[Pilot Of The US]

I was wondering, is there a way of using a sex-p in FRED2 that will begin a mission with the camera locked on to another ship. Because it would be like a little movie-type intro thingy.

Like you could have messeges playing while the camera hops from ship-to-ship, at the very start, so you could have the camera locked onto a ship and have it explode at the start. A bit like FreeLancer.

If it doesnt, someone might create one. have about 4 fields, 1) ship to lock on to  2) what view/angle 3) how to stay on 4) either return to Alpha 1 or choose next target to lock on to.

This probabaly wont work in-misson coz the enemy will blow you up if you're in a dogfight, unless you ativate some sorta invincible sex-p everytime the camera cuts in.  
This would be very useful if the mission you make does not start off the way the breifing said it would start off.

I was also thinking that it might be an idea for a sex-p that locks down Alpha 1's control (maybe just the basic flight controls), it could be tied in with the flash-hud sex-p to simulate a systems (flight control) failure. might be useful in some missions, it even could be useful with the camera lock sex-p mentioned above.

[karajorma]

As far as I know there isn't a single thing in there that isn't do-able already. You can already take over Alpha 1 using the player-use-ai SEXP.

As for the camera thing. Lock engines and weapons. Invulnerable and protect alpha 1. Use the Set ship position and set-ship-facing-object SEXP to move alpha 1 around. Ta-da!

[Goober5000]

And use toggle-hud to turn off the hud display.

[Silent Warrior]

But that also seems to turn off the text-messages (at least, that was what was observed in WC Saga), meaning that he'd need voice-files. That always complicates things.

[Pilot Of The US]

Use the Set ship position and set-ship-facing-object SEXP to move alpha 1 around. Ta-da!

Huh, move alpha 1 around?

I want the camera to actually go to the ship. (eg if it's 5 clicks away the camera flies all the way over there, just like the chase view of your own ship. It doesnt just track it from Alpha 1's POV).

You could be saying this but to to me it seems you're saying that the computer takes control of Alpha 1, points it into the direction of the targeted ship.

[karajorma]

That's exactly what I'm saying. Turn off the HUD and there's not much of a difference between a camera and the view you get from Alpha 1.

Afterwards you put alpha 1 back and turn the HUD back on.

[Pilot Of The US]

but if you have to move alpha 1 in far enough to get a closeup of ship 5 clicks away wouldnt that take time?

I want the camera to be able to flash between 2-3 diffrent ships that are located about 10 clicks from each other in about 20 sec. Is that possible with the method you descibed?

[karajorma]

Set ship position instantly moves a ship to the location you gave it. It's like it just blinks into existance somewhere else.

So you could blink over to a ship film it for 5 seconds and then blink over to the next one.

[Pilot Of The US]

ah! i get it now.

i guess it would take a couple of trials to get alpha 1 in the right position, coz if you wanted to view the ship from a specific angle or something, it would take some work. But anyway, i was just wondering, is it possible to lock most of the other controls? (exept the ESC key as well as some others like power managment, etc)

[karajorma]

Remove the HUD and break the weapons, comms and engine subsystems. I wouldn't imagine you could do much then

[Pilot Of The US]

Yes, but you could still change the camera view manually by pressing the change camera key.

[SadisticSid]

Originally posted by karajorma
Remove the HUD and break the weapons, comms and engine subsystems. I wouldn't imagine you could do much then

Quite a crappy workaround since you hear the subsystems exploding whenever you do that. Perhaps a better one would be to hand control of Alpha 1 to the AI and then issue it a play-dead order?

[karajorma]

Yeah. That's probably better.

As for the pilot changing the view. Maybe you could make a model that looks just like a piece of space dust and swap models at the same time


I agree that getting the SCP to make a specific way of doing this without moving alpha 1 about would be easier than all this but who has the free time?

Besides despite all the help I'm giving on this topic I'm fundementally opposed to any kind of cutscene you can't skip anyway

[Gregster2k]

well, a lot of games let you use the ENTER key to skip ingame rendered or FMV cutscenes, if they can add ingame rendered cutscenes like you guys suggest I'm sure they can add a function to skip one, although ppl would have to be careful to make sure all variables that are set during that cutscene are automatically set to their final end-custcene values upon hitting ENTER otherwise you could obviously skip an important variable and the mission will break

I've always wished that the FSO project would add a feature that allows you to literally record every movement you make and thing you do in-flight and copy that to an AI...translate the action into movements and actions for a desired ship in your mission to use...just pick the ship you're doing and voila, you're all set, developing a movie would become easy...or keeping precise control of AI movement...

that would be so useful, would make complex maneuvers very, very easy...thing is, i doubt anyone could do something like that, but then again, other games HAVE done it, screw waypoints, why can't FS2 do it?

drawback: if the environment around the ship changes (ships in the way of the recorded flight plan, expected ships were destroyed, other ships didnt follow their flight plans) then the flight plan wont work as you're effectively with my idea overriding the AI and turning the flight-planned ship into an automaton

nevertheless, if we were to get inflight rendered cutscene support, then a feature like THAT would be amazingly useful. after all, the ships you previously record for the movie would be moving around on their flight plans so then you can use the other ships to interact with them, cover their backs, basically you can script out an ENTIRE battle...although i betcha ram usage for a feature like Ive suggested is thru the roof =D

[Blaise Russel]

Originally posted by SadisticSid


Quite a crappy workaround since you hear the subsystems exploding whenever you do that. Perhaps a better one would be to hand control of Alpha 1 to the AI and then issue it a play-dead order?

Not if you set the subsystems to 0 in the FRED ship editor. And doesn't the player-use-ai still allow the player to mess around and fly everywhere?



A point picked up on earlier is, I feel, particularly important. Toggling the HUD prevents any display of text whatsoever, which sucks for in-game cutscenes. Would a variant of toggle-hud which didn't remove messages and training messages be possible, or will in-game cutscenes with dialogue be forced to retain a HUD for a supposedly non-existent Alpha 1?

[SadisticSid]

Never tried player-use-ai so I dunno how it handles player inputs.

I've suggested excluding training messages from the hud toggle before, though I'd extend this to normal messages as well.

[Pilot Of The US]

It would also be cool if you could also rotate the camera round a targeted ship, so it doesnt get too boring or you could move the camera to get a view of an enemy ship firing it's beam once, ripping through the hull and the captain screeming as the ship blows up. Or rotating to see a subsystem or turret blowup as a systems failure or something.

But,  i guess the SCP guys do have their hands full, but one day if someone decides to create a new sex-p to have ingame cutscenes that would be awsome! Many campaigns can benefit from this. It'd make missions a bit more interesting.

Also im for the exclusion of training and normal messesges from the toggle-hud-off sex-p, or you could just create a new sex-p = call it something like no-hud-comms-remain

[Goober5000]

You can't create a new sexp (it's hyphenated s-exp) to handle ingame cutscenes... it's a massive amount of work.  The sexps that are there will allow you to do 95% of anything you'll ever need.  If you're willing to spend that much time on a cutscene, you'd probably be better off rendering it in a modelling program.

[Pilot Of The US]

It's just a little somthing using the 'change camera view' control, to simulate a cutscene, of course it should include messeges and training messeges to be seen to you dont have to create voice files.

It cant really be that hard?, just have a s-exp to change the camera view. nothin special......

[Singh]

A mode where you could change the FoV of a pilot independent of the direction the fighter is facing would be usefull for making a cutscene, making cameras movable along with certain other SexPs.

Then you could change the zoom/focus and the direction/position of hte camera using SexPs....