Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: TheLeadSled on January 23, 2007, 04:42:52 am
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1/ I havn't come across any threads or information about being able to eject in the Saga prologue or the main campaign. Is it an engine issue or can we expect to be able to eject from fighters in the main release?
2/ By the way is there a confirmed losing tree where u fall back to Proxima and Earth and lose (without giving too much away :))? Some threads mention it but I'm yet to find one that says there will be a losing path.
3/ Will we see any remaining Confederation Class Dreadnoughts like the Concordia in the main campaign? http://www.wcnews.com/encyclopedia/showrecord.php?id=1293
Some sources at the CIC say the Carrier TCS Armageddon which is mentioned in Victory Streak (I havnt read the WC books) is a concordia class carrier but others such as Fleet Tactics suggest it is a sister-ship to the Concordia. If there is a Confederation class will the Armaggedon be one of them?
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1/ I havn't come across any threads or information about being able to eject in the Saga prologue or the main campaign. Is it an engine issue or can we expect to be able to eject from fighters in the main release?
Well, we could script this I think.
2/ By the way is there a confirmed losing tree where u fall back to Proxima and Earth and lose (without giving too much away :))? Some threads mention it but I'm yet to find one that says there will be a losing path.
Yeah. It will be available separately though (since you can't save your progress in FS2 at will)
3/ Will we see any remaining Confederation Class Dreadnoughts like the Concordia in the main campaign? http://www.wcnews.com/encyclopedia/showrecord.php?id=1293
Some sources at the CIC say the Carrier TCS Armageddon which is mentioned in Victory Streak (I havnt read the WC books) is a concordia class carrier but others such as Fleet Tactics suggest it is a sister-ship to the Concordia. If there is a Confederation class will the Armaggedon be one of them?
Last time I checked, we had replaced the Confederation-class with the Bengal-class. I can't elaborate on this matter though. It is still classified :D
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Someone would need to model an ejection seat and then it would need to be used with change-ship SEXP or something like that, and at the same time the game would be made to spawn an exploding fighter with same vector as the player ship had at the moment of ejection.
The hard question is, would it offer anything interesting gameplay-wise, aside from waiting for SAR-ship? Should the ejection seat be maneuverable itself? With perhaps pilot keeping a sidearm in hand and pointing it forward... :lol:
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Someone would need to model an ejection seat and then it would need to be used with change-ship SEXP or something like that, and at the same time the game would be made to spawn an exploding fighter with same vector as the player ship had at the moment of ejection.
The hard question is, would it offer anything interesting gameplay-wise, aside from waiting for SAR-ship? Should the ejection seat be maneuverable itself? With perhaps pilot keeping a sidearm in hand and pointing it forward... :lol:
it would be nice to see ejected pilots whose seats obey to law of physics... you would see swarms of seats folating all around the battlefields, or running far away in deep space ;7
Another problem is that a human pilot to survive needs oxygen, and a pressure and a temperature different from those you have in space.
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Someone would need to model an ejection seat and then it would need to be used with change-ship SEXP or something like that, and at the same time the game would be made to spawn an exploding fighter with same vector as the player ship had at the moment of ejection.
The hard question is, would it offer anything interesting gameplay-wise, aside from waiting for SAR-ship? Should the ejection seat be maneuverable itself? With perhaps pilot keeping a sidearm in hand and pointing it forward... :lol:
LOl that would be funny. An ejection seat with an afterburner attached with the pilot being able to charge kilrathi fighters with a spear :lol:.
But that is a point though ejection doesnt really offer a lot to the game except to complicate things more and more in regards to winning and losing missions ie. Having to script scenarios where if you finish the main objective but eject before the mission is complete do u go to the winning tree or losing tree. Most of the time if you eject you will probably either end up as cannon fodder and target practice for kilrathi pilots or get captured and hung from chains of the rafters in Prince Thrakkath's throne room.
As for not being able to save the game I don't think that will be any problem as players can simply create a second character to go through the losing tree. I'm sure most Wing Commander fans will go more than out of there way to find alternative and secret missions in the game.
It'll be great to see a nicely modelled and textured confederation dreadnought but looks like we'll have to wait to find out. LOL you guys are good at keeping secrets to build suspense :D
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2/ By the way is there a confirmed losing tree where u fall back to Proxima and Earth and lose (without giving too much away :))? Some threads mention it but I'm yet to find one that says there will be a losing path.
Yeah. It will be available separately though (since you can't save your progress in FS2 at will)
There are ways around that with cunning uses of PPVs. Especially once Taylor finishes his pilot code and introduces the third persistence type :)
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Didn't the pilot in the first Wing Commander just have his seat, his flight suit, and his helmet to keep him company when he ejected?
I mean, it cant be THAT cold in space if they did it in WC1 :drevil:
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I think that's the main point, that you could eject in Wing Commander. Not being able to do so is un-Wing Commanderish. :)
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Guys! Guys! I've got an idea for the ejection seat not obeying the laws of physics issue! Ok, compressed air underneath the chair forces it out, there should be small thrusters on the TOP of the ejection seat (and sides?) that force it to sit still to wait for recovery, to make recovery easier.
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I think that's the main point, that you could eject in Wing Commander. Not being able to do so is un-Wing Commanderish. :)
that's the least important thing I've ever heard of :)
This is "return with your shield or upon it" deal :D
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Counter-quote: A soldier who lives will fight another day. :D
Also, war machines can always be built faster than it's possible to train people to use them efficiently... So eject function would kinda bring realism to the game.
You could obviously court-martial or otherwise punish (make a script that makes the pilot have to fill and sign 50 Confederation Military Approved forms for losing a fighter?) someone who ejects during a mission, if the mission was deemed important enough that the pilots were expected to sacrifice their lifes.
Then again, according to almost all studies, the fastest single morale lowering factor in a battlefield is if you know that there's no proper evacuation for injured and/or deceased. That's why US Marines "leave no one behind", or so they say. Same applies to almost all armed forces except those who rely on goblin tactics (ie. sheer numbers)... I would guess that same applies to space fighter pilots.
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Hmm, you can't make it so that the whole cockpit becomes an escape capsule? I believe that some of our very high-flying planes have this, but I'm not sure... (SR-71, X-15) I know there was some type of plane that sort of converted the seat into a half-capsule or something like that when ejected. I'll have to look that up.
EDIT: some linkies, apparently I was wrong about the SR-71 and X-15...
SR-71:
http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/srloss~1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird
X-15:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_joewalker_061127.html
Disconnected, but interesting, IMO:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/54297
What I was remembering from was actually the B-1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-1_Lancer
The B-1 has an ejection pod.
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Well in WC4 and WCA TV it was actually that the whole cockpit was becoming an ejection pod. however, in WCP i beleve it was just a seat :D
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Hi.
I just found this forum while looking for a way to eject in FreeSpace 2. (The fact that you can't is a major flaw of the game, in my book.)
However, to correct Mancubus, in WC I, II and III, when you eject you only have your seat, helmet and flightsuit.
In WC IV, Prophecy and Secret Ops, the "traditional" ejection seat was replaced by an ejection pod. (The whole cockpit ejected from the rest of the ship.)
**EDIT** By the way, those three last episodes are my favorites.
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:welcome:
Enjoy your stay Maestro :nod:
And have fun ejecting after your ship blows up(WARNING: you will probably be in little pieces or vaporised)
:p
I think an ejection pod would be more realistic in FS2, unless people were wearing a special kind of suit, and they had enough fuel to escape the field of engagement and then wait for recovery.
There, fixed. Thanks for pointing that out, jr2! The screen loads back to the topic list, and I didn't bother checking.
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He, he... don't forget to get the latest updates for FS2... (see the walkthrough link in my sig)
If you want your game looking like this, that is: (check the A celebration of FreeSpace (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,25406.0.html) thread, it's got loads of pictures... not for 56k modem users, mind you!)
(http://i23.tinypic.com/35kmk5x.jpg)
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Well in WC4 and WCA TV it was actually that the whole cockpit was becoming an ejection pod. however, in WCP i beleve it was just a seat :D
Not WCP, I remember it being WC3.
Ed
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In WC3 there were seats, at least for the cats- I remember that I loved to shoot them down once the navpoint was clear :D
In WC4 it was a complete cockpit part around the pilot, not sure about WCP, but I think there was also something like that.
As for our game, it would be quite difficult to make. Let's say we forget all other ships and just think about the player, we would need some sort of model which we can switch too. But it would suck, if you can't see your own ship stalling and exploding in the end. So the only way of doing this is some sort of ingame cutscene which will be shown, there we could fake it in clever timing, BUT then it must be scripted in each mission, and will be another problem in missions where you could choose your fighter because the script needs to know which fighter the player has used.
Therefore the necessary work compared with the need is rather unbalanced, so I think it's quite unlikely :(
However, I think we could add at least a model for an ejected pilot if someone wants to make a SAR mission
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... Or, if making it "Wing Commander-like" is too hard, we could do it like the X-Wing serie... Remember X-Wing ? TIE Fighter ? Or X-Wing Alliance ?
In those games, the ejection system was automatic (you could also do it manually by pressing [CTRL] + E). And all you were seeing when ejecting was an outside view of your ship blowing up. It would be easier to make, no ?
Oh, and thanks for the links, Jr2.
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Something else. If we did decide that the whole ejection animation, the act of SEEING the ejection take place, was unnecessary, we could simulate a warpout, with a different debriefing, and counting the mission as a failure in the tree. Something like that.
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Something else. If we did decide that the whole ejection animation, the act of SEEING the ejection take place, was unnecessary, we could simulate a warpout, with a different debriefing, and counting the mission as a failure in the tree. Something like that.
Well, that happens automatically: Ejection = Mission Failed = Bad Debriefing :)
So there is no real use for the ejection in this version, so it's better to let the player "die" anyway, that's at least final and you know why you lost the mission.
Gameplay wise the real ejection would make any difference either. It's still mission failed, retry + a nice to look, but hard to create animation/movie.
Summary : Ejection system is very unlikely :( That 's one of the things we will need to forfeit and getting the game out sooner therefore :)
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Well, i see the problem this way - the ejection dont have to force you to loose mission IE you have completede main objectives and then ejected, it is victory. you ejected in the escort mission - you go loosing branch, like you have lost the escorted ships and so on.
Code wise, it should be pretty easy - just a few sexp's, not more complicated than autopilot code - evry time key pressed etc., then script explodes the dummy. than it's just a copy paste to mission. the only REAL problem for me, is to make the dummy look like your ship, if you can choose it
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Someone would need to model an ejection seat and then it would need to be used with change-ship SEXP or something like that, and at the same time the game would be made to spawn an exploding fighter with same vector as the player ship had at the moment of ejection.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,42857.0.html
Have a look, Its old but the theory is still applicable maybe... :nod:
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Just thought about something...
If you decide to not include the "ejection option", then I think there would be a problem... Because if you create a sidekick like Maestro in WCP or Maniac in WC4, you don't nesserly want him to die. So how could he survive a specific mission if he can't eject ?
Well, i see the problem this way - the ejection dont have to force you to loose mission IE you have completede main objectives and then ejected, it is victory. you ejected in the escort mission - you go loosing branch, like you have lost the escorted ships and so on.
Code wise, it should be pretty easy - just a few sexp's, not more complicated than autopilot code - evry time key pressed etc., then script explodes the dummy. than it's just a copy paste to mission. the only REAL problem for me, is to make the dummy look like your ship, if you can choose it
That's right. The fact that you ejected in a mission does not means that it must be recorded as a failure. You could only lose a few points (100 points (or more), as an exemple).
Also, if you really want to see the ejection process, you could play it simple... You could see your cockpit with a large [EJECTION] sing flashing (like in WC4) and then see an ejection pod floating in space.
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Just thought about something...
If you decide to not include the "ejection option", then I think there would be a problem... Because if you create a sidekick like Maestro in WCP or Maniac in WC4, you don't nesserly want him to die. So how could he survive a specific mission if he can't eject ?
ship-guardian?
In many missions in Prophecy and especially Secret Ops the Wing Mates were invincible. I think there is no problem to use ship-guardian to make them invincible after their hull drops under 20% for example. It's also possible that the wing mates retreat after their ship was damaged to heavy. In Wing Commander 1 mates like Iceman or Bossman returned to base automatically when their ship reached critical hull (but sometimes they still didn't reached the claw, it was also possible that they were killed on retreat, but it wasn't critical in WC1 because the story was told by Shotglass and in the briefings.)
From Wing Commander 2 to Wing Commander Secret Ops all story-important characters survived the missions and can only die on the loosing paths.
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In many missions in Prophecy and especially Secret Ops the Wing Mates were invincible. I think there is no problem to use ship-guardian to make them invincible after their hull drops under 20% for example. It's also possible that the wing mates retreat after their ship was damaged to heavy. In Wing Commander 1 mates like Iceman or Bossman returned to base automatically when their ship reached critical hull (but sometimes they still didn't reached the claw, it was also possible that they were killed on retreat, but it wasn't critical in WC1 because the story was told by Shotglass and in the briefings.)
From Wing Commander 2 to Wing Commander Secret Ops all story-important characters survived the missions and can only die on the loosing paths.
You're right about Prophecy, but in Secret Ops (and thrust me on that, I played through the game several times and on different difficulty levels) all story-important pilots (Maestro, Zero, Spyder, Amazon and Stiletto) were vulnerable... They were only ejecting before their ship exploded, so they never get killed.