[Flipside]

Ok, I've got a wierd problem here....

I've designed a model that uses a very fast projectile weapon which uses a missile trail for effect. The things work perfectly most of the time, but it seems the moment something goes to power up a beam, the game crashes and drops back to Windows  It could just be that the table is too big, but I tried removing one of my earlier weapons, and it still crashed.
Does this sound like a table problem to you? I cannot think of a single reason how my model could ONLY be causing this when a beam powers up?

Oh yes, by fast projectile, I mean 6000

Flipside

[Flipside]

Ummmmmm.... nope, it appears to be my ship in some way

Beams work fine on any mission not involving the ship, but crashes out the moment a beam goes to power up when the ship is in mission?!? I can only think it is some kind of target-lock problem with the polys on my model?

Any ideas what could be causing this?

Flipside  

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Flipside
Ummmmmm.... nope, it appears to be my ship in some way

Beams work fine on any mission not involving the ship, but crashes out the moment a beam goes to power up when the ship is in mission?!? I can only think it is some kind of target-lock problem with the polys on my model?

Any ideas what could be causing this?

Flipside  

If it is a problem with your ship, try letting your ship fire the beam.  If it's a target issue, then the game should still run, and if it is some kind of conflict then it will crash.  Out of curiosity, is this FS Standard or a SCP release?

[Flipside]

It's SCP release, and it is a targetting problem. The gun is mounted in a chamber that goes into the ship, increasing protection, but decreasing fov. It's fine when shooting, but the minute something tries to target a subsystem that is both right in front of it and through several clipping layers, poor old FS gets mighty confused
I suppose it was only the beam that had this effect because of the way it fires or the like? Either way the only option was to rebuild the first LOD of the model without the gun chamber. Not as pretty, but working Thanks for the help

Flipside

Oh yes, and heres something for the coders to be proud of, Fred 2 scp would load and place this ship in game. Fred 2 standard would crash whenever you tried, drew a mega-spikey thing and locked up

[Taristin]

I'll bet you could fix the geometry on the model. I've fixed a few of my problem files, so it isn't impossible. Maybe it was just a 'Normal' error. Was the turret firing through the right side of the ship? I.e. the opening in the chamber, or through the 'roof' of it?

I've had that problem, mighty funny looking.

[Flipside]

The gun on the ship was working fine, I think it was just that the gun was baried 'inside' the model, in a barrel, which has openings along the sides, so there were multiple flat surfaces between the beam turret and the target, which probably meant that you could draw a line between the cannon for a moment, so it went to charge, but before it could even start, the line vanishes and then the next 'hole' in the barrel would come along.....

Basically you would get

Q : Can the beam cannon target the subsystem?
A : YesNoYesNoYesNoYesNo
 -end program

That's my theory Anyway, remodding the ship worked and I have beams firing away quite happily now.

Thanks for the help

Flipside

[TopAce]

Originally posted by Flipside
.....Q : Can the beam cannon target the subsystem?
A : YesNoYesNoYesNoYesNo
 -end program
....

If you are talented yes, but otherwise not. If you can place a ship on the angle it would hit the subsystem accidentaly while the ship's beam wanted to hit another ship beyond the ship which's subsystem you want to destroy. A bit ununderstandable this way, let me explain it in a simple example:

You have a Deimos, an Orion, and a Fenris(or any)
The Deimos is the friendly, you want to to destroy the Orion's weapons behind the hangar.
You have to place the Deimos, and give it the order to attack the Fenris, but as the Fenris is covered the Orion's weapons, your Deimos should hit it and destroy its weapon subsystem with its beams.

[TopAce]

A source coder might be able to help ...

[Flipside]

Well, I'm not certain that it's so much a question of being talented as a question of being bothered. The front of the ship had a hell of a lot of polys in it, which didn't help, it was probably quicker to rebuild the model.
PCS wouldn't compile the old model, whereas Modelview32 would, though only at ridiculous sizes. And PCS would crash if you tried to load the Modelview created version, now the barrel has gone, all these problems are gone. I noticed there were probably a couple of hundred poly's making the barrel object, since the Boolean subtract on Lightwave is completely poly wastefull, and I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if this all turned out to be a polygon clipping/targetting error

Flipside

[TopAce]

I meant a source coder might help you in the 'beam targeting subsystem' question.

[Flipside]

LOL Oh Right! Sorry

Possibly, though I think, to be honest, it was me getting carried away with the sort of maths I was expecting FS to do in real time

<---- Has created 48 hour single frame renders on his 3D modelling software.

Flipside

[Taristin]

I'm curious to see what this model looked like to have hundreds of polies on a barrel...

You could probably do it with less than that. I think even with my limited TS skillz, I could too.

[Flipside]

Yes, I could probably have got rid of a lot of the polys with moderate ease, but since Lightwave screws up UV's big time when you do it, and Truespace is an awkward sob, and I had the unbarelled model sitting around anyway, it was a lot quicker to do it like that, rather than go through the whole process of recreating the model, only to (possibly) find out that it was nothing to do with the polys on the barrel.

I won't post a piccy just yet, since it's part of the Twisted Infinities Mod, but I'll tell you that the Barrel went into the ship from the front and stopped at around the midpoint. In the sides of the barrel at regular intervals were holes, the intended effect was to be able to see the main weapon glow travelling down the turret from the side. I might even keep working on the Barelled model and see if it can be saved

Flipside