coming back in your ship in 3d

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Fri Jun 06, 2003 7:00 am

I know you can quit your ship with the ejection sit, but is there a way to go back in it? I'm working on a sort a workaround, as far as vegastrike don't seems to crash when you "eject from you ejection sit" (when you eject from your ship, you are in your ejection sit, and when you eject from your ejection sit, you are in your ship). The only problem is the inventory: I cannot find a way to add the items I collected while driving the ejection sit in the main ship's one. Any ideas?

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Fri Jun 06, 2003 7:07 am

and the best is to be able to equip your ship with the collected items

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:31 am

Maybe we should add docking ports that are so small that only an ejection seat can use them (can that be specified in the docking ports tag?) to all ships...on small fighters these would naturally be located at the canopy, on larger ships they could be airlocks located elsewhere.

But for that to work we need the ability to take control of a ship to which you're docked. This would also give the ability to fly a small fighter into your own ship's cargo hold, say, after you've wasted some pirates, run to your bridge, take control, and fly off to the next system. Or, maybe, your ship gets toasted, your friend comes to pick you up in a big ship, you fly your seat to an airlock rather than get tractored into his hold, then you run up to one of his turrets and make yourself useful while you get flown to a place where you can get a ship.

-pincushionman

Runner · Post by **Runner** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 2:58 pm

This all sounds like Battlecruiser 3KAD, I only hope that if it ever happens, that it's playable inlike BC...

Basically, the more deep and complicated a game becomes, the more important it is, to make things very easy.

Very simple example for unneccessare complexity: Eject with key 'E', dock with key 'D', open a door in the ship with 'Space', use turret with 'T' and fire around using three different keys for three different fire modes...

Everything could be done by a single context-sensitive mousepress!

The same goes for cargo:
Bad Example: You want trade? Go to trade screen, choose cargo, choose cargo-category, chose cargo, chose amount to buy, press buy-button.

Instead: Go to trade screen, move slider next to one of the five cargos (not more) this station has left and right...

by, Runner

Shrike · Post by **Shrike** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 7:35 pm

After my attempt at getting a good formation screen shot, I mentioned this about wishing I could get back into a ship I had ejected from.

One thing that occurs to me now, which I didn't mention then; ships drift.

I would drive out and park a ship, get it in perfect position and stopped (as far as I could tell it was stopped) and then eject to go back and get another ship. When I came back I noticed some ships were slightly out of alignment, at least I thought they were, it was so small that I wasn't sure.

After some time I noticed that two ships were now rubbing each other and thier shields were lighting up when they did. No, they weren't horny (well, maybe they were, I didn't ask)...they had drifted into each other.

As for myself, I like the realism of it, but I wonder how others feel about that: Should an empty ship do "station keeping" so that when you come back it is where you left it, or is it better if they drift and if you leave your ship you take a chance that it either won't be there when you come back, or that it has drifted into a station and pissed someone off?

I thought I stopped the ships before I got out, yet they weren't stopped, they were actually still moving. Or, did they start moving when I ejected?

At any rate, the ejection process needs a bit of improvement. When I ejected from some ships, I found myself bumping into them, because I was placed too close. When ejecting, the seat should start far enough away from the ship so as not to bump it as soon as you move. Somewhat the same as when undocking from a station (I remember that being fixed a while back).

Grusifix · Post by **Grusifix** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 8:54 pm

Shrike wrote:After some time I noticed that two ships were now rubbing each other and thier shields were lighting up when they did. No, they weren't horny (well, maybe they were, I didn't ask)...they had drifted into each other.

Horny ships

I'd like ask just one question. Why would someone want to re-enter ship after ejection? It could be towed to station and repaired(you ejected for some reason). Somekind of emergency signal should be sended on some channel.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 11:27 pm

Why would someone want to re-enter ship after ejection?

If the ejection seat is a human model, you could just eject to visit interiors of a place (like in a fisrt person shooter), and after go back in your ship

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 12:29 am

For my idea, isn't ejection pods supposed to be nessecary to have in the game? I mean in wing commander prophacy, you eject and your in a pod.. not some kind of a human suit.

I would most likley to see an eject pod which is not some kind of an astronaut suit.

If a user happens to eject from the ship for no reason, the ship is supposed to be destroyed.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 12:57 am

you should have 2 pods, something like an exploration pod and an escape one

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 4:26 am

Why would someone want to re-enter ship after ejection?

I can definitely see a hollow asteroid somewhere that holds some rare artifact, and you can only get into the hole with a unit as small as the pilot.

As for using pods all the time, in a fighter an ejection pod would take up valuable space...cheaper just to blow the canopy and shoot the seat straight out.

Grusifix · Post by **Grusifix** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:43 am

pincushionman wrote: I can definitely see a hollow asteroid somewhere that holds some rare artifact, and you can only get into the hole with a unit as small as the pilot.

Why not send a robot to do man's job?

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 10:54 am

it depenps, do you want to remnote control this robot?

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 1:37 pm

In fact I just want to add a very little first person shooter/exploration part.
It seems to work fine, as ever in those cases, the biggest problem is the polycount of the model: for a simple cube wher you can go in in wings, you got 6 faces by faces, and you have 6 faces (+ 4 faces for the door) because you cannot do boolean operation (each wall is a cube). But if you generate a basic shape in another modeler (blender, by example) and after you export it in 3ds (loadable with wings), you will have only 2 faces by wall: wings: 6*6+4= 40 faces, 3ds import 6*2+4= 16 faces, and after triangulation you just have multiply by 2.
you can try with about 10 rooms, just count, you will see that you are really far from max polycount for a fighter (1024 polygons). You have many polygons left for adding stuffs in your rooms ; and don't forget that a good lowpoly model is in most cases absolutely awful without textures

)

Then I do think it is possible, and if it is, why not doing it?

Grusifix Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2003 6:43 am Post subject:

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pincushionman wrote:

I can definitely see a hollow asteroid somewhere that holds some rare artifact, and you can only get into the hole with a unit as small as the pilot.

Why not send a robot to do man's job?

We may have many ways to explore those places.
for humans, we should have somelittle "tanks",
for rlaan some drones or organic peons (a bug?),
for pirates they do it themselves, then scaphanders,
and for others don't know

pincushionman · Post by **pincushionman** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 10:57 pm

You can't do Boolean with Wings (which I agree would be useful) but if you want to fake it you can -- if you need to make an object into a shell, you can make a face the shape of the hole (or holes) you want, and use the Intrude command. I made a hollowed-out cube like you described with 22 polys by this method. You can do it with 18, but you end up with nonconvex faces, and that tends to be a bad thing.

And don't forget that if you extrude into an object, it removes material.

-pincushionman

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 12:11 am

yep, I know, but we can import 3ds models, you can then do boolean operations, but with another program: you can by this way create a tunnel

enlightenment · Post by **enlightenment** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:25 am

It's possible to create simple tunnels in Wings. Just select two opposite faces and choose 'bridge' from the RMB context menu.

As for importing from external programs, try not to use the 3DS format if at all possible. 3DS only supports triangles and therefore will send the polygon count through the roof when dealing with geometry designed using quads or higher polys.

Shrike · Post by **Shrike** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 11:21 am

Grusifix wrote:[I'd like ask just one question. Why would someone want to re-enter ship after ejection? It could be towed to station and repaired(you ejected for some reason). Somekind of emergency signal should be sended on some channel.

With this example, it's easy. Your ship gets damaged, you eject and fly to the nearest base and get another of your ships. You go back to the damaged ship and tow it to the base.

So, how do you dock that damaged ship if you can't get back into it?

Grusifix · Post by **Grusifix** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 11:48 am

Didn't think it that way.. After you have docked that damaged ship can you "eject" station? Or could it be towed in at the same time you dock with your other ship? It would be nice if you could dock this way.. then you could tow those cargo container just like that big motha truck.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:11 pm

Enlightenment wrote:It's possible to create simple tunnels in Wings. Just select two opposite faces and choose 'bridge' from the RMB context menu.

yes but if you want to create an empty sphere you need an other program

found some informations on http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/Booleans.html but it's a pretty long operation and wings crash when you tryes to texture your work

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:22 pm

etheral walker wrote:yes but if you want to create an empty sphere you need an other program

Have you tried this ($me is not at home, so i have no possibility to try it for myself right now

):
*create a sphere
*intrude 0
*cleanup

Yeah, i know: "This i only a solution for one special case."
The only bad thing with this is, that you have twice the faces than th starting sphere. (one for the in-and for the outside)

To check if it's really hollow just elect one face on the inside (wireframe view=w) and one on the outside and bridge them.

Pontiac

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:48 pm

GARGL!
thanks my lord

it works, and can be textured!
now I can create some nice reactor rooms

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:59 pm

etheral walker wrote:GARGL!
thanks my lord

Pleased to help you

it works, and can be textured!
now I can create some nice reactor rooms

Can't wait to see them.

Pontiac

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 2:17 pm

for now I'm in the main hangar of my startfortress/mainship:

http://jerome.desbordes.free.fr/confed/inzestarship.JPG

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:40 pm

like it

now some textures and ships would bring some live into it

Pontiac

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:21 pm

pontiac wrote:like it

now some textures and ships would bring some live into it

Pontiac

I just connected for an idea like this one, the ships, computers and other little things to get live into

Huge empty rooms are marvellous, but they are really really empty

Then comes my question, is it possible to have an export plugin where you can specify user objects? By example, if i put 3 spots named "computer1", is it possible to retrieve them in the xunit file? because modelling a server room is funny, but texturing 800 computers on a 1024*1024 map is not really marvellous. If we could have the possibility of making our own flags, we just have to put 800 spots well oriented, and they will load and draw automatiquely. For things like ships, things which ones the player should interact, it will be another problem, but I got no real walkaround for now