The math itself wasn't so complicated, this is the actual code thats calculating it:

cout << (180 / pi) * acos(dis(vx_1, vy_1, vx_2, vy_1) / dis(vx_1, vy_1, vx_2, vy_2));

Now, as for a 3 dimensional map, it is completely possible. You could flip new york on its side without crashing the game, if you did it properly. Its just tricky to do it properly (also the tradelanes would crash as they cannot go straight up or down).

I tried writing a program that automatically resized systems, but it just corrupted all teh systems it tried to scale =\ I could try having another go at it but i doubt i'd be successful.

Here is my current build of the program: FLRotCalc (source included)

It works! w00t! I've tested it and it seems to give the exact rotational value needed for the tradelanes. I've reuploaded the file with the corresponding source, the only thing that i changed was the helper text so there is no confusion. As long as you copy the position values into the program as you see them in the INI (minus the spaces, of course), it should work like a charm. If it crashes on you, check the format of the coordinates your feeding it, and make sure there are no spaces, no weird characters, only the coordinates, a comma seperating each of the 3 coordinates, and negative signs where nessacary.

Same goes for rotational value, just copy it in to the INI as you see it in the program. You might want to add spaces in.

Hope this works and proves useful!

Edited by - blackhole on 12/2/2006 12:00:13 AM

Blackhole,
You must be exceptional in your math. Outstanding.
As far as flipping New York on it's side, I'm not sure I follow you on that one.
Perhaps I'm thinking differently here.
Do you mean, that instead of viewing the map from the "top" you see the system from one of the sides?
What I'm thinking of is a cubic representation of a 3 dimensional system where you can manually change perspective views. Is this what you're refering to?
Direct-X seems to support the concept, but Im not sure the game engine does.
What do you think?
I know that after I've located an elevated planet or star in a 3D system, I could set a waypoint directly to it. The game engine seems to compensate or adapt to the change.

well, there is another editor called FLSE (freelancer system editor) that can make tilted up/down tradelanes(and it rotates them). IMO it's a better editor in its ease of use, even if it doesn't have all the features.... for one thing it actually works *harumph* although it is abandonware now. also, it doesn't rely on .net

so how about a coordinate-scaler tool hmm? doesn't gotta batch the whole universe, or tilt it or anything fancy, just scale each position coordinate and zone size

@ Blackhole, nice little app bud, but I have a much better use for it than fannying around with Tradelanes. 3D patrol paths, I've been looking for some way to calculate the rotational values for over a year now.

There's a problem with having sloped TL's that's left me scratching my head for the past 18 months, and that's to do with the ship and camera orientation on the return leg of the lane. On the first leg (ring 1,2,3 etc) you travel just as you would on a level TL, but coming back the way (ring 6,5,4 etc) your ship is pitched at the opposite angle to the TL. If your rotation is say 20,49,0 then your ship will be angled at -20, it's not a real problem if you're travelling downslope as your leaning back a little, but upslope means you're travelling nose down and haven't a clue as to where your going. It's a real problem for larger ships though as they tend to get trapped on exitting the TL on an upslope one. To avoid the upslope problems always have the first ring entry in the system ini as the lowest one of the TL, that way the return leg is always a downslope.

**shuffles of with a new headache**

Glad to be of help!

Now that i know my app works, should i post it in the utilities thread?

Back to the giant/single system idea, here's a cheap proposal.

Why don't just keep many systems, but making them like they seem all parts of the same? (AKA: a system of systems)

--> In the "central system" is where you put the sun and it represents its "surroundings", in each of others you put a single planet or the base you want with non sun; remember you can always put a lightsource however (even an invisible object). Then your jumpgates are considered for in-system jumps: actually they bring you to another system, but you designed it to appear as somewhere else of the same system.
I you may like it or not, but it's definitely easy and possible to do.
The only drawback I can think of is that you can't travel through the entire "system" in cruise mode. Ya haf'ta jump.

As I said, it's a quick solution...

I do believe that was what we were proposing ourselves.

Oh just fine then

(Am I too tired or what? Haven't find the same thing said on the thread)

...confusion is within me... hypnotized by your maths?

Good night to me.

I tried to make a system scaler but the program likes to completely corrupt all teh values and give me nonsensical numbers...

But other than that, the same problem arises. You launch, FL dies. I don't know why.

i *did* get my program to read/write all teh values from the INI file correctly though

1001,
It's fairly easy to make systems look alike from one to the next and give the appearance of 1 super massive system. You already know that you just can't travel between them except by way of jump gates and jump holes.
What we're proposing here is the possibility of "consolidated" major house systems.
For example: The Liberty House System contains all of New York, California, Texas and Colorado in it.
But in this case, each "sub-solar" system with it's respective star/stars sits at a different level within a 3 dimensional cube of say; 250000X250000x250000 kilometers. The extent of a useful and stable cube system would probably be limited as Blackhole suggested to a max of 750.e+3^3. (That's a monsterous system of 3.75e+18 in total when taking into consideration that measurments are taken from the center of the system) . So actual size is doubled on all three axis.
We know travel between these sub-solar systems would take a long time, so we were tossing ideas and solutions around to solve the problem of using a more challenging concept of tilted tradelanes.
Blackhole has come up with the math solution for determining the precise angles.
Bejaymac has proposed a solution for ship angle of attack while traveling through the tilted tradelanes. He has also been working on encounter zones and patrol paths along this same line.
Cold_Void has found an older program ( I guess? ) that does this tilting for you.


Blackhole,
If the tool works, why not go ahead and post it. Cool work. (not for the faint of heart) lol.

Edited by - Rankor on 12/2/2006 4:40:38 PM

Edited by - Rankor on 12/2/2006 11:23:02 PM

That program makes the tradelanes. My program is a method of calculating the rotational values needed to make one object point to another. Useful for a wide variety of things, if only to get your model to point in the right direction.

I'm going to go recompile with devCPP to rip out any lingering .net framework dependencies then zip it up and post it. w00t, my first tool

Edited by - blackhole on 12/2/2006 5:24:38 PM

Blackhole,
That's cool. I look forward to seeing that.

Edited by - Rankor on 12/2/2006 5:39:25 PM

Here's a little bummer for making mega-systems: fixed asteroids will not be rendered beyond approx. 130K from the system's center. Dynamic Asteroids will work, and you can redefine the normal 'fixed' asteroids as dynamic asteroids in AsteroidArch.ini , but you will need a separate asteroid file for each type. So an asteroid field composed of 4 different types of asteroids needs 4 files in Solar/Asteroids

Dynamic asteroids look cooler, but you can just kick them around with your ship... We need a method to make them much heavier...

I remember seeing very large, wandering, dynamic (rogue) asteroids in some mod (can't remember the name though) and that facinated me since I had never encounted that before. One of the cool things about them was, they were also lootable. I think these has some mass to them since they could knock my ship out of the way.
They often had way more loot than a ship could carry.
They weren't easy to catch up to since they were traveling a little less than cruise speed, so you had to kill the engine to shoot at it. So, while you were slowing down, it would still be pulling alway from you unless you could get into a position that allowed it to pass you as you slowed down.

The only thing I noticed that appeared odd about them, is that they seemed to have no texture them. My memory could be faulty on this since it's been a while.
They had that random shape like an asteroid. (but I had only encountered two of them in different areas of the same system since they were easy to spot against the background) .
I think they may have appeared black since they could have been outside the illumination sphere of a system light.

Edited by - Rankor on 12/3/2006 9:14:46 AM