Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Scourge of Ages on July 02, 2012, 10:56:19 pm

Title: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 02, 2012, 10:56:19 pm
Because we needed another one, of course. Anyway.

Is there any way to specify a separate pitch up and pitch down rate in ships.tbl, or anywhere at all?

I'm looking to reward pulling 'up' to turn hard versus pushing 'down' during a bank, like you can in FS2.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Thaeris on July 03, 2012, 09:06:15 am
Unless you're doing some sort of atmospheric mod, how does this make any sense for a starfighter?
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: MatthTheGeek on July 03, 2012, 09:09:12 am
Well, you could always have a starfighter whose manoeuvring thrusters are more efficient in one direction than another...
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: headdie on July 03, 2012, 09:11:52 am
Unless you're doing some sort of atmospheric mod, how does this make any sense for a starfighter?

for example it might be easier to mount thrusters pointing under the nose than above, in this case a fighter will climb better than dive given even rear thrust capability
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 03, 2012, 10:03:33 am
Who says I'm not doing an atmospheric mod? Well, StarFox-y mod at least :)
And I know there are or will be atmospheric mods that could also benefit.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Thaeris on July 03, 2012, 10:05:47 am
Well, you could always have a starfighter whose manoeuvring thrusters are more efficient in one direction than another...

I was actually thinking about that after posting, and it is a valid point. Now that I think about it, there was a concept I was working on a while back where this might have in fact been an issue.

for example it might be easier to mount thrusters pointing under the nose than above, in this case a fighter will climb better than dive given even rear thrust capability

There's a difference between pitch and climb if we really want to be technical, though that's also a possibility. If we want to sustain forward velocity during maneuvers but have mass restrictions, it may be a viable option to mount more powerful rockets under the starfighter than to have symmetrically mounted engines of equal power. This almost makes those musings on space combat and WWII combat sound realistic, eh? This fighter will pitch faster but has a very limited sustained turning velocity, or this one will hold a turn very well on one axis but, by executing a roll and pitching in the negative of their turn axis you can escape easily, etc...

Should that be the case, wouldn't it be better to invest in separate rates for each axis/degree of freedom? For an asymetric fighter (as in no bi-lateral symmetry), I may have a symmetrical +/- pitch rate, but my yaw rates are uneven, and my roll responses are also a little lopsided due to where I can place maneuver thrusters.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: MatthTheGeek on July 03, 2012, 10:09:34 am
In any case, I think the OP would like to see less "why" and more "how".

I don't think this is currently possible. Try to ask some coders and/or make a feature request.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Nuke on July 04, 2012, 06:52:55 pm
you could probibly nerf it with scripting, but it would be hackish and ugly.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 04, 2012, 08:38:14 pm
Wellp, seems like a feature request is the answer then.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Alan Bolte on July 05, 2012, 12:04:38 am
I wonder how the AI would react to flying a ship like the Salthi that can't turn right? As it is, I'm not sure if the AI will even prefer to pitch or yaw based on which one is faster.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: MatthTheGeek on July 05, 2012, 01:00:27 am
There's a fighter in ASW which turns much faster on one axis than the others. Try to look how the AI reacts to it.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Dragon on July 05, 2012, 04:19:04 am
AI handles strange rotation times pretty well. Atmospheric mods tested it quite extensively and it works.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: mandobardanjusik on July 10, 2012, 09:03:52 pm
hmmmm well this is interesting, cant wait to see where this and the other thread goes, thanks for bringing this up scourge, cant wait to see your work on arwing tabling, should have that training ring for you soon.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - pitch up versus pitch down
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 11, 2012, 02:46:42 am
Next question:

Creating a new or duplicate ship involves more than just copying the retail table entries for an existing ship, if you want to have all the interesting visual features that SCP and FSU have added.
And I could just go down the entire wiki entry on ships.tbl and look at every thing and see if I need it, but most of those things I definitely won't and it's hard to tell what's what. Also don't a few things depend on species.tbl and ai_profiles.tbl?

So the question: If I were to attempt to create an exact visual duplicate a Ulysses or Subach (for example), which entries from which .tbls and .tbms would I have to copy?
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: karajorma on July 11, 2012, 07:52:38 am
I'm waiting for some poor sod to fill this request and then have to tear all their work out again because someone realised that some fighters have more than one engine subsystem and it makes no sense whatsoever unless you include that as part of the design.

Actually, I'm not waiting. I'm telling them now. :p
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 11, 2012, 02:17:54 pm
I'm waiting for some poor sod to fill this request and then have to tear all their work out again because someone realised that some fighters have more than one engine subsystem and it makes no sense whatsoever unless you include that as part of the design.

Actually, I'm not waiting. I'm telling them now. :p

Not sure I follow...
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: mjn.mixael on July 11, 2012, 02:23:04 pm
Agreed. I read through the thread twice and was still a bit lost as to what karajorma could be referring to...
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: mandobardanjusik on July 11, 2012, 02:28:15 pm
essentialy he is saying that what has been talked about so far is hooking up such a system to A engine, whereas whne you have multiple engine subsections it will need a different setup for if one engine is damaged it will effect the others, least I think thats what he is saying
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: headdie on July 11, 2012, 02:35:37 pm
I'm waiting for some poor sod to fill this request and then have to tear all their work out again because someone realised that some fighters have more than one engine subsystem and it makes no sense whatsoever unless you include that as part of the design.

Actually, I'm not waiting. I'm telling them now. :p

Not sure I follow...

basically copy paste is an ok beginners point but because many retail ships (especially FS1 era) only have 1 engine subsystem but many larger ships FS2 ships and community ships (including fighters) use multiple engine subsystems so will cause errors if you do a copy paste.  your best bet is to actually familiarize yourself with the wiki pages so that when you do copy paste you have a rough idea of what options are available. 

Even better spend the half hour or so hand building the table, that way you have complete control on your ships performance.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: Scourge of Ages on July 11, 2012, 02:47:14 pm
basically copy paste is an ok beginners point but because many retail ships (especially FS1 era) only have 1 engine subsystem but many larger ships FS2 ships and community ships (including fighters) use multiple engine subsystems so will cause errors if you do a copy paste.  your best bet is to actually familiarize yourself with the wiki pages so that when you do copy paste you have a rough idea of what options are available. 

Even better spend the half hour or so hand building the table, that way you have complete control on your ships performance.

Ohhhhh, that makes more sense. It sounded like he was responding to the first request which threw me off.

Yeah, I was just going through the ships.tbl page today and added some things that are definitely not in the retail table, but some of the things, particularly regarding engine spews and trails and stuff like that just went right over my head. And I was also wondering if and what I would have to include in species and/or ai_profiles to get some of the effects.
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: karajorma on July 11, 2012, 10:01:51 pm
Agreed. I read through the thread twice and was still a bit lost as to what karajorma could be referring to...

Doh! I had both open at the same time, looked at the topic of the post above me being about pitching up and down and thought I was replying to this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=81302). :p
Title: Re: Scourge's modding questions - which tables and .tbms do I need to copy?
Post by: Aginor on July 12, 2012, 04:40:52 am
LOL, I already wondered whether you had turned into an oracle. "What he says is always true, but your mortal mind may not understand it. The Karajorma has so much deeper knowledge of Freespace that you can't find words that fully describe what he sees." :D