[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Lynx
An intro idea:

Have the game search for a mission file called intro.fs2 or something on startup, so that you can create an ingame cutscene as introduction movie.

Methinks mission loading times are a little long for this to happen.

[Lynx]

Really? Loading time is system dependant(it takes about 20s for me btw), but I think most people will tolerate that if they get a cool intro afterwards.

[StratComm]

That's what concerned me.  And if the intro got a bug in it, you'd be pretty much screwed.

[knn]

My "ideas":

Fighter beams that fire until you release the trigger
Fighter beams with auto-targeting
Turret AI that does not try to shoot through the hull of the ship
Rotating turrets placed on non-horizontal surfaces
Ship AI which uses the equalize function (not only fighters)

Can't think of anything else now...

[Lynx]

Originally posted by StratComm
That's what concerned me.  And if the intro got a bug in it, you'd be pretty much screwed.

IIRC WMCoolmon's in cutscene stuff you can abort them by keypress.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Lynx
Really? Loading time is system dependant(it takes about 20s for me btw), but I think most people will tolerate that if they get a cool intro afterwards.

(Assuming you were replying to WCM and this was timewarped...)

I think there might be mission-stuff which is precached as part of the game starting up, and then a secondary load for the specific mission assets.... so you'd still need to wait for that on top of the load time you see loading a mission in campaign/techroom.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Lynx


IIRC WMCoolmon's in cutscene stuff you can abort them by keypress.

All the cutscenes SEXPs I've written just modifies a certain aspect, eg fade-in, set-fov, set-camera-position. The player still has full access to the controls, but shouldn't be able to change anything with the cutscenes. It's up to the FREDder to provide an 'exit' key, because there's no way to account for what ships should be where after the cutscene.

I think there might be mission-stuff which is precached as part of the game starting up, and then a secondary load for the specific mission assets.... so you'd still need to wait for that on top of the load time you see loading a mission in campaign/techroom.

The stuff that's loaded on game start are mostly the tables. The loading time could be cut down because only ships, weapons, and effects used in the mission would have to be loaded. No need to load all the HUD gauges for example. Thanks to taylor's work on -loadonlyused the loading time's been reduced a fair amount, but it's still pretty large.

So it'd be a little less than the normal loading time, but yeah, it'd basically be the time to get to the pilot screen plus the time to load a mission.