Griff's normalmapped ship remakes

[Thargoid]

The other question (at least until I've decoded exactly what OTBs post actually entails) is what would be the point on a player ship? Unless you are planning on having your missiles at least partially visible from one of the views, or an external view where you're staring at your own underside (ooer missus) especially to watch them shoot off, by the time they've actually been launched and gone somewhere visible then they won't look much different to having a common launch point below the ship as most models currently do anyway.

All you'll be giving is a nice view for all the NPCs around the place, but their opinion hardly matters

[Thargoid]

Don't lose hope KW.

I've had a little think on this and in light of recent developments in custom missile displays of individual pylon icons on the hud, I believe there is at least a 75% chance of doing the external missile pylon concept(player version) correctly without breaking immersion.

I'm not ready yet to tackle this and it would require a specially made hud for the particular ship that can have external missiles but here are my thoughts on this.

Ships with external pylons should not have the missile directly as a subent but instead have a "pod" or "cannister" so as not to break immersion of what is on the external pylon.

An interesting concept - it would certainly do away with the primary issue of the sub-ent missile and the fired missile no longer matching up in terms of model etc (so the missile that's mounted on the ship may well end up not being the one that's actually fired off when you fit the "M" key).

The ship would have missile capacity equal to the inboard mounts plus the external pylons. The externals would be the first pylons and could be filled with some kind of empty icon(missile) when nothing is fitted or the missile has been used. This would prevent the missiles from sliding towards the #1 pylon as they are used and prevent problems.

The problem would be how to fill those pylons, as if they have a dummy placeholder "mounted" on them to stop things shuffling along, as far as the game code will see the pylons will have something mounted on them, hence you won't get offered any missiles/mines for sale on the equipment screen. And as soon as you remove one of the placeholders you will get everything shuffling along again like you were trying to avoid in the first place.

I guess something could be done by "bay switching" like my Vortex code, but it would mandate then that the same number of external and internal missiles are available. But then on docking the placeholders could automatically be removed, negating the problem above somewhat.

The new ability to display any pylon at any position(or not) means that external pylons that are not even fitted with a cannister or pod don't even have to be displayed on the hud and only those that have a missile in them would have a relevant icon displayed instead of the empty icon. It is this new ability that I believe will maintain immersion for the player and allow external pylon pods(cannisters) to be buyable equipment for specific ships. Yeah, kind of a pain, but doable I believe.

Dummy equipment that can be purchased(EQ_EXTERNAL_PYLON_#) would allow the empty missile to be removed and replaced with whatever missile you like. Scripting could keep the empty missiles in place even when you unmount all missiles at the station.

When the external missile is fired it would be instantly replaced with the empty missile(icon).

I believe the rest of the scripting is currently covered with what is being done in Griff's external missile cobra III and the vortex.

These are just my thoughts based on what I currently know and in light of now being able to have a custom missile display on the hud. So keep your chin up KW 'cause its probably gonna happen.

The other problem is going to be how to award the missile to a specific pylon, to enable the re-filling of the external mounts when there are some items on the internal ones (even allowing for the aforementioned glitch of equipment availability). It could be done by some major script-work (storing all current missiles in an array, unloading all missiles, manipulating the store array and then re-awarding everything again from scratch). Could be done, but would be a nasty bit of code to write fully I think.

The other question would be if you don't use sub-ents, how will you make the missile visible externally? And would this be for a specific custom model ship as well as HUD?

But nonetheless an interesting concept, and something that could be very interesting if it can be made to work!

[Killer Wolf]

i guess Thargoid's got the most sensible reply, in that it's not of much benefit...but it looks cool

i'll settle for just designing a new missile for the KC instead

[Ironfist]

Guys would it be possible to build a rotating missile bay with a sub-entity which could be launched. then the bay would rotate and fill up again with the next missile or just stay empty if they had all been fired.
Do not know enough about the scripting interface yet to know whether this is a possible option.

Ironfist

[Thargoid]

Sub-entites cannot have sub-enties of their own, but something could perhaps be done.

The main issue is that subentities are fixed for the given model in shipdata.plist. Basically once a ship is defined, you cannot add new subentites onto it that aren't already so defined. You can remove and restore those that are, but you can't "glue new bits on". That's where things fall down, as you would end up with a different missile or mine model leaving the ship on firing than was hanging from it just a moment earlier.

But for a given fixed missile what you suggest could be done, although may be tricky to animate.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Thargoid, I was thinking more or less this:

EXTERNAL MISSILES....................INTERNAL MISSILES
....1....2...3..4................................5...6....7....8
...[X].[X].[M].[X].............................[M].[M].[M].[M]

X is a placeholder and M is a missile. You will only see X if you have purchased that external pylon.

When you wanted to buy a missile for one of the external mounts you would first buy a piece of equipment called "Mount External Missile Pylon". It stores in an array pylons 5,6,7,8 and removes them and also removes the "X" missile placeholders for any of the external pylons that you have purchased. For this example, you have 4 external pylons purchased which is why you can see them(scripted to appear if the pod is there based upon my recent discovery on how to do a custom missile display). The next missile you buy would end up in pylon 2 because the missile in pylon 3 would now be free to slide over to pylon 1. "Mount External Missile Pylon" is only good for buying one missile so after a missile is bought it fills empty spots of external missiles, in this case 3 and 4 with the place holders"X" and replaces any missiles that were stored in the array from pylons 5,6,7,8 and now your ready to do the whole thing over.

And this would be for a specific custom model ship as well as HUD that can (hide?) what it is that is going on and would have a small panel just for missiles that would change what you see based on scripting. The ship itself would have for example 8 missile capacity but without the external pylons equipment(pods)would appear to have only 4 pylons as you would not see them and not be able to buy missiles for them. The ship would be, for example, a special Cobramk3 with 4 pylons and 4 optional external pylons.

I'm thinking this will work without too much difficulty but will only know by getting down to dirty task of scripting it. I hope that explains a little better what I'm thinking of.

[Thargoid]

Interesting, if a little specific and specialised.

The problem will be that you can't award a missile/mine to a specific pylon, nor remove one in the same. So you would not be able to remove the placeholder from pylon 1 whilst leaving pylons 2-8 exactly as they are. You can remove everything, but then when you re-award the first missile will automagically go onto pylon 1 again. I think that little feature will make things extremely difficult for you to achieve what you want.

The only way to do something like that would be to actually fire off the missile and then instantly remove it. But that needs a target (which could screw up legal status unless a specific dummy target was spawned and then removed just after the missile was) but the bigger issue is you can't fire a missile whilst docked. And of course that's when you're going to be wanting to do your missile shuffling to purchase new weaponry.

But let's keep considering this, as I like the way this idea is going. Something could come out of it - for example I would swap things about perhaps and make 1-4 the internals and 5-8 the externals, but hide 1-4 if possible or something like that to ease the issue with the weapons sliding down the line.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Thargoid, slight change to the previous same example:

EXTERNAL MISSILES....................INTERNAL MISSILES
....1....2...3..4................................5...6....7....8
...[X].[X].[M].[X].............................[M].[M].[M].[M]

X is a placeholder and M is a missile.

When you wanted to buy a missile for one of the external mounts you would first buy a piece of equipment called "Mount External Missile Pylon". It stores in an array ALL pylons and then re-awards any missiles that are not "X" placeholder missiles that were in pylons 1-4(externals), in this case, the missile that was in pylon 3. The next missile you buy would end up in pylon 2 because the missile that was in pylon 3 would now have been awarded and would automatically be in pylon 1. "Mount External Missile Pylon" is only good for buying one missile so after a missile is bought it fills empty spots of external missiles, in this case 3 and 4 with the place holders"X" and then awards any missiles that were stored in the array from pylons 5,6,7,8 and now your ready to do the whole thing over.

I'm thinking the way I just described will work now. What do you think Thargoid?

[Thargoid]

As long as you're OK with mounting a single type of missile on the external pylon (so essentially rather than being a true external pylon, it's just a normal pylon which is hidden from normal view until you "enable it" by buying the equipment, then yes it will.

What you won't be able to do is to mount any other existing missile or mine (from trunk or OXP) onto those external pylons. Whether you have an active pylon or a placeholder, the game will see all pylons as being occupied (it won't be able to tell the placeholder from anything else) and so you won't be offered any other missiles or mines for sale (your external pylon can get around this by not being a mine/missile, and being removed and a counter or something incremented to keep track of when all externals are used up).

It's not perfect, but it's an interesting work-around. Something similar could be done for a ship whose general missile count can be expanded just by blocking off pylons by script until suitable "unlocks" are purchased in the form of missile bay expansions.

[CommonSenseOTB]

There's just a slight misunderstanding of what I said I'm thinking. Buying "Mount External Missile Pylon" doesn't actually award you a missile when you buy it. It sets everything else up so when you then buy a missile in the normal way it tidies up the mess and puts everything else back to normal.

I'm a little busy at the moment but I think the first step is to retrofit a standard hud with a suitable missile panel and then begin scripting the equipment "Mount External Missile Pylon" and have a basic cobra3 with 8 pylons to work with. Won't need a special model to make the test with as that can be tied in to a suitable ship later. No deadlines or promises but it's now on my "todo" list. Will probably need to rip some scripting off the vortex and/or pylon equipment remover oxps. Will report when I have something and may need some scripting help to bridge some gaps in my knowledge. Thanx for the discussion Thargoid. Cheers!

[Griff]

I've brightened up my coriolis_(alt) station oxp and added a bit of colour to some of the texture maps

[CommonSenseOTB]

Cool!

[Cody]

Very, very nice... thanks Griff.

[Killer Wolf]

i'm a sucker for two-tone, and that looks effing sweet. that thing now actually does look like a city in space as opposed to just a rotating box.

[RyanHoots]

Awesome, Griff! If only my computer could handle something like that.
Maybe you and Smivs should team up and make a ship set... that would be very cool.