[Tempest]

Hi. I've run into a table problem that I can't seem to figure out. What I need is for a remote-detonated bomb to spawn entities that look exactly like a primary weapon, using the $laser bitmap, $laser glow, etc. fields. I assumed that this would work. It caused the game to crash as soon as the weapon was detonated (no parsing errors). Is there anyone who knows how to make secondaries or secondary children render like primary weapons using the $laser fields? (it complained about num_models > -1)

P.S. Also, anyone feeling generous with ship models that aren't being used in a mod, I *really* need models. ANY kind will do!

Thank you!

[asyikarea51]

(it complained about num_models > -1)

I don't think your type of weapon is possible. I'm not too sure, but I ran into a similar error involving flak weapons before. Someone enlighten me if I'm wrong...

For ship models, did you try Hades Combine already?

[Wanderer]

Not possible. Secondary weapons can not use laser rendering (which isnt that good anyway). However you can make model with textures named 'invisible' and then attach a glowpoint to it. In tables make it a non homing secondary with 'child' option and add a trail to the weapon and it almost looks like a laser shot.

Alternatives are to use special transparent maps with sort of x shaped models or to use particle spew (or scripted particles) with the invisible model.

[bizzybody]

Trying to make some of David Weber's 'laser head' missiles from his 'Honor Harrington' book series? (Which, IMHO, Freespace SCP would be a great engine to mod for that...)

[Tempest]

Nope. This is for my Decent mod. I'm trying to make the smart missile. I've put in almost every other weapon, but I'd like to ask for help again for some other issues:

1. Adding the Homing ability to primary weapons causes them to rotate, but not to actually seek their target. Is there any way around this?

2. If you've ever played descent, is there any way to make a spreadfire or helix type weapon, where mutliple shots all come out of the same hard point, at the same time, at different angles?

I'll try the Hades Combine.

Thank you guys!

[Wanderer]

Primary weapons can not use homing field. So...
1) Not for primaries, use some sort of glowpointed or similar secondaries
2) Shotgun is possible.. setting weapon bank to fire on spreadfire pattern might also be possible when using the 'gun convergence' flag, but that is ship rather than weapon specific flag.

[Einstine909]

well you don't even need to use the gun convergance flag...
 
$FOF in combination with $Shots will do

i see that you have modded tbls, so this should be easy for you

[Tempest]

Wohoo! Thanks Einstine909, I'll try it soon.

Anyway, I went to the Hades Combine and downloaded Aldo's model dump. I got the model to show up in freespace, but there is a serious problem: the ship doesnt move or shoot. It has the subsystems weapons, sensors, and engines defined and the turrets all have weapons and firing points. I'm really not sure whats wrong; I got a lot of it to work, but it seems to not respond to anything and just sit there, even if I sexp it orders. I can scroll through the turrets and subsystems and even destroy them. Anyone know what the problem is?

Oh, and does anyone know of a program that can open up and extract files from descent3's HOG file?

This mod is going to be soooo sick when I release it. I've already got a good 20 weapons that are close to completion if not completed. And four ships, soon to be six, with music and Sound effects. Still needs a campaign though, but the lack of (working) models is the big downside.

[Wanderer]

$FOF in combination with $Shots will do

That is the shotgun.... But that is also very far from the spreadfire seen in Descent games. That is it doesnt use exact pattern but rather sets a cone where the shots are fired...

[Einstine909]

ok i didn't know that there was a pattern to the shots... i've never played Decent before

[Mongoose]

Descent mod?!   How long have you been working on it?  What ship models/weapons have you implemented so far?  Have you been able to implement full 6DOF motion?  Got any screenshots?  Need any testing help?

*snaps out of rabid fanboy mode*

...Er, anyways, here's a whole bunch of D3 utilities; as far as HOG extraction goes, I've always found Hogview32 to be a good choice.

[Tempest]

I've been working on it, little by little, since summer. I've implemented the following weapons:
Lasers 1-6
Vulcan
Gauss
Pheonix**
Plasma*
Fusion
Omega*
Microwave
EMD**
Concussion*
Homing*
Flash*
Guided*
Mercury*
Smart*
Mega*
Earthshaker*

Most of these weapons have there sounds, and in addition i found some great descent music that I've slapped into Freespace, like the briefing music, and some .ogg's i found of the ingame music. I don't like the ingame music fits in, but the menu and brifing stuff is good.

*No model or bitmap present, stats are there.
**Semi-implemented, needs a lot more stats and bitmap stuff.
The following ships also are implemented...
Pyro GL
Black Pyro GX
CED Pheonix
Magnum AHT
PTMC Cruiser***
***Does not DO anything, just sits there...

6DOF motion is well...possible. I havent been sure if I've actually wanted it, since it might screw up the gameplay of freespace. I've certainly looked into it, and I could implement it if I wanted, but again, it might be way too difficult to ever hit anything.

The mod isn't anything great, but it could be if I just had access to more models. I could email it to you, and I'd love ANY help you could provide, testing would be great too, since I've had a bit of trouble balancing the weapons. So here are the things I still need to do:
Give primaries their bitmaps
Give secondaries their models
Implement a few more d3 weapons
oh, and add about 100 ships too...

Thanks for those utilities. Mongoose, you got any skills you would like to donate? (or models, those would be good to). I can give you the .vp too.

[Mongoose]

I don't have any specific Freespace-related (or Descent-related, for that matter) modding skills, but I figure it's high time that I learned at least a little bit about the way things work.  I don't have much in the way of creativity, but I'd like to think that I might be able to do something with tables, particularly if you do try to give 6DOF motion a shot.  (On that subject, I know there was a recent thread made by someone who was able to implement most of what you'd need for it; I should try to dig that up.)  I'd also be willing to help out on the Descent file side of things.  If you're willing to send the .vp file, I'd love to take a look at it.

As far as models go, one right off the top of my head that I think would work great would be Eagle's 1500-poly Pyro-GX model from the defunct D4 project, which you can find here.  It's definitely a big improvement over the in-game D3 ship models, and I've always been curious as to how it would look in the FS engine.

[Scooby_Doo]

How did you get the fusion gun working right? Or is it just firing the gun why you hit the fire button?

[Tempest]

As you might guess, I couldnt get the fusion cannon to charge up. I still captured the "feel" of the weapon quite well, I think.

I would upload the .vp, except for the fact that it is, with all media, 113 mb. Even without sound effects OR music, it's still 21 mb. I'd need someone to host the files to share them.

Mongoose, what EXACTLY can you do? FREDing? Storyline? Conceptual artwork? Converting Descent2 bitmaps to Freespace2 bitmaps? POFing or Texturing models? Hmm... a balance tester would be nice. I'd LIKE the game to be perfectly balanced. Anyone got someplace to get free hosting?

Oh, and I still don't know why my Cruiser sits there and does nothing...

[Scooby_Doo]

Ah ok... I'm waiting for charge up to for a fusion cannon on the Lance Dragon.

[Nuke]

to make a shot for a smart missile, take the countermeasure pof (its small enough), open it up in pcs, and change its texture to invisible. then go to glowpoint and add one at the middle of the model. set it to typ 0 and do not give it a normal. set the bitmap to whatever your plasma effect is ans set the radius accordingly. that should home the way you want.

to make a helix/spreadfire cannon (in theory, ive never done this myself)
make a vwep model (just use a simple model with invisible, youre just using it to change the fire points). convert the model and open in pcs. now you need to add a set of firing points for each spread (for the spreadfire this will only need 6 points, the helix needs 20). the points will all occupy 1 point in space but their normals will need to be set to spread. for spreadfire youl probibly want your normals for each point set to 1'0'10, 0'0'10, -1'0'10, 0'1'10, 0'0'10 and 0'-1'10. if you fire 3 at a time youl get a spread proper. helix is more trickey, as you need to do some trig to calculate all the normals properly.  then in the weapon entry, set $shots to 3 for spreadfire or 5 for helix. you also need to set $externam model file to one of the dummy models with the extra firing points. note in descent the helix fires from a single point so the shim model must have a single point bank which is compatable with helix weapons.

*edit* i take it back, that doesnt work, i just tried it. apparently freespace sees all the points on the vwep model, unfortunately it ignores their normals. you could actually spread the positions of the points but it would look less realistic.

as far as descent -> freespace modding goes, ive done some small amount of work in that area.

theres a quake map i converted to pof, those textures suck

pyro ix

[Tempest]

That pyro-ix looks nice, maybe someone could do some textures for it...?

AS for an indoors level, that MAY happen, depending on how much other work i get done. I also want to give planetary battles a try, which could be fun.

The Helix and Spreadfire will be put into the mod, but in a way that is different from the way Descent does it. It will be more like a real "shotgun" effect. Unless I figure out a different way.

A big part of my mod is going to be "variety". I never felt that Freespace had enough variety in its weapons, and Freespace's way of doing capships always felt "off" to me. Players will have access to all sorts of different guns, from ballistic to beam to flak to shotgun, there's something for everyone. Plus, secondaries have been made more interesting, with a bunch of new weapons. Basically, you take the weapon variety from Descent and add it to the wonderful space combat model of Freespace .

Nuke, thanks for the tip on the Smart Missile. That is a great idea! I'm probably going to get a lot done this weekend, as I've found a source for those secondary models I was talking about. Again, if anyone wants to contribute anything, from hosting space to FREDing to testing, just let me know.

And if any coders want to code in a "charge" flag, or maybe a "pattern" flag for the fusion and spreadfire respectivley, I would be very, very grateful.

[Nuke]

i am good at texturing you know, besides its not done yet.

levels are actually quite doable, doors have to be scripted but it can be done.

i probibly still could get the spreadfire helix working. unfortunately the shots wont actually spread, but it will, to a degree look just like descent 2. perhaps the coders can enable normals on the vwep model firing points (i sorta wanted this for somethingelse anyway).

i also got a merc pof laying around, its actually in numemod as sort of a nostalgia item. its just using the original texture but i modeled it myself. also if you want robots, you should be able to download a bunch od cob files for descent 1 and 2 robots from here. for hostin im sure they will let you on at game warden. just post on the hosting request forum.

you could probibly cheat and implement the fusion cannon as a beam weapon. alternatively you could probibly script it in. there should be new hooks for collisions, so you can override game code with your own damage script.

[Tempest]

Could you give me that merc pof by any chance?

Oh, and that link is taunting me. I went to it and it wouln't let me DL any of the items. If it is experiencing some problems at the moment, I look forward to downloading them in the future. Yay missiles.