If you want, here's an invisible ship, with shďp, shän and all you need.
Just edit the shďp resource to give it the 0 armour & 0 shields, the death delay you want,

This post has been edited by Pace (haldora) : 12 March 2005 - 08:00 AM

Pace (haldora), on Mar 12 2005, 06:40 AM, said:

If you want, here's an invisible ship, with shďp, shän and all you need.
Just edit the shďp resource to give it the 0 armour & 0 shields, the death delay you want,
View Post

I thought I had an invisible ship working like that in another plug of mine but on looking again I see I was mistaken.
I get a zero k file when I unzip that.

Guy, on Mar 12 2005, 08:37 AM, said:

I thought I had an invisible ship working like that in another plug of mine but on looking again I see I was mistaken.
I get a zero k file when I unzip that.
View Post

Pace needs to make drop zip smart.

Preferences/macbinary/smart

I guess it´s stupid the rest of the time.

This post has been edited by modesty_blaise_us : 12 March 2005 - 05:35 AM

Hm Sorry about that folks.
Here's a working version.

Attached File(s)

• Invisible_Ship.zip (996bytes)
  Number of downloads: 61

Pace (haldora), on Mar 12 2005, 01:00 PM, said:

Hm Sorry about that folks.
Here's a working version.
View Post

Okay thanks. I actually fixed it by making a shan and pointing it to the "stars" rleD then added transparency for good measure.
Is there any way to make it not show up on radar? I tried giving it a polaris cloak v1.1 and setting all the cloak flags but that didn't work. Your plug seems to reference outfit 446 which doesn't exist.

Any comments on the Race?

If you haven't already thought of it, I would suggest adding an explosion which is invisible or black so that the player won't see a little ball of fire.
NebuchadnezzaR, I like your trick a lot. I thought of something eerily similar (almost exactly the same). But your method has two major advantages. First it is a bit more elegant than the method I would have used and second I wouldn't know how to turn my theory into something that actually exists like you have. Make sure this reaches the Cool Nova Hacks topic.

How quickly would time pass? I know I have never spent 24 hours in a battle. My max is probably 2 or 3. Perhaps a 16x rate compared to real life would work.

This post has been edited by Klepsacovic : 12 March 2005 - 08:13 PM

I don't like to burst a bubble, but has anyone actually tested this? I just tried it out and it seems that missions that are started in-flight do not create their special ships.

Quote

I don't like to burst a bubble, but has anyone actually tested this? I just tried it out and it seems that missions that are started in-flight do not create their special ships.

Well, it works fine if you set them to "jump in after short delay" (thus adding a semi-random few-second delay to the start of the timer).

Quote

Someone prove me wrong, but it appears that the instant you touch one you die dead - escape pods/ships don't work and nor do any bit set fields like onretire.

No, it isn't just you. Deadly seems to mean DEADLY. Even a DeathDelay of 0 (ship stays a lifeless hulk forever) has no effect.

Quote

If you haven't already thought of it, I would suggest adding an explosion which is invisible or black so that the player won't see a little ball of fire.

Needlessly complex. Just setting all explosions to 0 works fine.

Guy, on Mar 12 2005, 09:31 PM, said:

Okay thanks. I actually fixed it by making a shan and pointing it to the "stars" rleD then added transparency for good measure.
Is there any way to make it not show up on radar? I tried giving it a polaris cloak v1.1 and setting all the cloak flags but that didn't work. Your plug seems to reference outfit 446 which doesn't exist.
View Post

Once again, "oops" :). It's using the Arpia cloak, with flags set as "0x1021" (4117).
It is strange, but I haven't yet managed to get the ship to enter a system without being invisible on the radar. I've tried as much as possible, but the ship always comes in visible on the radar, before activating its cloaking device. And it can then leave the system invisibly

Pace (haldora), on Mar 13 2005, 08:44 AM, said:

Once again, "oops" :). It's using the Arpia cloak, with flags set as "0x1021" (4117).
It is strange, but I haven't yet managed to get the ship to enter a system without being invisible on the radar. I've tried as much as possible, but the ship always comes in visible on the radar, before activating its cloaking device. And it can then leave the system invisibly
View Post

Doesn't help. My ship has 0 armor so I maybe it doesn't have time to activate the cloak?

Klepsacovic, on Mar 12 2005, 08:10 PM, said:

How quickly would time pass? I know I have never spent 24 hours in a battle. My max is probably 2 or 3. Perhaps a 16x rate compared to real life would work.
View Post

The maximum granularity this method allows for is roughly 18.2 minutes. ( (32767 / 30 frames per second) / 60 seconds per minute). That's about 80x real time. This could be extended by causing the timer to spawn a second timer, which would in turn cause the actual effect.

-reg

This post has been edited by Regulus : 13 March 2005 - 10:39 AM

Guy said:

Doesn't help. My ship has 0 armor so I maybe it doesn't have time to activate the cloak?

This may be the case. It may also be that a disabled/destroyed ship can't ever be cloaked, and a zero-armor ship falls under both of those categories.
On the other hand, I've been having a great deal of difficulty getting normal ships to cloak, and even more trouble getting them to stay cloaked (I'm afraid the innards of your "Race" plug no longer look much like the orginal ).

And Pace, the leaving the system invisibly is because you set the ship's "Cloak While Hyperspacing" flag, probably while trying to get the thing to enter the system cloaked.
BTW, is it just me, or does the "Appear randomly, cloaked" ShipStart (2) act exactly like the "jump in after short delay" (1), only with cloaks (after jumping in)?

For the record, i havent figured out yet anything about keeping him off the radar. Hes untargetable since hes already dead, and for now im chalking up the blip to some radar bug or something, some ghosting effect or something or other. Certainly not professional.

I guess you could set the special ship to 1 or whatever it is to put it square atop the first stellar. Does that work in the sytstem? Ill test it this evening if nobody knows.

(And i have a working method exactly as i described, so im sure it works)

Edwards, on Mar 13 2005, 05:47 PM, said:

On the other hand, I've been having a great deal of difficulty getting normal ships to cloak, and even more trouble getting them to stay cloaked (I'm afraid the innards of your "Race" plug no longer look much like the orginal ).
View Post

Check the shďp resource I put in my plug. Look at the "flags2" field. (if you're using MC, the cloak flags in "flags3" are to be ignored)

Edwards, on Mar 13 2005, 05:47 PM, said:

And Pace, the leaving the system invisibly is because you set the ship's "Cloak While Hyperspacing" flag, probably while trying to get the thing to enter the system cloaked.
BTW, is it just me, or does the "Appear randomly, cloaked" ShipStart (2) act exactly like the "jump in after short delay" (1), only with cloaks (after jumping in)?
View Post

I know why it leaves invisibly, and it's something I was hoping for, but the real goal is to get it to enter invisibly, which doesn't seem to work.
The "appear randomly, cloaked" is just like the "appear randomly", but it's cloaked At least, that's how I've experienced it.

Edwards, on Mar 13 2005, 04:47 PM, said:

This may be the case. It may also be that a disabled/destroyed ship can't ever be cloaked, and a zero-armor ship falls under both of those categories.
On the other hand, I've been having a great deal of difficulty getting normal ships to cloak, and even more trouble getting them to stay cloaked (I'm afraid the innards of your "Race" plug no longer look much like the orginal ).
View Post

Well I'm glad someone downloaded it. What are you trying to do, add an AI ship to race against?
I reckon I've got a way to this, but I haven't tried anything out yet. It'd require a much simpler type of track (straight lines). Does anyone know if a planet-type PD works as expected?

Guy said:

Does anyone know if a planet-type PD works as expected?

Well, I just tested, and if by "expected", you mean that they will automatically shoot planets, then the answer seems to be no (after all, spobs don't have a "can be targeted by PD" flag).

Guy said:

Well I'm glad someone downloaded it. What are you trying to do, add an AI ship to race against? smile.gif

No, just testing out everything that's mentioned in this thread. The racing against the AI is reserved for a Comara Racing plug I'm pondering (can anyone here think of a way to independantly track whether each of two ships has passed another ship?).

Back on the subject of straight-line races, you probably shouldn't need to use a PD weapon. The AI will shoot planets anyway, and unless waypoints are neccesary, the human doesn't need to destroy anything.

Edwards, on Mar 14 2005, 01:20 AM, said:

No, just testing out everything that's mentioned in this thread. The racing against the AI is reserved for a Comara Racing plug I'm pondering (can anyone here think of a way to independantly track whether each of two ships has passed another ship?).

Back on the subject of straight-line races, you probably shouldn't need to use a PD weapon. The AI will shoot planets anyway, and unless waypoints are neccesary, the human doesn't need to destroy anything.
View Post

Well yeah, I was thinking of using waypoints rather than deadly barriers because I don't want the AI racer drifting into them.
Will a planet-type PD shoot at a ship? I could stick a hostile ship in the system and have the short-range planet-type PD sub into a long-range harmless projectile.

This post has been edited by Guy : 13 March 2005 - 10:11 PM

Back to the test-bed...

OK, yes, planet-type PD weapons will fire at any ship, regardless of its type, as long as it can be targeted by PD systems. Also, as usual, they will fire based on the combined ranges of themselves and their sub-munitions (which brings up the reason that the game locks on startup when confronted with infinitely recusive sub-munitions- it tries to calculate their maximum range).

Edwards, on Mar 14 2005, 04:07 AM, said:

Back to the test-bed...

OK, yes, planet-type PD weapons will fire at any ship, regardless of its type, as long as it can be targeted by PD systems. Also, as usual, they will fire based on the combined ranges of themselves and their sub-munitions (which brings up the reason that the game locks on startup when confronted with infinitely recusive sub-munitions- it tries to calculate their maximum range).
View Post

Yes, I just tested it for myself too. It will even shoot at a ship that's already dead so I just made the timer mission's ship behaviour to attack the player and now the race will complete as soon as you touch the planet. Instead of a planet that's deadly to ships it's a ship that's deadly to planets.

I also found that making a planet Uxxx itself OnDestroy doesn't work.

Attached File(s)

• Race.zip (11.2K)
  Number of downloads: 21

This post has been edited by Guy : 14 March 2005 - 12:26 AM

Very interesting.

Edwards also mentioned that the 'start the game destroyed' flag does nothing. Is this verified?

Also, what happens with dead stellars using this time-passing method once they reach the day they should regenerate? Anyone test this either? If not, I'll have answers for all of these once I finish a short round of testing.