A day in the life of Mr. B

Thanks! :)

As for doing the best possible with the engine, well, we are trying to do the best possible taking into account engine and time restrictions - I think I can speak for the rest of the team when I say that we could keep adding stuff to this game forever if we didn't have to eventually release it. :p

Better looking destroyed capships and cockpit struts for simulator-only ships are good examples of things which the engine can do, but which would just take too long. And then there's some stuff which the engine can't do, but which Tango could try to hack into the engine if we had all the time in the world.
 
Ah good to hear that you actually made destroyed submodel objects. It looked kind of strange in UE with the destroyed Dauntless having only a few blackened windows floating in space exploding forever. :p
 
Eder, Quarto, or Tango...I have a quick question that maybe you've already answered (I'm not sure). But when you destroy a capship (or even a component of that ship) can you just remove the component (or make it invisible). I don't know for sure but I think I'd almost rather have a capship explode and then disappear then have it still sitting out there looking pretty much intact except for a few explosions echoing here and there. Just a question/suggestion.
 
We can't change the hull mesh, so to make a capship entirely invisible, the hull would have to be an invisibile mesh to begin with (such as our Ralatha, as I mentioned).

However, the capship will keep exploding even if we set all of its meshes to be invisible - I'm sure we all agree that watching empty space explode forever would look even dumber than watching a capship's fried hull explode forever. :p
 
I'm fairly positive that, eventually, WC mods won't be mods at all, but rather entirely different programs, where mods replaced so many bits and pieces that the core engine was finally completely re-written to allow for all the cool/nifty ideas.
 
And, considering how many budding (or well-rehearsed) programmers have taken to modding WC games, or doing conversions for it, I'd say it wouldn't be too far off. If only there were a team that had the time, patience, and skills to pull it all off.

For now, teams such as the Standoff and Saga teams are really making what they have look superb. And I'm not just saying that because I'm doing voiceovers for both games, either! ;)
 
Well, since the FS2 engine is opensource now you could dedicate yourself to branching off of it and making a Wing Commander game engine from that.
 
Nomad Terror said:
since when are they modifying the engine?
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They are modifying it (or using someone else's modifications, I dunno)... that surely ain't the stock FS2 engine.
 
Eder said:
We can't change the hull mesh, so to make a capship entirely invisible, the hull would have to be an invisibile mesh to begin with (such as our Ralatha, as I mentioned).

However, the capship will keep exploding even if we set all of its meshes to be invisible - I'm sure we all agree that watching empty space explode forever would look even dumber than watching a capship's fried hull explode forever. :p
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I don't know about WCPas too much but would it be possible to script that the ship dissapears as soon it explodes.
And IMO at least the biggest caps should have models for destroyed subobjects. While it isn't so obvious on smaller ships it would be really strange to have no whatsoever change in shape after it's destroyed.

Eder said:
They are modifying it (or using someone else's modifications, I dunno)... that surely ain't the stock FS2 engine.
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At first we were using someone elses modifications, but now we have recruited enough programmers do allow us some flexibility. Among the most important new features there are WC like autopilot, a 3d navmap, new scripts for mission programming, HT&L implementation which allows high detailed ships with the game still running smoother than the retail engine, shine and glowmapping and many other improvements.
The FS2 code seriously needed(and needs) improvements. Even the lead programmer of FS2 who used to show up on HLP once in awhile admitted that their coding was horrendous. :p
 
Lynx said:
I don't know about WCPas too much but would it be possible to script that the ship dissapears as soon it explodes.
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I'm not sure. If that's possible, it probably takes as little as one line of extra mission code per capship... but I prefer to have 600m long capships sit there and explode forever than *disappear*. :p Sure, we could probably come up with another hack to have some chunks fly off or whatever, but then it'd become too much hassle both for me and for the coders.

I don't get why everyone else seems to prefer disappearing capships (note to all readers: this is not an invitation to come and reason this with me - I don't like capships that disappear and Standoff agrees with me by default ;)) than capships that explode forever.
Lynx said:
And IMO at least the biggest caps should have models for destroyed subobjects.
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IMO all of them should, but modelling destroyed subobjects doesn't pay the bills. :D If it did, then all of them would at least eventually (I'm pretty sure this is easily patch-able post-release without screwing up anything in the game) have destroyed subobject meshes, and good ones. :p
 
Eder said:
If it did, then all of them would at least eventually (I'm pretty sure this is easily patch-able post-release without screwing up anything in the game) have destroyed subobject meshes, and good ones. :p
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Indeed it is easily patchable, so y'all don't need to worry - Eder likes to model stuff when he's bored, and he'll probably be bored a lot once he runs out of things he _needs_ to do for Standoff :p.
 
Unless I forgot everything I ever did with WCPas doing a capship that vanishes after exploding for X seconds or that is changed to a non exploding hull shouldn't be any problem at all. However it would be an additional burden for the modellers and increase filesize significantly. What could be challenging is how to do the 'final' explosion.
 
Hmm, you could set the smaller capships (Like Ralatha, Gilgamesh etc.) to disappear when destroyed. There is nothing wrong with the current system, only it would be a hommage to WC 2 if we could see some big explosions. :D
 
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