I have a Zip drive now

and you know what that means...

I made this plugin to demonstrate that a point-defense beam, even one that fires continuously, need not be imbalanced. It also contains a few other beam weapons I've slapped together.

Qaanol__s_Beams.zip (25.98K)
Number of downloads: 46

On an unrelated note, here's a screenshot of a disabled Kestrel from the stock game, no plugs.

Kestrel_Disabled.jpg (34.7K)
Number of downloads: 135

So... did you buy a kestrel, capture another ship (while still in S7evyn), buy the kestrel again and then disable the first one?

Six times. Then he released one of his six Kestrel escorts and disabled it.

But as for the topic at hand, I suspect that there will be a great deal more excitement around here now that Qaanol can post things that he's assembled at home, with all the time and resources he needs. Some of those ideas about plugs sounded quite interesting (I seem to recall something about wobbly asteroids?).

Edwards

Okay, I slapped together a concept plug-in demonstrating asteroids that bounce, swing, scurry and loop. Just have to polish everything up a bit and I'll send it to you. In the process of building it I discovered an oddity that may or may not be a quirk of 1.0.7, or perhaps of the game engine in general:

If a röid has FragCount of 1, so that it is supposed to produce 1 +/- .5 asteroids on destruction, it will never produce any. If it's set to 2 or more it'll work fine, but not 1.

Incidentally, asteroids can have their FragTypes set up in a loop where vaping one produces another, and smiting that produces the first. I have not tried having an asteroid FragType itself, but I have a feeling that would work too.

For a weapon to hit an asteroid, much as to hit a ship, it must be within its ProxRadius of the mask of the asteroid, not just the target rectangle (not that there's a target for roids, but that's not the point.) I haven't tested to see whether the mask of the weapon has to be in range, or just its target rectangle, but I'll do that soon.

I should probably mention what exactly is in the plugin I attached at the start of this topic:

1 PD Ionization Beam. Deals no damage. Just ionizes fighters that are too close. Also ionizes capital ships that fire missiles at you from too close.

1 Close Range Stabilizer. Just a tractor beam. But I stuck it on some AI ships, notably the Manta, Thunderforge, and everything that has a thunderhead lance. I think they do much better now, staying in close long enough for the TH-lance or other beam to rack up some serious time-on-target damage.

3 Reverse Thrusters. One for light ships, on for medium ships, and one with monstrous fuel use for heavy ships. AI doesn't use it effectively, so it amounts to a cheat, of sorts, except for the fuel consumption. Of course, since the player is already 100x better than the AI, this just bumps it up to about 218.281828x. It looks so cool on a Manticore, though...

And, um, that's it.

Edwards: May I have your email address so I can send you the Asteroids plugin I've almost finished? I can't upload in now since the library doesn't have a Zip drive, but I'll shoot it your way when I go to the University of Southern Maine, where I can use the computer lab, next week.

Do your crazy asteroids do collision damage? Mine do
This test plug contains one collision size, suitable for ships of similar size to a Starbridge. Buy the outfit and fly into stuff...

(edit) Now in two sizes! See link in sig.

This post has been edited by Guy : 09 September 2006 - 08:56 PM

Guy, on Nov 13 2005, 08:17 PM, said:

Do your crazy asteroids do collision damage? Mine do
This test plug contains one collision size, suitable for ships of similar size to a Starbridge. Buy the outfit and fly into stuff...
View Post

Interesting.
I tried it and it also hit other starships too, which is not so bad. But guess what happened when I was disabled and someone came to repair me.

Desprez, on Nov 14 2005, 12:18 PM, said:

But guess what happened when I was disabled and someone came to repair me.
View Post

Ha ha, didn't think of that. They repair you and you get disabled again almost immediately, is that right? Hm, now how could I prevent that...

Guy, on Nov 13 2005, 11:53 PM, said:

Ha ha, didn't think of that. They repair you and you get disabled again almost immediately, is that right? Hm, now how could I prevent that...
View Post

Well, in my case it killed me... but yeah.
I guess you'd have to give a brief no-collision period. Could you get the dummy craft to hyper out when you get disabled? Not sure how to get it to come back though...

I could make it fail on disable. That will turn the dummy friendly so I could probably make it hyper out then. Then I need to restart it shortly after being repaired. But even that won't help if there's other hostile ships in the area. Hm, maybe it's not possible.
And of course you can't board other ships. Maybe I should make it a homing weapon so it only hits asteroids.

(EDIT): Here we go. It now only hits asteroids and also the impact works properly now. To see it work on ships just check the "prox triggered by any ship" flag. If you fly too fast it may not work very well.
Collision Damage

This post has been edited by Guy : 04 May 2006 - 03:56 AM

Further testing reveals that a discrete-shot (read: nonbeam) weapon's mask must be within ProxRadius of the target's mask, but a beam only has to cross the target's rectangle. This can result in short beams becoming substantially elongated.

Guy: Do you want me to send you a copy of my wacky asteroids plugin? Edwards says he had fun with it, and he also found the hidden treasure (as well as the easter egg). Just drop me a PM that includes your email addy if you do. In fact, anyone else who wants to try their sleuthing skills against my hiding skills, or who just wants to mindlessly blast that-which-can-no-longer-be-called-asteroids, or who'd like to see first-hand how I made an asteroid into a bouncing coiled spring should do the same.

Sure, sounds like fun I thought you were going to post it here - is it too big?

How does your Manta fare against my dangerous asteroids? Too fast to work properly?

Yes, too big. 2.2 MB total, 666 +/- 3 KB compressed.

I haven't yet tried out your plug, sorry. Busy with other stuff. I'll do it soon.

Gah, the dummy ship causes ordinary PD weapons to fire as well! This is no good. Any ideas on how to avoid this?

Guy, on Nov 20 2005, 11:08 PM, said:

Gah, the dummy ship causes ordinary PD weapons to fire as well! This is no good. Any ideas on how to avoid this?
View Post

What? Even when the dummy ship is out of range?

No, but how do I keep it out of range? I tried making it move really fast but the system wrap-around doesn't seem to work for AI ships so it quickly gets out of range of the even the sub.

Guy, on Nov 20 2005, 11:58 PM, said:

No, but how do I keep it out of range? I tried making it move really fast but the system wrap-around doesn't seem to work for AI ships so it quickly gets out of range of the even the sub.
View Post

Hmmm. That's odd. AI ships wrap around for me.

If the theory about AI locations being relative to your location is correct, that might explain it. If you tested AI ship looping by flying around the system yourself and having them chase you, their position relative to you would not be affected by the loop, and they would seem to follow the loop without actually being affected by it.
There is another point in favor of this, actually- they never disappear from the radar. If they used the same looping system as you did, there should be a period right after you looped where they would be absent from the radar, and then they would suddenly appear on top of you.

Of course, if you just sent your AI ships screaming across the system, while you stayed stationary, and they reappeared every few seconds, that would be a good stroke against that theory.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 21 November 2005 - 02:50 AM

IIRC, I had a AI ship with a speed of 32000. I was pretty stationary and it would suddenly fly accross the screen every few seconds.

But I'm not sure how this would break the theory if I understand you correctly. If AI range is relative to you, than it's probably a similar signed integer to most other nova numbers, as soon as it gets more than 32767 units away from you, it will suddenly loop around and be -32767 away.

If it isn't, then it could still similarly loop when it gets out of bounds of the system coordinates area, presumably +/- 32767.

Either option doesn't mean the ship has to dissapear if you are close to the boundry, though. The space-scape would repeat. You'd have the topography of a torus.

I'm going to guess that it's a relative position though. Otherwise your autopilot and missiles would track in the wrong direction if the boundry was between you and shortest line to the target.

I'm not sure if these are the actual numbers though. I'm just guessing. I suppose some tests are in order.

Desprez, on Nov 20 2005, 11:17 PM, said:

Either option doesn't mean the ship has to dissapear if you are close to the boundry, though. The space-scape would repeat. You'd have the topography of a torus.View Post

It isn't quite a torus. When you reach a point 15000 pixels out from the center of the system, you appear at 10000 pixels out on the other side, so there is a 5000 pixel gap between you and the loop point going the other way.

But yes, a speed of 32000 would likely loop.
@Guy: How long was the submunition range of that PD weapon? And what happens when a weapon's range goes above 32767?

Edwards

Yeah well I didn't actually do anything to test if the AI crossed the border or not, all I noticed was that the collision worked for a few seconds and then stopped.

The range is currently set to 1000 speed and 2000 count (so that would be 20000 pixels? which is more than enough). If I leave the dummy in system center then I can fly right around the system and the collision will always work. If I set it much higher (ie above 32767) it seems to stop working altogether. Don't know how this would affect a manual weapon though.

Here, try this out. It's really strange. Buy some blasters and accept the mission. The dummy will zip across the radar and the collision will work for a short while and then stop. When that happens, target the dummy and fire your blasters for a while.

This post has been edited by Guy : 21 November 2005 - 06:11 PM