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power to the jumpgates

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Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 12:56 pm

power to the jumpgates

hello all !!

i`ve been experimenting on something and i ended up confused -i have a straight question here:

is it just me who can (very well) hear the impact sound of a weapon -but strangely can`t hear it, if it`s an npc who uses the same weapon against me, or is it something hardcoded?

plz let me know if you have experienced the same, or the opposite .. thx a lot !

EDIT:
updated subject of the topic

Edited by - RimShot on 4/7/2005 3:41:27 PM

Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:03 pm

Erm... I have not experienced what you're describing. When hit by weapons, I generally hear an impact sound. These impact sounds are described by shiparch... and if you're not hearing those sounds, then either there's something funny in your shiparch entries, or something funny about your soundcard driver

Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:26 pm

thx for the response Argh,

i tried it again now and noticed something really funny .. it works fine with one weapon but not with the other ..

and i`m sorry, just noticed i did not tell what exactly i tried .. left the most importrant part out ..
i have been experimenting with the impact that goes in FX\effects.ini, added snd_effect entry to the visual impact.

now that`s cleared, i`ll try some more and get back with updates if i find out what`s wrong ..

thx again !

Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 2:06 pm

My guess would be that :
1. The sound you tried to add has a too low sound range (See sounds.ini), or a too high basic sound range.
2. The shield hit sound simply goes over the other sound.

I'll try to catch you on MSN as soon as possible
FF

Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 2:24 pm

thx also FriendlyFire, but that wasn`t the problem ..
anyways,
i got it fixed now -it appears to me that usual guns won`t give an impact sound .. but missiles do,
strangely i made a missile that the ai refused to shoot -so i made a gun/missile mixture instead (that somehow didn`t play a sound aswell)

BUT i re-did the missile completely and now it does what it should ..
i`ll be tweaking it a little and gonna release a small mod with it soon, if i`m satisfied with the end result

RImShot over and out :p

EDIT:
it all sucks, i`m going nuts .. freelancer is playing tricks -acting differently without me having changed anything, ignoring values, and so on ..
i`ll maybe try using mines for a last try, before i drop the idea.

the idea was to make a special weapon that does single shot kill, assign it to jumpgates and have it say "jumpgate access denied" when the ship explodes ..
i`ve been using guns at first but noticed the projectiles often went right through the ship without doing any damage,
so i went to missiles -but somehow the distance at which i told the pilot to start shooting no longer worked, and it didn`t look cool to die 500m in front of the gate (also there`s a missile warning)
maybe try mines,
but i`m sick of it now and will go to bed hehe

Edited by - RImShot on 4/6/2005 6:26:28 PM

Post Wed Apr 06, 2005 5:52 pm

Erm...

If you want to keep people out've hostile jumpgates, it seems to me that it'd be far easier to simply make the AI for the jumpgates more accurate, and vastly upgrade its guns. Not terribly tricky to do, and it'll work every time. As for the "jumpgate denied" and one-shot-kill missiles... previous experiments have confirmed, over and over again, that one-shot-kill missiles tend to malfunction on a regular basis.

It'd be just as simple to make the Gate with a Loadout that included two turrets, each one firing a normal missile with very good guidance, speed... and uber-damage, which used "jump gate access DENIED" as the sound it made when it fired... and if having the sound work perfectly without any overlap was the major issue... make two versions of the weapon- one using no launch sound at all, and the other with the sound. You *can* make missile pairs like that that are almost 100% certain of getting a kill, every time... and you could make their range about 800, which would mean (for practical purposes) that they wouldn't fire until the ship was just about ready to dock with the Mountpoints (which are about 650M away from the center of the Gate).

Just a thought...

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:34 am

thx Argh, but the reason i`m trying this the uneasy way is i want to make it look like gates let a ship explode by sending big power impulse or something ..
if my attempt was functioning properly i would have removed all visible effects, but just make a huge "energy-fx like" impact afterwards ..
now,
i just tried mine droppers on the gate, but somehow they don`t appear (i`ve been using an orginal dropper, mine01_mark01)
what confuses me is, i CAN see them mounted in target view .. they`re there as sub target but not visible, not functioning too .. no mines coming in on me ..

please, if you have any ideas let me know !
right now it seems to me that mines don`t work with solar objects ..

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:03 am

Well, you can make invisible missiles. Simply use an invisible CMP (easy enough to make one of those), and then define its engine trail to use no ALEs. Give it a showy explosion, and voila...

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:31 am


if my attempt was functioning properly i would have removed all visible effects, but just make a huge "energy-fx like" impact afterwards ..


apprechiate all comments but please make sure to read exactly what i said above, as it`s not the problem making it invisible ..

have you any experiences assigning mine dropper to solar objects?

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:59 am

I would suspect that Mines don't work because of the way that the AI is configured. Here, let's look at a sample:

[MineBlock
nickname = mine_light_fighter_a
mine_launch_interval = 10
mine_launch_cone_angle = 30
mine_launch_range = 250

Methinks that the last two entries are the important ones here.

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 11:32 am

thx, but

i just tried mine droppers on the gate, but somehow they don`t appear -i CAN see them mounted in target view .. they`re there as sub target but not visible, not functioning too .. no mines coming in on me ..

and i have added a mine_id to the solar_pilots, so that`s not the problem again .. thx tho


Edited by - RimShot on 4/7/2005 12:35:43 PM

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 11:55 am

what if to acheve this u added a new FX sound like u said to the hull it FX, to acheve the acsess denide,

and then added a Mine dorpper like u sugested to the Solar Object [ in this case a Jumpgate and make a new type pof mine u can set the blast range to a size and set the dammage to a very high one hit kill and the fx fire off with ACSESS DENIDE taht what we want right?

ill take a shot and let u know

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:01 pm

What I am saying is that you not only need to add a mine entry to the AI, but also change those values. Give it a launch angle of 360 and a launch distance of 800.

But... that may not work, even so. Mines have a minimum activation distance, and I have a feeling that FL simply doesn't allow mines to be launched from stationary objects, because they'll never get outside that radius.

At any rate... I am still not understanding why doing this with missiles isn't working for you. A one-two punch of two nearly-identical weapons, one with the sound and one without... should do the trick, and so far as a player could tell, it'll happen very quickly. You'll have to modify the launch sounds so that they have a big enough radius, but np there... tweaking the radius and attenuation is super-easy, and works great.

If you set their blast radii tiny or set their hitpoints to really high levels, and make them uber otherwise, then they'll never take each other out, will hit 100% of the time (assuming you make them fast enough- high speed muzzle_velocity, start the Motors almost-instantly, start the guidance instantly, and give them uber guidance... easy enough to do). So players die with a silent (but showy) "boom BOOM" shortly after hearing a godlike voice tell them "Jumpgate access DENIIIIIIIED".

I really cannot see why doing something like that is proving difficult- I've built many custom weapons, and all of this should work very easily... keep hacking at the missile angle... I think your main problem here is that you want it to be perfect ... and like any hack-job... you're not going to get perfect, just "close enough that nobody but you knows any better"

Post Thu Apr 07, 2005 5:07 pm

well,
indeed i wanna make the stuff as perfect as possible ..
and you`re right -all of this SHOULD work very easily ..
practice has given me proof tho, some things do not work as in theory.

tried writing down a little a mod report,
and
here are the facts:

1. i wanted to make this an addon mod compatible with almost any other mods (meaning: the less changes the better)
2. i wanted the illusion that it is not a weapon killing you, but rather some kind of malicious energy impulse (meaning: the closer to the gate, the better)
2.1. also meaning that no mistakes are allowed, else the jump sequence initiates

now
to the problems:

-using guns
not accurate enough > solution: changing of gun_ids for all solar_pilots
no separate explosion possible, multiple shots needed (negative values didn`t work); voice confusion > solution: none
projectiles going right through the ship doing no harm (sometimes) > solution: i have no clue (see fact 2.1)

-using missiles
changing of missile_ids for all solar_pilots required to reduce missile_launch_interval_time > solved
missile_launch_range ignored by AI (reducing missile range didn`t solve this, crazy pilots still shot even if out of range; additionally adds voice confusion) > solution: none, this is weird
perfectly homing missiles not homing at all (sometimes) > solution: i have no clue (see fact 2.1)
"incoming missile" warning; acceptable if no other bugs

-using mines
testing not possible, equipment not properly mounted > impossible?

ok
i hope i didn`t forget anything, and made no mistakes (which i doubt cause i did extensive testing)

this is my last mod project, still have one option left:
making a rapidly firing weapon that does no damage but rather pushes the ship back with some impulse (like: incoming heavy wind)

will go to bed now
cu

Post Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:04 am

"making a rapidly firing weapon that does no damage but rather pushes the ship back with some impulse "

well, you would have to use missiles for such a effect, too..

besides, the whole impulse thing of freelancer does not really work on actual ships, as long as they are not in engine-kill mode...
so, flying to the jumpgate and being hit by an impulse would only cause the ship to spin like hell and whatsoever...
with engine-kill, the ship even would be accelerated to a speed of like 1000 or something in the reverse direction, which eventually is exploitable...

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