Nav computer/map

Iceblade

Iceblade

Admiral
Hey, you know how FC doesn't have a nav map or even navbuoys in-game. Well, I converted an object to fullful part of this role. Just place a navbuoy object in your mission about where the next nav point should be.

The RG website is being "revamped" and will be ready in about a week or so. At which time, I'll have Cyberion post the nav object along with a ships package, which will include some Border Worlds craft from WC4 and from Unknown Enemy as well as a few things for the shipviewer.

[Man, it seems I am getting more use out that box mesh from UE then they did]

Alright, the rest of the thread is of course for discussion of what sort of things should be added concerning a nav computer (either from a coding basis or from other avenues like this object).
 
I know this is out of my field, but couldn't you use a series of relationship algorithims (I guess that is the right term) to establish a sort-of cohesiveness amongst the navs with which to allow the ability to view and select other navs?
 
No. I have no idea what you just said. Have a feeling you don't either. :) Anyway, this is a patch I would accept if somebody implemented it.
 
Okay, yeah algorithim was definitely the wrong term. I was thinking about having a series of code chunks that would be connect the navs together establishing a sort of web of nav points allowing the ability to have a nav map and to be able to view/select a nav.

I have a few questions about how your navs are set up:
How are the navs connected with each other?

Is a nav its own 3d environment and the player just jumps from one environ to another or are all navs located in one continuous environment?
If A, then how would you perserve the state of a nav, so as to return to it?

Is there a way to link the navs together into a system?
 
Ummm. It's currently designed so navs always go sequentially. If you're interested in the details, you have the code. There's a whole host of problems that creep up if you do it the wc way, that would require many regressions in the engine, and much breakage of working functionality.
 
Iceblade said:
Is a nav its own 3d environment and the player just jumps from one environ to another or are all navs located in one continuous environment?

If A, then how would you perserve the state of a nav, so as to return to it?

Is there a way to link the navs together into a system?
Click to expand...

Yes to A. The state is not preserved. Which is partly why this is nasty to do. The nastiness of the changes are making me not want to do it, sorry. I've never once flown a wc mission out of order, and have been perfectly happy doing so.

If you really want the player to choose between nav points, you can wire it up through the custom comm menu. But that would be an extremely difficult script, and you'd have to script all the ship creations instead.
 
Hmmm...could work. Doesn't sound too bad to do in the script.

I am not really interested in being able to go out of order for navs, just to be able to have a navmap for the current nav and to be able to see another nav point from the current navpoint. The second is easy, just place a navbuoy about where the navpoint should be, but I would like to be able to see another navs asteroid field and be able see the most of the field as well spreading across a large area, but not actually be in it. The navmap should be easier to code, though, since it would only have to track the targets in one navpoint and be concerned with only the current nav.

A cache system could also be set up to use for the return to the home nav. I mean, a cache system is already needed to keep track of the number of ships lost in a mission and for the current state of the fleet (which would save me time in having to deal with multiple capships down the way).
 
All easier said than done :)

The one thing I think is doable is adding a crosshair at 0,0,0 automatically for the current nav. And displaying the distance to it is fine. But that's kind of useless by itself. But having a crosshair to the next nav won't work, because its setup so that you can' fly between navs unless you autopilot. Setting it up to fly between navs without an autopilot is painful.
 
Thats why we would use an object, or just maybe creating a special type of target. It could be possible to create a nav editor that would allow the modder to establish a set of navs, which would be used by the mission to create the navbuoys that are be targeted by the player. Only if the player went to the location of the nav buoy, he would not be in the next nav. But at a certain distance from the centre of one nav the player is transferred into the next nav without the need of the autopilot. When the player reaches the edge of one nav, the game does a kind of mini-auto that would be initiated by a distance trigger, that wouldn't have a cutscene, and would place the player at the same point relative between the two navs in the global nav map using a cache system. And I could go on and on, lots of ideas just flooded my brain of ways to have the navs remain as separate 3d environments and be able to have interconnected navs, but it is way too late for me to type out such a long post. (Probably would take up a whole Word page, single-spaced!)
 
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