[JSRNerdo]

I alt-tabbed out, and now when I alt-tab back in, my HUD disappears every couple seconds and the tactical display is gone. 

I replayed and that happened again without alt-tab: my HUD just kept shutting off.

Watch your heat, engineering should be giving you a message that your heat is critical and you're about to shut down. Stop afterburning everywhere and watch out for space friction, your ship runs on space AMD don't think it can dissipate both afterburner, space friction and space AMD heat all at once!

Beams are unfortunately unfixable without a serious attempt at hacking stuff in with SEXPs or a script, because there's no "if beam can fire" or simple way to simulate that.

[General Battuta]

You should probably pop up a training message or a regular message or whatever to say 'your hud is off because of heat', I didn't get that at all.

[xenocartographer]

EDIT: I... somehow broke the recent post warning, weird...

I asked about that on IRC after having the same thing happen. It's supposed to indicate reactor overheating (and, apparently, there are some other heat sources not mentioned anywhere...).



OP: The "overheating" also prevents you from reading messages unless you check the log. Is there a reason you're turning off the HUD? A simple training-message would seem to make more sense.


EDIT2:

because there's no "if beam can fire" or simple way to simulate that.

Trigonometry?

[niffiwan]

because there's no "if beam can fire" or simple way to simulate that.

Trigonometry?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect FREDers to have to understand the maths behind 3D space, matrices & vectors  
Also pretty sure that basic trig isn't going to cut it here (based on my experiences of trying to do exactly that and getting the wrong answers all the time. Maybe I'm just bad at it  but I did figure out the 3D maths eventually so... !shrug)

[xenocartographer]

I dunno, if you're going to build systems in 3space you're going to run into it eventually. The math here isn't all that complicated and I can explain it if asked (the oracle at Google will probably do a better job, however), but this morning I realized that we're on the wrong track.

Like, we want to add heat when the beam fires, right? So, rather than trying to predict when it can fire, we should just ask the game when it has. There's a scripting hook for a weapon being fired, so why not just increase the heat variable from there?

[The E]

because there's no "if beam can fire" or simple way to simulate that.

Trigonometry?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect FREDers to have to understand the maths behind 3D space, matrices & vectors  
Also pretty sure that basic trig isn't going to cut it here (based on my experiences of trying to do exactly that and getting the wrong answers all the time. Maybe I'm just bad at it  but I did figure out the 3D maths eventually so... !shrug)

I think the easier solution would be to introduce a "is-valid-target" sexp that returns true if a given target is within a turret's FOV.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I think the easier solution would be to introduce a "is-valid-target" sexp that returns true if a given target is within a turret's FOV.

Easier by far, considering the code to check whether something is within the FOV already exists and all.

[General Battuta]

I'll give this another shot now that I know the vanishing HUD isn't a glitch. Consider playing a sound as well as a message on shutdown!

[mjn.mixael]

Per the HUD effect, there's also some neat post-effects you can use to really sell it. Using some simple chained SEXPs you can fade the effects on and off and the result is pretty neat.

[procdrone]

My faithful ally, Let me see what you made here

[General Battuta]

I made it up to the Pharaoh! But I lost the station. Probably I should turn it off insane lel.

[Nyctaeus]

I've noticed you used old version of the Ophion here. Go ahead and replace it with newer version with properly modelled hangarbay, LODs, debris and other stuff.

[HLD_Prophecy]

The beams are still confusing me. More than half the time when I hit the fire key my beam charge will drain but the beams won't fire.

[AdmiralRalwood]

The beams are still confusing me. More than half the time when I hit the fire key my beam charge will drain but the beams won't fire.

That means the target wasn't in the firing arc for the beam emitter.

[Nyctaeus]

The beams are still confusing me. More than half the time when I hit the fire key my beam charge will drain but the beams won't fire.

That means the target wasn't in the firing arc for the beam emitter.

...or part of the hull blocked the arc. Side beams are placed underneath some sticking out part. Despire firing angle of 170 degrees, you are not able to fire upward.

I guess multipart beams from newer version would be better in this case. I would also incrase their amount to four, also reducing firepower of each shot.

[JSRNerdo]

Problem with that would be the intuitiveness of the controls. I'd have to add a forward and a backward beam for it to really make the same amount of sense, or with two beams on each broadside both would have to fire at once, which might not be exactly what you need. Right now, left and right arrows work well because you only have one each side.

Another solution would be to just force fire the beam after a range and a "is in box" sexp check. I don't really like that one though, as any bug could mean your beam shoots through your ship.

[Nyctaeus]

Check the version I posted. Turrets 01, 02, 03, 04, 23 and 24 are multipart beams. Darius did outstanding job with new turrets and overall setup. By removing 03 and 04, the effect would be optimal.

[xenocartographer]

Nerdo, have you considered tying heat generation to the beams actually firing, instead of to the buttons? The beam still won't fire if it, uh, can't fire, but then you don't suffer heat from it. Conceptually, the arrows become more of a "permission to fire".

[AdmiralRalwood]

If the event could detect the beam actually firing, then energy drain without a beam firing wouldn't be a problem either.

[JSRNerdo]

Hrm. If that were possible, it would be cool, but unfortunately even after chatting to battuta and the others, the only solutions we came up with to detect firing are "check if the enemy ship is tagged and make our beam the tag beam" or even "invisible ship in front of the beam emitters and subtract when destroyed."

Code freeze

I suppose I'll go test the is-in-box solution for now, maybe.