[assasing123]

not being biased i would personally love the deformation matrix, i have seen very high polygon models and several of them in carmageddon getting pretty messed up geo wise without a very big impact in perfomance.

tho question to nuke, in carmageddon models did had splicing while working i remember more than once getting half my car cut totally and i could still drive with just my forward section around, i dont know how they did to make it work like that O,o it was like a single model would get made 2 models in real time and the game inmediately updated they to be totally separate entities...

[Nuke]

deformation matricies are kind of ugly unless your ship is a composite of submodels where each one has its own deform matrix. its really and old skool technique which probably isnt compatible with the way freespace works. youd also need to remodel everything as a collection of smaller subobjects. so i dont really think its practical for freespace. should also point out that carmageddon was about slamming your car into other cars/pedestrians, so the parimary source of damage is collision damage where in freespace collision damage is fairly rare, where most of the damage is weapons damage, beams cleaving off bits, punching holes through your ship, etc. i dont think its well suited at all.

[MatthTheGeek]

talking about collision, I think one of the main problem with all those ideas isn't how to deformate the mesh, but how to update the collision mesh accordingly, in real time.

[Nuke]

i think it would be fairly easy with the holes approach. if you collide with an object, then check to see if the point of collision is inside any of the holes for that ship, if it is then you can ignore the hull collision. you might then check the hole to see if you are going to collide with any of the inner surfaces, and do response if necessary.

it would also be fairly easy to do with deformation matrices as well, since a matrices allows you to convert between the 2 coordinate systems. might slow it down a little though.

i was thinking a little bit about implementing the hole system and thought it might mesh well with my scorch map idea. the hole models are just rendered in those places not masked by the stencil buffer. so i was considering how to render those places where the holes should go to the stincil buffer. my first idea was to use a sprite roughly where the hole is on the model. but this probibly wouldnt look right. so then i started thinking about my scortch map idea. what if there was a channel that got rendered as transparent to the stencil buffer to allow holes to be rendered beneath. this would also allow you to scar up those holes with scortch marks and provide nice transition between a clean hull and a massive gash. the two effects would complement eachother nicely.

[assasing123]

well given the deformation dosnt sounds so good as an idea, the nuke idea looks fairly good as it gives both things, geometry modifications and visual enhancement.

 if i could i would just like one more thing then, since i was told real time fractures are a NONO in freespace i was thinking maybe ships could be given a "spawn debris on hit" so they spawn some small debris parts when hit by powerfull weapons on the point the ship gets hit and a hole made as to show where the hole mass went to, and certainly, add a damage threshold  for what kind of weapons or stuff will cause said holes.

[Nuke]

can the powers that be move this thread to the scp board for review by coders for potential implementation?

[Retsof]

I was thinking maybe ships could be given a "spawn debris on hit" so they spawn some small debris parts when hit by powerfull weapons on the point the ship gets hit and a hole made as to show where the hole mass went to, and certainly, add a damage threshold  for what kind of weapons or stuff will cause said holes.

I think you would want to reserve that for blowthroughs and projectiles, since anything on the wrong end of a beam should be vaporised.

[qwadtep]

I was thinking maybe ships could be given a "spawn debris on hit" so they spawn some small debris parts when hit by powerfull weapons on the point the ship gets hit and a hole made as to show where the hole mass went to, and certainly, add a damage threshold  for what kind of weapons or stuff will cause said holes.

I think you would want to reserve that for blowthroughs and projectiles, since anything on the wrong end of a beam should be vaporised.

Depends on the severity of the hit. The kinetic force of the beam or secondary explosions inside the ship could send debris flying.

[Nuke]

debrits and particle spews are already in the game, i dont see why they cant be used to spice up the damage sequences.

also you consider that not all materials melt or vaporize at the same rate. i mean if you have tungsten conduits surrounded by aluminum structural elements then the the aluminum would vaporize first potentially providing rapid expansion necessary to sent bits of tungsten flying off into space before they can be seriously deformed. for like beams that go all the way through the hull you would definitely have ejecta coming out of the other side.

[MatthTheGeek]

Who cares about what would really happen. Rule of cool, people. Flying debris ARE cool. That's all we need to know really.

[z64555]

Who cares about what would really happen. Rule of cool, people. Flying debris ARE cool. That's all we need to know really.

Yeah, but there will always be people that ask "why," so we gotta be prepared. 

So, what would be needed to get this puppy started?

[General Battuta]

Hey uh in terms of spawning random debris during combat, please give mission designers/mod designers control over that as that's a big balance change.

[Droid803]

unless they don't do damage and are a purely visual effect

[Nuke]

the debris is really just eye candy, and if your so close to bet hit by them you will likely get vaporized by the beam anyway.

[jr2]

It'd be fun if beams had a small 'cone' around them, where, if you're close enough, it knocks out the shield quadrant touching it + 50% hull if the hull touches it, and flings you back about 100m  -- wait, beams pierce shields, so shields should stay up, but hull should still drop.

[Spoon]

It'd be fun if beams had a small 'cone' around them, where, if you're close enough, it knocks out the shield quadrant touching it + 50% hull if the hull touches it, and flings you back about 100m  -- wait, beams pierce shields, so shields should stay up, but hull should still drop.

'cept of course for the beams that dont pierce shields!

[Dragon]

Does blast radius work on beams? Because that'd be what you're asking for, basically. Not a cone, but a sphere around the impact point, but the basic idea is the same.

[assasing123]

i believe a satanas beams would cut a chunk big enough to be a menace to any fighter flying around and crashing with said debris

[Aardwolf]

*ahem*

As far as feasibility, I reckon the pre-modeled holes technique is the easiest, both as far as graphics and physics. Here be wizards, etc.

[qwadtep]

debrits and particle spews are already in the game, i dont see why they cant be used to spice up the damage sequences.

Yeah, I think that upgrading particle spews would be the place to start. Remember, you can't really see the new asshole the Lucifer carves in the Legion until after the timeskip because it's on fire.