you've been drinking paint thinner?

I'm a monkey, Mr. Anderson

Edited by - Cold_Void on 3/20/2006 7:58:11 AM

Continue dreaming


+++I´m the Commander, I´m the law.+++

Why not just play Mech Warrior? All of that is already there.

well, its beating a dead horse to mincemeat but -

1.the idea is stupid - if you made arms and legs from guns they would always point forward - the flying-undead-mechs?-i don't think so

2.the idea is stupid - mechs operate on planets(unless you're talking gundams,but we're not)which have gravity

3.the idea is really stupid - FL is a space game.we can't create animations, we can barely export surs, and besides thaat there is still the ridiculous image of a mech flying limbs-forward

4.did i mention i think its a stupid idea? - oh well, i'm sure someone gets my point here

*pictures a mech flying around in the doggy style position*

Riiiight.

UH HI I Did mention about whining, any way, Ive got a stick figure mech to move about nice enough, and the joints do move, ( on you boi) tis a bit rough and ready at the moment. but the way Ive done it is that the lover torso and legs move we-el like guns . ie the face in ANOTHER direction, looks quite good actualy when strafing, still a bit dodgy at the mo but time and tinkering will help, also the arms hold ONE main weapon, Ie: picture how a soldier holds his rifle when firing, YES IT IS NOT ANIMATED BUT IT DOES MOVE like one (ie HUMAN for those with thier mind in the gutter on failing that a chainsaw for my preferance.) would when holding a gun and firing.... the whole point of this bloody exercise it to make yer ride customizeable, ok I Repeat for the THIRD time C U S TO M I Z E A B L E For those who are not that deft at cognition.

Oh and id did ask for help DID I NOT? so again SPARE ME THE WHINING. Gods you lot sound like a bunch panty waisting anti war protesters. I guess the memory of 911 does fade fast, ruddy stupid louts.

So what is the plan, to have the mech holding weapons or to mount onto the arms themselves?
If you had it for npc's and set the weapon to auto_turret then the limbs should rotate to engage multiple targets.
Not sure if the end result would really work though. In game terms how much of the whole mecha effect is going to be visable?
Maybe you could begin by making a mech based station defence and see if it works out from there.

You may want to clarify what you mean by customizable. SHips are already customizable in Freelancer. New SHields, Engines, Thrusters, scanenrs, guns, armor, ect...

You are not looking for customizable ships, you are looking for a whole revamp of a ship from what it sounds like. From what I gather, you are either trying to make ships that look like mechs. This in itself I beleive can be done. And as far as intercgangable legs to improve thruster speed, this would be the same as upgrading your engines or thrusters in the current game.
Now if you are going for completley different looking aship when all is said and done with new legs, arms, torso ect, this would be rather tough from my limited understanding of ship creation in freelancer.

I believe this would take many different files for a ship to work correctly based upon what you are trying to do.

You gotta love someone whining about whiners.

Why do you keep talking about Internet Explorer? I am finding it hard to understand your post, because I stop each time I read IE and wonder why you want guns with internet explorer built in!!

Maybe he wants to surf the web while killing NPC.

Thought I'd post something a bit more useful.

What you could do is make a general "Frame" model with a "general" sur for each mech to start off with a stack of hardpoints on them. It would also have a "fixed" Torso in the frame model. Then this "frame" could have say...10000 HP for example.

Although...if possible you could assign a sur to pieces of equipment which when come together work much better.

Then make all the "parts" (legs, arms, weapons, cockpit/head etc) as 3db's which are bought as thruster, shield hardpoints and weapon/CD/Torp/Mine hardpoints. Engines could also be buyable.

Then the armour HP use the current armour system to specify how many HP your mech has. Each different armour type (1.0x, 1.2x, 1.4x etc) could use a different amount of cargo space to avoid really light mechs having stacks of armour. This also could be used in conjunction with how many missiles a mech could carry. Pilots would have to toss up between more armour and carrying more missiles.

I think this Idea could create a whole new way of shipmaking in FL. But instead apply it to normal ships instead of mechs.

You'd start off with a basic "frame" instead of a whole ship. Then you'd go and buy different thrusters etc which would PHYSICALLY change the look of your ship completely. With enough items you could end up with huge variations of ships. It could even get to the point where people could see particular upgrades and identify them visually.

For example:
Buy and YT1300 (Millenium Falcon from SW) frame.
It comes standard most stuff.
You could buy an upgrade Scanner which installs a massive (or bigger) dish on top of the ship. You could also buy a new engine which is twice as big and goes twice as fast. People would also be able to SEE this without scanning your ship.

Another thing to think about....since the scanner "dish" is so big someone could come along and blow it off. Same would go for thrusters and shield hardpoints (in the mechs case...the arms/legs etc). It could add usefulness to the "sub-targetting" system which is currently in FL but serves no real purpose so far.

Hope I've helped a bit more than the others who seem to just want to whine and put crap on your great idea.

Claps his hands like a pleased school master when a few hopfules emerge in the darkness.

Yes that is broadly what I'm trying to achieve.

Essencialy your mech has one main weapon (set of arms.) and your thrust speed increases or decreases depending on your legs for example (dunno if this is achievable.) the rest of your weaponry is mounted on and around the torso.

Cose what I want to do is you buy a complete mech, much like Asgard where you purchase better scanners ect. you swap out different heads for better ranges, also for the more powerful weapons In theory your mech will require two hands to handell it correct, there for if you want to you can get a trade off between one HEAVY weapon or two lighter weapons in each hand,,

Again Im not needing animations there is only one joint at the shoulder (ok theoreticly the shoulder) and the mech's arm and gun are one entity , also I found that if you change the LOD ranges then you can restrict its field of movement, thus eliminating that rather silly action of having yer legs spinning like mad under you , though that would make a rather funny vid if you had to have it to the tune of "do the twist" (ahah forgive my rather pun ladend sense of humour) also this way one can have a prefectly good excuse to use the gundam missile mod and mount 6 of so launchers on yer mech. NOW that would be entertaining,.

sorry i digress, there fore one could then class the weapons in such a way that you can only swap out your arms for weapons, head for sensors, legs for thrust, and then the body for armour (unless of course one wants to get finiky and have armour modules cose some chassies move faster than the heavies, another case in point I will look at.)

So as far as my testing is concerend I'm sorta on track, I'm just replacing weapons for the parts, but I need better to get it the way I want it, this is going to be a lo-ong way away from getting NPC's to fight in mechs but I will get there eventualy,

Which reminds me 'm keeping well away from gundam, never liked it, I cant belive you lot forgot good ol' US of A grown Heavy Gear By dream pod 9...

NOW those are MECH's.

Grin

My god it's an insane version of Argh

+++ out of cheese error - redo from start +++

And I See You read quite a bit of Terry Pratchet. Besides being insane has kept me from doing knurd. *snickers evily*

Any way I'm going to need help with doing models, the codings not going to be that bad, but there is going to be a lot of testing here, Volenteers