[BurntCornMuffin]

I've been looking around the forums a bit and found some posts regarding damage decals...mostly about the fact that they're not entirely implemented and how their development is on hold due to some sort of issue.

Since there seems no interest to solve the problem, why not try to circumvent it?  Instead of placing damage decals on the model, we could label certain polygons on the model as "fragmentable", so that they fall off when they are hit based on how much damage has been accumulated as well as the hull damage modifier on the weapons factoring in (i.e. much more likely to fall off at 10% hull or when hit with a trebuchet than at 90% hull or when hit by a morning star).  Of course, if the modeller should flag polygons as fragmentable, they should create something underneath the fragmentable bits so that the player doesn't see through the ship they just tore up.

Perhaps this is best described through an image...
Okay, so here are three images of the same space ship (it could either be a fighter or a capital ship): #1 is how the ship would look brand new.  Note that the darker gray panels are flagged as fragmentable while the rest of the ship will stay together.  #2 has all the fragmentable bits removed, showing the model underneath (the green stuff).  #3 would be the ship after taking a beating (and considering what little is left, it probably won't take much more punishment).


So...is it possible?  I'm sure there would be some code changes, and I don't know how much the resident modellers would take to modelling some of the inner parts of their ships, but still...any thoughts on this?

[Kie99]

This suggestion's been around for ages.  AFAIK it's not implemented because every model would have to be redone to have extra polygons beneath the fragmentable ones, and there'd be a massive frame-rate hit from the amount of polygons you'd need to use.

[Colonol Dekker]

When health < 100 but >80 use Lod D1 (damage1)
When health <   80 but >70 use Lod D2 (damage2)



Would that be ok through Sexp or Codage?

[WMCoolmon]

This thread reads like a cleverly disguised request for poor-man's Geomodding.

You can do something like this with textures with my most recentest scripting-enabled builds.

Code: [Select]

$Ship class: GTF Ulysses
$On Weapon Collision: [
   if (sv.Ship.HitpointsLeft / sv.Ship.HitpointsMax) < 0.8 and sv.Ship.Textures['pristine']:isValid() then
      sv.Ship.Textures['pristine'] = gr.loadTexture("damaged")
   end
]

[Prophet]

Geomodding.

OMG! Geomod!1!! taht would be so cool i could blast a hole in to stanashus and fly in the intorier lol comon code geomod in to freespace!!!1 just take the code from red faction then i can shhoot holes in the juggernaites imagine it would be so awesom geomd lolol roxors!!!


Sigh. I miss those Geomod discussions.

[Col. Fishguts]

If you find a masochistic modeler, you can do a lot with destroyable subsystems.

[BurntCornMuffin]

If you find a masochistic modeler, you can do a lot with destroyable subsystems.

I had thought of that before, but wouldn't it cause SDG type guns to look as if they're trashing the hull of a ship? 



I hadn't really heard of Geomodding before this, but it seems pretty close to what I was thinking.  Time to do some research and look at these Geomod discussions...

[WMCoolmon]

You could use the armor system to set disruptors to do no damage at all to those subsystems.