[starlord]

Hi there,

since there were some talk on a starlancer TC and various followings, I was wondering if it could be possible to reverse flight/afterburn in the FS2 engine? Also, would some "strafe" movements up, down, left and right (à la descent), be also possible?

Just wondering on this lately...

[Nuke]

reverse thrusters, lateral thrusters and vertical thrusters have always been part of the engine and can easily be modded in. afterburners when enabled can also increase the power of lateral and vertical thrustrs, as well as main. input facilities for these (namely axis binding), is something the engine lacks. you can bind keys to them but not axes. you can get around it with scripting for now. for example i made it possible use the mouse to control lateral and vertical thrust. which really works out if you have an x52 or ch stick and throttle, you can use the thumb stick as a mouse to control with. i kinda also want a reverse thrust axis (or split the main throttle axis at some percentage), but for now i just use profiler software to hold down the z key when the throttle is less than 5%.

[Sushi]

afterburners when enabled can also increase the power of lateral and vertical thrusters, as well as main.

Wait, what? How do you enable that (so that AB works on non-forward thrusters)?

[Mongoose]

There do seem to be a few irregularities in FS2 when dealing with these sorts of things, beyond what Nuke mentioned, as I discovered as I've been trying to fool around with table files to duplicate something vaguely Descent-like.  At least by default, using the afterburner seems to cancel out strafing, and the engine doesn't seem to support strafing in two directions at once (such as up and left) in order to achieve the "trichording" effect.  (Diagonal HAT switch directions aren't recognized, either.)  Some of that may be achievable through scripting, though.

[Sushi]

There do seem to be a few irregularities in FS2 when dealing with these sorts of things, beyond what Nuke mentioned, as I discovered as I've been trying to fool around with table files to duplicate something vaguely Descent-like.  

At least by default, using the afterburner seems to cancel out strafing

Funny, works for me.

, and the engine doesn't seem to support strafing in two directions at once (such as up and left) in order to achieve the "trichording" effect.  

Also works for me. Maybe it's a problem only with certain control setups? My strafing and afterburner is all controlled via the keyboard...

[Mongoose]

Huh...maybe it all comes down to a joystick not supporting those actions, then.  That's still a personal bummer for me, though, because my Descent config for years has been joystick-only.  I was annoyed enough at the fact that I couldn't use my throttle to accelerate backwards.

[Nuke]

afterburners when enabled can also increase the power of lateral and vertical thrusters, as well as main.

Wait, what? How do you enable that (so that AB works on non-forward thrusters)?

+Aburn Max Vel:   90.0, 90.0, 175.0

the first to vector components are lateral and vertical max speeds respectively, im not sure how acceleration is delt with. the reason afterburner cancels out strafing as its called (in error ) is because those two numbers are left at zero. in general they should be larger than the normal vels.

as for hat switches, support for 8 way seems to never work in most games. sdl as far as i know only recognizes 4 way hats, as does direct input. the fact of the mater is 8 way hats dont exist. when a joystick says it has an 8 way hat, it doesnt, unless you map them to functions in the joystick profiler. there is no api level support for such things. if your joystick software allows, set it up as a 4 way hat, this way the software wont override the inputs and do something else. also most joystick's key emulation is rather limited and cant process simultaneous keystrokes, which seems to be the case with my ch gear. joysticks also use button matrices, and sometimes they are cheap about it and dont use a switching diode for every button. they do this especially on hat switchs. frankly i think hat switches suck, sad thing is i have 8 of them

what is really necessary is new input code to allow for (mouse/js) axis bindings to those controls, which has been asked for time and again since the start of the scp. pilot file code apparently is slowing the process.

its also now possible to script around input without screwing up physics. so things can be done. such as using the mouse for lateral thruster control (i use the thumbstick on my throttle as a virtual mouse for this), or using the trackir to control stuff (like the ship or turrets). another idea i just thought of (and will implement over the next 10 minutes) is splitting the throttle up to control forward and reverse thrust. the cockpit demo will have all these features.

[Sushi]

afterburners when enabled can also increase the power of lateral and vertical thrusters, as well as main.

Wait, what? How do you enable that (so that AB works on non-forward thrusters)?

+Aburn Max Vel:   90.0, 90.0, 175.0

the first to vector components are lateral and vertical max speeds respectively, im not sure how acceleration is delt with. the reason afterburner cancels out strafing as its called (in error ) is because those two numbers are left at zero. in general they should be larger than the normal vels.

OK, but don't you still get thrust forward?

For example, if I have my throttle and speed at zero, hold down my "sidethrust left" key, and hit afterburner, won't I still get pushed forward as well?

[Mongoose]

I'm curious as to exactly how those different afterburner directions work myself.  In Descent, the afterburner only fires straight forward, yet you can still slide (or strafe ) in a particular direction while it does so; your main thrust is forward, but you keep the ordinary thrust to the sides.  I expect I'll have to play around with that table value to achieve the same effect.

And whether joystick input generally does or doesn't support an 8-way hat switch, I can safely assure you that the Descent games managed to combine sliding directions by using the diagonals just fine.  Moving the hat switch up and to the left activates both up and left sliding, which allows one to trichord.

[Nuke]

i remember my hat switch worked fine in descent, but it was a 4 way i was using. really it depends on the joystick, the game, and the input api. i guess in your descent experience all 3 worked.

[JGZinv]

FringeSpace still needs a reverse afterburner.

Better known as, normally you increase speed by hitting buners and you go forward.
Well in our case, we want to hold Z (reverse) and then hit burners (tab), and reverse burn (move in the rearward direction faster
with acceleration).

Evidently, that's not possible yet.

[Nuke]

i dont remember tach ever having reverse afterburn. of course i havent touched that game in about a decade. but it sounds like it would be fun gameplay wise (especially in glide mode). il have a looksee next time im messing around with game physics. my thought is multiplicative afterburners. right now afterburners just ignore the engine values and just uses its own.  my thought is to represent afterburner with velocity and acceleration factors. so it will just amplify your current inputs when theyre enabled. might also want threshholfd values, so that the afterburners only come on if you have a certain amount of thrust applied in a given direction.

[JGZinv]

This is essentially how it operated in tach:

my thought is to represent afterburner with velocity and acceleration factors. so it will just amplify your current inputs when theyre enabled.

Only difference being that you could be at full stop engine wise, and still hit burners and your ship would move off that.
So it was treated like a separate thrust system. It just had a higher max velocity and faster accel compared to engines.

Reverse burn was used mainly by the multiplayer aces when dogfighting.
Most folks forget it's there, but it can leave your opponent looking for where you should be while
you back out and hit them with railgun beam shots.