Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: Topgun on February 28, 2008, 10:31:32 am

Title: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Topgun on February 28, 2008, 10:31:32 am
I have the urge to make an airspeeder.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on February 28, 2008, 03:34:42 pm
I'm not in a position to say for sure, but I think we should make spacefaring ships vessels first. Making an airspeeder would force us to make other atmospheric vessels, which means even more models to mesh/UVMap/texture/table/test till boredom.

If you can squeeze out a T-47 with a decent mesh and some initial textures, we could put them into hangars as "mission decorations." That way we won't have to consider making other atmospheric vessels, and still have another SW classic in our pocket.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Turambar on February 29, 2008, 07:34:54 pm
when we finally campaign-ize the X-wing series, atmo and near-ground missions will be unavoidable.

hell we'll even have to do Coruscant.


but first, let's take care of real star wars stuff, like say THE SECOND DEATH STAR'S INTERIOR  :horror:
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 01, 2008, 08:14:13 am
What about a cumulative modelling thread for it? Each modeller will create a part of the interior...
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mongoose on March 01, 2008, 10:18:07 am
but first, let's take care of real star wars stuff, like say THE SECOND DEATH STAR'S INTERIOR  :horror:
May your horror be our immense profit.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 01, 2008, 11:17:07 am
What about a cumulative modelling thread for it? Each modeller will create a part of the interior...

Is it a bad idea?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 01, 2008, 01:37:06 pm
We should first decide if we actually want the DSII before starting to model it. We already planned to create a DSI, what happened to that, ideawise and modelwise?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 01, 2008, 01:43:31 pm
No doubt the DSI will come first(for modelling reasons, too). The DSII will be a must...

I'm thinking about the Battle of Endor in terms of FREDding :blah:
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: chief1983 on March 01, 2008, 04:14:02 pm
I don't know where any actual models of the DS1 are, but it's not something I think we'd need for a campaign right now, and especially not for multiplayer.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 01, 2008, 05:33:30 pm
Would it be on a Karnak scale? That seems a nice median.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 01, 2008, 05:51:29 pm
Eh? It can't be that small...
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 01, 2008, 06:39:42 pm
I dunno :) if you make it big enough to crash an ISD into, could the engine handle it?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 01, 2008, 06:47:58 pm
Hippo once tried to make a DSI trench, and even made an trench run cutscene. It was even highlighted!

Maybe he has never made a complete DS, just a trench with lots of greebles?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Turambar on March 01, 2008, 10:21:56 pm
any death star I and trench related missions are most likely only going to be part of the surface of the death star, instead of the whole damn thing.

of course, it'll be a much bigger part of the surface, not like those rogue squadron games which gave you a small block.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Flaser on March 02, 2008, 10:53:09 am
Omniscaper once made a full fledged Death Star mesh. It wasn't completely detailed, as it was only a demonstrator for detail boxes.

....or it could have been DaBrain.

Both of them are magicians, when it comes to using the new and rarely used features of the FSO engine.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 02, 2008, 11:05:36 am
No doubt missions with the DS will be divided in sub-missions. There could be a model used as terrain other than a regular one. The final sequences of the first film should be easy to manage that way(you can use the y coords control to make sure that everything proceeds smoothly, for example.)

The Battle of Endor should be divided in sub-missions, too(I think).
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Snail on March 02, 2008, 01:21:18 pm
Will the BoE be a BoE mission, or just a mockup or cutscene?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 02, 2008, 01:25:33 pm
The BoE is going to be a true challenge. I can't think a solution other than splitting that episode. What is the SWC team going to do with that? I'm curious ;)
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 02, 2008, 01:27:00 pm
I reckon two or three red alerts need to happen.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 02, 2008, 03:04:27 pm
Nah, end-mission is enough ;)
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 02, 2008, 05:05:43 pm
Lol you know what i meant. This is gonna be frickin awesome when it's done. Are you able to duplicate that unique tie fighter roll yet?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 05, 2008, 11:53:27 am
I reckon two or three red alerts need to happen.

When I tried to link three missions with red-alert, it didn't work out very well. The problem was that if you tried to go back to mission one in the red-alert ("Incoming Transmission" screen), you could only go back to the second. Pressing "Play Previous Mission" in mission 2's Incoming Transmission crashed the game. Has the SCP done anything about this?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 05, 2008, 11:54:57 am
You could pretend the briefing screen is a targeting / nav computer with some fancy styling.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 05, 2008, 01:56:56 pm
I reckon two or three red alerts need to happen.

When I tried to link three missions with red-alert, it didn't work out very well. The problem was that if you tried to go back to mission one in the red-alert ("Incoming Transmission" screen), you could only go back to the second. Pressing "Play Previous Mission" in mission 2's Incoming Transmission crashed the game. Has the SCP done anything about this?

You won't always have to use red-alert, there's end-mission. If you want to keep the damage inflicted to the player and other ships...use variables ;)
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 06, 2008, 08:28:05 am
That's not the problem I'm talking about. What I mean is that in mission 3's Incoming Transmission page, you can only go back to mission 2. After that, in mission 2's IC, if you press "Replay Previous Mission," the game crashes. Using end-mission would indeed solve the problem, but it would force the player to restart the whole series of missions (or even campaign ! :S) if he realizes he did something wrong in the ship selection, or simply suffered too much damage/lost too many wingmen in the previous mission.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 06, 2008, 08:42:54 am
What about setting it up as a loop? I can't remember if you can restart those. If not, is there a way in the camp editor of referring to a keypress event(in mission) of going back to the mission in question?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 06, 2008, 11:12:03 am
What do you mean by loop here? If you mean branching, I cannot see a way of it being of any use in solving this problem.

The campaign's progression is only affected by the campaign file, so there is no way to manipulate it in-mission, at least I don't know about that.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 06, 2008, 11:55:14 am
That's not the problem I'm talking about. What I mean is that in mission 3's Incoming Transmission page, you can only go back to mission 2. After that, in mission 2's IC, if you press "Replay Previous Mission," the game crashes. Using end-mission would indeed solve the problem, but it would force the player to restart the whole series of missions (or even campaign ! :S) if he realizes he did something wrong in the ship selection, or simply suffered too much damage/lost too many wingmen in the previous mission.

I don't see the point in using red-alert. Depends on how the missions are connected each other...if the connections are minimal(i.e. dogfight against TIE fighters ---> surface of DSII ---> interior of the DSII)...

In case the player is heavy damaged you can use variables to make sure that his HP are somewhat restored. If the player goes down he will restart the mission with more chances of survival(there should be a limit to that, anyway).

MISSION ONE

every-time

has-time-elapsed
0

modify-variable
HitPointsPlayer(campaign persistent variable)

hits-left
<Player>

-----------------------

MISSION TWO

when

true(or has-time-elapsed 0, it doesn't matter I think)

set-subsystem-strength
Player
Hull
HitPointsPlayer

-----

when

has-time-elapsed
1

modify-variable
MissionReplayTimes (player persistent, default value must be 0)
+
  MissionReplayTimes
  1

-----

when

=
 MissionReplayTimes
 1

modify-variable

HitPointsPlayer
+
HitPointsPlayer
20 (reasonsable percentage, 15-25 seems fine)

And so on... ;)
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: TopAce on March 06, 2008, 04:46:49 pm
That's overly complicated. Having a support ship that repairs your hull can do that, too. But that still doesn't provide a solution to the "you cannot step back to mission 1 after starting mission 3" issue that we must account for if we want to link the Endor missions, and have at least 3 of such missions.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 06, 2008, 04:52:13 pm
What about my suggestion?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Mobius on March 06, 2008, 05:04:37 pm
That's overly complicated. Having a support ship that repairs your hull can do that, too. But that still doesn't provide a solution to the "you cannot step back to mission 1 after starting mission 3" issue that we must account for if we want to link the Endor missions, and have at least 3 of such missions.

There are no support ships in SW(if I remember well). Why would you use red-alert and make the missions replayable, anyway? Are the connections too considerable to use end-mission? The last mission will only involve fighters, what's the point in storing the status of all the warships fighting outside the DSII?

Please note(no offense, SCP team) that there will likely to be many red-alert related bugs in the future. End-mission solves the problem.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on March 07, 2008, 08:13:56 pm
Hmmmm, if I understand correctly, the idea is to split the BOE into tiny chunks to make it manageable.
You couldn't conceivably have all 30 cap ships that will take part in the battle all slugging away at once (as awesome as that would be).
Splitting the missions allows for parts like, "Take down StarDestroyer X with support from Frigates A and B," and once that was done move to, "protect transports C through G from Interceptors Y for 10 minutes," without having X, Y, and A through G all in the same map.
Hope that was clear and accurate enough.

How about instead of half-a-dozen red alerts, you have one or two red alerts followed by an end mission. This could simulate returning to the carrier for warheads, fuel, repairs, etc. and could handily explain how you get a shiny new fully armed fighter two or three times during the battle.

Just ignore the fact that the battle probably passed too fast, and that the Rebellion didn't have sufficient rescources for that sort of thing.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: chief1983 on March 07, 2008, 08:48:09 pm
You can have the illusion of all the capships slugging it out, and do a far better job than XWA did.  It would just be a lot of work.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Harbinger of DOOM on May 27, 2008, 05:13:52 pm
No doubt the DSI will come first(for modelling reasons, too). The DSII will be a must...

I'm thinking about the Battle of Endor in terms of FREDding :blah:


I'm thinkin' do it in sections.

Have like a BoE part 1-3, with each mission having an animated background with "ships" duking it out.



EDIT: D'oh, great minds think alike. My idea has already been thought of.
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: Titan on May 27, 2008, 06:22:54 pm
Make a skybox with lots of ships, then have cutscenes inbetween battles, especially for when the superlazer fires. the DSII battle (mostly when lando escapes it though) is one of the only good parts of VI. (for more info, see my signiture)
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: jr2 on May 28, 2008, 01:50:41 am
Would it be on a Karnak scale? That seems a nice median.

The previous SWC team had a true-scale DS and DSII.  They were doing something to make it work, they even had a preview vid of the trench run.  I can dig through the old threads if you want... ?
Title: Re: are we going to do in atmosphere?
Post by: chief1983 on May 28, 2008, 09:34:46 am
The vid is on the website already I believe.