Viper Racing

Basic Race : I started experimenting around to find a good way to have inner system races. The ships needed to do a few things; first, they needed to go to the finish and second, disappear when they crossed the finish-line. I didn't care for graphics that much so please don't criticize that part.

I realized that I had to mod a few things. First I made two Vipers, one with no weapons (Viper A) and one with a planet destroying weapon (Viper . The Planet destroyer weapon does 1 damage.

I made three spobs. The start, Computer start, and the finish. The start is the planet with all the missions, the Computer start is slightly behind it (So you don't lose time trying to find which way to the finish) and the finish has a ship destroying weapon. The finish planet must be a government enemies against the racers, or else it won't work.

Then I made the missions. The Vipers would spawn up on Nav Default 2 (Computer Start), and they were set to 'Attack Enemy Spobs'. Also they must be on Escort objective. Any other objective may not have the desired effect, or give you a victory for doing nothing.

This was a basic race. But I didn't settle for basic.

Hazards : I decided that not only should these hazards target the other racers, but also the player. I started out basic, interference, asteroids, the works. However, this affected the player more then the computer, so I made a couple of spobs evenly spaced.

Then I added three more spobs, each one had an ionizing weapon and a govt set at xenophobic. I also gave them a little bit of gravity for more of a challenge. I recommend a guided missile that shot in bursts. If you don't choose to do this, the following does not apply...

I quickly realized that the player would need defense against such a weapon. So I made a PD weapon, inaccuracy around the 7-12 degree range.

With all these hazards, I put up a 'back to start' station by the finish. It's a wormhole connected to the starting spob. This way the player doesn't have to go back through the hazards

For the final touches I added an attack drone. I used the xenophobic govt and made fighters fly around with a short slow weapon. Very potent when the victim is ionized, but not much else.

Final Touches : Tampering with the misc strings mostly. Such as turn the 'mission fail' text to something like '<SN> crosses the finish line'. A few more variants that vary in speed or ionization tolerance. A few more hazards (Post ideas).

Download: Here is the plug so far. (((( Mac OSX ))))

--->Racer X

This post has been edited by IT 000 : 04 April 2009 - 06:55 PM

Well in terms of innovation, this one's gotta rank right up near the top of anything I've ever seen for Nova.

QUOTE (IT 000 @ Apr 4 2009, 07:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I made three spobs. The start, Computer start, and the finish. The start is the planet with all the missions, the Computer start is slightly behind it (So you don't lose time trying to find which way to the finish) and the finish has a ship destroying weapon. The finish planet must be a government enemies against the racers, or else it won't work.

Niftay. I'll try it ASAP.

For the issue of the player's starting direction, you can hard-code it. Just make a hypergate or wormhole that links to the Start spöb, and use CustSndID:

CODE

CustSndID Which ambient sound to play
-1 No ambient sound effect
Anything else ID number of snd resource to load
(Note: for hypergates and wormholes, this field serves
a different purpose - it controls the angle at which
ships emerge. Values between 0 and 359 specify an
exact angle, while any other value specifies a
random direction.)

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 09 April 2009 - 09:00 AM

sweet!

Bleh, I was working on a racing plug-in once, and I stopped working on it because my approach was wrong. I was using the concept of way-points (e.g. racing rings) to try to get the AI fighters to fly through them one by one and go to the finish. The difficulty here was the way points. I made them spobs that fired invisible weaponry at "leech ships" attached to the computers so that their reaching a waypoint would be recognized, but the leech killing weapon didn't work as expected. It either didn't fire or fired with an infinite, system-wide range. :blink: Yeah, do you blame me for stopping on that project?

In any case, it looks like you've done what I couldn't. Good job.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 11 April 2009 - 10:06 AM

Gravedigging because the download link for 'Racer X' doesn't seem to work.

It would be cool to have a course where the boundaries are generated by distant spobs with repulser beam weapons with a set range that keep you on course.

Ex:

But obviously there is a spob limit so the courses would have to be longer and less detailed.

What about using ships with high mass, repulsor beams and almost no speed+acceleration that you have to push through/out of the way?

Still waiting on a copy of this awesome-looking plug-in. I say 'awesome-looking' because I can't actually dub it 'awesome' until I try it. Anyone have a copy lying around they can send me a copy of? Given IT 000's permission, of course.

I might be able to dig it up somewhere, but if anyone else could post it that would be wonderful.