Originally posted by Omniscaper
Are their any current solutions with applying a cloak or movable parts (Bird of Prey wings or Voyager Nacelles) on these models? I'm aware of cloak difficulties, but I read that a month ago. Any change? I'm slowly getting the hang of Fred, is there any sexp's that could do either yet?
Cloaking
Cloaking is currently only available under OGL as previously stated, and only functions by means of cheats, so no sexps to do it. Its probably on the list that coders will try to make D3D-capable and mission controlable once 3.6 is out the door. We'd need not only sexps, but new HUD art to include it as part of the ETS, rules for its energy consumption, an extra subsystem for the list, a box in FRED to allow or disallow a ship from using the cloak. This is probably best implimented only on the player ship, since the AI won't know how to use it, and coders hate altering or creating AI... not that I hold it against them. All in all, with the exception of the player ship, cloaking will have to be exclusively controlled through scripting. Finally, we'll also need an addition to the control section so a cloaking key can be mapped into use.
Moving Parts
While this is possible, it is somewhat impracticle. Right now, its only supported under rotating subsystems. You'd have to make each wing as a separate rotating segment, but which is missing the other side. I know that rotating subsystems don't have to be ballanced, because you can knock out one of the rotating blades of a Shivan Comm. node and the other end of it will continue rotating. The only problem with that is that the subsystem will attempt to continue rotating through the rest of the hull, rather that stopping at the raised, lowered, or mid position as the case may require. Now, there are sexps that tell a subsystem to start rotating or stop rotating, so you'd have to use a series of sexps to tell the segment to start moving, and then stop moving when it gets to the desired position, which would require experimentation to know how many seconds to leave between each action. What we need to complete this is a sexp to tell a rotating subsystem to reverse its rotation, which may not be possible... I don't know what the rules are. The only light at the end of the tunnel to make this an automated feature, is Fe2... if it actually gets done.
Later!
