I just realized a few days ago how nice it would be if there was a defensive command for your fighters. I know it's possible to make them attack a target of your own choosing, but what about the times when there is more then one target? I'm thinking about it this way - Setting a radius around the player's ship that his fighters will stay within once they are given that command. Anything hostille that comes inside that radius will be instantly attacked, thereby giving the player a degree of cover. This will also give the player a greater range of tactical flexibility.
I would welcome any feedback.

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Here's some feedback for ya, ya little ******!!

On the other hand, a very nice idea. I've often wanted my fighters to stay near me and still be of use.

Well, here's a suggestion of my own:

Don't use ship sprites facing 36 directions. Have 36 pictures of the ship all facing the same direction, with the light coming from different angles. So if your ship is facing up, use frame 1, and if it's facing 45 degrees right, use frame 5, and rotate it 45 degrees to the right when drawing it to the screen.

If you did this, you could have dynamic lighting without increasing the number of sprites or needing to use models.

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Quote

Originally posted by Giule:
Well, here's a suggestion of my own:

Don't use ship sprites facing 36 directions. Have 36 pictures of the ship all facing the same direction, with the light coming from different angles. So if your ship is facing up, use frame 1, and if it's facing 45 degrees right, use frame 5, and rotate it 45 degrees to the right when drawing it to the screen.

If you did this, you could have dynamic lighting without increasing the number of sprites or needing to use models.

Nice idea, but it wouldn't work, because if you rotate a sprite it gets mixed up, it doesn't look as good, as if you rendered it at the specified angle, also its harder to apply light to a sprite than to a model.

Chamrin

What would be nice is to increase the number of sprites involved in one ship, to at least double the current amount, and possibly 1 per degree. This would allow smooth turning, even for very large ships. With the higher speed and greater disk space capacity of computers these days, that wouldn't be a problem. With 16-bit graphics, I don't think EV3 is going to run on anything less than maybe 150-200Mhz PPC anyway.

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"The impossible is easy; it's the unfeasible that poses a problem."

Nice idea, but it wouldn't work, because if you rotate a sprite it gets mixed
up, it doesn't look as good, as if you rendered it at the specified angle, also
its harder to apply light to a sprite than to a model.

Well, but each frame is already lit; it would just select the frame with light at the proper angle. For example, let's say that frame one is lit from directly above. Frame 2 is lit from 10 degrees to the left. So if the player turns right 10 degrees, frame 2 is rotated 10 degrees right for the view, and appears to be lit from directly above.
As for the rotated sprites not looking as good, this depends on how you rotate them. You could have double-sized sprites and scale them down.
Dynamic lighting would be really great. The star could be placed in the system at a certain point, and your ship would be lit based on your position relative to it.
The sprites could also be brightened or darkened based on their proximity to the star.

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Quote

Originally posted by Giule:
**> Nice idea, but it wouldn't work, because if you rotate a sprite it gets mixed

up, it doesn't look as good, as if you rendered it at the specified angle, also
its harder to apply light to a sprite than to a model.

Well, but each frame is already lit; it would just select the frame with light at the proper angle. For example, let's say that frame one is lit from directly above. Frame 2 is lit from 10 degrees to the left. So if the player turns right 10 degrees, frame 2 is rotated 10 degrees right for the view, and appears to be lit from directly above.
As for the rotated sprites not looking as good, this depends on how you rotate them. You could have double-sized sprites and scale them down.
Dynamic lighting would be really great. The star could be placed in the system at a certain point, and your ship would be lit based on your position relative to it.
The sprites could also be brightened or darkened based on their proximity to the star.
**

Yeah, but the problem is that if the game tried to rotate it on the fly, you would end up with very grainy sprites. You ever tried to rotate a pict in anything less than photoshop? It ain't pretty.

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Confucius say: "Man who stand on toilet, is high on pot."

Well as I said, it depends on how you rotate it. With nearest neighbor or the like, it would look pretty grainy. But bilinear rotation would look good, and dynamic lighting would really be great for a game like EV.

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I like the idea of having many combat manoevres, and also, it would be neat to have individual control over each ship. For example, If you have 5 UE Fighters, 3 could attack a capital ship, and the other two could focus on the smaller ships.

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"Not an Electric Sausage"- Marvin

"Happiness is a warm gun"-John Lennon

I am a proud member of Dogbert's New Ruling Class

Could you not use a seperate mask, or special predefined colours within the mask, to identify parts of the ship which should 'glint' when there is a light source in a certain direction? I'd reserve 18 or maybe 36 colours in the sprite mask and use these to map which parts of a ship should shine (increase brightness) when lit from a certain direction.

The most important thing would seem to be not wasting processing time on dynamically rendering ship models the hard way - in runtime.

Of course, in a system with no sun, or with a dwarf star or black hole, all you'd see of a ship would be its running lights. To see pirates, you'd need IR, or light beams... or you'd have to dump a lot of flares. Fun!

Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I shall await future developments with interest.

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"I wear a helmet
But I've got a bare chest
I do some talking
My phaser does the rest
Don't like your tentacles
Don't like your face
Don't like your planet
Think I'll lay it to waste
'Coz I'm Rambo in Space
Yeah, I'm Rambo in Space"

Quote

Originally posted by Chrestomanci:
**What would be nice is to increase the number of sprites involved in one ship, to at least double the current amount, and possibly 1 per degree. This would allow smooth turning, even for very large ships. With the higher speed and greater disk space capacity of computers these days, that wouldn't be a problem. With 16-bit graphics, I don't think EV3 is going to run on anything less than maybe 150-200Mhz PPC anyway.
**

Not all of us have new computers. I'm stuck with a 100Mhz PPC Performa. I don't like it, but i'm stuck with it until my parents decide to get a new one. EVO still runs fine on it.

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