[Bobboau]

executable

there are also two test pofs that demonstrate how to implement the new amaizeing spectacular "look at" feature, this non-subsystem movement option allows you to make an object that will always do it's damnedest to keep it's look at target in the same relative radial position with it's rotation constrained to one axis. that axis can, of course, be defined to be anything at all useing the off axis rotation feature (and given the nature of look at fvec can be just about anything at all other than 0,0,0).

the most obvious use for this (and the one I invented it for, and tested it with) is hydrolic/pneumatic cylinders. when placed properly two cylinders told to look at each other will effectively appear to be pushing and pulling the objects they are attached to apart and together.

this will be considered an advanced animation technique, because it requires you to have a working animated set of objects already, as it won't be of much use in the arenas I've tested it with (rotating subobjects and turrets (although you might be able to make a cool looking turret using this if you tried a lot harder than I did))

[Cobra]

Ooooh, so what you're saying is that when a laser turret on an Orion is tracking a fighter, it will actually LOOK like it's tracking it?

[Bobboau]

no, this allows one subobject in a model to look at another subobject in the same model.

turrets already do that.

[Bobboau]

look at the arm on that, you can make those piston thingys that make the arm move now.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oh wow. This is going to be oh-so-cool for oh-so-many things I have planned. Awesome and thanks a million!

BTW, did you get the PM I sent a few weeks back asking about the detail boxes?

[Bobboau]

yeah, you wanted it to be a detail sphere instead right?

[Cobra]

turrets already do that.

In a VERY jerky way. When I look at any turret and it's firing The Blob, it jerks to look at the target before firing. =/ I figured this had smooth rotation.

EDIT: Wait, hmm... Last time I saw it, anyway. Which was last month or so.

[Bobboau]

well, I happen to be working on fixing that as well at this very moment.

[Vasudan Admiral]

yeah, you wanted it to be a detail sphere instead right?

Don't think I mentioned shape actually - I was just wondering if you could get the custom bounding box feature up and running. It's the only non-working part of the detail box feature.

I've been trying to use the 'invisible cube to pad-out the bounding box' technique that Omni used on his Death Star, but this screws up the ships radius and thus the target display, target box and chase cam position if the invisible geometry needs to be a fair bit bigger than the actual ship.

[taylor]

I've been trying to use the 'invisible cube to pad-out the bounding box' technique that Omni used on his Death Star, but this screws up the ships radius and thus the target display, target box and chase cam position if the invisible geometry needs to be a fair bit bigger than the actual ship.

You know that the detail box stuff was recently fixed to actually work properly, right?

[Trivial Psychic]

I guess this means we can make steam trains in space now, right?  Anyway, I was looking at the test pof data, and trying to see if one could hack together a turret recoil system based on this feature, but to no avail.  Looks like we'll have to wait for subobject translations for that.

[Vasudan Admiral]

You know that the detail box stuff was recently fixed to actually work properly, right?

lol, if I had, I wouldn't have asked for it.
When & where is this sorta fix announced though? 'cos HLPs search is useless at the moment, and in this case it's rather labourious to re-test it with each successive build.

[taylor]

You know that the detail box stuff was recently fixed to actually work properly, right?

lol, if I had, I wouldn't have asked for it.
When & where is this sorta fix announced though? 'cos HLPs search is useless at the moment, and in this case it's rather labourious to re-test it with each successive build.

Uhh, you know, I don't think that I ever even mentioned it on HLP.    It was something that DaBrain was having trouble with and all of the discussion took place on GW.  The the problems were:

1) it didn't read the box details out of the model properly (it could only read out the X var, it screwed up on the Y and Z)
2) box checking was based on View position rather than being based on Eye position and the offset from parent model like it should have been
3) children of a (sub)model would have the detail box check run twice and often fail the second time when they shouldn't have
4) (sub)models which wouldn't have drawn anyway would still get the detail box check and slowed down rendering

All of those things were broken in the initial commit of the code btw, so it has never actually worked properly.  I also tied the detail boxes to the model detail slider.  Maxed out (level 5) it will scale the values in the model by 120%, at level 4 it will just use the values in the model, scaled by 80% at level 3, 50% at level 2, and 20% on the lowest detail level.

[Axem]

I guess this means we can make steam trains in space now, right?  Anyway, I was looking at the test pof data, and trying to see if one could hack together a turret recoil system based on this feature, but to no avail.  Looks like we'll have to wait for subobject translations for that.

Oh recoil is possible. (It's a bit jumpy though)

http://www.game-warden.com/narfin/movies/recoilaction.avi

Though it won't recoil if any part of the turret is moving.

[Vasudan Admiral]

1) it didn't read the box details out of the model properly (it could only read out the X var, it screwed up on the Y and Z)
2) box checking was based on View position rather than being based on Eye position and the offset from parent model like it should have been
3) children of a (sub)model would have the detail box check run twice and often fail the second time when they shouldn't have
4) (sub)models which wouldn't have drawn anyway would still get the detail box check and slowed down rendering

All of those things were broken in the initial commit of the code btw, so it has never actually worked properly.  I also tied the detail boxes to the model detail slider.  Maxed out (level 5) it will scale the values in the model by 120%, at level 4 it will just use the values in the model, scaled by 80% at level 3, 50% at level 2, and 20% on the lowest detail level.

Crikey, well those problems would explain some of the odd behaviour I saw but attributed to being because of the custom bounding box wasn't working. Excellent.

[DaBrain]

This is awesome Bobboau!

After reading about one of your new features I instantly get ideas how to use them.


Also... my idea to create a tech demo, showing all of FSO's features more and more becomes a plan.


Btw, do you have access to the SoL internal already?

[taylor]

Crikey, well those problems would explain some of the odd behaviour I saw but attributed to being because of the custom bounding box wasn't working. Excellent.

Oh, almost forgot to add that FRED2 has full support for this too.  Based on your view position in FRED it will also use detail boxes like it will in-game.  But, FRED2 has a View menu option called "Render full detail" will render every object regardless of whether or not it uses a detail box.  This should help you figure out how things look to the player in-game, and also be able to see everything at once to figure out how to properly position things.

The Lab (F3 from the mainhall menu) also has a "Render full detail" checkbox in the Render Options menu which will also show everything there.  Between this and the FRED options it should make it easier to figure out your detail box setup as well as help debug it without actually having to jump into a mission to see what the player will see.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Ooooh, even more excellent then! Thanks.

BTW, Bobboau - might this work you've been doing with Uvecs and Fvecs lead into a workable way to handle subobject translation?
It's pretty much the last remaining thing that we can't properly do with the animation system - and it would allow for a lot more situations you could use this look-at feature with.

In fact there wouldn't really be any types of mechanisms you couldn't quite easily build using combinations.

[nubbles526]

Thanks a lot! Thats a cool function!

[Col. Fishguts]

Oh recoil is possible. (It's a bit jumpy though)

http://www.game-warden.com/narfin/movies/recoilaction.avi

Though it won't recoil if any part of the turret is moving.

How the **** did you do that ?!?

@Bob: Is the "$look_at:subobject number" in the sumbmodel properties field all that's needed to get this working ?