Mon Apr 28, 2003 9:01 am
Ablative Armor - Can bays be opened yet?
Hey All,
I've been working on a theory. Errrrr, maybe toying with a question would be a better phrase. I got to working on a Runabout-style ship and thought "Heck, this would look sweet if I could activate Ablative Armor". For those non-trekies here's a view of what I mean.
Basically it's an armor skin that materializes overtop of your ship's hull.
Then I got thinking to myself... "Hey, if I had a command to simply move something from one place to another on the ship then I would be able to do that easily"... Then something struck my mind. "Isn't that was bay doors do?"
The model is relatively easy. All you have to do is basically copy your ship, remove most of the detail (making it smooth), make it a tad bigger (so it will cover the origional), and then cut that model into little chunks, hiding those inside the first model until they're needed. Then when you press a button, just have the peaces move into place. It's easy when you think about it, but I'm not sure if Freelancer's "Open/Close bay" command is powerful enough to control this kind of movement.
In order for this to become a reality I would need to move more than 1 door (pannel), which I don't see as being a problem since most of the battleships have more than one door open when the bay opens. Anyway, then I would need to figure out how the doors work. Do they have a start location and an end location or do they simply "work"? And how would this be coded in Milkshape. Make a "hardpoint" for the start location and another for the end location, for each peace? If so, that would be easy, all I would need would be the hardpoint names that I need to use.
But first I need to know if someone's cracked the bay doors yet. If so, can you chuck me a link to the tutorial?
I don't know any way to make my armor strength go up when the armor moves into place (from being hidden inside of the model to the outside), but simply having the effect would be cool none-the-less.
~Jay~
*Image courtacy of scifi-meshes.com
Edited by - Jackel on 28-04-2003 10:13:14
I've been working on a theory. Errrrr, maybe toying with a question would be a better phrase. I got to working on a Runabout-style ship and thought "Heck, this would look sweet if I could activate Ablative Armor". For those non-trekies here's a view of what I mean.
Basically it's an armor skin that materializes overtop of your ship's hull.
Then I got thinking to myself... "Hey, if I had a command to simply move something from one place to another on the ship then I would be able to do that easily"... Then something struck my mind. "Isn't that was bay doors do?"
The model is relatively easy. All you have to do is basically copy your ship, remove most of the detail (making it smooth), make it a tad bigger (so it will cover the origional), and then cut that model into little chunks, hiding those inside the first model until they're needed. Then when you press a button, just have the peaces move into place. It's easy when you think about it, but I'm not sure if Freelancer's "Open/Close bay" command is powerful enough to control this kind of movement.
In order for this to become a reality I would need to move more than 1 door (pannel), which I don't see as being a problem since most of the battleships have more than one door open when the bay opens. Anyway, then I would need to figure out how the doors work. Do they have a start location and an end location or do they simply "work"? And how would this be coded in Milkshape. Make a "hardpoint" for the start location and another for the end location, for each peace? If so, that would be easy, all I would need would be the hardpoint names that I need to use.
But first I need to know if someone's cracked the bay doors yet. If so, can you chuck me a link to the tutorial?
I don't know any way to make my armor strength go up when the armor moves into place (from being hidden inside of the model to the outside), but simply having the effect would be cool none-the-less.
~Jay~
*Image courtacy of scifi-meshes.com
Edited by - Jackel on 28-04-2003 10:13:14
