[Mr CharlieCharlie]

I've recently started enjoying the Babylon 5 total conversion for nothing more than its refined flight model. Once used to the somewhat awkward glide functions of the StarFury, I find myself wishing that I could have the same amount of inertial freedom in the main Freespace games. Although, we all know the 'planes in space' model is an unavoidably unrealistic byproduct of the medium. It is, after all, entertainment so there is always a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief required but my real question is whether this glide function is only available within TBP total conversion, or indeed, whether there is a way to activate this in all Freespace open related content?

[jr2]

Check out the Beyond the Red Line demo.  ftp://ftp.4players.de/pub/pc/sonstiges/btrldemoinstaller.exe  That has it too.

FS doesn't use it except for the SF Manticore IIRC (could be wrong; maybe it's another SF I'm thinking of, but one of them has glide).  And, of course, that's not a player flyable ship.  However, the engine does have the capability.

All you'd have to do is edit the ships.tbl file and add glide specs to whichever ships you wish (which you would find in... one of the .vp files, I can't remember which one exactly off the top of my head).  Just stick the edited version in the appropriate folder (\data\tables\) and it will override the one in the .vp

[MatthTheGeek]

Glide is a FSO feature, didn't exist in retail. The ship you're thinking about is the SF Scorpion, which, alongside some other Shivan crafts, has lateral thrusters - nothing to do with glide.

[-Norbert-]

There are fan-made glide mods for Blue Planet (one by Fury I think for AoA, the other by me for WiH).
If you want to adapt the glide mod for something other than Blue Planet, just delete all the BP-exclusive ships out of the file and add the following piece of code in, for each ship you want to be able to glide (obviously before the #End tag, or the lines will be ignored):

Code: [Select]

$Name: Shipname
+nocreate
$Glide: YES
+Dynamic Glide Cap: YES
+Glide Accel Mult: -1
$Use Newtonian Dampening: YES
Usually you can get the shipnames out of "ship.tbl" or similar table files. How you name the "glide-unlock" table file doesn't seem to matter, or at least it worked just fine in my experiments, when I renamed it to glide-shp.tbm and linked it with only the MediaVPs.... which brings be to the next matter:
I strongly suggest making a new mod folder and linking it up with whatever other mod you want to play with the use of a mod.ini, rather than placing the new table file into any existing mod folder, just to be on the save side.
Table files belong into ...\FreeSpace2\<modname>\data\tables\ .

A working (if very minimalistic) mod.ini would look like this, with mod_x being the foldername of the mod:

Code: [Select]

[launcher]
modname      = Glide for mod X;
infotext     = Adds glide to mod X
[multimod]
primarylist  = ;
secondarylist = mod_x,mediavps_3612;
A final warning: Giving the ships glide will change balance.
I know that Fury's enhanced AI copes well with glide (some people reported the AI getting more competent with gliding enabled -> see the linked thread for example), though it's also possible that the standard FS2 AI will be unable to use glide properly and end up bumping into everything.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

FS doesn't use it except for the SF Manticore IIRC (could be wrong; maybe it's another SF I'm thinking of, but one of them has glide).  And, of course, that's not a player flyable ship.  However, the engine does have the capability.

I think you are thinking about the mara and scorpion, which don't actually have glide capability (being retail FS ships), but do have noticable non-forward velocity, which sorta make them glide when pulling turns at high speed.

Or you and I are completely wrong about this

EDIT - On topic.

-Norbert- pretty much summed up what needs to be done to enable gliding on any ship, and I recommend you take a look at the ai.tbl and ai profiles tables on the wiki, and create your own tables to allow the ai-controlled fighters to glide.
I was about to recommend using BP's AI tables, but I am not sure they have entries regarding gliding (since this feature isn't present in BP (as far as we know)).

[General Battuta]

Yeah, jr2 is thinking of the wrong thing - retail had reverse and side thrust on some Shivans, but no glide.

[Mr CharlieCharlie]

I'm extremely grateful to everyone for the informative resposes on this subject. It has certainly given me some other options to get my teeth into..

[EDIT] changing the subject: A little apology to make regarding the repetition of this subject enquiry ..I have realised that due to the various links(-norbert- especially), that this was quite well fleshed out and chewed over some years ago at the release of BP2 et al! I'd like to reiterate my thanks and indeed, sorry for perhaps wasting chaps time on this subject 

[-Norbert-]

Actually it's even older than WiH.
Fury (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) originally implemented it in an "optional feature pack" or somesuch he made for the BP: Age of Aquarius Directors Cut. I just posted my own variant of the glide mod, rather than dig his up, because it was easier to find for me (and not at all for self promotion ).
And obviously TBP had it even before that. Wether they were the first to do it, I really can't tell.

There are also off-shoots of FS2, that use full newtonian physics, most notably the "Minbari Project", which started out as a mod for TBP, but since then moved on to become it's own project, with it's own custombuild exe files (additional physics and cockpit gauges and all that stuff you need for proper newtonian flight).... at least that's what I read about it, never having actually played it myself.

[Mr CharlieCharlie]

Thank you kindly for the headsup about that!

I have to say I found myself being compelled to play with those little control tweeks TBP illustrated to me, for the simple reason that I found myself being able to accomplish some of the most(for me at least) satisfyingly complicated manoeuvres in combat and indeed flying escort missions...showing off is the most accurate way of describing it

[Mr CharlieCharlie]

Speaking about TBP, I'm switching between 3.6.12 inf exe and 3.6.14 rc5, whilst also using the most updated version of the launcher. It was suggested to me to obtain Zathras 2.0 for some visual improvements and some other refinements. Is there any way to use this in conjunction with some more recent mediavps, as there clearly seems to be( from my somewhat limited understanding of such things) a distinct lack of the more recent detail obtained from mediavps_3612 onwards(normal maps, glow maps, higher poly models etc)?

[jr2]

a distinct lack of the more recent detail obtained from mediavps_3612 onwards(normal maps, glow maps, higher poly models etc)?

Yeah, but the MVPs are those upgrades for FreeSpace ships... you would need them for TBP ships.  What you need should be in the Zathras update.

BTW, you should go poking around with a VP file view and ModelView and TableView... it would do you good, as you'd get a feel for how things work.  Just don't change anything until you know what you are doing (and make backups even then until you're even better).

[Mr CharlieCharlie]

Thank you for the advice.  I think that's really my ultimate goal with all this, to actually get to the bare bones of everything
Having been definitely thinking about a VP viewer of some sort and maker.  Just to get everything a little neater, instead of worrying about individual file types(pcx, tga, tbl,pof etc)

Does anyone know where I might be able find The Minbari Project?

[-Norbert-]

The release-thread is here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=51083.0
But it seems that it has been abondened, since all the link go into a domain that is no longer there, including the download link.

[jr2]

I have it somewhere, I can try to upload it.  It would be better if someone else could, though, as I only have unlimited Internets a couple times a week @ work.

[Mr CharlieCharlie]

No need to worry chaps..have found it, or something similar to it via links from the 'First ones' website.  Some very interesting things are going on there if you love Babylon...which quite frankly, I do.  Recently got hold of the full series and films and have been religiously watching it in conjuction with the total conversion, fantastic stuff!!

Bloody tricky to fly, mind you...i do like a challenge...

[-Norbert-]

If you mean I found her, that is something different. It too is free fan-made a Babylon 5 game with full newtonian flight, but IFH was build from the ground up, including their own engine, while "The Minbari Project" is a total conversion using FreeSpace's engine (however it's called).

IFH certainly would fit the "bloody tricky to fly" part, especially hitting those damn Raider Zephyrs with the flat front profile.

Oh and if you want to feed your "religious needs" further, I suggest getting the "Passing of the Technomages" Trilogy books and "The Shadow Within" by Jeanne Cavelos and the Psi Corps Trilogy by J. Gregory Keyes. "To dream in the city of sorrows", while interresting is a bit boring for the most part
And the Centauri Trilogy... wasn't quite to my tastes... too many things that didn't make sense (why would the Drakh use dart guns that only carry a six shot magazine, when even Humans can make PPGs that shoot dozens of shots, especially when they are using energy weapons in Crusade and the other books? to give just one example).

And unless it's in a bundle together with the other films (like the one I bought) do NOT buy the film "Legend of the Rangers". Best pretend this film was never made. Everything else about Babylon 5 is at least entertaining, but that film so bad it makes "Grey 17 is missing" look like a great episode in comparison.

[Dragon]

The release-thread is here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=51083.0
But it seems that it has been abondened, since all the link go into a domain that is no longer there, including the download link.

This one's outdated. There's a newer version, merged with The Geometry of Shadows.
It's on FSMods, here: http://freespacemods.net/download.php?view.658

[jr2]

a distinct lack of the more recent detail obtained from mediavps_3612 onwards(normal maps, glow maps, higher poly models etc)?

Yeah, but the MVPs are those upgrades for FreeSpace ships... you would need them for TBP ships.  What you need should be in the Zathras update.

BTW, you should go poking around with a VP file view and ModelView and TableView... it would do you good, as you'd get a feel for how things work.  Just don't change anything until you know what you are doing (and make backups even then until you're even better).

In addition, try poking around the Wiki, specifically, around here and then on to anything else that interests you:

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FS2_Data_Structure

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Installing_Mods_for_FS2_Open

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Mod.ini