Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Vengence on December 13, 2010, 01:14:13 pm

Title: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 13, 2010, 01:14:13 pm
I'm workin me creative mind juices of late and this idea has been in my mind for a while  ;).
To help with visualization, I made a little GIF anim! :D
(http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/8210/siegeship.gif)

This is a Siege Ship, as you can tell it relies on, drumroll, animation  :p. Obviously animation in the FSO isn't a totally perfect, and I am pretty sure this thing can't be done eh? Not only does it rely on opening those flaps to bring those huge naughty beam guns up, but it also relies on turret objects actually moving with those flaps, and still being good shots.

Thoughts? I could live with the thing having basically two model versions for missions. One undeployed, one deployed and I'd be perfectly fine. Just call me insane for wanting some of the craziest things to go into the game  ;).
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: headdie on December 13, 2010, 01:28:09 pm
The only aspect of that ship that cant be done already with one model  is moving the fire points with the rotating subobjects of the wings
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Nohiki on December 13, 2010, 01:45:28 pm
Correct me if i'm wrong, the way i get it, the firepoints are not slaved to the end of the barrel, but rather to relative position to the mesh, right? Then you can have them in the "unfolded" position and 3, 2, 1, beam-free-all the ship only after it's transformed. It won't need to fire the beams in subspace when it's folded, because it's not recomended to blow up something you can hit with a beam inside a subspace node. And while in normal space, it could move unfolded.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: bobbtmann on December 13, 2010, 01:46:08 pm
The firepoints could be static. If the model can only fire when the wings are open, then it'll look convincing.

edit: what Nohiki said
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Galemp on December 13, 2010, 01:49:29 pm
Well... if the guns can't fire when the arms are closed, couldn't you just place them where you want them when the arms are open, and lock them until the animation is finished?

EDIT: Damn you guys are fast.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: BengalTiger on December 13, 2010, 04:28:07 pm
Could dock points rotate along with a rotating subsystem?

If so, than create the hull, make rotating dock points and dock the wings as separate ships armed with beam cannons, and this should work perfectly.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 13, 2010, 05:39:34 pm
Could dock points rotate along with a rotating subsystem?

If so, than create the hull, make rotating dock points and dock the wings as separate ships armed with beam cannons, and this should work perfectly.

Well that is quite an elaborate method!  :p

I'll be half honest, I -do- kinda want it to be able to fire in its undeployed state but really... lets not kid ourselves, it'd create more annoyances than good. As for the fixed firepoint, just to absolutely clarify: Even if the firepoint is a singlepoint button turret parented to the wing subobject (if possible) the firepoint will NOT move with the button turret?

In short the whole wing flap thing is so that the ship doesn't create a 20km wide subspace portal (that'd be an eyesore eh?) so when it enters the field it will come through a small portal then unfold into battlemode. Well folks as long as the epic FREDers keep their hats on I suppose the static firepoint idea will work :). Unless of course.... the SCP team suddenly decides to code in support for translating firepoints. That'd most certainly be epic.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on December 14, 2010, 01:18:57 am
Dock points don't rotate either so that's out. 
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: varsaigen on December 16, 2010, 06:00:05 pm
Interesting design on the seige ship. While I do not have an answer for you, I can't help but imagine a fleet of these warping in, deploying, and forming a wall.

...
I think you just created a new form of hell for your enemies. XD It just puts "blockade" to a whole new level XD
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 16, 2010, 08:06:25 pm
There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  ;). And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: DarthWang on December 17, 2010, 05:54:47 am
Looks like a wristwatch
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Nohiki on December 17, 2010, 06:36:07 am
In short the whole wing flap thing is so that the ship doesn't create a 20km wide subspace portal

Would this (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Warpin_Radius:) be a solution to that?
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Stormkeeper on December 17, 2010, 06:55:56 am
Well, before worrying about the 20km large subspace portal, I think he's more concerned about the unfolding.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 17, 2010, 02:51:56 pm
I'm pretty sure the whole static firepoints would suffice. Might even add two points so players can still fred the thing firing undeployed.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Black Wolf on December 17, 2010, 07:44:59 pm
Of course, the turrets will need to be invisible, untargettable and thus undestroyable...
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 17, 2010, 07:48:24 pm
I'm pretty sure that can be explained as the weapons being mounted deeply internally. Maybe even simply refraction/reflection ports that draw from inside the ship. In any case taking out the weapons subsystem should stop the beamspam.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Droid803 on December 17, 2010, 07:48:39 pm
Or you could just put two of the same turret on top of each other, and rig it in fred to destroy the other one when one is destroyed :P

Might take a bit of when-argument'ing but should be fairly doable (and copypastable)
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Kusanagi on December 26, 2010, 04:26:33 am
You could always make two versions - one for folding and one unfolded and use the change-ship-class SEXP.

Either way, your subspace portal is going to be as large as it would be were the arms completely unfolded. The bounding box of the main model has to be large enough to include these arms or else collision detection breaks.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Commander Zane on December 26, 2010, 04:33:38 am
There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  ;). And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like  :rolleyes:
I seriously can't help but think of the Bentusi when you say this.
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Kusanagi on December 26, 2010, 05:17:14 am
There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  ;). And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like  :rolleyes:
I seriously can't help but think of the Bentusi when you say this.

T-mat, baby  :pimp:
Title: Re: Ship Concept? Perhaps Too Much
Post by: Vengence on December 26, 2010, 11:24:53 am
Now that you speak of it... my friend designed the race who owns this. I only design the ships. He's a big homeworld fan and... two and two together makes a four. Heh good thought there  ;)