[Grey Wolf]

Using different designations is already possible in the game.

[Kitsune]

I realize to stop it from happening you can disable the screen on your hud, but could someone fix the bug where if you have too many subsystems listed as being damaged (most of the time while flying a cruiser or something) that it only lists the 10 most damaged or most important systems?

I don't think it'd be to hard to put a limit into the systems on-screen.

--Edit--
Well this would be harder, but let the AI control and fire the turrets of a player controlled ship?  Including beam weapons?

[CelestialArchon]

Some ideas I've heard from people over the years...

1) Be able to make a ship jump out of the area and then jump back in at a later time.
2) Be able to "transition" from mission to mission.  In other words, be able to go from one mission into the other without having to show an "Incoming Message" screen.  With this you could create a series of missions that would simulate moving from one system through a jump node to another before returning to base.
3) Be able to have more than four ships in a wing without problems.
4) Be able to use other wing names besides Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. and still have the benefits of the wing/ship status indicators, etc.


Reality check : As a software engineer myself, I think first someone should look at possibly writing code that would implement precompiled in-process files (e.g. DLL).  That way we won't have to package and compile the code all over again when someone creates a new addon, for the most part.  This would definitely be helpful in FRED to be able to create addon DLL's that could be implemented into the FRED environment rather than ending up with dozens of tools that everyone uses all running in separate processes.

Rock on!

[EdrickV]

The Alpha/Beta/Gamma/etc. stuff is hardcoded and the in game abbreviations you see on the HUD are not text. They're stored as seperate frames in an ani file. Changing that would require some major work and probably at least one new table file. Plus, to use any new wing the mission/mod/campaign author would have to make an ani (or maybe more then one depending on how the code was rewritten) for the HUD abbreviation. It might also break compatability with the original campaign.

[LtNarol]

Not necessarily...that can be changed to display text in which case if the need for use of an ani was essential, all we would need is a 104 frame ani containing all the letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case and in 2 shades, add 20 to that if you want numbers as well.  Kinda like the way shield icons are done (not sure the exact process, but i know its possible).  Should only be minor recoding for someone who knows what hes doing...

Hey dave, wanna lend a hand?

[penguin]

Yeah, that Alpha/Beta/etc. wingmates-label-as-graphic has gotta go.  I don't see a problem with making it text.  

Use the first three letters or something, I think that's how it works now anyhow... the logic about which wings are displayed up there should remain as is for now (ABGDEZ, IIRC) so things don't get too wacky.  Then we can decide which wings get displayed up there... it could be similar to the escort list (ie set in mission, but player can override).  This would require changes to FRED, the mission file, etc... (if it's not present, we use "compatibility mode" and display only the wings ABGDEZ)

[EdrickV]

If you want to do the abbreviations as text then You'll have to check to see what resolution it's in and resize the font accordingly. (Assuming that is even possible.) There are seperate anis for 640x480 and 1024x768 graphic modes. The ani for the latter is a larger resolution. And if you wanted to do letter anis rather then name anis you would be doing 3 times as many anis as normal for that section of the HUD which might cause a preformance hit. (Though it probably wouldn't be too big, but along with everything else that everyone else wants added I can imagine an FS2 exe with all the bells and whistles that requires, as a minimum, a 1Ghz processor, 256 MB of memory, and a $400 graphics card.) There is also the fact that the alpha/beta/gamma/etc. stuff is hardcoded for other things too. Including the function that determines if a ship is in one of those wings.

[penguin]

Throwing up the extra letters isn't the same as putting up an ANI.  The HUD screen is littered w/ text too, so I don't think there'll be any performance difference one way or the other.  

And the text would be rendered at the same (pixel) size as the other text on the screen., so it should be resolution-independent.  (I dunno, 'cause I'm too poor to have a machine that can handle 1024x768)  In any event, the text should look no better or worse than any of the other text on the HUD.

It shouldn't be too complicated, but you never know...

[Alikchi]

I'd like the ability to use MP3s as souns.
You know how much that would cut down on mainhall music size?
Also, I'd like to be able to play higher-quality sounds. That's about it.

[Bobboau]

you know how much procesor time that would waist

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Bobboau
you know how much procesor time that would waist

...Not very much. Star Trek Voyager Elite Force uses MP3 music, and shock and surprise, it's still quite fast and playable. Using Ogg Vorbis is obviously preferable to MP3, of course...

[Bobboau]

once in game they can be decompressed, but loading times will increse,

[Inquisitor]

I started a topic on mp3 versus Orgg or Ogg or whatever it's called

Talk there:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,8731.0.html

[DTP]

Originally posted by Bobboau
once in game they can be decompressed, but loading times will increse,

not to mention memory usage.

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Bobboau
once in game they can be decompressed, but loading times will increse,

No. Wrong. Ogg Vorbis and MP3 can both readily be decompressed on the fly. In fact they're both designed for that, and that's how your preferred MP3/Ogg Vorbis player works. It certainly doesn't try to decompress the entire song in memory; that would be crazy!

And while your preferred audio player may consume crazy amounts of processor time, remember that a lot of that time probably goes to visualization effects (especially in Windows Media Player, but also in Winamp, RealPlayer, XMMS, et al), and not the actual decoding of the audio stream, which is very fast.

Audio decompression is only slow on 486 machines, which can't run FS2 anyway.

In short, that's bull.