Oolite Bulletins

The next level in getting realistic damage imho is (re)building ship models from many subentities which can be destroyed individually. After melting some armor plates we would be able to see in and shot the internal equipments. If these are subentities also then scriptable to destroy the corresponding tools when out of its own energy. The game engine will remove the destroyed subentities, leaving holes in the ship.

The High Poly Classic Modpack is built using similar way, unfortunately Dertien is missing since feb.

That would make building a new ship (or rebuilding the existing models) quite complicated!

But I love technical details. Just one example: Instead of just pressing "1" for launching I would prefer to first having to switch on the master switch, then start the energy generators (from batteries that could be too low), watch some gauges rising, start the main engines if the energy level has reached a certain level, then the control engines for rolling, pitching and yawing (of course each one separately!), the shield generators, the life support system, the anti-collision lights and so on. This would be especially cool if all the machines made some sound. I remember a quite realistic DC-3 simulator where successfully starting the engines according to checklist was almost like winning the first battle!

That's probably while I don't like the simple damage handling of Elite/Oolite (and of course many other games). But of course it has to be kept simple for the majority of players that aren't completely crazy like me!

Fritz wrote:

Instead of just pressing "1" for launching I would prefer to first having to switch...

You could make a dummy cardboard dashboard with all sorts of knobs and levers. Before launching push the buttons and switch levers and make funny sounds.

I always wanted to build something like that for may car. It would scare off thieves!

Fritz wrote:

But I love technical details. Just one example: Instead of just pressing "1" for launching I would prefer to first having to switch on the master switch, then start the energy generators ...

Maybe you are looking for Rogue System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFlrRfVeNA

Tichy wrote:

Maybe you are looking for Rogue System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFlrRfVeNA

Three minutes and 32 seconds. That is painful. I'm adding that link to the Solarnauts topic.

Norby wrote:

The next level in getting realistic damage imho is (re)building ship models from many subentities which can be destroyed individually. After melting some armor plates we would be able to see in and shot the internal equipments. If these are subentities also then scriptable to destroy the corresponding tools when out of its own energy. The game engine will remove the destroyed subentities, leaving holes in the ship.

The High Poly Classic Modpack is built using similar way, unfortunately Dertien is missing since feb.

Smivs had some visual representation of the Battledamage Oxp in his old shipset too. I still think it's too good to be forgotten, because it worked on low spec computers too by replacing the diffuse textures and witching the lightmaps. I was pondering on the idea to have something like that for the core ships... (if it's ok to cannibalize the idea)

Tichy wrote:

Maybe you are looking for Rogue System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFlrRfVeNA

OMG.. I think I'm in love.



Now all I need is a new computer.

Perhaps a bit too detailed for a game like Oolite, where docking and undocking happens quite often, but that's what I was thinking about!

Amah wrote:

Smivs had some visual representation of the Battledamage Oxp in his old shipset too. I still think it's too good to be forgotten, because it worked on low spec computers too by replacing the diffuse textures and witching the lightmaps. I was pondering on the idea to have something like that for the core ships... (if it's ok to cannibalize the idea)

Of course, please do.
It was quite effective as you say, but was still a bit too crude to carry forward into the Classic Ships and is more OXP territory - I sort of think of the Classics as more of an alternative default ship set, rather than an expansion (which is probably a bit pretentious thinking about it!).
There is certainly room to develop the concept - I would have liked the damage to relate more to the parts of the ship being hit for example, and a wider set of 'damage' images would also have been good. Much more is possible now, but I don't plan on following this up myself as I already have a huge stack of OXP stuff to do.

Back to my "problem" and trying to conclude it for now: I remembered that the core game already manages something like hull integrity: It is linked to maintenance offers and the probability of witch jump mishaps and other bad things. Perhaps the probability of equipment damage is already depending on it at least a little bit?

For having a battle-damaged hull instead of random equipment damage, the influence of laser hits, missiles or collisions on this integrity value must of course be much bigger than it is now, the value should be displayed in the HUD, and it would be necessary to distinguish between "hull repair" and "general maintenance". The latter could be abandoned completely, but to make it even more realistic there should be two different integrities: hull and equipment (witch drive). The hull gets strained by jumping (but only a little bit) and by laser hits, the witch drive only by jumping. The hull would have to be "repaired" relatively often, the equipment gets "maintained" in about the intervals as it is now.

Fritz wrote:

the value should be displayed in the HUD

Note the Hull bar left from the clock. This need CombatMFD and Large or XL HUD in HUDSelector, but you can make it into any HUD using the same tricks.

I'll have a look at it! But I think that's the least of my problems. Making equipment damage depending on hull integrity will probably be the difficult part. But for now, I'll experiment with simpler OXPs to learn more about the internals of Oolite. This will have to wait at least until christmas!

PS: What ship are you flying?

Fritz wrote:

What ship are you flying?

A really big one: [wiki]Andromeda[/wiki].

Norby wrote:

Fritz wrote:

the value should be displayed in the HUD

Note the Hull bar left from the clock. This need CombatMFD and Large or XL HUD in HUDSelector, but you can make it into any HUD using the same tricks.

This property can be added to any HUD? Can you give a brief rundown on the script involved in that? I use a modified Chupacabra HUD with a single added MFD display, and I wouldn't mind having a hull-integrity status on it if it's not too hard to add in.