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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 07:21:42 am

Title: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 07:21:42 am
I think this is my final question before release!

I'm not sure how to make a non-player ship jump in from a Knossos. The ship is placed with its nose right in the center of the ring (with the intention of having the warp effect be in the center of the Knossos), but when it jumps in it moves the whole Knossos along with it (looking at the wireframe view in FRED it seems that the "empty" center of the Knossos is actually part of the model, so the ship in question is just pushing the Knossos along). How did  :v-old: make things come from a Knossos, anyway?
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2016, 10:08:54 am
That ship is ****ed up.

Add them both to a collision group together with that one sexp that does collision groups. Or set the Knossos to be immobile.
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: 0rph3u5 on November 24, 2016, 10:59:58 am
Or set the Knossos to be immobile.

My colleague is of course referring to the last option in the left hand collum of the Ship Status-dialgoue of the Ship Editor in FRED:
(http://i1020.photobucket.com/albums/af321/0rph3u5/FS%20Open/knossos%20status_zpsq0camuvw.png) (http://s1020.photobucket.com/user/0rph3u5/media/FS%20Open/knossos%20status_zpsq0camuvw.png.html)
A picture to replace my inability to make the location sound less convoluted

It will make the Knossos stay on it coordinates no matter what you do - blasts, kinetic weapons, collisions etc etc.

There is also a SEXP to do that on the fly, called: set-immobile, in the "Change"-"Coordinate Manipultion"-category

Add them both to a collision group together with that one sexp that does collision groups.

add-to-collision-group, from the "Change"-"Models and Textures"-category

How did  :v-old: make things come from a Knossos, anyway?

Illusions!
The Knossos is an example for some good old optical trickery. You may notice that in every mission the Knossos is in, you always kept in front of it by the action - often too close to see it as a whole. Only "Flaming Sword" has you regularly move out to observe it from a distance.

As such you never really see where the "line" from which ships come from are, allowing slight inaccuracies to be overlooked. Plus  :v-old: never actually has larger ships pass through the middle but always slightly off-centre. You just don't notice because you are never at a position to really see it.

You can do the same by simply going through the "natural view point" of your mission, i.e. where player is looking at the start and where they are guided to look at by the initial action, and make sure that your jumping ship is never visible from an angle that allows the player to see the ship not passing the "right point".
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on November 24, 2016, 12:19:45 pm
Actually, the code takes a ship making a Knossos-style jump and locates a nearby Knossos-type ship and forces it to jump from in from the middle (jumping out, of course, would look weird if the ship teleported first).
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 01:55:49 pm

Illusions!
The Knossos is an example for some good old optical trickery. You may notice that in every mission the Knossos is in, you always kept in front of it by the action - often too close to see it as a whole. Only "Flaming Sword" has you regularly move out to observe it from a distance.

As such you never really see where the "line" from which ships come from are, allowing slight inaccuracies to be overlooked. Plus  :v-old: never actually has larger ships pass through the middle but always slightly off-centre. You just don't notice because you are never at a position to really see it.

You can do the same by simply going through the "natural view point" of your mission, i.e. where player is looking at the start and where they are guided to look at by the initial action, and make sure that your jumping ship is never visible from an angle that allows the player to see the ship not passing the "right point".

Wow, thanks, that's cool. I never thought about this!

I'll try checking off "Does Not Move" and see what happens.
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 02:49:40 pm
Wow, I can't believe this.

I checked Does Not Move and it still moves. It just gets shoved by this juggernaut-sized ship I have coming through it.
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2016, 02:57:29 pm
Try collision groups, put them both in collision group 1
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 03:06:05 pm
Try collision groups, put them both in collision group 1

I don't know how to make collision groups... ?

EDIT: Okay, correction, I found the symbolic expression that does that... is there anything else I need to do?
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on November 24, 2016, 03:21:15 pm
Wow, I can't believe this.

I checked Does Not Move and it still moves.
That sounds like a bug; anything set to be immobile should never move under any circumstances. However, it may be that something is clearing its immobile status...
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 04:25:58 pm
Wow, I can't believe this.

I checked Does Not Move and it still moves.
That sounds like a bug; anything set to be immobile should never move under any circumstances. However, it may be that something is clearing its immobile status...

I really can't think of anything that would be doing that.

I do have its rotating subsystems locked from the start of the mission...
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 24, 2016, 04:26:37 pm
Hey, sorry that I forgot to say -

Happy Thanksgiving guys!  :cool:
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2016, 10:02:06 pm
Try collision groups, put them both in collision group 1

I don't know how to make collision groups... ?

EDIT: Okay, correction, I found the symbolic expression that does that... is there anything else I need to do?

Somebody posted instructions right in this thread on how to make collision groups.

Put them both in group 1 after they've arrived
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on November 25, 2016, 12:25:49 am
Couldn't you temporarily give the Knossos a no-collide flag with sexps?
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: TrashMan on November 25, 2016, 01:03:15 am
Wow, I can't believe this.

I checked Does Not Move and it still moves. It just gets shoved by this juggernaut-sized ship I have coming through it.

Have you tried "no collision"?
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 25, 2016, 02:26:12 pm
Wow, I can't believe this.

I checked Does Not Move and it still moves. It just gets shoved by this juggernaut-sized ship I have coming through it.

Have you tried "no collision"?

No, I will try...
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on November 25, 2016, 02:31:03 pm
Adding both the Knossos and the ship that's jumping in to a collision group (set to trigger after the ship that's jumping in arrives) results in a  really weird case where the ship jumps in right on top of the player.

Yeah I can't make heads or tails out of it.

EDIT: No wait, it works. I had added the ship that was jumping in to the collision group (after it arrived) but I was adding the Knossos to the collision group from the start of the mission.

Making sure that both the ship and the Knossos were added only after the ship had jumped in fixed the problem, now the ship just runs nicely through the center.

Awesome! Thanks so much guys!

you didn't hear it from me, but

RELEASE TIME IS NEAR  :wakka:
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: Goober5000 on December 06, 2016, 08:43:43 pm
Actually, the code takes a ship making a Knossos-style jump and locates a nearby Knossos-type ship and forces it to jump from in from the middle (jumping out, of course, would look weird if the ship teleported first).

This.  PVD_Hope, you need to select "special warpin" in the ship flags dialog.  No need to mess around with collision groups or immobile objects.
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2016, 06:19:28 am
Why hasn't anyone just made a new Knossos model?
Title: Re: How to make a Knossos jump look right?
Post by: 0rph3u5 on December 07, 2016, 07:41:17 am
Why hasn't anyone just made a new Knossos model?

Well, there is the 2010 version that is in the MVPs (the initial discussion (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72377.0) of which doesn't read like one of the HLP's finest hours) but I guess you are more interested in the answer to why no one made a version without the invisible boundaries. The answer to which I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with logistics of having a model made up entriely of rotating and/or unconnected subobjects in retail. (I faintly remember a simlar problem with the Babylon 4 and Babylon 5 models in TBP but I might misremember as those models have static elements)