Questions about the stormfire, and work around thoughts for SO

Shaggy

Vice Admiral
The Stormfire Mk II was availble on certain fighters in Prophecy. So does that mean it can be used in SO. I wanted to put a pair of Stormfires on my light recon fighter. I guess what I'm wondering is if I build the LRF with stormfires can I only use it in Prophecy or will it work in SO as well?
Stealth|Cloaking workaround
I guess cloaking fighters is sort of out of the question, without actually reprograming the Vision engine. What about writing the mission AI so that if your fighter is say within five thousand miles of the enemy they can detect you. So like there would be maybe a mission where you follow an enemy fighter to it's home base and then stay at least five thousand miles away from the enemy task force and target each ship so it's like taking reconnaissance scans of the enemy forces?
Mud Moving
Ground attack missions are something I'd really like to include if I can find some way to work around current restrictions.
One piece of advice that was given to me earlier was to create really big asteroid mesh. If I did create a massive mesh would it slow down the game to much.
Furthermore would I be able to create a blue sky effect and way points?
Obviously it wouldn't be an infinite landscape, and I would take this into account while designing the topography. Would I be able to create sort of a grassy plain and mountain look?
 
Stormfires, strictly speaking, do not exist in SO. However, it is no problem to alter one of the existing guns to a Stormfire.

Yes, you could have fighters ignore you outside of a certain range. Probably, anyway - I've never done anything exactly like that, though I have in one mission made the enemy fighters retreat if they got too far away from the centre of the navpoint. Not quite the same, but very similar technique.

In the case of the big asteroid, it would be just that - a big asteroid - certainly not big enough to have navpoints, because it in itself would have to fit at one navpoint. Essentially, what this would be is a much bigger version of the Kilrathi asteroid base from WC3. We're not really sure how much it would slow the game down, because nobody's ever tried anything like that before :p.
Blue skies would be impossible (well, you could do them, but then the entire mission would use them, and that would not work well). Grassy plains and mountains you can do if you really want, but they wouldna make much sense on an atmosphere-less asteroid :).
 
Can't you have translucent faces in a Prophecy model? That could be used as a (probably lame) work around for the atmosphere thing.

--Eder
 
Planet thingy

an idea of mine would be to make a flat plane, slightly curved with undulations and mapping to give the effect of a planet, but in fact to be like a giant piece of tin foil..... after all, you wont be wanting to go round the whole circumference of the planet. also, you could have multiple nav point on the surface, you just use the same effect for each nav point!
Basilisk:)
 
Well, that's pretty much what I suggested, Basilisk. The problem is, will WCP be able to handle a piece of tin foil big enough to keep the player happy? :)
 
it wont have to be that detailed......... the occasional mountain withj most of the effects coming from the texture map. the tex map wont have to be that big, since it can be repeated over and over and over etc. what do you use to actually edit prophecy? could i obtain this editor?
 
The problem isnt the textures or detail Basilisk, but scale.
Something like that would need to have a huge scale, and we dont know how prophecy would take it
 
reply

yeah i know....... but whats the harm in trying.... enough with the theory, go and try it in the game... the resolution of the plane will have a significant effect on the speed of the game... and textures will make a difference, since if you have an untextured plane, it will run significantly faster than a textured one, because your graphics card is renering more different coloured pixels..:) anyway, lets see what happens when you get the plane into Prophecy, and then you can decide what to do then......... simple reductions like less undulations will make an impact on playability:p
 
LoL!!!

Hmmm.... its funny you should mention that..:). since at the moment i am doing a considerable amount of mesing in 3dsmax. is it possible that i could design a mesh in 3dsmax, so then its usable in Prophecy? it wouldnt take me long (random generators). was that pre-ordained?;) i could send you some pics of my work, so you know that i am the real thing, and not just talk. my email is dbanbery@hotmail.com email me if you want pix!
 
No Problem!

No problem......... i have mailed you with previews of my work..... i was going to attempt to do my own extra missions or mod, but i need more people and a broader understanding of the Prophecy game engine.:)
 
hmmm...interesting, looks like a 'planetary' mission test is on the way :D
I can convert the model to WCP, and let Q try it on a mission. Always wanted to see how the engine would handle it :D
There some problems that are obvious though, The plane wont be infinite no matter how much bigger it is, so sooner or later, the player will reach its end, and it will show into the radar as a ship.
 
Yeah, But...

unless your one of those idiots that tries to find the end of the plane, there shouldnt be a problem, as long as you begin in the middle of the plane... how big do you want this plane? do you know how they did the planetary surface in WCIII and IV? was it the same? my money is on the fact it was the same, since i never was promiscuous enough to find the end of the planetary surface. or maybe theres a way to make prophecy repeat it continously forever......... i dont know much about the prophecy engine please enlighten me!!!:(
 
Radar thing....

you mean it will show up on the radar all the time? or just when you reach the end? maybe if you intilled a radio intererence theme into the story, that would discuise it sufficiently... ;)
 
PopsiclePete

You could just set the plane alignement to neutral and say the grey dot on the radar points to the ground. That way you turn something bad into a navigation tool :)
 
Well, the actual size of the model doesnt matter Basilisk, the scale is defined during the conversion. As for the poly count it msut be under 1200 polys, and less textures as possible, preferably 256x256 pixels, bmp format.
Btw, i mentioned the end of the plane, not because i or someone else would be looking for the end of it, but because it would need to have a huge scale, so it wouldnt appear anytime soon ;)
In WC3, i believe it was infinite (infinite repetition of the same plane that is) since you had to fly a long distance in the last mission on kilrah and you never see anywere near the end of it.
 
True about the Kilrah mission.... forgot about that...... anyway, iv done the mesh, theres just some amendments to be made. 1.do you want it to be really rocky and cavernous? or do you want it to be slightly up and down? 2. i have a texture of both mars's moons, would these do for a texture? 3. is there any need for a texture? or do you just need a flat block of colour?
cheers... and sorry bout the topic
 
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