[Krelus]

I'm thinking about the "grand finale" of a campaign I'm planning, and I figured I should determine if my climactic final battle would be at all possible before getting too ahead of myself. It will involve a BOE-ish engagement inside a 30km-diameter power core (think the last battle in Freelancer), followed by a frantic "ZOMGWTF ITS ABOUT TO ASPLODE" escape scene through a series of corridors (think second-to-last level of Ace Combat 5). Very "Descent" inspired. I figure actually making the model itself won't be too hard even with my fairly limited modelling experience, since an interior would be much, much less complicated then an exterior and mostly comprised of simple geometric shapes. What I'm curious about is whether or not this will cause the FS2 engine to completely bork, and whether or not it'll cause the AI to go into cardiac arrest.

[Stormkeeper]

Is possible. Just model a massive ... model ... with all those openings and corridors. And it would be time for really fancy flying. The AI will go into cardiac arrest. Cardinal Spear has a similar scene when you :

Spoiler:

Have to destroy the Karnak in the last mission by destroying its internal reactor.

That was a pretty heart pounding scene for me.

[Droid803]

If pull it off correctly, it would indeed be epic.
The game engine wouldn't crash, and if you keep the power core low-poly enough, it shouldn't tax resources too much.
The AI would work during the battle inside, but the AI will absolutely fail at trying to escape, unless you waypoint each and every single fighter or something like that.

[Krelus]

If pull it off correctly, it would indeed be epic.
The game engine wouldn't crash, and if you keep the power core low-poly enough, it shouldn't tax resources too much.
The AI would work during the battle inside, but the AI will absolutely fail at trying to escape, unless you waypoint each and every single fighter or something like that.

Actually, the AI won't be trying to escape. Everyone will jump out, but your drive will jam and you have to leave the hard (fun) way. Cliche, yes, but too fun to resist.

Having a low-poly count is a win-win, then, because it A.) won't tax the system and B.) I'm not a terribly good modeller.

I was just wondering if this was at all feasible. I won't even start working on it for a while, since I just started work on mission number four out of what might very well wind up as a 25+ mission campaign.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Vidmaster actually made an "indoor" dogfight for TBP so it is possible.  Some issues in multi like respawning outside the object sometimes and passing through walls occasionally but single shouldn't have that issue.     

[Aardwolf]

Wasn't the final mission for the original Robotech mod fought inside some sort of boss enemy?

[karajorma]

Vidmaster actually made an "indoor" dogfight for TBP so it is possible.  Some issues in multi like respawning outside the object sometimes and passing through walls occasionally but single shouldn't have that issue.

I have a fix for the former from Quiet. It will be added after the code freeze ends.

[Getter Robo G]

WOW that's news to me! The original mod (you can still download from robotechlan.com I believe) only had 2-3 missions.

Perhaps you got confused by my old screenshot test of the SWA Death Star model I used to simulate the inside of SDF-1 for a city battle test.

[Aardwolf]

Maybe I mixed it up with some other mod, I remember seeing something like that on youtube though.

[Flaser]

Actually the model won't have to be low-poly. It only has to use detail boxes. Shadows of Lyat will be the first MOD to heavily use it.

[esarai]

what are detail boxes? are they LODs or something completely different?

[Droid803]

Detail boxes are a subobject that will only be rendered if the player is a certain distance from it.
Well, that's how it works.

[LeGuille]

So, how do you make a detail box?

[Droid803]

Its a subsystem, which you then define in PCS2 I think.

[Krelus]

Hm. Another possible option, instead of making one huge honkin' corridor complex, would be to make many modular corridor segments and fit them together like K-Nex. Actually, that'd work better, since if for some reason I decide to retool the layout 3/4 through the process I won't have to redo any modelling.

[LeGuille]

Like making wall segments and piecing them together?

[Droid803]

It'd take up more ship slots in the tables though.
If you aren't anywhere near running out, then its of no consequence, so ignore if that is the case.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well if your ran out of ship slots you could move corridors from one location to another depending on where the player ship is.   

[Grimper]

Its weird how there has never seen a serious attempt at this before...
I would have thought people would love having a Descent style mod, but maybe people just like playing Descent more.

[Krelus]

It'd take up more ship slots in the tables though.
If you aren't anywhere near running out, then its of no consequence, so ignore if that is the case.

Yeah, I've only added maybe 20 if that many ships to the table. What's the limit, anyhow?