Cool!
Here is an excerpt from the README I'm writing to go with the next build release. Hopefully, this will work for people.
--Bug Fixes (universal)--
* Sidethrust is now about as powerful in glide mode as it is in normal flight. Previously, it was much weaker.
* Accelerations no longer suffer from the "inverse ramp" effect (where ships accelerate faster at higher speeds,
most noticable for sidethrust)
* The throttle control now works properly (proportionally) in glide mode. Before, 100% forward thrust was applied
for any non-zero throttle setting.
--New (optional) features--
* TODO: newtonian damping option
* Dynamic Glide Cap
In addition to having a fixed maximum glide speed or unlimited glide speed, there is now the option to have
a dynamic glide cap that adjusts with your engine settings and whether or not you use afterburner. In other words,
the maximum speed rules for the ship are the same for normal flight and glide mode: if you want to go faster, you
must either add power to engines or use your afterburner.
To facilitate this option, I added a new optional entry to the ships table (under $GLIDE):
+Dynamic Glide Cap
This option defaults to NO.
* Table-controlled acceleration constant
* Glide Speed Ramping
Both of these features are controled by another new ships.tbl entry (under $GLIDE):
+Glide Accel Mult
This option defaults to 0.66 (unless the WCS command-line flag is set, in which case it defaults to 0.0)
This gives modders more fine-grained control over how quickly ships accelerate in glide mode. Basically, this
specifies how quickly the ship accelerates in glide mode compared to the MAXIMUM acceleration in normal flight.
In other words, if this is set to 1.0, the ship in glide mode will accelerate at the fastest speed it ever does in
normal flight. If set to 0.0, ships can't accelerate at all in glide mode (like WCS). Modders can toy with this
value, but I've found that 0.66 is a "sane" value that feels more or less right in most places (and is pretty
consistent with existing mod behavior).
I've also enabled an (IMO) even cooler option: glide speed ramping. By setting +Glide Accel Mult to a value
less than zero, accelerations will ramp up to the target speed in glide mode in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY that
they do in normal flight! This allows for maximum consistency between normal flight and glide mode. For
example, flying BTRL's Viper mk7, it takes exactly as long to go from a dead stop to 200 in either mode.
Combining the Dynamic Glide Cap and Glide Speed Ramping, is, IMO, the best way to go. It allows for maximum
consistency between normal flight and glide mode while still allowing all of the fun extra manouvers that glide
gives you. This consistency not only makes the ships more fun and intuitive to fly, it makes it easier to balance
distances and combat when designing missions.
--Recommendations--
It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you set the "$use newtonian damping" flag (in ai_profiles.tbl) to YES. I've
done so for the demos below. The new features were designed with this option in mind.
Also, the glide speed ramping was designed with the dynamic glide cap in mind. You can use the glide ramping
without the dynamic glide cap, but you may experience some wierd results (such as going faster when turning
than when going straight).
The idea is to make it so that everything is easily tweakable via ships table settings, but that the defaults are sane and minimally changed from the status quo.
Based on what I have right now, the WCS people wouldn't have to do anything special: the default glide cap is the maximum speed (including afterburner), and if the WCS features flag is set than the +Glide Accel Mult entry will default to 0 (which means no acceleration in glide mode).
Likewise for BTRL and TBP: The default behavior would be EXACTLY THE SAME AS IT IS NOW. Personally, I think the experience in both mods would be improved by using both of the "new" features (glide speed ramping and dynamic glide cap), but I'll leave that up to those mods to decide.
I'm also going to make it so that the newtonian dampening can be optionally set on a per-ship basis via ships.tbl flags. This would allow for more flexibility in (for example) mods like RealFlight that attempt to mod existing campaigns. We would be able to get the physics for gliding fighters working smoothly (since they would have the newtonian dampening) but not interfere with the mission timings since all of the transports, freighters, capships (etc) would still be using the old dampening (which wouldn't matter since they aren't gliding anyway).
As Havner pointed out in the RC2 Release thread, auto speed matching is currently broken in glide mode. I think the best solution for the time being is simply to turn that feature off in glide mode. There are other fun possibilities (like making it so that in glide mode, it tries to match
velocity vectors instead of just speed) but those are a project for another day.
Regarding the throttle in glide mode: as previous versions had it implemented, any throttle setting at all meant 100% thrust. I fixed that so that the thrust is proportional to the throttle setting. This makes a lot of sense to me: it allows for more fine-grained control over your ship in glide mode. On the other hand, it breaks the "throttle speed = target speed" dynamic from normal flight. Turning the throttle off in glide mode or making it so that it still is based on the idea of "target speed" also makes sense. Should I add this as an AI Profiles option? I don't see any reason why this one should ever be per-ship.
My philosophy at the moment is "if there's more than one way that people might want it, make both ways possible." It means more ships and ai-profiles flags, but more options is a good thing, right?
So, expect SushiGlide v5 soon.
And please, keep letting me know what needs to be done.
