Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Scooby_Doo on October 22, 2012, 05:31:06 pm
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Here's some ideas I would like to implement after I've finished all my confed models. I'll be adding more stuff as I come around to it (or if someones has some suggestions). Think of this as public notes to myself.
Landing Gear:
My guess is part of lod 0. A detail box wouldn't work because they would need to rotate.
For sexping I'm guessing (is there an easier way???)
1. wait till mission over and within range of landing bay
2. Take control of player ship, move ship to landing decent path start
3. Move camera to a "camera" subsystem on the capship and point the camera at the fighter, it should track the craft as it comes in for a landing.
3. Have AI do the landing/docking so it'll come down on landing approach
4. At specific time/distance start rotating landing gears
Things I need to take notice to:
- The landing/docking endpoint (touchdown) must be the same height for all ships otherwise bombers will have their wheels falling into the floor and light fighters will float in the air
- This can also be used for fighters just sitting in the hanger bay
Changes to existing model: Cut out the wheel wells and some retexturing for those wells, nothing too major.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/side-landing-gear1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept1.jpg)
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O_o wow demwheels.
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certainly in FSO (not sure about WCS builds) there is a built in landing mechanic which might prove usefull
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Subsystem#.22allow_landing.22
and
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Collision_Physics: onwards
edit
corrected second link
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I'm aware of the landing physics in ships.tbl, but what's "Allow landing" do?
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It means that a subsystem (I presume modeled) can be used to trigger the landing mechanic, so basically you fly at the subsystem marked with the flag meeting your ship's criteria for landing and the landing code will trigger, iirc all that will remain is figuring what trigger you want to use for the landing gear and how much room you will have under the fighter for the landing gear, perhaps as the table options don't seem to be able to set a "rest altitude" then using either a rogue vertex or the bounding box controls in newer PCS2 builds to adjust the height might help.
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Actually, you'd need to fine-tune it using radius, since capship to fighter collisions are done with a mesh to radius system. Only capship's mesh gets checked, but for the fighter, the radius is used.
Of course, you could ask SCP to change that. Some additions to the landing code would be needed for gear to truly work.
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Well you wouldn't really have to physically land on the hanger floor, just slightly above it to prevent the dreaded collision rubbing sounds.
Hmmm the docking point on the carrier would be just above the floor. The docking point on the fighter would be vertically level with the bottom of the tires.
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Well you wouldn't really have to physically land on the hanger floor, just slightly above it to prevent the dreaded collision rubbing sounds.
Au contraire. Diaspora introduced a special "landing physics" feature, which enables you to actually touch down on the hangar floor (as long as the floor is a subsystem with the "allow landing" flag set). Landings are quite possible, and if it wasn't for a couple of missing SEXPs and an annoying quirk in the collision engine, they'd be on the level of Starshatter.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vxwNJVKaFO8
to see what the system looks like in Diaspora
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This is what I'm aiming for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y521CV97GBg&feature=relmfu at 27:07 when the dragon comes into land. That's the end-mission viewpoint, otherwise having landing gears (wouldn't be worth the effort. I should really fred up an example. LOL also those wheels are tiny for such a massive craft.
Well you wouldn't really have to physically land on the hanger floor, just slightly above it to prevent the dreaded collision rubbing sounds.
Au contraire. Diaspora introduced a special "landing physics" feature, which enables you to actually touch down on the hangar floor (as long as the floor is a subsystem with the "allow landing" flag set). Landings are quite possible, and if it wasn't for a couple of missing SEXPs and an annoying quirk in the collision engine, they'd be on the level of Starshatter.
Well since it should be AI landed that could be accomplished my way too, although I can see it being useful in other situations.
Also on another note, the landing gear rods need to be somehow hierarchically linked so I can stretch for some ships. For example, the bearcat needs to be raised up so the front wheel gear is actually sticking out reasonably, but the rear struts need to be lengthened.
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Now with front landing gear:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept2.jpg)
note this requires 9 rotation subsystems (three for the struts, 6 for the doors
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Looks amazing.
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Second concept idea, missile launching bays
This would me much easier to implement than the landing gears. Only thing that really matters is the ability of the scripts to capture launching secondaries event. Rotate the bay doors, launch and reclose them.
It would require about the same amount of work on the base model as the gears, only this time it would need only two separate subobjects.
Oh and you would have to be able to tell which missile pod is connected to which missile doors. Perhaps a parameter in the doors properties, i.e. missilebank=1
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept3.jpg)
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Very nice. I hope it would work in Saga. At least it good in Ingamecutscenes like I used. I put the fighters close to the deck. But with wheels it looks perfect. What I wonder...
In Wing 3+4 the ships has wheels again. Wing Commander 1+2 has Landing gears. See in the Blueprints:
http://static.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/wc1rapierblueprint.gif
http://static.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/wc1hornetblueprint.gif
http://static.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/wc1raptorblueprint.gif
Or Star Citizen the Hornet:
http://static.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/rsi_hornet.png
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I suppose it depends on how you land. If you come down in a simply clunk, the gears/pads would work. Otherwise the moment a ship lands, EVERYONE on the ship hair would be standing on end as the metal screetching. Worse yet... when they actually have to move the ship around while on the hanger, it needs to have wheels
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The missile bay with a dummy missile for looks
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept4.jpg)
P.S..... OMG photobucket's update is HORRIBLE.
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That looks nice. If only the missile could launch like it should, not only straight ahead...
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Just :eek: :eek: :eek:
:yes: :yes: :yes:
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Minor nitpick, Scooby. Note that your mainwheels will bear most of the fighter's weight when on the ground, so they tend to be larger than your nosewheels or tailwheels (should you have such). It may be due to perspective, but your mainwheel trucks seem to be bearing smaller slicks than that of the nosewheel truck. And even though you have four slicks in total at the aft of the fighter, you also have a far higher concentration of weight as well. You may want to get some larger diameter slicks back there...
:)
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This would me much easier to implement than the landing gears. Only thing that really matters is the ability of the scripts to capture launching secondaries event. Rotate the bay doors, launch and reclose them.
They're already pretty much implemented, only they open upon selecting the missile bank and not upon missile launch.
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Minor nitpick, Scooby. Note that your mainwheels will bear most of the fighter's weight when on the ground, so they tend to be larger than your nosewheels or tailwheels (should you have such). It may be due to perspective, but your mainwheel trucks seem to be bearing smaller slicks than that of the nosewheel truck. And even though you have four slicks in total at the aft of the fighter, you also have a far higher concentration of weight as well. You may want to get some larger diameter slicks back there...
:)
I think it's the perspective, they're the same size. Also these will be generic gears, it'll depend on the shape of the craft which gears will be used
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Couple (or so) more features...
Radar/sensor thingie - encased in protective glass, it's location will vary from ship to ship (some on the nose, some on the wings, some with one, some with two...etc..) Requires chopping lod 0 up and some retexturing
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept5.jpg)
Physically vents (not normal mapped low quality) just add more objects to lod 0, no other changes need to be made (they get removed in lod 1 and replaced with just the texture version)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept6.jpg)
Refuellers - Same as the vents
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept7.jpg)
Anyone have any other ideas?
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RCS nozzles. I'll tell you how to set them up so they actually fire. Just put them on the model, and I'll show you how to table them.
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Just had a scarey thought.... when you rotate a subsystem does it rotate around it's local axis or the worlds? Local axis is a lot better than world.
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what do you mean, "world's"? Dat doesnt even
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iirc it all rotates around the local, if it was mission space then things like the radar dishes on the Orions and Fenris/Leviathon wouldn't work
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iirc it all rotates around the local, if it was mission space then things like the radar dishes on the Orions and Fenris/Leviathon wouldn't work
Makes sense, also that would make off-angled doors and stuff nearly impossible to do correctly.
what do you mean, "world's"? Dat doesnt even
Local space = rotate around the subsystems x/y/z axis
world space = rotate around the games x/y/z axis
for example: Take a rotate radar that rotates clockwise, we then rotate the subobject 90 degrees pointing due port (0,90,0) Now in local space coords, the top of the dish would still be angled at (0,0,0), and it would still be rotating clockwise. In world coords, the top of the dish would be (0,90,0) and would be rotating top to bottom to top. It's all relative.
edit: Same goes for moving/scalling. In local space the scale is ALWAYS 100% and the objects center/origin is ALWAYS (0,0,0)
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Well, if you mean like that (I'd rather use "ship space", since "world space" implies global coordinates for the entire mission), then AFAIK it'd be world's axis. Basically, if you define a model to rotate on Y-axis, then it'll rotate around the ship's Y-axis (i.e. top-down direction relative to the ship), no matter how you twist or transform the submodel itself. Yes, this does make off-axis doors and other animations hard to set up, and that's why there's so few of them. You have to express the rotation you want as a sum of two rotations around different axes. For simple angles like 30, 45 and 60 degrees this should be easy, for others might be less so, but it pretty much all boils down to high school level maths at most.
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Is it possible to make telescoping landing gear work in the FSO engine? Specifically, I'm thinking of a landing gear strut that swings down in an arc and also extends as it does so (and shortens as it retracts), like a piston. I know translation isn't possible and that with some work it can be "faked" using a pivot point placed far away from the object. What I'm also not certain about is whether such an object can have two animations.
Taking this piston idea further, what about the implementation of landing gear suspension effects?
I might be better off looking this up elsewhere rather than asking here, but these are some ideas that I hope others might like to see working.
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Hmmm is rotation mostly limited to the local Z axis? I can't seem to get Y axis rotation to do anything and X seems to be the same as the Z's rotation.
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in situations where you have a long chain of child objects in a heirarchical arrangement the children at the deepest level are transformed first, then their parents (and all its children) until the root object is reached. so children get rotated by their own rotations, then inherit their parents rotations, and their grandparents rotations, etc (but instance depth maxes out at like 5 or something so it cant be too deep). ive had situations where parent rotations cancel out child rotations. with a 3 deep system you can easily accomplish translation. getting it to work and keeping collision detection for those children working is another matter entirely (at any given time a parents bounding box needs to contain all its children, if an animation makes a child leave the bounding box, then that child will probibly have collision issues, and this needs to be done at every level of heirarchy including the parent, and the model radius must contain the root objects box, in theory).
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RCS nozzles. I'll tell you how to set them up so they actually fire. Just put them on the model, and I'll show you how to table them.
Done
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Shodan_AI/concept8.jpg)
About 54,000 polys, 37k without the landing gears
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Excellent. Can't wait to see it released. Once you get it in-game, I'll send you a table with the thrusters set up, with instruction for implementing them on other ships. Unless you have a different effect in mind, I'll use the RCS puff from BTRL (the same one was used in Diaspora). BTW, this can work on capships, too (maybe with a different effect though).
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Excellent. Can't wait to see it released. Once you get it in-game, I'll send you a table with the thrusters set up, with instruction for implementing them on other ships. Unless you have a different effect in mind, I'll use the RCS puff from BTRL (the same one was used in Diaspora). BTW, this can work on capships, too (maybe with a different effect though).
Are the thrusters based on a pof data entry? (i.e. are they setup the same way as regular thrusters?)
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Nope, they're table only. You don't need to add anything to POF to use them.
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Nope, they're table only. You don't need to add anything to POF to use them.
Oh man, that could be more difficult then.
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Just use glowpoints for taking the thruster's exact position and normal. It's not that hard, if a bit tedious.
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Ahhhh.... that'll work I think.
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Some updates to this very old thread...
These are all lod 0 details, lod 1 and down have no changes..
(http://i.imgur.com/7StTYxd.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/3QXjE77.jpg)
New texturing style... (no bump yet)
(http://i.imgur.com/TfQSVsK.jpg)
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Kinda looks like a beefy F-22 Raptor.
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Do more experiments like this :D . New texturing style reminds me your older fighters and I really like it :yes:
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LOD 0 is a poly monster....
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Now with bump mapping
(http://i.imgur.com/CZN5jtY.jpg)
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Waow. That's gorgeous.
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Even more physical detailing... aka.. not normal mapped!
73K poly and surprisingly I'm still getting 60fps with this cheapie video card.
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That's starting to look like a Star Citizen ship. :) Will you remake the rest of your fighters to the same standard? Also, since you're going all-out, how about a new Confed pilot model?
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Problem with confed fighters is they're generally very slick and aerodynamic. Kinda hard to add detail without spoiling it and I don't really like to add detailed panelling, too much work, normal maps are good enough for that.
And yes I'm looking for a good detailed pilot model, this one is very long on the wind.
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I'm thinking about missions of bigger size, with dozens of fighters. While Your previously generation of fighters are enough hi-poly for up to date standards, dozens of fighters with 73k poly... Well. I'm not sure if it's going to work without killing my PC or game engine. If I were You, I would stop on reworking the textures without adding numerous details to all fighters. Your new texturing style is gorgeous :D.
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Remember this is all lod 0. Lod 1 and lower won't change a bit. Also I want to release a variant, one without landing gears (where the fighters never land, they never need stuff no-one will ever see)