TRACTOR BEAMS

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:21 am

Not much to say. Except can't it be improved a bit more?
Forgot the screenshots, tho. But The Tractor Beam seems to be merely a colored transparent green square set right on the nose of the ship.

A fact very obvious if you view the ship sidewise.
So:
1. Coulde it be made more like a continuous beam, like some of the weapons?
2. Could it become a sort of untargetted beam, like Freelancer's tractor beam. Which doesn't need to be pointed at the object to draw it in. And it should originate from the cargo areas, and not from gun points.

But really, as for now, why not get rid of the big square thingies and make it truly a Tractor BEAM.

Post by **klauss** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:08 am

You can do that with you vegastrike.config.

Add "tractor.scoop" as "false" to section "graphics".

BTW: Does it look that bad sideways? I always thought sideviews were the strong point of that implementation, whilst cockpit views were kinda lame (but improving it was far too much work, and believe it or not, it's a pretty accurate approximation of the way it would look in real life if it was a "light-emitting volume in the shape of a cone").

geoscope · Post by **geoscope** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:54 pm

Wouldn't that be

<var name="tractor_scoop" value="false" />

I notice most of the other name attributes use "_" underscores to separate words.

Post by **klauss** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 6:43 am

No, mine use the dot.
Because I try to have a logical structure to help remember them and guess their function once I see their name.

tractor.xxx (all having to do with tractor beams)
tractor.scoop.xxxx (configuration details on the scooping feature)

Makes sense: once you see the names, you easily guess their function. The dot (instead of underscore), is more of an OOP thing - to me, used to OOP, underscores look ugly and don't separate concepts that clearly.

Besides, I wanted to eventually export that into the XML - like:

Code: Select all

<struct name="tractor">
   <var name="scoop" value="true" />
   <struct name="scoop">
        ...
   </struct>
</struct>

I dunno, it's not import, but it was an idea.

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 4:51 am

Thanks klauss.

Yep it does:

Post by **klauss** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 5:58 am

Wow - it's not supposed to look like that.
It was supposed to look like those green cones.

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 6:14 am

Dunno why. Maybe the SVN version's broken again. Take a look at the stars:

They're dying too.

geoscope · Post by **geoscope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:42 pm

What's wrong with the stars?

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 5:19 am

Halleck pointed it out.

Compare it with past screenshots. Its blotchier and paler.

geoscope · Post by **geoscope** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:10 am

Blotchier? You mean the sunspots?

Post by **jackS** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:41 pm

The corona/flare/glow effect is being rendered on the wrong side of the star.

Post by **dandandaman** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 11:33 am

That was changed on purpose (as a quick fix) I think, because the sprite and the rest of the sun were having ordering issues for some reason the other way around...

Dan

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:10 am

were having ordering issues

What does that mean? Does it crash VS?

If it's just a minor problem, I think we should take the halo effect back on top. It kills the sun effect.

Dark-Blood-Hound · Post by **Dark-Blood-Hound** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:23 am

Yeh I think we should.