[zookeeper]

Ok, now that the Strike Cruiser is out of the way, I'll come back to this...

Found it easier to just switch the materials. Can't find the hole in the reactor. Images?

Here's a screenshot; the missing polys aren't part of any other subobject belonging to LOD0 either.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[bobbtmann]

Well damn. I dug up the version I sent you and it does seem to be the case. I guess the last thing I did before sending them off was delete those ploygons. I've attached the replacements.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[zookeeper]

Thanks, that does the trick.

[zookeeper]

Status report: the only thing still remaining is the fighterbay (the little landing deck in the forward section of the hangar). It has problems though:

1. There's just barely enough space to fit 6 fighters in there at once when they arrive. This is a problem because they all start to move at once, and there's currently no feasible method of forcing them to fly out one by one.
2. The AI tries to fly way too fast, making them often overshoot some of the path points.

It very much looks like we're gonna need some new features to make this work. Firstly we need a way to prevent the arriving fighters from bumping into each other when they start to move, and then we also need a way to cap their speeds so that they actually manage to follow the path.

Other than that it's currently good to go.

[Droid803]

Uh, you could try putting the start of some of the paths further back so that the fighters appear to come out "after" the ones in front.
That is, if you manage to persuade them to follow the path properly

[bobbtmann]

I only ever intended that bay to carry shuttles. Four TIEs at most. I think I read the specs somewhere that said the Dreadnaught carried only a single squadron, so that's the big bay. The most sizing I did was to make sure that the space was big enough for the Millennium Falcon. Which is pretty arbitrary, I guess.

[LordMelvin]

The most sizing I did was to make sure that the space was big enough for the Millennium Falcon. Which is pretty arbitrary, I guess.

Arbitrary or not, I'm sure Han appreciates it.

Keep up the good work!

[zookeeper]

Committed. It took this long because 1) in the end, the engine just can't handle the TIE racks I spent hours and hours trying to get to work and 2) getting even fighterbay paths to work well enough was really difficult. Now there's 3 docking points in the ceiling of the hangar (for transports and other mid-size ships), 1 docking point in the middle of the landing deck (a Lambda should just about fit there; probably the AI can't handle the docking/undocking, though) and the fighterbay is capable of launching 4 fighters at once.

I've added a modelled communications subsystem (in a bit of a similar style as the one on the Strike Cruiser) and detached bits of the hull to make bridge and navigation subsystems.

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the AI apparently can't handle undocking from the landing deck dockpoint, so don't try to do anything fancy with it. The three dockpoints in the hangar ceiling probably work just fine though, since they only got two path points, which is something the AI seems to be able to cope with. Also, a Lambda doesn't quite fit in the landing deck: the bay is pretty much exactly as high as the Lambda, so there's not really any room.

[TopAce]

Figures, the Lambda is tall enough for the XQ2's hangar as well. Is there a way to make it appear with its wings closed when it comes from a fighterbay?

Also here are two random shots that feature the Dreadnaught.


Sorry for the angle in this one.

[zookeeper]

Figures, the Lambda is tall enough for the XQ2's hangar as well. Is there a way to make it appear with its wings closed when it comes from a fighterbay?

I don't think so. We'd need better control over custom subobject animations to be able to do that; we'd need to have an animation which instantly snaps the wings open or closed in addition to the current 5s-long animation, and AFAICT currently you can't really use more than one custom animation on a single ship because you can only trigger all of the animations at once.

[-Norbert-]

But some of the ships Dawn of Sol and Blue Planet WiH use have animations for weapons and afterburner flaps. A good example would be the Jackal/Kentauroi. It has two different weapon slots being opened or moved in place and a third animation were flaps change position during afterburning.

[zookeeper]

But some of the ships Dawn of Sol and Blue Planet WiH use have animations for weapons and afterburner flaps. A good example would be the Jackal/Kentauroi. It has two different weapon slots being opened or moved in place and a third animation were flaps change position during afterburning.

Ah, yes, you're right. The current opening/closing animations are script-triggered animations, and those you can only have one per ship. So, that wouldn't prevent us from also having the same animations as docking and/or door animations for the Lambda. However, I don't know if they would trigger at the right time during the docking/launching sequence; maybe someone can test?

[FekLeyrTarg]

There was another Star Wars based project for FSO: Imperial Alliance. In the latest MP demo (which isn't available right now but I still have it), S-Foils can be opened and closed just like in the X-Wing games.

[chief1983]

It wasn't for FSO, it was for a heavily modified fork of the FSO codebase.  Their S-Foil animations were part of that codebase, not part of FSO.

[FekLeyrTarg]

It wasn't for FSO, it was for a heavily modified fork of the FSO codebase.  Their S-Foil animations were part of that codebase, not part of FSO.

Yes, I've already thought so. IA also uses XWA's IFF system instead of FSO's one. And I've also once tried to use FSO's exe files with IA without success. That made me think that it's nothing like the other Freespace based projects. Thanks for confirming that.
Btw someone over at the Emperor's Hammer forums told me that the FotG team received some code of IA. Do you think that you'll use it in FotG?

On topic: Nice work on the Dreadnaught.

[chief1983]

We've had the code, but the fork is so heavily modified, and outdated, that without the help of the original authors it's not likely we'll ever be able to utilize it in our codebase.  But, we've already independently implemented a lot of what they had, using more generic systems that just took longer to develop since they had to be mod-agnostic.

[Archaic]

so you guys have working s-foils now? or is that something that's still being worked on?

[chief1983]

Define 'working'.  The models have the ability to be animated, just like the Lambda, but unlike the Lambda, which will fold up during docking procedures, when do you actually need to use X-wing S-foils in a game like this?  Any time they've ever been implemented before, it's more of a gimmick than any sort of useful or reasonable feature.

[-Norbert-]

If you do atmosphere missions, it could be used. Or you could depart from canon a bit and make fighters go faster with folded-in s-foils, if that's possible.

[Archaic]

well, i had plans to make a star viper for you guys, but its sort of been pushed aside.

the s-foils on a viper, when deployed, make the fighter's front/back profile about 300% bigger.

besides, it looks cool when it opens and swings its guns forward.