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"Warping"...Cruise Animation?

The general place to discuss MOD''ing Freelancer!

Post Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:40 pm

"Warping"...Cruise Animation?

I know there's a big deal about asking things about invisibility, but hear me out.

What I was hoping to accomplish was like a "sub-dimensional warp" effect. The ship will charge its cruise engines, and right before it cruises it'll shrink and distort a little, then vanish (to simulate going sub-dimensional). The catch to being able to cruise from point A to B unseen is that the pilot will get the "wormhole" effect like when traveling between systems, or something (Just anything to basically blind the pilot)... essentially they can't see where they're going so they have to plot their course out ahead of time (and so they don't get the unfair advantage of seeing where they're going and no one knowing what's coming). This is meant for capital ships too mind you, so flying into a debris field could ultimately be fatal so the pilot should pay attention. Once they reach the destination they drop out of cruise, to which there could be a flash and a ship growing and normalizing quickly. I know it sounds complicated but I just have this feeling it could be done, but likely would take some clever engineering... If anyone has some pointers, I'd greatly appreciate it, and if it's something that shouldn't be posted up on the forum, I could give an alternate contact because ultimately what I'm trying to accomplish is perfectly fair in all regards I believe.

P.S. Hello again Chips, long time to see! I doubt you remember me... I chatted with you ages ago when you were working on Evolutions regarding Battleships.

Edited by - Tolderian on 9/11/2006 8:45:35 PM

Edited by - Tolderian on 9/12/2006 7:36:27 PM

Post Mon Sep 11, 2006 11:29 pm

In my experience, the wormhole effect is impossible to put as the cruise effect. In fact, one cannot change the cruise effect at all without permanently changing the entire engine effect.

Warping and dissapearing seems doubtful as well, as you would somehow need to get a <the word that must not be said> device to activate with the cruise engine.

Post Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:38 pm

Argh... I just KNOW it has to be plausible... and the <word that cannot be said> is not being abused in this case because we HAVE to institute a counter-measure to maintain its balance. In either situation if someone figured out how to utilize the <word that cannot be said> in said manner, it'd be easier to make it a private conversation so that others cannot abuse it... Don't give up hope!

So if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, feel free to lemme know, no offense but I'm looking for solutions or ways around the problem rather than what's impossible, it's very demotivating to tell me everything that cannot be done when people find ways around problems every day ^_~.

Anything is possible, let's look at what can't be done and make it happen. LONG LIVE FREELANCER! w00t.

Edited by - Tolderian on 9/12/2006 5:55:46 PM

Edited by - Tolderian on 9/12/2006 7:39:54 PM

Edited by - Tolderian on 9/12/2006 7:42:31 PM

Post Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:27 pm

Here's a thought, bud. I know it would be virtually impossible to do just with cruise engines, but perhaps you could do some sort of tradelane thing? You could darken the tradelane light effects enough so that the pilot can't see out of the tunnel, and then tie the tradelane effects to a buoy or something. Yeah, it's not as imaginative, but I am fairly sure you can't change the cruise effect to do what you want. I'll look into it nonetheless, because that would be cool. An EVE-style warp drive, but without being able to see.



Head Modder and Admin, Phoenix RPG Server

Post Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:42 pm

you can make special high-speed cruise areas that will cause a ship to accelerate to tradelane speeds(and higher, if the max velocity is raised) within them

}Zone{
interference = 0.1 <-necessary for drag_modifier to work
drag_modifier = a range of 1-50, the higher the modifier the more insane the cruising speed inside the zone - but, it should also be noted that outside of cruise this drag modifier will factor into your speed and the speed of mines and missiles - a drag modifier of 50 = almost a dead crawl in impulse mode

i've been trying to determine the mathematical relationship that causes this cruise 'warp'; apparently it's a function of a high force to linear drag ratio; like 100:1 - but also the mass of the ship - if the mass is increased enough this little cruise bug will disappear

Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/12/2006 10:44:54 PM

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:06 pm

Not to sound like a mean old mod but if any mod has cloak anywhere in the code, it can easily be extracted and turned into a cheat. No amount of "countermeasures" you add will protect it from being abused. I won't lock this or edit the content because I don't think it requires it, but please just keep things that should be kept out...out.

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:15 pm

Well...how about instead of cloaking... it shrinks down so small... it just cannot be seen very well at all? Or is there a way to make a certain jumphole only accept a certain type of ship? I dunno...just throwing ideas out there.

Post Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:08 pm

Unless you have the source code to freelancer, everything is most certainly NOT possible. I would personally suggest abondoning this idea, but if you continue, be warned that you may end up hacking away at this for months without ever getting anywhere.

Shrinking a ship is impossible.

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