Shane: maybe old mystery solved

Shane, This may solve an old mystery:

you reported occasionaly in the past: in Autopilot, a ship would fire missiles intermittently.

This is probably a input issue, as I've discovered the following:

If you don't have the joystick connected but you have your controls configured to default.ini (joystick) all kinds of wierd things can happen when in autopilot approach or formate mode.

- sometimes it fires missiles.
- sometimes it fires PBCs (when you're within range of an enemy)
- sometimes the game will switch inexplicably to director mode

Since, random things happen it is hard to get repeatable test results but you will repeatedly get some unexpected events if the joystick is not connected.
I've also noted, this effect is more predominate when you have several .ini files (more than just one default and one keyboard only) in your configs folder.





Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Thanks MajorTom.

Sadly, I never had my joystick disconnected or anything other than the normal files in my config folder when encountering this problem. But, I never encountered anything other than missiles firing off either.

When I read the Star Wars mod features magazines rotated off the Z+ axis, I was curious to see if you would encounter it.

My feelings were that it (the missile auto-firing when in autopilot) was related to mounting a magazine launcher in a position where it does not fire along the Z+ axis. But for the life of me I could not tell you why I maintain that suspicion. As you mentioned, I could never isolate the random behavior of the problem. It's elusive as hell.

This, more than any other problem (except GrandpaTrout's recently identified circular script query problem, which really gives me pause) makes me shy of modding EoC to any great extent.

If you're investigating it, I'd love to hear what you come up with. I spent over three weeks working on it with nothing to show in the end.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Originally posted by Shane

My feelings were that it (the missile auto-firing when in autopilot) was related to mounting a magazine launcher in a position where it does not fire along the Z+ axis. But for the life of me I could not tell you why I maintain that suspicion.

Well, it looks like you are right on this and I went of half cocked.

I.e, the problem is still there occasionally even with the stick connected. I guess we'll have to 'un-rotate' the missile nulls and see if it still persists.

btw. Did ever you get missiles to actually launch with them initially pointed in a direction opposite to (or differing from) the ships Z+ axis?







Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Oh yeah. They manually launched fine; no problems there. It's keeping them from launching at whatever you're autopiloting to that's the hard part. The autopilot type doesn't seem to matter either... autodock, auto-approach, etc., all acted the same.

I had missiles which launched 'up' from the carrier's bay and others which launched 'sideways' from the carrier's neck. A few which launched backwards from the rear of the carrier's fighter bay. All worked properly during a manual launch (pulling the trigger) but would sometimes launch when autopilot was engaged... and when they were doing that they would continue to launch at (what seemed to be) random intervals. Sometimes three within 30 seconds. Sometimes two within three minutes. Sometimes none at all.

Crazy, eh?

Many other ship setups I originally created for Epic suffered from this; The Dreadnaught, the Oakland and Venice, the destroyers and cruisers.

All had rotated magazines in common.

The funny thing is that you say the decoy launchers are part of the magazine systems (and you're right... I just never thought of it that way before), but they operate fine when rotated.

So what could be the difference? That the missile has to accelerate?

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Wow, that's pretty strange. I guess I'll straighten out the launchers and see about fixing that docking null on the A-Wing today.

btw - Shane, did you get the model files I sent you?

mailto:second_chance@cox.net
The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
cartoons.sev.com.au/index.php?catid=4
.

I sure did, SecondChance. Sorry I haven't gotten a chance to drop you a line and let you know... life's been pretty crazy lately. [xx(]

I built a background 'cone' and ran a quick animation last night, but was not pleased with the results. I'll have to tweak my scene a little this weekend to get the animation right.

Nice models BTW. Very effecient work.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">