Question for the ship builders out there.

Shaggy

Shaggy

Vice Admiral
I've started working on some new Confed ships, for a potential Secret Ops Mod, and needed a little advice.
First of, some of the new designs have the vectored engine style of SO ships, the mod would be same era different enemy, and I was wondering if I need to make the engines a separate model to the main body of the fighter or should they be connected. Am I right in that the fighter model should be one object, as opposed to several shapes put next to each other but not attached.
Secondly, has anyone tried to do variable geometry wings on fighters. Something similar to the way the Dragon's wings fold down when arming the fission cannon, or wings that fold down after you launch or accelerate with a booster?
 
A fighter can consist of multiple meshes, and this is indeed how the Vampire and Panther engines are done (as well as the Seahawk's antenna). The same applies to capships - the bridge, engine, and in fact anything targettable must be a separate mesh.

As far as variable geometry is concerned, there is only one fighter in WCP that uses variable geometry, and that is the Squid. What this means is that you could only use variable geometry for engaging the booster. However, there hasn't been too much experimentation done with the Squid booster. We know that each arm is a separate mesh, and we know that these arms can be attached to other ships if you really want (ever seen a Wraith with Squid arms? :)). I don't think anybody's managed to replace the Squid arms with a different mesh, however.
 
:cool: Thanks!
So any movable or targetable element on a ship has to be a separate mesh. I'm assuming this insludes turrets on figthters. Does the separate mesh have to be part of the same 3DS file, before conversion to the SO engine, or in it's own file?
 
Yep, turrets are separate meshes too.
Each turret is actually two meshes - one "base" mesh, which you want to attach to a hardpoint on the ship's mesh, and another mesh for the turret's gun barrels (since they move separately from the base of the turret, after all), which you want to attach to a hardpoint on the base mesh.

(Note: I've tried to make my own turrets before, and I gotta say, it's much easier to just use WCP's existing turrets. There are several types of them, so there must be at least one which fits your needs.)

Each part of the ship must be a separate file before conversion... after you've got all the meshes converted, you use WCPPascal to write a "ship file" which is the file that will store information about the ship - the ship's name, shields, armor, speed, guns, turrets, and parts... this is the file in which you specify the filenames to use for the "main" mesh and for any attached parts like turrets, capship components, etc.

--Eder
 
Here's what I have so far.
On my light fighter it doesn't have any vectored thrust. But I have the wings and two rocket pods attached directly to the fuselage, and each other. The missile pods will fire Dragonfly rockets
So does this mean I need to have a separate file for each wing and rocket pod before I convert it? Is that right?
I asked about the turrets because I was thinking about putting a chin turret on my light fighter, so it would be like the main gun on an Apache helicopter but I decided against it.

Has anyone tried to recreate the camera gun from WC4 in SO?
 
Originally posted by Shaggy
Here's what I have so far.
On my light fighter it doesn't have any vectored thrust. But I have the wings and two rocket pods attached directly to the fuselage, and each other. The missile pods will fire Dragonfly rockets
So does this mean I need to have a separate file for each wing and rocket pod before I convert it? Is that right?
Click to expand...

Well... no. Only capship components and moving parts (turrets, moveable thrusters) must be in separate files from the main mesh. So if your fighter has no moving parts, the entire model should be a single file.

--Eder
 
Although, using multiple meshes in a single fighter may be a way to get around the poly limit... whatever that limit is :p. I guess Eder is the only one to have reached it ;).

The gun camera could be recreated by making a gun that fires invisible, extremely fast-moving bullets, and then using Mario's leech patch to check if the the target was hit.
 
Originally posted by Quarto
Although, using multiple meshes in a single fighter may be a way to get around the poly limit... whatever that limit is :p. I guess Eder is the only one to have reached it ;).

The gun camera could be recreated by making a gun that fires invisible, extremely fast-moving bullets, and then using Mario's leech patch to check if the the target was hit.
Click to expand...

Would that damage your target though?


P.S.
Thanks Eder!
 
Originally posted by Quarto
...whatever that limit is. I guess Eder is the only one to have reached it ;).
Click to expand...
Hey, where I come from, extra detail is a GOOD thing ;)

The limit is around 1200 polygons per mesh - pretty low if you ask me (my Hakaga model has like 3000 polygons, so I had to cheat a bit...)

--Eder
 
Two ideas I had:
1: I was thinking about creating a fighter with wings the fold down when you launch and fold up when you land. So the wing is only in motion during the times when you don't control the fighter. Which is why I asked about variable geometry wings.
2: I thought about creating fighters that you could targety specific areas, like you can with the cap ships. Except now you could target a fighters tachyon cannons or its engines. So you could stop it dead in the water or you could pull its teeth. But this idea would go into a much more in depth TC than what I have currently planned. I was curious what kind of effect that would have on the AI, if you destroyed a fighter's guns and it had no missiles left would the fighter run away(with the built in AI) or would something like that have to be programmed in?
I also kind of wondered what kind of work it would take to implement a multiplayer option in SO.
But maybe that's for a later thread.:p
 
I really don't know how you'd go about destroying components in a fighter... you'd have to hack something rather impressive together, as the engine isn't designed to handle that at all...
 
yeah, lag


then fighter engagements would have to be kept real small

maybe just "weapon systems" or "navigation" and stuff
 
Originally posted by Shaggy
1: I was thinking about creating a fighter with wings the fold down when you launch and fold up when you land. So the wing is only in motion during the times when you don't control the fighter. Which is why I asked about variable geometry wings.
Click to expand...
Well, as I've explained, it's impossible, because we have no way of controlling the variable geometry. Perhaps a dll patch to do this would be possible, but that's not my realm of expertise.

2: I thought about creating fighters that you could targety specific areas, like you can with the cap ships.
Click to expand...
Also impossible. That's the difference between a fighter and a capship, one has components and the other doesn't.

I also kind of wondered what kind of work it would take to implement a multiplayer option in SO.
Click to expand...
Heh. You know, saying "impossible" three times in one post makes me feel bad... but... it's impossible :p. I mean, the hacking this would require... without the source code, there's just no chance.
 
After over two and a half years of work on UE, I've given up on making the distinction between extremely difficult and impossible :). One of the more important aspects of modding is decision-making. You have to decide what's worth spending time on and what isn't. Thus, the distinction mentioned above becomes irrelevant, because an extremely difficult task will most definitely suck up more time and effort than it is worth.
 
Q's right. Take cloaking for instance. We've had tons of discussions about that, and came to the conclusion that it can be done with a LOT of work and a few restrictions... but it's just not worth the effort. I'd love to include an encounter with a Strakha in Standoff... but more than that, I'd love to have Standoff done by 2005 :p

--Eder
 
Last question, at least from me on this thread.
How do I post an image from my hard drive to a thread?
I've got a picture of one of my fighters and I wanted to get some feedback from the community, but I can't quite figure out how to use the the board's system.
 
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