[Fry_Day]

Just a tiny fix - For engine glows, and also others (like from a subspace portal), just determine if the middle of the glow (The point from which it emantes) is visible, and then draw the glow with ZBuffer READs disabled. Right now, it might be a small detail, but it's really annoying to see an engine glow showing half-through a myrmidon (The engine is visible, so it's drawn, but since part of the fighter has lower Z values, it hides the glow, but then the fighter ends, and it looks as if the glow went right through the fighter's hull. After that fix, it would show correctly (no part of the glow hidden, no glow going through the hull)

[Nico]

Originally posted by Fry_Day
Just a tiny fix - For engine glows, and also others (like from a subspace portal), just determine if the middle of the glow (The point from which it emantes) is visible, and then draw the glow with ZBuffer READs disabled. Right now, it might be a small detail, but it's really annoying to see an engine glow showing half-through a myrmidon (The engine is visible, so it's drawn, but since part of the fighter has lower Z values, it hides the glow, but then the fighter ends, and it looks as if the glow went right through the fighter's hull. After that fix, it would show correctly (no part of the glow hidden, no glow going through the hull)

no thanks, don't wanna see engine glows through other ships.

[LtNarol]

Venom, I think he's proposing that we fix that problem, because right now we -do- see engine glows through ships (Myrmidon is a perfect example)

[Nico]

Originally posted by LtNarol
Venom, I think he's proposing that we fix that problem, because right now we -do- see engine glows through ships (Myrmidon is a perfect example)

it's not what I mean: he means he wants to see the glow showing through the ships hull, which is fine. but removing the Zbuffer stuff will make the glow show through the other ships as well: imagine a perseus goes between you and an orion, you wob't even see the perseus through such big glows, even if it's damn close to you. no Zbuffer means ALWAYS visible, even with an obstacle between you and the glow.

[Fry_Day]

I was suggesting how to fix the problem. Technically, with all alpha-blended stuff, you have to draw it after you've finished drawing all the scene, and depth-sorted.
If you draw the glows after you've drawn all the ships, it wouldn't draw glows which are completely invisible (I said you had to check if the source of the glow is visible), but the glows won't appear to go through a Myrmidon's hull. and, like in real life, a ship won't be able to obscure half a glow. It's either you see the whole glow, or you don't see it at all.

Edit: The problem is I know the theory of these things, but not the implementation, or I'd do it myself...

[KARMA]

little idea:
about anis as textures, wouldn't be possible to use anis not only for the animation but just to "store" multiple texture?
something like you set a sexp command to switch between textures (or maybe to activate the ani) only if some conditions are verified.....
i can think of a lot of situations when this can be useful
(simulate damages, mimetic ships -something like..you are near an asteroid, the ship got reskinned with an asteroid-like skin-, stealth ships changing status, have people moving in the windows of the capital ships, situations like: green path to hangar you can land, red path you can't and so long)

[EdrickV]

So far I've yet to hear of anyone who's managed to get a non-built in ani to play in the game. From what little ani related code I've looked at, it doesn't look like a trivial task to do major upgrades to the ani system code. (I don't think it's simply a matter of feeding a filename to a built in "play_ani()" function, the ani is drawn frame by frame dependent on various things.) I think it'll take some work to parse all of that code to figure out what does what and where to insert/modify code for other things like ani textures. I haven't looked into that area all that much so far though.

[KARMA]

i was thinking....
anis as a way to store textures may be a bypass also to obtain multilayer textures as other requested in order to have different colors of the fighters insigna (like having the xwing red, blue, gold..)

[Assassin]

Decent ideas here, about Fighter Squadron tactics/AI - it may have been mentioned before but I'm not sure.

Firstly, we all know that the current tactic of fighter squads is that when you target one fighter, it goes into defencive evasion, circling and generally not attacking, in hopes that its squad mates will attack you while you are 'distacted' by the ship you targetted.

How about having this as one option of a squads AI, but also featuring several seperate AI tactics that you could select for the squad in FRED2? Like an extra box in the squads option which you could select to have them behave like this, or a variety of other strategies (which could be thought of later) I just think this would be a fresh, new addition to Freespace since it could revolutionise the typical dogfight and add a lot more variety!

Another idea, although not as important, is perhaps allowing ships to fly in formation? Like an X shape, crescent, etc. etc. Perhaps you could also add something to the commands list to tell Alpha to go to a certain formation?

Ooh, just had another idea. I don't want to be Alpha 1 constantly, let me Epsilon 2, let me be Hornet 4,  let me be 'Rar' for all intensive purposes. And allow the status repurt on the left with all of Alpha, Beta, Delta, etc.'s blips of green/red etc. be not only for those squads - allow the user to create his own in FRED with perhaps another box called "Abbreviated blip name" or something,maximun 3 letters... would be another nice tweak!


Let me know what you think of these.

[Ulala]

*gasp!* You don't want to be the all mighty all powerful Alpha 1 anymore?! You hurt his (her? its?) feelings! I'd watch your back pal... never know when a Perseus might come take out your car.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Assassin
Let me know what you think of these.

I think the first is great, the second is neat, and the third one I didn't understand.
Ouch, I thought! Now I need to rest a couple hours, damn you

[Assassin]

Originally posted by venom2506

Ouch, I thought! Now I need to rest a couple hours, damn you

I have this affect on a lot of people.

What I mean is I don't always want to be Alpha 1, or a squadron leader. I'd like to option to have the player in a ship of any name or squadron, not necessarily Alpha 1. And the box on the right with has the green blips, red blips, or empty blips for healthy/damaged/destroyed/departed ships has squad names, which are limited to Alp, Bet, Del, Eps, Gam, and maybe a few others. I'd like to be able to create a wing, lets say "Aevla" wing and choose to have blips to represent the craft in that wing with the name "Aev".

[EdrickV]

The wingman data is hardcoded and the wing names actually aren't text, they're in an ani file, so I don't think that'll be changing anytime soon.

[Assassin]

If they're in .ani well bugger me. Was only a suggestion

I still think the other two ideas stand valid.

[Tar-Palantir]

Don't know if any of this has been said but, have it so that subsystem damage has an effect.
Ie destroying the weapon subsystem on a destroyer current reduces the accuracy by X. But when the system is at 1%, its still as accurate as it is a 100%. Perhaps when the damage gets to say 25%, the turrets get less and less accurate until they are at 0% where the accuracy has been reduced to X.

Engine subsystem could work in a similar way too. These are the only one that should/could have a effect on ship performance that I can see.

Somthing else, have it so cargo ships etc can be docked/have things docked to them, to more than one thing at a time.

[TeflonBob]

Loadout copying:
To be able to save a ships loadout and copy it across an entire wing rather than do every weapon on every ship.

Beam Turret targeting key:
So when you attack large capships you don't have to scroll through all the weapons to get a beam turret

AI issues:
Order fighters to attack capships at max weapon range, so if they carry maxims they attack at 3000Km rather than just flying right up to the hull.

Order a wing to attack a wing, so i can order beta wing to attack zeta wing and each of beta will select one member of zeta and attack seperately.

Attack beam turrets order, where wingmen will attack only beam turrets then break off.

Hold position order, to order bombers to hold position out of range while fighters clean up the area then call them in.

Radar:
Any improvement would be welcome but the smallest i could think of is to light capships brighter than fighters to give you some idea where to point. Ideally a totally new one but that's probably too big a job.

Escort lists.
to have a hostile and freindly ship list, if i select hostile ships and friendly ones jump in it'll push the hostiles off so a seperate one for each and maybe show a few more ships on each (5?)

[penguin]

Loadout copying:
Do you mean in-game or in FRED?

Beam Turret targeting key:
Nice idea

Order fighters to attack capships at max weapon range
Interesting idea, but may be complicated, haven't dug into AI code enough to know

Order a wing to attack a wing
Much needed... can be done via FRED but not by the player... also orders to protect a wing

Attack beam turrets order
Probably not too hard to do, would require a new AI goal (disarm-beam or similar)

Hold position order
Again, like FRED 'do nothing' so not hard to implement

Radar:
Maybe use tiny (hollow) circles or something ??

Escort lists.
Escort list should be larger, easy change

[EdrickV]

You should be able to order a wing to attack a group of ships by selecting all the ships you want them to attack at the same time and then order them to attack. (To select multiple ships you setup hotkeys for them in, I believe, the in game F3 config screen.) Should work for other commands too, but I'm not completely sure and I don't know exactly how it works.

[penguin]

Originally posted by EdrickV
You should be able to order a wing to attack a group of ships by selecting all the ships you want them to attack at the same time and then order them to attack. (To select multiple ships you setup hotkeys for them in, I believe, the in game F3 config screen.) Should work for other commands too, but I'm not completely sure and I don't know exactly how it works.

I agree, that's the way it should work, but it's been my experience that ony one ship of the wing is actually targetted; the others are only "bracketed."  And if you order a wing to "protect (or attack) my target," they'll all protect (or attack) just that one ship.  You can then target a wingmate that you've given the order to, and their orders will be "Protect Omega 1" (as opposed to "protect Omega Wing," which is what you see if that was their standing orders).

Haven't looked it up in the code yet, but that's how it acts when I've tried it...

[TeflonBob]

Originally posted by penguin
Loadout copying:
Do you mean in-game or in FRED?

Sorry, i meant in-game,  Glad to hear all the rest is do-able though