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Shadow Ships

Will the Shadow Vessels in the game Phase in through Hyperspace or will they simply appear/Jump in like the other models?

I asked that same question and the answer was no... That can't be done, I believe. FS2 supports only one kind of jump ani (so IF it's ever done it will perhaps be done by making a very dark jump ani) until the team gets its hands on the source. They have the blue/white in jump, and since FS2 does not make any difference between in and out jumps there won't be that orange jumpout ani either. At least I believe so, I might not be the right person to answer this but I did it anyway . Ice?

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Humans...
Yes. They are the key.

-Delenn and Kosh, Babylon 5: In the Beginning
Yes, a foolish key... But who cares?

If you can answer it do so we may be able to use orange for jump out...but its tricky and may need the source code...its a question for mission designers

there is a way to specify second warpout animation but one one other warpout animation, with a grand total of two (1+1=2
so untill we can get the source were stuck with that bit.

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I was here then I wasn't, now I'm dead

quote:

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Originally posted by Kushanis:
Will the Shadow Vessels in the game Phase in through Hyperspace or will they simply appear/Jump in like the other models?

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Actually...you can set any ship to not display a warp animation. It still appears like with the animation, except its not there. Its not perfect...its certainly not phasing, but its not bad.

It would be even better if you could make a SEXP so the shadow ships didn't appear until the player was looking away (maybe a "not" and "facing" would do it). That way the player wouldn't see the ship's suddenly appear, kinda like the Lucifer did in FS1 when the Galatea was destroyed.

The Lucifer warped in.

Its hard to account for that many ships...and when trying to balance a battle...having half the ships not show up is a real bummer.

They are pretty damn hard to see anyways. They will all of the sudden be there

Yeah, great tactic for "escort-whatever-until-it-jumps" missions: look in the direction the enemy would come from, they never appear

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"There is only chaos and evolution!"
"You will fight, because we tell you to fight!"

Hey, guys.

Even though I really don't know too much about B5... if you caould use a little (very little in some cases ) help in the form of the author of this post, he will be able to help...

WTF did I just say?

I don't even know

Ok, what I mean to say is, if theres some annoying little task to be done, and it's relatively simple, I can help...

?

No? Phwew, I didn't know what I was thinking when I posted that, I really don't want more work

quote:

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Originally posted by IceFire:
The Lucifer warped in.

Its hard to account for that many ships...and when trying to balance a battle...having half the ships not show up is a real bummer.

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But lets say that I'm going to have 6 Battlecrabs and a crapload of fighters all of the sudden engage my fleet of 3 Sharlins. If I happen to be looking in the direction of 3 of those Shadow vessels and stay there for longer than 5 seconds...the balance of the mission could change immensely. Its an unpredictable variable you want to use in very controlled conditions (like the second mission of FreeSpace 2).

with the boadicea?

To truly enjoy this game I think you need to convert an entire computer to just play the game.I know I would drop a couple of $$$$ if the game was good enough.Although you would have to get over the #of ships that fred2 allows you to have.In a big battle 100 ships is just not enough!!

Actually...were limited to 50 ships I think. Or maybe it is higher when you count waves.

In any case, big battles can be had, although not on the scale of Babylon 5, but still its doable to have big battles without the player really realizing that its actually small. Its the feel that counts.

I've gotten numbers a lot higher than that to work in tests without crashing.

I'd never dare to release these missions since they are so hideously inbalanced but as for having 100+ large ships with an equal amount of fighter with waypoints it is possible without FS2 crashing.

FS1 does have a solid block of over 50 ship objects on screen at one moment however.

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Ace
Webmaster
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I'm pretty sure FS2 has the same limit. You just have lots of wings of fighters Ace.

100+ ships onscreen at once? I've heard stories of FRED2 crashing before you reach 100! I don't wanna know what my two year old computer might do if I attempted something like that. Probably something along the lines of *bzzzzzzztttttt* : oof of smoke and sparks fly from CPU::

BTW, with the source code would it be possible to animate the bioarmor on the Shadow ships? I don't think that's possible by any means with the stuff we have available now. Also, with the source code could you design a weapon that intercepts and lessens the damage of energy weapons like in Babylon 5?