Does anyone know of...
Has anyone ever put out a plug-in with "squadron" graphics? By squadron I mean more than one ship graphic in the same rleD resource, so it looks as though there's more than one ship after you. Of course the game engine only sees it as one ship, but to the player it would be a couple ships flying in tight formation.
I used the GIMP to successfully edit together three civilian vipers this way, but I'm slow at it. Has this been done before (and put out there for public use)?
I'm pretty sure the idea has been considered before, but it has never been put into practice (that I know of). Remember to set gun exit points for all the ships in the squadron, and also up the fire rate of the weapons so it will appear that each ship in the squadron has one of each particular weapon, rather than each ship having a piece of the weapon.
The main downside to this is that blowing up one ship will blow up the entire squadron, but this could be explained by saying that each ship has an energy cell or reactor of some sort that explodes when the ship dies, destroying other ships in the squadron, or that shrapnel from one ship incapacitates the other ships since they are in close formation.
This is a great idea. Go for it.
I'm pretty sure the idea has been around for a while now, as I heard of it as an old concept back when I first started Delphi, in which I suggested the use of the idea, and quickly discovered that there is no such thing as original thought. 
Either way, I haven't seen any use of it in a plug yet, but it's always worth looking!
@delphi, on Nov 2 2007, 11:34 PM, said in Squadrons?:
I'm pretty sure the idea has been around for a while now, as I heard of it as an old concept back when I first started Delphi, in which I suggested the use of the idea, and quickly discovered that there is no such thing as original thought.
Either way, I haven't seen any use of it in a plug yet, but it's always worth looking!
Oh yeah, definitely an idea that's been around. I went digging around in the plug-in section hoping someone might have followed through on it, but didn't find anything. Thought maybe somebody here could point me in the right direction - if anyone had done it in a plug, I figured you guys would be the most likely to know about it.
Anyway, the civilian viper squad-of-three I did turned out ok; I got the engine glows lined up, with some passable gun exit points. The one thing I'm not sure I like, is that they stay a bit too perfectly in formation. I suppose I could make the grid a little bigger, and move them around a little as they turn, but...maybe more work than it's worth. I could try to find a place to put them up for download, if anyone wants to play around with 'em.
viper_squad.bmp (96.05K)If you upload it, I'll download it.
@lnsu, on Nov 2 2007, 10:48 PM, said in Squadrons?:
The enigma TC crew is using a pic containing every in-game ship flying in formation (3D render, not an evn-flat render) for the loading screen.
They have my pity -- that's gotta be hard on your brain...
... not to mention your wrists.
This post has been edited by StarSword : 03 November 2007 - 04:48 PM
@starsword, on Nov 3 2007, 05:47 PM, said in Squadrons?:
They have my pity -- that's gotta be hard on your brain...
... not to mention your wrists.
We've already finished everything except missions and descs. About 3/12ths of the missions are planned out.
It only took us a few days for the rest of the stuff, as its based on enigma, a MMORPG turn-based startegy game (think a giant online board game) found at www.aresaxis.us
Right now not many people are playing due to a bug that has made one pirate invincible, so everyone is idling to avoid his wrath.
This post has been edited by LNSU : 03 November 2007 - 07:52 PM
I decided to try this, as it seems like a good beginner plug-in project. For those interested, here's my progress:
squadron ship graphics done for all four vipers (civilian, fed, pirate, rebel) including banking and engine glows
ship and shan resources done for above (not doing the "Availability: b9999" variants, just the ones that you can buy normally), including some imperfect-but-tolerable weapon exit points
new outfits adding the civilian viper bay and squadron, with descs written and GIMP-edited Outfitter pictures
modified weap resources for fed, pirate, and rebel bays; new weap resource for the civilian bay
GIMP-edited Outfitter pictures for fed, pirate, and rebel squadrons
modified target graphics for squadrons (more GIMP editing )
a new weapon, the Modified Light Blaster, added as insurance against hitting the max-shots limit (weap, outf, desc, and another edited picture, using the light blaster shot graphic) - balanced to do the same amount of damage over time as a regular light blaster, but with fewer shots and a few other improvements
And here's the stuff I still want to do:
do the same as above for the Firebird and the Phoenix
add a mission or two to make the civilian bay and squad available
add civilian bays and squads to select ships (armed Leviathan variant, for example)
make sure squadrons have an appropriate explosion size
more balance testing (started out too weak, then overcompensated, now scaled back...getting closer)
a ReadMe file
And I may possibly:
add a Sigma outfit intended for the big Sigma ships, adding civilian bays in exchange for a lot of cargo space (instead of free mass)
do the same as above for the Anaconda, Thunderhead(s), and/or Lightning(s) (Mantas maybe? balancing that would be... :blink: )
I think I'll have it done in a few more days. The one big question mark is compatibility with other plug-ins - not sure if I want to worry about that, or let the player worry about that.
Anyway, that's it for the moment. I'd like to make it available for people to play with before the "official" submission to Add-ons, but I'm not sure where to upload it. There are a few free hosting sites listed in the "links" sticky - any tips on which to choose? And am I missing anything important from my done/to-do lists?
Try this. Have a squadron-type graphic with 2 ships displayed in formation. The actual ship is just as strong as one of the ships by itself, but it looks like two ships in formation. The actual ship is carrying a bay with a single ship inside, one that looks and acts like a single ship, but is marked as an 'escape-type ship'. Once the "squadron" is attacked to the point that one of the ships would blow up, it does, but it also ejects into an identical ship (without the "squadron" graphics). Therefore, the squadron would look intact at first, suffer damage and then a casualty/explosion, but would then be seen as a single ship remaining.
One initial problem I foresee is that the 'escape-type ship' might not retain its warship AI, making it flee the scene. This could be explained in-game as the wingman always loses the nerve to fight after his on-wing is shot down.
Thoughts on this idea?
@werhner, on Nov 6 2007, 08:13 PM, said in Squadrons?:
Try this. Have a squadron-type graphic with 2 ships displayed in formation. The actual ship is just as strong as one of the ships by itself, but it looks like two ships in formation. The actual ship is carrying a bay with a single ship inside, one that looks and acts like a single ship, but is marked as an 'escape-type ship'. Once the "squadron" is attacked to the point that one of the ships would blow up, it does, but it also ejects into an identical ship (without the "squadron" graphics). Therefore, the squadron would look intact at first, suffer damage and then a casualty/explosion, but would then be seen as a single ship remaining.
One initial problem I foresee is that the 'escape-type ship' might not retain its warship AI, making it flee the scene. This could be explained in-game as the wingman always loses the nerve to fight after his on-wing is shot down.
Thoughts on this idea?
That could work for a player flying a squadron, but does the AI even use that flag? I suppose I could experiment with it if no one knows, but I hadn't yet because I thought it was a player-only thing.
@orcaloverbri9, on Nov 6 2007, 11:17 PM, said in Squadrons?:
Yes.
Cool, I must go play with that then. 
@tsuki, on Nov 6 2007, 07:28 PM, said in Squadrons?:
Cool, I must go play with that then.
I'm interested in what you find out. If it looks promising, this could lead to 3+ ships in a squadron, which devolves into a 2-man squadron, then finally a single ship as the group takes damage. Perhaps make some tactical advantages for the squadrons, giving the player an incentive to break up whole squadrons before going after the remnants of whole squadrons, such as a jamming penalty for incoming missiles having to pick out a specific targets in a group.
@werhner, on Nov 7 2007, 01:03 AM, said in Squadrons?:
I'm interested in what you find out. If it looks promising, this could lead to 3+ ships in a squadron, which devolves into a 2-man squadron, then finally a single ship as the group takes damage. Perhaps make some tactical advantages for the squadrons, giving the player an incentive to break up whole squadrons before going after the remnants of whole squadrons, such as a jamming penalty for incoming missiles having to pick out a specific targets in a group.
So far I can tell you that it is inconsistent, but cool when it works. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
I've got one ship flagged as an escape-type ship, with a bay to launch it. The squadron's ship resource has one of this bay, with 1 ammo. In order to prevent the single ship from being launched, I've set the weapon resource to "AI doesn't use this".
The result: sometimes a solo ship flies out of the destroyed squadron, sometimes not. When it does, it behaves appropriately: checks strength and attacks if appropriate odds exist. When it doesn't...well, it (the squadron) is just destroyed and that's that.
Did I set this up wrong? Shouldn't it eject the escape ship every time?
This post has been edited by Tsuki : 06 November 2007 - 08:36 PM
It would be fun to play with keycarried options here too; have a fleet stay in formation until attacked, and then split up. When integrated with the escape ship option, this could have some really cool effects.
Also, a carrier could launch "waves" of fighters. This is a nice idea, as it helps to eliminate that little max ships problem that I ran into when I had a carrier that just had too many fighters. If the carrier launched these fighters in waves of 3-6, and they'd gradually be worn down to one (therefore always having one replacement ship for every lost ship, and gaining nor losing the number of in-system ships until the entire squadron is destroyed) then it could definitely be managed.
If we get this to work flawlessly (or nearly flawlessly), I think I just might use it.
I may use it too, since Im trying to make the carriers in my TC more life-like. (PDS, a few turrets, and a lot of fighters.)
You could just reason out somewhere in the plug why sometimes the whole squad dies. Just say something like an occasional lucky shot will take out a whole squad through large explosions, exploding fighters crashing into squadmates, or whatever excuses you need. After all, something as devastating as a Hellhound or EMP Torpedo probably would only kill one member of a squad every time.
I like this idea. I read about it before on EVN.net, but it is cool to see it be revived here. The nice thing about it is that it allows you to have 'squadrons' which don't take up loads of resources on screen.
Er, I haven't read the whole topic yet, but have you considered making the squadrons inertialess? That way their maneuvering won't look as odd as it would if you left their inertia intact.
