An observation on Star Wars speeds

Surely making collision hulls is fairly trivial? If you're creating your own wonderful and complex Star Wars ships then smaller sized asteroids and stations with the collision hulls should be relatively easy.

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.

Actually, we wouldn't even need to go that far. The avatars can be scaled down by editing in notepad, and we have the models for the collision hulls. I could scale those down in about 2 seconds in Lightwave. But EoC wasn't designed for small scale flying, and I'm willing to bet that just slowing down the ships isn't going to give us a cinematic experience.

Ok, in all honesty, I'm playing right now with all the ships slowed down to 1/10th their speed, 1/4 their turning ability and all the ranges halved to help bring the fights closer into visual range. It certainly eliminates the problems of hitting the small ships. But I get hit constantly too, because there's not enough acceleration right now to out-maneuver incoming fire and missiles. I haven't decided if I like it or not yet. Also, there are really no HUD lines because you're not going fast enough compared to what the game expects. So therefore, no real frame of reference for movement. Making you feel like you're going even slower. On the up-side, it's way cool when you pass someone in-close and actually get to see what they look like.

Well, anyway. I'll let you all know if I hit the cinematic game battle holy grail, lol. And really, honestly, I wasn't trying to apply this observation to our mod. I just thought it was really interesting and worth talking about, since it explains some of the aggrevation we've had to go through trying to get the mod to look "Star Warsy".

It's also worth noting at this point that most of the fighter engagements in Star Wars took place at the ludicrous distances of merely dozens of meters, not hundreds. Way closer than even WW-II fighters fought. You're talking WW-I bi-planes at this point. I'm sure Luke was able to make out that Tie Fighter pilot giving him the finger as he went down.

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Originally posted by Stephen Robertson PS

Surely making collision hulls is fairly trivial? If you're creating your own wonderful and complex Star Wars ships then smaller sized asteroids and stations with the collision hulls should be relatively easy.

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.

If someone, like Second Chance said, can do the work in 2 secs per model, that would be fine. There are only about 35 to 40 models involved in the 6 different maps we now have.

I don't think we can expect to ever get a cinematic effect: cinematic is viewed in 3rd person using a moving and zooming camera to change perspective while the viewer remains in one position. Our game is in 1st person perspective where the player has to move himself to change perspective.


With slower ships, not being able to dodge incoming fire is a serious issue as previously discussed in the flight performance thread:
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1637
(the post that starts off with "Some interesting Test notes:"

We should be able to compensate that effect by increasing the acceleration values considerably. That wouldn't matter too much due to the lack of inertia that the Star Wars ships should have anyhow.

My main concern is:
All the weapons (including secondary weapons) would have to be completly re-designed together with all of the flight performance parameters. That is a lot of work!

Still, if someone is commited to creating the models I would do it: I could make a simple map to test with: We would only need 1 each model for a station, an asteroid and the large hollow asteroid for that.
Perhaps someone else would like to help with weapons design and performance tweaking?





Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

MajorTom, you're reading too much into my use of the word "cinematic." It doesn't have to include all those exterior panning and zooming shots you're talking about. I'm not talking about the whole battle scene, I'm only refering to the views seen from the cockpit during those scenes.

But anyway. I can do all those thing mentioned quickly and easily, but, I honestly think you guys would hate the results. If you want to try it I'll gladly fix up the collision hulls, but I don't think you'll like the way it plays. Although, MajorTom is absolutely right about the issue with dodging incoming fire. The only reason I had problems was because, being scaled down evenly, the acceleration values were now out of proportion to the top speed.

You shouldn't need to really change much of anything in the weapons. Energy bolts should be fast or they look rediculous (and they're working fine for me at the moment). Now that I'm getting used to the new speeds, I'm finding new ways to dodge the enemy fire (even without good acceleration). The only thing I needed to change was the lifetime of missiles (which should be done for the normal game anyway). I simply halved it. At 10 seconds, they act more like missiles really should; if they miss you, they miss you. They don't come around for another four or five passes at you. They're not Star Trek torpedoes for God's sake.

Anyway, if you guys are really interested in trying this, let me know which models and C-hulls need to be modified. Or send them to me.

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Originally posted by Second Chance

You shouldn't need to really change much of anything in the weapons.

Besides being easier to dodge, reduced bolt speeds and lengths would make hit rates more consistent (especially when the ships are closer together).
I agree they shouldn't be too slow. Don't worry, there is plenty of margin to slow them down. Compared to standard EOC weapons, we have practically doubled the bolt length and speed on most Star Wars weapons:

; Standard quad-lite-pbc Bullet properties
lifetime=1.5
half_time=0.3
speed=4500
length=500

; X-Wing quad-pbc Bullet properties
lifetime=1.1
half_time=0.9
speed=9000
length=880

The laser effects we have are primarily based on the bolts avatar length (a visible effect). The mathematical speed and length of the bolt as shown above is used for the collision (bolt-ship) detection.

Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Holy cow! I had no idea you made the weapon speeds so fast. Well, it looks like you certainly do have plenty of room to slow them down. Cool. I would suggest though, making the ranges quite a bit shorter so the ships have to get closer to each other to shoot (it works well, even with AI ships, and looks better in-game).

Besides being easier to dodge, reduced bolt speeds and lengths would make hit rates more consistent (especially when the ships are closer together).

A very good point! Another benefit I noticed from the reduced speeds is that rapid firing weapons no longer have this arcing trail of bolts leading way out to the target. Which was originally caused by the change in firing angle between shots being so great because the attacking and target ships were moving so fast, resulting in a nice curvy arc of bolts to the target (which, for whatever reason, doesn't really look that great).

Also; just for fun, I replaced the heavy cruiser with a fully-functional, fighter launching Star Destroyer to check it out in battle in Instant Action. The two things I immediatly noticed were; 1. Holy cow, that thing is huge! The capsule jump flare that accompanies an arriving ship is so large it whites out the screen. And 2. At the slower speeds, you can actually fly very close along the length of the ship for a very dramatic experience. (This wasn't really feasible with the higher speeds because; 1. You didn't have enough maneuver control to get that close without crashing into it, and 2. You'd be going so fast, by the time you did get that close to the ship you'd have already passed it.) I'll post some cool screenies of the SD in action over in our 3D section.

Umm, should I take this to mean that you want to try out slowing things down?

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