsystem: radar01a-dish, 5, 0.0
and the rotating turret:
$Subsystem: turret09a-01-main, 8, 10.0
The first number there represents how many hitpoints this subsystem has as a percentage of the total hull hitpoints (can't exceed 100%) and the second is how long that turret takes to rotate (ie, big turrets turn more slowly).
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Originally posted by TrashMan
You know what? F*** retail!
How about we just say f**k you instead :p
Originally posted by TrashMan
This is FSO! Retail didn't have armor. It didn't have ballistic primaries! It didn't have a lot of stuff.
And NONE of that is used in the retail campaign. You're insisting on making a change to something that is used in retail and would have an effect on missions.
Originally posted by TrashMan
At leat make it a turn on/off feature if you fear it might break some campaigns (alltough that must be some sloppy campaign if they can be broken so easilly)
As Stratcomm pointed out there are lots of missions that depend on the fact that the designer has made the assumption that the player won't have enough time to disable enough of the craft to have an effect. That's a fair assumption to make as long as people don't start dicking about with the code.
Having a ships table flag that alters the behavious is fine but saying screw backwards compatability is a sign that whoever said it really isn't thinking things through.
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I meant that with WMCs armor.tbl or the like you can make the ships take more damage from certain weapons. So what if you make a subsystem that that 0.0 as the subsystem HP multiplier entry and has no HPs (quite like hangarbays in some [V] designs, all damage goes to directly to ships HPs without damaging the subsystem) and input an armor entry for it that forces it to take more damage from certain weapons or even from all weapons (weak point concept). And as it is a subsystem it would still allow AI to use this, with proper fredding.
With heavily armored hull i meant that the hulls armor is so strong (again the armor.tbl) that no fighter weapon will even penetrate it and henceforth do not cause any damage to it.
[fluff]It could be perhaps reasoned that there is no point constructing massive battlewagons that can not withstand standard fighter primary weapons. Secondaries and beams are another matter. Also low turret armor might allow turrets to rotate faster and therefore turrets have reasonably low armor values.[/fluff]
Ofcourse the influence of this kind of a change is so low that there is perhaps no point what so ever to do it.
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Originally posted by karajorma
And NONE of that is used in the retail campaign. You're insisting on making a change to something that is used in retail and would have an effect on missions.
That's why I sai an on/off feature..
besides, name me one mission that could be easily borken?
Everytime a ship is heading towards somewhere it has so many engines or so many hitpoint that there is no chance of you stoping it.
Ineni? Gone too fast.
Sathanas? You can'd disable it!
Aquitaine? I has 5 engines and not much HP. The shivans are gonna destroy it in 99,9% of all cases before they actually manage to disable it.
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You forgot a few missions (http://fs2.kissifrot.com/)
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I meant that with WMCs armor.tbl or the like you can make the ships take more damage from certain weapons.
Oh! That explains all then, my apologies. :o
On the subject of engines, the Moloch doesn't work because it has all engine glowpoints assigned to one engine subsystem (02). If you take it out, all glowpoints will vanish AFAIK.
The Deimos works because the glowpoints are separated by their appropriate engine block - as they're supposed to be. It's basically something that will need to be fixed on a model by model basis when they're HTLed. :)
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Originally posted by TrashMan
That's why I sai an on/off feature..
besides, name me one mission that could be easily borken?
Everytime a ship is heading towards somewhere it has so many engines or so many hitpoint that there is no chance of you stoping it.
I named one. Way back when. Rebels and Renegades. The Iceni is supposed to spend a very precise time inside the active asteroid field. If it loses an engine and slows down, then the entire mission gets changed. But since one example just isn't good enough for you (even though one contradictory example is all that's needed for any logical proof) I'll go through the entire list.
- The Great Hunt
- Rebels and Renegades
- Love the Treason...
- Battle of the Wilderness
- Proving Grounds
- King's Gambit
- Endgame
- Clash of the Titans II
- Apocalypse
And that's just the retail campaign, and is actually assuming that the current damage model still applies for ships with only one engine subsystem. Essentially any time a ship with more than one engine subsystem must complete its waypoints before some action is taken (mission completion, jumping out, etc) will be potentially effected. And since that's a pretty fundamental way of scripting a mission, you've got major misconceptions about what balance is if you think it's ok to just muck around with scripted events.
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You raise excellent points, StratComm. Despite that, it would be nice to have an adaptive engine damage system toggle in case someone wanted to make a mod that would use it. I'm sure any number of us could think of some a way to take advantage of such a feature.
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The point is, there already is an adaptive damage model in place. It may not be the adaptive model that some people want, but it is there and can be used to great effect if someone were to actually take the time to make it work in their missions. I'd oppose a global command-line level flag if just for the fact that I really don't want to have to customize my launcher settings for each and every campaign that comes out (insert Kara's mod.ini pimpage) and for something as totally trivial as the way overall thrust scales with engine damage it's just not worth it in the end.
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Now that sounds like a good idea. An ini file that loads command line triggers needed for specific mods. It would make customization easier. Want to play The Babylon Project? Just load it. The ini file makes sure the settings are correct. I think karajorma's on to something here.
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Some of hte mission you descirbed are faulted.
The appearance of the Ravan for instance is tied with the damageing of the second cruiser and similar things hold true for other missions.
99% of all mission I've seen are tied with are-waypoints-done or some otehr event like hull strength or distance.
And let's not forget there's NOTHING from stopping you currently to try and disable any ship in those missions.
With or without that system, some mission can be broken is some ships are disabled.
Fortunately, the shivan AI is allways out to destroy, not disable and engines generally have lot's of HP. - and bigger engines, that give more thrust, have more HP.
So what would happen if in the Great Hunt for instance, one Deimos get's it engine blown? It would be a little slower - BIG DEAL. it would change nothing in the mission....
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Originally posted by StratComm
I'd oppose a global command-line level flag if just for the fact that I really don't want to have to customize my launcher settings for each and every campaign that comes out.
I'd suggest with going for a ships table flag anyway. You should be able to determine how much each engine affects the overall speed. It seems silly that the tiny engine at the front of the Deimos is generating as much thrust as the huge ones at the back.
That way the mod designer still has complete control and backwards compatability is preserved as the old tables won't have this new data and will just use the old model.
@Trashman I suggest you set a cap-waypoint-speed on those ships and see what happens to the mission balance rather than continually asserting nothing would happen.
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Trashman:
Originally posted by WMCoolmon
You forgot a few missions (http://fs2.kissifrot.com/)
There is no reason to go back and test all those missions and hack in fixes to the code when it could be done with a special ship flag for just as much effort.
Now that sounds like a good idea. An ini file that loads command line triggers needed for specific mods. It would make customization easier. Want to play The Babylon Project? Just load it. The ini file makes sure the settings are correct. I think karajorma's on to something here.
*Dislikes this idea*
Command-line flags should be for player preferences only, IMHO. If a mod might conceivably want to turn something on and off, then it should be some kind of flag. (eg newtonian physics)
I don't want to have to start editting INI files just because the mod designer thinks that I *should* be playing with specular lighting on. (Although it may slow my comp down)
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Some of hte mission you descirbed are faulted.
The appearance of the Ravan for instance is tied with the damageing of the second cruiser and similar things hold true for other missions.
99% of all mission I've seen are tied with are-waypoints-done or some otehr event like hull strength or distance.
Mostly distance. And what is distance besides a sign that the ship has traveled a set distance from some other point, which will be wholly dependant on its speed. Longer time-to-completion, longer mission, broken timing and balance.
Originally posted by TrashMan
And let's not forget there's NOTHING from stopping you currently to try and disable any ship in those missions.
With or without that system, some mission can be broken is some ships are disabled.
Did I ever say anything about the player doing the disabling? No, I did not. I'm actually implying that an errant bomb or some other quasi-random factor would do that. And since it's relatively random, you've got no control over how long it takes the relevant ship to move from one point to another anymore.
Originally posted by TrashMan
Fortunately, the shivan AI is allways out to destroy, not disable and engines generally have lot's of HP. - and bigger engines, that give more thrust, have more HP.
I've seen a number of ships get disabled by Shivan bombers. It does actually happen. It's rare that they take out more than one system if more are present, so having redundant engines currently acts as a buffer to that effect. You're asking to change that.
Originally posted by TrashMan
So what would happen if in the Great Hunt for instance, one Deimos get's it engine blown? It would be a little slower - BIG DEAL. it would change nothing in the mission....
Except that the two corvettes will not be side-by-side like they are supposed to be. Which means only one will engage the cruisers, only one will be in front of the Ravana. That's different.
But what I suspect this all boils down to is that, instead of implimenting the mission properly with a scripted set of events, you want to plop things down and have them behave exactly as you expect (see "Battles too short?") which goes against the way things are done in Freespace in general.
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fair enough Coolmon, as far as that goes. But what about for necessary features to a mod. It would limit the amount of command line switches needed.
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Yeah it's supposed to be for this sort of thing, not graphical details. Resisting the temptation to turn on graphics by default may be difficult, but being able to specify, say, cell shading, smart shields, and disabling beams from piercing shields across every player of the mod (or some other feature that otherwise breaks backwards compatibility) would be extremely useful to making sure mods don't have to worry about balancing for a dozen different combinations of options.
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I'm not sure those should even be command-line options...but that's exactly the sort of thinking I'm talking about. If I have global command-line options, I'd like to be able to use them. And if they don't work, it's just a pain in the ass to go back and figure out why, what with intermod dependencies and such.
I'm not sure how cell shading is done, but it seems like a reasonable per-mission or even per-ship/weapon/object option. If it can only be turned on when fs2_open is started then maybe a .tbl option is in order.
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Originally posted by StratComm
Yeah it's supposed to be for this sort of thing, not graphical details. Resisting the temptation to turn on graphics by default may be difficult, but being able to specify, say, cell shading, smart shields, and disabling beams from piercing shields across every player of the mod (or some other feature that otherwise breaks backwards compatibility) would be extremely useful to making sure mods don't have to worry about balancing for a dozen different combinations of options.
So shouldn't these gameplay altering features be mission, ship or weapon flags rather than command line options?
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Originally posted by CaptJosh
TBP would probably appreciate it if there was a newtonian physics mod as well.
Not really, arcade physics with some newtonianish tricks has been TBP's gameplay style from the beginning. The staff has never really wanted full newtonian physics. If you want newtonian phycics, go and play "I've Found Her (http://ifh.firstones.com/) ".
That said, times change as does TBP's leadership, and I cannot predict future decisions on the matter.
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Originally posted by StratComm
Mostly distance. And what is distance besides a sign that the ship has traveled a set distance from some other point, which will be wholly dependant on its speed. Longer time-to-completion, longer mission, broken timing and balance.
If a mission can be broken simply becouse a ship is slower or a little faster than usual, than that's bad FREDing.
Besides, for a mission taking one minute longer to complete - what's the deal. Don't tell me you consider that broken?
I can't think ofa single mission I made that could be broken that way.
Did I ever say anything about the player doing the disabling? No, I did not. I'm actually implying that an errant bomb or some other quasi-random factor would do that. And since it's relatively random, you've got no control over how long it takes the relevant ship to move from one point to another anymore.
You never can know for sure. What if the shivans (by pure randomness) disable it? That's why tying events to ship speed is utterly dumb
I've seen a number of ships get disabled by Shivan bombers. It does actually happen. It's rare that they take out more than one system if more are present, so having redundant engines currently acts as a buffer to that effect. You're asking to change that.
As I said, it would only slow the ship down, it won't make it any easier for the enemy to destroy the ship...
Except that the two corvettes will not be side-by-side like they are supposed to be. Which means only one will engage the cruisers, only one will be in front of the Ravana. That's different.
Not really
a) the speed difference is not that great
b) they stop at each cruiser so the second corvette would catch up
c) the ravana comes after the first cruiser is critical - it takes time for the corvettes to do that and that means plenty of time for the other corvette to catch up
But what I suspect this all boils down to is that, instead of implimenting the mission properly with a scripted set of events, you want to plop things down and have them behave exactly as you expect (see "Battles too short?") which goes against the way things are done in Freespace in general.
Unless you allready noticed I don't care how [V] did their missions. We now have new features and new SEXP's and new solutions to problems.
But for backwards compability sake, it would be best if there was a mission flag like "no traitor" that sets the engine damage model. That would make everyone happy.
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Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I'm not sure how cell shading is done, but it seems like a reasonable per-mission or even per-ship/weapon/object option. If it can only be turned on when fs2_open is started then maybe a .tbl option is in order.
Cell shading is a texture, AFAIK. It's basically to make the ships look cartooney. IIRC, on the scp site, there is a vp file with cell shading textures available. But you have to turn off some other feature to make it work. I don't remember, though. I'm not really interested in it.
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Somehow I think you've completely failed to fill in WMC on anything he didn't already know.
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He's the one who said he didn't understand. Cell shading is basically a texture that's supposed to look like it was hand drawn like a cartoon, no?
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Originally posted by Trashman
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This is coming from the guy who would rather completely **** over :v: table balance because he doesn't like the inconvienence of not being able to plop two ships down in-mission with beam-free-all and have them play out perfectly every time, so I guess arguing is just going to be lost on deaf ears. It might be useful to add as a ship flag, but as I understand it flags aren't something that (with the current system) can be added indefinitely and the limit's creeping up quickly as it stands.
Originally posted by Spicious
So shouldn't these gameplay altering features be mission, ship or weapon flags rather than command line options?
Yes, but they're command-line flags now. If that gets changed, then my point is moot, but I'm only talking about EXISTING features.
Originally posted by CaptJosh
He's the one who said he didn't understand. Cell shading is basically a texture that's supposed to look like it was hand drawn like a cartoon, no?
Um, no. WMC said he didn't know how cell-shading processing is done (seperate from the media, which only enhances the effect) not that he didn't know what cell shading is. There is processing that gets done to make cell-shading look different too (-cell) so it's not just a matter of textures.
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Well, it does say that you have to enable that option to make activate the textures, or something like that. Like I said, I have no interest in making things look like a cartoon, so I don't bother with that feature.
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Nope again. The textures are activated just by having the mv_cell vp in your root directory. The -cell option changes the way lighting is applied (and a few other things as well) so that ships with proper cell-shading textures will look cartoony. Very different animal. You're new so I wouldn't have expected you to know that, but by the same token, you're new so you've got no business correcting someone who actually works on the SCP either.
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Correcting? I made a comment, and then was told I was mistaken. I started asking questions. Please stop jumping to confusions.
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Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I'm not sure those should even be command-line options...but that's exactly the sort of thinking I'm talking about. If I have global command-line options, I'd like to be able to use them. And if they don't work, it's just a pain in the ass to go back and figure out why, what with intermod dependencies and such.
I'm not sure how cell shading is done, but it seems like a reasonable per-mission or even per-ship/weapon/object option. If it can only be turned on when fs2_open is started then maybe a .tbl option is in order.
I think cell shading simply maps a sort of light range which is either all shaded, or not shaded atall.
So... when you calculate the light reaching a pixel, rather than just applying that light, you use it to set a threshold of how much light to apply.
So, um, if you have 200,200,200 illuminating 200,200,200 on a normal lighting model....
You could have like between 255,255,255 and 200,200,200 lighting 255,255,255, and then 100,100,100 to 200,200,200 lighting 150,150,150, etc. And soforth for shading, so a range of light/shade 'real' values map to single applied light/shade value.
I'm not too sure about the black highlights....I think they're created by rendering an enlarged, all black model with flipped faces or somesuch. You'll probably understand it a bit better reading http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/celshading/ or somesuch. Or just ask Bob. :D
I need to read up on my grpahics theory quite a lot, to be honest, because that sounds a shoddy description. I keep on thinking of something to do with goraud for some reason....
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Originally posted by CaptJosh
Correcting? I made a comment, and then was told I was mistaken. I started asking questions. Please stop jumping to confusions.
You have a tendency to post like this, though. I don't know if you realize it, but the majority of your posts read like you're talking down to people. I searched through your 100-odd posts and they tended to sound either smug, dismissive, or demanding. That's probably why you were accused of being a n00b not too long ago. Whether you intend to or not, you sound like one.
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Originally posted by CaptJosh
Correcting? I made a comment, and then was told I was mistaken. I started asking questions. Please stop jumping to confusions.
1) You're explaining to the person who compiles the VP files for the SCP what is in the VP section of the SCP site. WMC knows what's there. He put most of it there!.
2) You're explaining what cell shading is to WMC when it's pretty damn likely that he knows. What he was saying is that he doesn't know how it's implimented in the code. Your response didn't help explain that.
The fact that WMC (and myself for that matter) have SCP avatars should really clue you in to the fact that we are likely to know a fair bit about the SCP. If you'd been paying attention you'd have noticed that he was saying that he didn't know how cell shading was done not what it is.
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You know, I tried to come up with a post to say how a feel about this, but I get the feeling most of you would've just read what I started with as a long diatribe against this board and its members, regardless of my true intent.
I'm trying to contribute as best I can without knowing all the little details about the SCP boards. Somehow, someone seems to have gotten the idea that even though I'm new, I should have a perfect understanding of the dynamics around here. And somehow, some of you have been infected by this logical fallacy. Given the short time I've known about the SCP and the even shorter time I've been posting to this board, there is no way I could have gotten the dynamics of these forums down in an even shorter time. What I have seen is by turns both encouraging and discouraging.
I see some of the people here working together well to try to make a better game. But at the same time I see people flaming eachother over an idea that in and of itself is not inherently bad, but like most ideas, has both good and bad points. I've seen folks willing to forgive me a little grouchiness whet I apologize for it, but then I've seen people tear into me for a mistake that required a short paragraph of simple explanation.
Just in this thread, I misread/misinterpereted what someone said, and rather than waiting for him to say something about "that's not what I meant", I got jumped on by someone else, as if WMC couldn't respond effectively to my comment on his own. Regardless, once It was pointed out to me that I was mistaken, I started asking about it more. Did I put periods where I should have had question marks in some places? Yes, I did. In doing so, it changed something that was supposed to show uncertainty into appearing as a flat statement, and so some of what I was trying to communicate was...lost in translation, as it were. I could go back and edit all my posts, to match up with what I intended, but I somehow feel it would be a waste of time, as I doubt anyone else would edit theirs to a be appropriate replies to my fixed posts. Of course, if I'm wrong on that, I'm sure someone will tell me, hopefully politely. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to try to contribute constructively to this community, regardless of how someone else may interperet my posts.
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I think it's time to take this one to PM as it really doesn't belong in public.
If one of the other mods wants to handle this as well that's fine. Any other comments of the subject will be deleted.
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Don't worry about it, karajorma. I said my piece and I'm done.
Getting back on topic...
aldo, interesting description, even if I really can't make head or tail of it. I'm no graphic designer. I'll leave that stuff to the people that are.
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I meant I was taking it to PM. I'm about halfway done :p
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Yikes :nervous:
Yeah, what I meant was the technical process, eg would it be plausible to enable/disable cell-shading based on a mission setting instead of a command-line var. (Or with the command-line var serving to override it.)
I can think of some cases where someone might want to do a cell-shaded mission and not need any mods (mostly things like DEM...) and it would get rid of a command-line being used in a meh way.
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It seems to me that if it could be done with mission scripting or other alternate methods, It could be useful somewhere. Maybe a ship that's supposed to look more grown than built?
Another thought. I just realized that the distances in this game are really short for what they should be. An AIM-54C missile has a range of some 80 nautical miles, or or 150km. The longest ranged missile in this game has a range of barely 4km. Does anyone else find that a little odd? We have a missile now that can go 80 nautical miles (92.064 standard miles), but the missiles in this game have an engagemant envelope sometimes shorter than that of the guns. I realize it's not a simulation. This is just one of those "things that make you go, 'huh?'"
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It's not supposed to be anything resembling a simulation. Your fighter does about 60mph most of the time too. If you want realism, you've got the wrong game :)
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60 mph? What is this? World War 2? :D
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In Space?!?
(In case anyone here didn't know already, that's exactly what Freespace is supposed to feel like.)
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I thought it seemed a bit slow for the timeframe if basing one's analysis on tech devolopment curves as we know them.
I wonder...hrm...How hard would it to be to modify this game for a more modern warfare feel? Like with speeds around and above that of sound(in terran atmosphere) for fighters, and about half that for bombers... Leave the ships going about 40, 45 MPH tops...that's got to have something to do with the tables, I would think. But then it's likely that some missions would need to be redone to conpensate for the speeds. Plus impacts would be much more dangerous...Call it something who thinks even the hardest difficulty is too hard.
Missiles would have to have increased range and speed...and guns would have to reach some 1.6 to 3.2 km...
Does that sound like fun to anyone? Or does it just sound scary? :D
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It sounds completely impossible. There are speed mods out there that address some of your concerns, but in all honesty the problem isn't the tables or the speeds themselves or anything like that, at least not nearly as much as the problem lies in the way the game itself works. For one thing, AI goes belly-up at speeds of about twice what FS speeds achieve. For another, colission detection is optimized for much slower speeds (the projectiles are really the issue here, as they have to be the fastest objects in a given mission) and adjusting the max on everything pushes you closer to those limits. It's not a trivial task to readjust everything (assuming you want to do essentially a TC), and even assuming you got it right there'd still be tons of fairly major problems associated with it.
But, if it really is something you care about, search for "speed mod" and see what you come up with.
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I think the biggest problem is that the AI wouldn't have the faintest clue how to deal with the problem and no one wants to touch the AI code cause we're all scared of it.
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Hey, it was just an idea, StratComm. No need to slam the door on me. It's not all I'm interested in. I just thought it would be interesting to see how the game dynamic changed if it could be done. Clearly it can't. At least not as the AI code stands now. Not to mention optimizing collision detection. Plus, at those speeds, if you impact, you'd better hope shields can ward off some of that, or BOOM. No boom today? Boom tomarrow. There's always a boom tomorrow...sooner or later, BOOM!
BTW, thanks for elaborating on why it wouldn't work, kara.
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CaptJosh, StratComm wasn't slamming the door on you.
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The phraseology led me to believe otherwise, Goober.
The first thing he said was, "It sounds completely impossible to me."
This is not constructive. It's a sentence that could have been left out entirely without changing the content of the message.
That said, I did look at what he said other than that and still responded to the actual issues he raised.
Perhaps, given previous posts, I'm not the best person to comment on this. But I am trying to get things straightened out.
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Originally posted by CaptJosh
The phraseology led me to believe otherwise, Goober.
The first thing he said was, "It sounds completely impossible to me."
This is not constructive. It's a sentence that could have been left out entirely without changing the content of the message.
Actually, it's an opinion. See, he's looked at the issue and come to the conclusion that Freespace 2 with increased speeds will not work, is not a possibility - is "impossible". Note also the "It sounds" and "to me," which don't make the judgement sound particularly final or uncompromising (regardless of the "completely").
That, by itself, could be 'slamming the door', yes. However, he took the time to explain his conclusion, laying out why he thought that way. That's an open and honest discussion of the issue; there's no slamming of doors, no vicious attacks on mere ideas happening anywhere.
Your "phraseology" suggests that you seem to be trying to take offence wherever you can, as though the entire universe is constantly trying to take you down. Easy, soldier. Dude was just answering your question, he wasn't trying to make you look bad.
I mean, good grief. We're getting upset over the use of the word "impossible"? What happened to the insults and flaming?
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Well, to be fair, I think prohibitively difficult would be more accurate. Just from playing various games I've seen how hard it is to design a good AI, and how easy it can be beak an otherwise good AI with "a minor improvement."
But prohibitively difficult doesn't make it entirely impossible. It just makes it a pain in the ass. I guess I just don't like the word "impossible." It has been my observation that when people say something's impossible, it seems like it's either actually used in place of not wanting to try for some reason or another (difficulty, time, money, etc.), or in place of "I don't believe it." IMO, there are better ways to say something is absurdly difficult.
I am aware that in the realm of mathematics, there are statistical impossiblities, that is, things that are so improbable that they just aren't going to happen in anyone's lifetime, but that's different than claiming a task that is highly difficult can't be done.
All that said, I wasn't trying to take offense. I should have qualified what I said about shutting or slamming the door and I didn't. You called me on it. Fair enough. I apologize.
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Hey, no need to apologise to anyone. This is the Internet; miscommunication is its entire point.
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Smartass. :D :p
Nice to meet you.
Smartassery aside, I prefer to communicate clearly. It saves trouble. Or saves time making trouble. :D
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I tried changing the ship speeds to more realistic levels..It won't work.
Ai is utterly incapable at those speeds and dogfighting is imposssibl. teh ships szip by you so fast that you even have problems getting a missile lock (and udue to their speed, ship evade missiles even easier than before) and hitting them with guns is next to impossible.
Realism is good, unless it break gameplay..in this case it would.
@StrattComm - I see you're down to your ususal "my adversary in this debate is a brick wall and generally a idoit" routine.... hehe
Our of ammo?
By the way - you might want to know that I went trough the retail missions right now and found nothing that can break the mission based on ship speeds..
I even played the whole campaign trough with different ship speeds in the tables.
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Did I forget to mention that you have to open up engagement ranges, etc...? You can't increase the speed without increasing the capability of the weapons being used.
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And that turns into a arel combat simulatr.. played those and they are boring as hell...
lock target a kazzilion klicks away*
*fire missile*
*wait a few minutes till it hits*
*repeat process*
*eventually miserably try to avoid the missile*
You never see the enemy... I don't recall that I ever - in any of those games actualyl got close enough to use the guns..ever..
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Originally posted by TrashMan
@StrattComm - I see you're down to your ususal "my adversary in this debate is a brick wall and generally a idoit" routine.... hehe
Our of ammo?
No, StratComm elaborated fairly well on why it seemed impossible.
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About what? Speed mods or the engine modifications?
the first I never proposed, the second I proved wrong by playing tough the fs2 campaign with changed CAPSHIP speeed tables...
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Yes, the speed mod. Considering that's what you were talking about for most of your post, and what everyone else was talking about for the last 20 posts, and you prefaced your contribution to the previous topic with a "by the way"...
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shift+.
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All right, enough of this.