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Oh yeah... forgot few things.

- Changing the barracks on Main Screen some way that you could watch your 'e-mail' (a la X-Wing Alliance) there and some other things. (would enchance the feel of being there)
- Making the loading screen as a ANI that it would show 'you' launching from the ship (a la Tie Fighter)
- Maybe a possibilty to choose more resolutions. Like 800x600, 1280x1024 and so on.

Blah... these are not at all necessary but they could spice up the game a bit...

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Mauri "Darkblade" Majanoja

Mission designer - [url="http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon"]The Babylon Project[/url]

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Oh yeah... forgot few things.

- Changing the barracks on Main Screen some way that you could watch your 'e-mail' (a la X-Wing Alliance) there and some other things. (would enchance the feel of being there)
- Making the loading screen as a ANI that it would show 'you' launching from the ship (a la Tie Fighter)
- Maybe a possibilty to choose more resolutions. Like 800x600, 1280x1024 and so on.

Blah... these are not at all necessary but they could spice up the game a bit...

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Mauri "Darkblade" Majanoja

"Damn it people, I'm the official party pooper, not a mission designer!"

Mission designer - [url="http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon"]Freespace 2 : The Babylon Project[/url]

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Damn it... forgot one thing.

- Better mod support, changing the game so that it would use 'data' folder as a default but you could put the mods into different directories. Like The Babylon Project in fs2/TBP folder and then Freespace 2 would seek files from the default 'data' folder and from 'TBP' folder.

This could give the players a possibilty to have a number of mods in Freespace 2. Basically the whole thing works like in Half-Life.

Again I'm not sure is this at all possible but it is just an idea and probably given from someone else already.

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Mauri "Darkblade" Majanoja

Mission designer - [url="http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon"]The Babylon Project[/url]

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Damn it... forgot one thing.

- Better mod support, changing the game so that it would use 'data' folder as a default but you could put the mods into different directories. Like The Babylon Project in fs2/TBP folder and then Freespace 2 would seek files from the default 'data' folder and from 'TBP' folder.

This could give the players a possibilty to have a number of mods in Freespace 2. Basically the whole thing works like in Half-Life.

Again I'm not sure is this at all possible but it is just an idea and probably given from someone else already.

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Mauri "Darkblade" Majanoja

"Damn it people, I'm the official party pooper, not a mission designer!"

Mission designer - [url="http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon"]Freespace 2 : The Babylon Project[/url]

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i posted this in one of my mod release anouncements ( [URL=http://www.volitionwatch.com/vwbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6214]this thread here[/URL] ), i think it would fit better over here in this thread though, so here it goes:

i would have wanted the autocannon turrets on the apis to be a blindfire weapon system under pilot control, instead of a pair of turrets. i also wouldnt mind replacing the forward pair of turrets on the nemesis with a blindfire beam system.

what i mean by blind fire is that the turrets will try to aim themselves at a target in a specified fire cone in front of the ship. the weapon shows up in the weapon list (which would need to be made bigger to fit more guns), is under player control, and consumes energy or ammo. the selection menu would cycle trough as usual, except with 3 or 4 guns instead of 2 (the blindfire systems may or may not be used together with the normal guns, this could be a variable in the blindfire entries in the ships table). a crosshair for each blindfire weapon would appear on the the hud to indicate where the gun is actually pointing. the blindfire weapon system would be an integrated weapon system, meaning you cannot choose the weapon type, and only get that weapon when using the ship with the system (of course the table entry for the gun could be used with turrets and the like).

for you to add a blindfire system to a ship, it would need a forward pointing turret (or at least one that can point forward) a table entry for the weapon, and a set of extra entries for the ship table that would specify detaild about the system (time it takes for the gun to lock on, the size of the fire cone, name of the sub object and so on).

another idea for integrated weapon systems, gatling guns. you set up your gun as a single part turret, with a firing point in front of eash barrel you set the axis of rotation, the max rotation speed, and speed of acceleration and deceleration in the pof subsystem poperties. a weapon table entry would be used, but the fire rate would be ignored. the real fire rate would be the number of fire points * the time it tages the gun to spin around once. of course the thing will have spin up and spin down time. you would probibly have to add an entry in the ship table (simmilar to the blindfire entry) that specifies the sub object and whatnot. you could put the speed accel and decel in the table or as said before in the pof subobject properties (in my opinion the pof subobject properties have great potential, you can enter anything in there that new code can interpret).

for the fighter beams (which i think would work great with my blindfire idea), a hold to charge, release to fire could work, but i think it would be better to be able to have a single action way of firing (you can pull the trigger and the beam goes through a 2 ms charges and fires). the amount of energy they consume would be up to the normal beam entries, but would probibly need a new type of beam.

also for the phoenix, id like to have a cycling fire pattern rather than having everything fire at once, this would be set up on a ship by ship basis, so that ships like the chaos (with an excessive quantity of weapon firing points) would cycle and the 2 bank 2 guns each configuration would fire grouped. cycling may or may not speed up the rate of fire, again by modders discression.

a couple more changes to the weapons would be a prox flag for player weapons (explodes when in proximity to an enemy ship). it would be similar to flak, except that it does not blow up in your face and would be good with both primary and secondary weapons. the other idea i had was deflection angles. shots fire slightly off axis randomly within a specified fire cone (or a scatter effect). this could be good with gatling guns and blindfire weapons. id also like to be able to use the homing flags on primary weapons and make primarys that use ammo instead of energy.

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Last edited by NukebombOverkill on 05-15-2002 at 02:55 AM

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i posted this in one of my mod release anouncements ( [URL=http://www.volitionwatch.com/vwbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6214]this thread here[/URL] ), i think it would fit better over here in this thread though, so here it goes:

i would have wanted the autocannon turrets on the apis to be a blindfire weapon system under pilot control, instead of a pair of turrets. i also wouldnt mind replacing the forward pair of turrets on the nemesis with a blindfire beam system.

what i mean by blind fire is that the turrets will try to aim themselves at a target in a specified fire cone in front of the ship. the weapon shows up in the weapon list (which would need to be made bigger to fit more guns), is under player control, and consumes energy or ammo. the selection menu would cycle trough as usual, except with 3 or 4 guns instead of 2 (the blindfire systems may or may not be used together with the normal guns, this could be a variable in the blindfire entries in the ships table). a crosshair for each blindfire weapon would appear on the the hud to indicate where the gun is actually pointing. the blindfire weapon system would be an integrated weapon system, meaning you cannot choose the weapon type, and only get that weapon when using the ship with the system (of course the table entry for the gun could be used with turrets and the like).

for you to add a blindfire system to a ship, it would need a forward pointing turret (or at least one that can point forward) a table entry for the weapon, and a set of extra entries for the ship table that would specify detaild about the system (time it takes for the gun to lock on, the size of the fire cone, name of the sub object and so on).

another idea for integrated weapon systems, gatling guns. you set up your gun as a single part turret, with a firing point in front of eash barrel you set the axis of rotation, the max rotation speed, and speed of acceleration and deceleration in the pof subsystem poperties. a weapon table entry would be used, but the fire rate would be ignored. the real fire rate would be the number of fire points * the time it tages the gun to spin around once. of course the thing will have spin up and spin down time. you would probibly have to add an entry in the ship table (simmilar to the blindfire entry) that specifies the sub object and whatnot. you could put the speed accel and decel in the table or as said before in the pof subobject properties (in my opinion the pof subobject properties have great potential, you can enter anything in there that new code can interpret).

for the fighter beams (which i think would work great with my blindfire idea), a hold to charge, release to fire could work, but i think it would be better to be able to have a single action way of firing (you can pull the trigger and the beam goes through a 2 ms charges and fires). the amount of energy they consume would be up to the normal beam entries, but would probibly need a new type of beam.

also for the phoenix, id like to have a cycling fire pattern rather than having everything fire at once, this would be set up on a ship by ship basis, so that ships like the chaos (with an excessive quantity of weapon firing points) would cycle and the 2 bank 2 guns each configuration would fire grouped. cycling may or may not speed up the rate of fire, again by modders discression.

a couple more changes to the weapons would be a prox flag for player weapons (explodes when in proximity to an enemy ship). it would be similar to flak, except that it does not blow up in your face and would be good with both primary and secondary weapons. the other idea i had was deflection angles. shots fire slightly off axis randomly within a specified fire cone (or a scatter effect). this could be good with gatling guns and blindfire weapons. id also like to be able to use the homing flags on primary weapons and make primarys that use ammo instead of energy.

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Whargoul Cannot Die!

Last edited by NukebombOverkill on 05-15-2002 at 02:55 AM

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how about intra-system subspace jumps under pilot control. it would work kinda like the jump drive from elite (you simply hold a key and go really, really fast). you hit shift j (instead of alt) and a subspace vortex opens up as usual ecept you stay in the cockpit (no casecam). when you cross the threshold into subspace a semi transparent tunnel appears around your ship. this is not visible from normal space and your ship and the vortedx does not clip with anything in real space. you however can see where you are coing through the walls of the vortex. you can also see other near by ships that are in subspace (your wingmen for example). you hit shift j again to drop out. while in subspace you can make slight course changes (your ship's turn rate would only be 5% of the normal). this however would burn up your afterburner energy (you are diverting it to subspace drives). this would expand the size of a mission greatly.

i also want manual docking with capships (so you end a mission when you fly into a docking bay). this would be really cool if someone made a carrier with big open docking bays.

combine the two ideas and you could take off from an arcadia installation and take a trip to the battle front some 100,000 clicks away (in about 10 seconds) it would really expad the gameplay. a hud marker could indicate the mission area so that you can find your way to a fight that is beyond visual range.

to ade in visual accuracy the plannet sprites would get bigger as you aproch them and smaller as you move away. get close enough and the sprite is replaced with a plannet model, get even closer and your ship starts geting pulled in to a point where you start burning up in the atmosphere.

it would be cool if you could make freespace into a game more like frontier, where you could fly to any system with a jump node within a single mission. but that is a little too much. the subspace idea should be possible at least.

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Whargoul Cannot Die!

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how about intra-system subspace jumps under pilot control. it would work kinda like the jump drive from elite (you simply hold a key and go really, really fast). you hit shift j (instead of alt) and a subspace vortex opens up as usual ecept you stay in the cockpit (no casecam). when you cross the threshold into subspace a semi transparent tunnel appears around your ship. this is not visible from normal space and your ship and the vortedx does not clip with anything in real space. you however can see where you are coing through the walls of the vortex. you can also see other near by ships that are in subspace (your wingmen for example). you hit shift j again to drop out. while in subspace you can make slight course changes (your ship's turn rate would only be 5% of the normal). this however would burn up your afterburner energy (you are diverting it to subspace drives). this would expand the size of a mission greatly.

i also want manual docking with capships (so you end a mission when you fly into a docking bay). this would be really cool if someone made a carrier with big open docking bays.

combine the two ideas and you could take off from an arcadia installation and take a trip to the battle front some 100,000 clicks away (in about 10 seconds) it would really expad the gameplay. a hud marker could indicate the mission area so that you can find your way to a fight that is beyond visual range.

to ade in visual accuracy the plannet sprites would get bigger as you aproch them and smaller as you move away. get close enough and the sprite is replaced with a plannet model, get even closer and your ship starts geting pulled in to a point where you start burning up in the atmosphere.

it would be cool if you could make freespace into a game more like frontier, where you could fly to any system with a jump node within a single mission. but that is a little too much. the subspace idea should be possible at least.

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ok, last one (i think)

doppler shifting sound effects! yea, you know things have a different pitch when they move away from or to the sourse of a sound. that would be awesome!

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Whargoul Cannot Die!

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ok, last one (i think)

doppler shifting sound effects! yea, you know things have a different pitch when they move away from or to the sourse of a sound. that would be awesome!

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Whargoul Cannot Die!

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thats in there already
you need an A3D card though (like me )

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thats in there already
you need an A3D card though (like me )

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well, considering Creative ate Aureal, I'd say porting the 3D sound effects to EAX would be a nice idea.

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well, considering Creative ate Aureal, I'd say porting the 3D sound effects to EAX would be a nice idea.

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I still say a sexp operator that hands control of the player's ship to an AI and another one to give it back to the player would be best for the docking. You can set it up as "Is key pressed" whatever key "Player AI orders" Dock--Alpha1-GTD Aquitaine

for the subspace, i dont know about being able to see whats in realspace, that wouldnt make sense even though it might look cool. If you want subspace, i say you jump at nodes -only- and you can only travel the tunnel of the node. without seeing what goes on outside

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I still say a sexp operator that hands control of the player's ship to an AI and another one to give it back to the player would be best for the docking. You can set it up as "Is key pressed" whatever key "Player AI orders" Dock--Alpha1-GTD Aquitaine

for the subspace, i dont know about being able to see whats in realspace, that wouldnt make sense even though it might look cool. If you want subspace, i say you jump at nodes -only- and you can only travel the tunnel of the node. without seeing what goes on outside

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well intra system subspace jumps would likely be nearly instanatinius, you would see the subspace apachure opening a quick swerly sceen then WHAM you fly out on the other end of the solar system, though is might make sence to have mission load with a animated subspace background

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i just liked the way you could warp around in elite, i just thought it would be cool to do it freespace style. i know they say its instantanious, but i think for gameplay purposes you could kinda go into slow motion (anyone play max payne) during the intra system jump and then pop back into realtime when you have finished your warp.

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OK I know that people have worked the fighter beam idea to death and back however I just thought of a n idea that might be intresting.
When I hear people talk about fighter beams I get the feeling that they just want the things to fire straight ahead of their ship, but i dont thin this is very realistic (or fun). I'll us the Shadow battlecrab from B5 as an example. If you were to make the ship accurate to the show but still player flyable you would realize that the Shadow beams dont just fire straight ahead of the ship but rather they fire in almost a 180*90 degree arc in front of the ship. Now you come back to the idea of using beam cannons that are automatted. Abviously that doesn't work cause who wants to fly around in a ship that you cant fire the weapons?
My idea is to use a system like th asspect missle locks for firing the beams. Use the nifty little lock indicator to lock on as long as the target is within a certain degree arc (180*90 in this case) then you pull the trigger an it fires as long as you hold down the trigger or a ceratin time period, whichever happens to come first. Once its been fire have a [short] recharge period before you can fire again. This way you could fire on ships that aren't directly in front of you and if, say you were trying to hit one of the faster bombers then you wouldn't have to keep it directly in front of you for as long as you wouuld have to if you were jsut fire dumb-fire beams.

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OK I know that people have worked the fighter beam idea to death and back however I just thought of a n idea that might be intresting.
When I hear people talk about fighter beams I get the feeling that they just want the things to fire straight ahead of their ship, but i dont thin this is very realistic (or fun). I'll us the Shadow battlecrab from B5 as an example. If you were to make the ship accurate to the show but still player flyable you would realize that the Shadow beams dont just fire straight ahead of the ship but rather they fire in almost a 180*90 degree arc in front of the ship. Now you come back to the idea of using beam cannons that are automatted. Abviously that doesn't work cause who wants to fly around in a ship that you cant fire the weapons?
My idea is to use a system like th asspect missle locks for firing the beams. Use the nifty little lock indicator to lock on as long as the target is within a certain degree arc (180*90 in this case) then you pull the trigger an it fires as long as you hold down the trigger or a ceratin time period, whichever happens to come first. Once its been fire have a [short] recharge period before you can fire again. This way you could fire on ships that aren't directly in front of you and if, say you were trying to hit one of the faster bombers then you wouldn't have to keep it directly in front of you for as long as you wouuld have to if you were jsut fire dumb-fire beams.

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Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, there side, and the truth.
-Cap. John Sheridan

Where ever you go there you are.

There will be an answer. Let it be.- John Lenon

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