air based factories for FF

air based factories for FF

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mecha
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air based factories for FF

Post by mecha »

is there a tag or way of defining an object to have a certain height above the ground at all? I was just looking at zwzsg's flying factories and I was wondering if there is a way of modding the Final Frontier factories so that they could be suspended in the air?.

This sort of refers to the aircraft LOS topic (http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2557) but is more so that all the FF units and buildings as well as the odd asteroid could be given great height so it appeared more like they were sitting in space.

(could use his stargates for transportation between orbital asteroids and planetside facilities too!)
Gnomre
Imperial Winter Developer
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Post by Gnomre »

Just raise the unit up on the y-axis in 3dobuilder. Can't do it in FBI, but the 3dob way works just as well.
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mecha
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Post by mecha »

Cheers!
Pnakotus
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Post by Pnakotus »

Is it possible to have structures float properly, ie being able to drive under it? I imagine the spherical collision box might prevent that (among other annoying side effects of the sphere), but in FF it'd be nice to see true hovering structures.

Course, someone will have to remodel them first ;)
Gnomre
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Post by Gnomre »

Mmm, if they're high enough, the sphere would also be very high and units could probably fly under I imagine. It'd be neat to see the FF units fight in "layers:" the biggest, heaviest craft lowest, with the crafts progressively getting higher in altitude until fighters and then buildings.

Anyway, as for driving under the factories, I'm not too sure there. You could do it in OTA with yardmaps, but in OTA at least that would make a unit invincible. You could try it in Spring as well, I think the indicator is 'y' off the top of my head.
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zwzsg
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Post by zwzsg »

Yeah, try making factories with all pieces way up in 3do builder and with empty yardm.... oh wait Spring does not handle yardmaps.

Maybe you could try zero sized footprint. They would be hard to select (you'd have to click and drag instead of just clicking), and the green square wouldn't be appear, and probably a couple more bugs. I don't know if zero footprint units in spring can be damaged or not. Try. But zero sized footprint will probably bring in too many bugs.

We need someone to code in proper handling of yardmaps! Who's volunteering for the task?


In Spring, mobile units can build mobile units, so maybe you could change factory into mobile units, or remove them and create three ships-builder capital ships per side. However, when a unit build a unit, the unit built is build on the ground not in the building unit. It probably won't look good to have factory flying up in the air and what they built be stuck low on the ground.


You could still use my mobile factories script hack, but the problem are that:
- It requires the player to build a regular factory, then to ask this factory to build its wings. (It could be the contrary, it could make it so you build the wings first and ask the wing to build the factory, but still, you'd have to manually click twice to build one flying factory)
- The part in the script of the wings where the script check wich of the units between 1 and 5000 is at the same pos as itself so as to auto-weld to it is some very dirty hack.


What I'd like, is someone to add some FBI tags that would mean "when that unit is built, automatically also create that other unit and attach one to the other". I'm not sure about how the nanolathing of that added unit should work. Maybe add the other unit only once the main unit is done built would be best.

Or even better, a script command to spawn a unit and immediatly attach it to a given piece!

I know SJ will probably think it would be best to code in moving factories, but I like having the wings part and the factory part be two independently selectable units. So you can set a waypoint for built unit different from the waypoint of the factory. And having large unit technically made of little unit would be interesting, in the future, to make super giant capital unit: you would be able to select and give order or repair each turrets independently, for instance.

So, can some kind soul code me in a way to tell the engine, either via FBI or via unit script, to automatically spawn and attach a unit Y to each unit X that is built (and let me specificy wich piece to attach to, too)?
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Guessmyname
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Post by Guessmyname »

Mobile factories would be easier to implement.

Also, zwzsg asking for help with scripts? :o
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zwzsg
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Post by zwzsg »

No, asking for help with addition to the engine source code.
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SinbadEV
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Post by SinbadEV »

Acctually it wouldn't be too bad in the FF scheme of things to make "floating platforms", you'd have small, medium, large and heavy ones, each one with just a few options for buildings and different levels of mobility... would change the way contruction happened, most of the things that con-units built would be these platforms and then they would take off and stay in the air...
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TA 3D
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Post by TA 3D »

How about this. Orbital factories have to be built on the ground to begin with, but once their constructed, you can then turn on their "orbital engines"(using on/off), which makes the factory levatate at a specified alttitude. That would look sweet.

Heres some ideas:
1)Make the factories at a perminet alttitude from the intional construction.

2)Make the factories built by a land based construction facility, then be able to turn on the engines to make it rise to a specified alttitude. Once at max alttitude it can then move around.

3)Make the factories built by a small uplink station on the ground, and sit at a specified alttitude above the uplink.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Talking of yardmaps, press f2 when trying to build a radar and look at a factory thats open and building untis, and look at what you see:

ImageImage
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Pxtl
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Airships?

Post by Pxtl »

It sounds like what people really want is some new unit class for "airships" - basically, airborne units that handle like ground units. Like the spaceships from StarCraft. They never land, they don't strafe, they have turrets, they don't fly by the target after attacking - they handle like ground units in every way except that they sit high up in the air. The moment after they're built, they levetate up to their standard height and never come down again (unless they're used as a transport to pick up units).

Making an immobile one would be a floating construction platform. Make a super-high-altitutude one for satellites.
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AF
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Post by AF »

No we just want to be able to add a tag to the fbi file to make units behave like factories do when building other mobile units, rather than asking us where we want the new unit built.

Maybe then a homeworld mod would be possible, or a half decent way of adding mobiles building mobiles
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Alantai Firestar wrote:No we just want to be able to add a tag to the fbi file to make units behave like factories do when building other mobile units, rather than asking us where we want the new unit built.

Maybe then a homeworld mod would be possible, or a half decent way of adding mobiles building mobiles
The more I think about it, the more I think that the best way to handle things like that would be to work through the creation of aggregate units. After all, the ui for a mobile unit that creates mobile units is confusing at best - if you order it to move, is it referring to the mobile construction facility or to it's children? What if you want said building to be armed, should we allow armed construction facilities?

Just make it so that a factory can create "aggregate" units - in which a child unit is duct-taped to a parent unit. In that case, all damage, stealth, movement, and death is handled by the parent unit, but the player can give orders to the child. So you can have a jammer+radar vehicle in which the radar and jammer are seperate child-units that can be selected by the player and disabled individually. From what I hear, there's some minimal facility to do stuff like this.

Consider how handy it would be for turrets - you could have the main artillery on a battleship be armed seperately from the smaller deck guns, so you can have the battleship be ordered around to fight local threats and manoever, then select the artillery and have it bombard the shoreline while you do this. Imagine having a fleet battle and in the meantime selecting all "battleship deck guns" and having them bombard targets on shore, while still having the boats continue on retreating routes.

Easier armed transports, easier moving construction vehicles, etc. The catch is that it makes commanding said units tougher (you have to select a _part_ of the unit) - but more complicated units means more complicated UI.
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AF
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Post by AF »

No that shouldnt eb how ti works, but ti is a suggestion that should be implemented anyways as it ahs other uses.

If a unti builds as a factory then untis are palced like a factory. If the factory/unit moves then the built units dont move with it unless they've been told to.
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

Alantai Firestar wrote:No that shouldnt eb how ti works, but ti is a suggestion that should be implemented anyways as it ahs other uses.

If a unti builds as a factory then untis are palced like a factory. If the factory/unit moves then the built units dont move with it unless they've been told to.
If I click the factory, select "patrol" and click on another point on the map, what goes on patrol? The factory, or the units that it builds? Right now, with immobile factories, all the units that it will build will follow that patrol. What happens with mobile factories? You could follow the StarCraft rules and have it mobile when "off" and constructing when "on"- but that makes building-while-moving impossible.

That is why I think that the best way to have a mobile factory is to have it as two parts - the "mobile" part and the "factory" part.
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zwzsg
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Post by zwzsg »

Alantai Firestar wrote:ImageImage
Hey, looks like yardmap works after all, but why do they work only on factories?


Pxtl wrote:The more I think about it, the more I think that the best way to handle things like that would be to work through the creation of aggregate units. After all, the ui for a mobile unit that creates mobile units is confusing at best - if you order it to move, is it referring to the mobile construction facility or to it's children? What if you want said building to be armed, should we allow armed construction facilities?

Just make it so that a factory can create "aggregate" units - in which a child unit is duct-taped to a parent unit. In that case, all damage, stealth, movement, and death is handled by the parent unit, but the player can give orders to the child. So you can have a jammer+radar vehicle in which the radar and jammer are seperate child-units that can be selected by the player and disabled individually. From what I hear, there's some minimal facility to do stuff like this.

Consider how handy it would be for turrets - you could have the main artillery on a battleship be armed seperately from the smaller deck guns, so you can have the battleship be ordered around to fight local threats and manoever, then select the artillery and have it bombard the shoreline while you do this. Imagine having a fleet battle and in the meantime selecting all "battleship deck guns" and having them bombard targets on shore, while still having the boats continue on retreating routes.
I agree.
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FizWizz
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Post by FizWizz »

an interesting idea. as I understand it, many units in Warhammer have modular armaments. Imagine what that could do for the WH mod.
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GrOuNd_ZeRo
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Post by GrOuNd_ZeRo »

Perhaps we could have sellectable turrets on units?

I'd also love to see Carrier type units that can build aircraft, after they are done they could immediatly be transported to the airpads?
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Pxtl
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Oh crap

Post by Pxtl »

I just realised that this is all damn near impossible. Afaik, when a building constructs a unit, the unit isn't really "on" or "in" the building, he's just standing on the ground - it just looks like he's attached or standing on it. With a moving vehicle, I don't know if it could express the concept that "this unit is sitting on that unit". I mean, the only case I can think of in OTA is transports and some mods that included mobile aircraft repair-platforms. For Spring, it could be wierd.
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