Directional thrusters

Development directions, tasks, and features being actively implemented or pursued by the development team.
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log0

Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

Just a quick hack to add support for optional "forex, forey, forez, upx, upy, upz" to unit lights(http://wiki.vega-strike.org/HowTo:Edit_units.csv). It would also require changes to UnitConverter I guess. What do you think?

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IansterGuy
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by IansterGuy »

I think they are beautiful, though I would like to take this opportunity to say that bottom thrusters should be made stronger then other lateral thrusters for steering and landing reasons. The ones on the bottom should be bigger to show the significantly more thrust, and there should be more of them to spread out the weight. For the llama 6 thrusters, for other ships 3 for small skinny ships to up to maybe around 12 for huge ships that would have to fight gravity.

The way you have them right now seem well placed, even the ones on the rear side I can't think of a better place since it looks like the thrust may have a clear path outward.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by klauss »

log0 wrote:Just a quick hack to add support for optional "forex, forey, forez, upx, upy, upz" to unit lights(http://wiki.vega-strike.org/HowTo:Edit_units.csv). It would also require changes to UnitConverter I guess. What do you think?
I think...
  • Did you modify the activation code to account for their direction? It shouldn't be difficult, it was all prepared for that.
  • Do you really need the up vectors?
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log0

Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

Did you modify the activation code to account for their direction? It shouldn't be difficult, it was all prepared for that.
Else it wouldn't make much sense. I am wondering why it wasn't implemented right from the beginning? The effect is worth the few extra code. 8)
Do you really need the up vectors?
It's optional, more generic, would allow to share some code. And just in the case someone would want to have non-rotationally symmetric thruster effects the code would support it already.


I think it would be cool to use thrusters for angular acceleration too. I know there has been some preference towards CMGs. The boring thing about CMGs is that they are not very visible. Any opinions?

Oh btw, any ideas where to put the retro thrusters on the Llama? I think the mesh needs some adjustments.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by klauss »

log0 wrote:
Did you modify the activation code to account for their direction? It shouldn't be difficult, it was all prepared for that.
Else it wouldn't make much sense. I am wondering why it wasn't implemented right from the beginning? The effect is worth the few extra code. 8)
Do you really need the up vectors?
It's optional, more generic, would allow to share some code. And just in the case someone would want to have non-rotationally symmetric thruster effects the code would support it already.
Excellent

log0 wrote:I think it would be cool to use thrusters for angular acceleration too.
There is support, AFAIK, you just have to mark the entry as angular-acceleration-triggered. If there isn't... it should.

PS: No there isn't. But I had planned it. You basically have to transform the velocity vector by the acceleration matrix, and produce a "local acceleration vector". That ought to do the trick - for maneuvering thrusters (lights have to be marked as such).

log0 wrote:I know there has been some preference towards CMGs. The boring thing about CMGs is that they are not very visible. Any opinions?
Fully agree.
log0 wrote:Oh btw, any ideas where to put the retro thrusters on the Llama? I think the mesh needs some adjustments.
We have many ships that make no sense in that way. I'd suggest ignoring it for the time being, unless you can find a creative way of adding them. We'll probably need new meshes on the long term.
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log0

Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

Did a quick Llama retro pods mod. But messed up the materials, duh. Can use it for testing at least.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

There is one interesting effect with angular acceleration btw. The placement of the forward and reverse thrusters relative to vessel center(center of mass) can create additional momentum. The three Llama forward thrusters will variate their output independent of each other according to current acceleration.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by klauss »

log0 wrote:There is one interesting effect with angular acceleration btw. The placement of the forward and reverse thrusters relative to vessel center(center of mass) can create additional momentum. The three Llama forward thrusters will variate their output independent of each other according to current acceleration.
Exactly what I had planned.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

Got it running. Need to cleanup the code a bit for a patch. The differential thruster firing makes external view much more fun (now if the external camera would be made a bit more dynamic it would be awesome).
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by Deus Siddis »

Exciting feature development from log0 once again. :D
log0 wrote:The differential thruster firing makes external view much more fun (now if the external camera would be made a bit more dynamic it would be awesome).
More dynamic how, out of curiosity?
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

The chase cam (5) is fixed relative to vessel. If it was made to lag a bit on acceleration one would get a better sense of ship motion. I guess that a simple mass-spring model won't work due to large acceleration range (0.1-100g). But something in that direction should do it (maybe adjusting stiffness/damping to max accel).
log0

Re: Directional thrusters

Post by log0 »

Somewhat ot, but I think it would be cool to have some kind of slip vector display in the hud view. Aircraft have got aoa and sideslip info.

For starters maybe simply a line from current target direction towards true motion direction would do it, should be also easy to add.

Something like:
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by IansterGuy »

log0 wrote:Somewhat ot, but I think it would be cool to have some kind of slip vector display in the hud view. Aircraft have got aoa and sideslip info.

For starters maybe simply a line from current target direction towards true motion direction would do it, should be also easy to add.
This is a great idea in the way that I'm visualizing it now. A slip indicator in combination with a intercept vector would be just as useful as the virtual HUD particle lines I was thinking of using for intercepting targets and it would not require changing ones vector reference, just their target. I decided to submit my proposal earlier than I planed here, because this seems to be on the same topic and looks to solve my remaining problem. Replace those blue virtual particle HUD vector indicators with a transparent slip indicator in cell shaded purple on the HUD, and VegaStrike would have a ship interface like no other.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by IansterGuy »

Love the retro thrusters hull extension. Might be good to put some scorch marks on the hull there. I imagine that either the two front tips would fold up to load cargo containers, or a ramp would come down from the wider from each of the widder parts at the front and the tip would then be just component upgrade space. So it is good that your thruster placement is a good ways back from the tip and ahead of the wider part.
klauss wrote:
log0 wrote:There is one interesting effect with angular acceleration btw. The placement of the forward and reverse thrusters relative to vessel center(center of mass) can create additional momentum. The three Llama forward thrusters will variate their output independent of each other according to current acceleration.
Exactly what I had planned.
Well now that is getting detailed, sounds like fun. I'm sure it would give the ships a custom feel while flying them, because currently all ships feel much the same.
log0 wrote:I think it would be cool to use thrusters for angular acceleration too.
I would like to add that, robotic thrusters would be fancy and look cool too but in a time of war these recessed thrusters make more sense because they are likely tougher.
log0 wrote:I know there has been some preference towards CMGs. The boring thing about CMGs is that they are not very visible. Any opinions?
When all manoeuvring thruster are destroyed in the game currently the ship can still turn in the desired direction, just much more slowly. I always imagined this was the CMG's turning the ship. I also thought that if the ship turns slowly enough the thrusters should not bother firing.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by Primordial »

I really didn't realise the base mesh for the Llama was so simple. That texture work is damn good, I thought the mesh was somewhat higher-poly because of it.
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Re: Directional thrusters

Post by klauss »

Primordial wrote:I really didn't realise the base mesh for the Llama was so simple. That texture work is damn good, I thought the mesh was somewhat higher-poly because of it.
AFAIR, it was done by a professional. The only bad thing is that it's quite outdated and follows really obsolete guidelines.
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