Barrel rolls?

[Blink]

So I know (from hearing bits and pieces, boy are you guys tight lipped!) that there have been some issues hence far with implementing barrel rolls into Shadows of Lylat. I think this would be a really key feature to make the Arwings seem like Arwings. So, how's this coming along? What's been tried so far? What can we do to help?

Basically, if we can contribute ideas to help fix this problem, we'd love to.

[takashi]

i hope the barrel rolls arent long lasting like commands. they run you into walls >.<

[DaBrain]

I don't think we made much progress on that one.

There is no way to trigger an animation for that atm. But as soon as a trigger can be bound to a key, at least visual part of it might work.

Well, I guess Wanderer has a concept for it. ;)

[Devestator]

Well, when the player rolls, we could have like a blank shape appear around the arwing that absorbs any incoming fire.

Just a thought.

[takashi]

triggered shields?

[Blink]

Yeah, it doesn't need to be an animation. It could just be "if Arwing is in roll for __ amount of seconds, shields are activated until roll stops" since I really doubt it will ever have the arcade feel of the real Star Fox games.

[takashi]

maybe if the animation codes triggers would be expanded to key-pressed...it would be possible along with triggered shields. *coughscriptingcough*

and for another topic, charged lasers can be done with warmup time for secondarys.

example:

in the flags...

"charged"

after the "energy comsumption" field
$chargeup:
+charge time: 3
+charge animation: chargeup
+particle size:1
+particle count:30
$Cargo Size:

where the particls are those little specs of light sucked into the "charging energy"
example table:

$Name: @charged laser
$Model File: laser.pof
$Mass: 0.1
$Velocity: 360.0
$Fire Wait: 0.30
$Damage: 45 ;; damage applied when within inner radius
$Blast Force: 0.2
$Inner Radius: 10.0 ;; radius at which damage is full (0 for impact only)
$Outer Radius: 20.0 ;; max radius for attenuated damage (0 for impact only)
$Shockwave Speed: 30 ;; velocity of shockwave. 0 for none.
$Armor Factor: 0.9
$Shield Factor: 0.5
$Subsystem Factor: 0.6
$Lifetime: 1.8
$Energy Consumed: 0.0 ;; Energy used when fired
$chargeup:
+charge time: 3
+charge animation: chargeup
+particle size:1
+particle count:30
$Cargo Size: 0.25 ;; Amount of space taken up in weapon cargo
$Homing: NO
$LaunchSnd: 90 ;; The sound it makes when fired
$ImpactSnd: 88 ;; The sound it makes when it hits something
$FlyBySnd: -1
$Rearm Rate: 12.0 ;; number of missiles/sec that are rearmed
$Flags: ( "in tech database" "player allowed" "charged" )
$Trail: ;; Trail cannot be set if Exhaust is set
+Start Width: 0.1 ;; Width of trail nearest missile
+End Width: 0.2 ;; Width of trail before it "evaporates"
+Start Alpha: 1.0
+End Alpha: 0.0
+Max Life: 0.3 ;; how many seconds before trail disappears
+Bitmap: newmiss2 ;; Bitmap used to draw trail
$Icon: iconchargelaser
$Anim: Tempest
$Impact Explosion: laserexpl
$Impact Explosion Radius: 3.0

sorry for derailing this topic, but i cant start a new one because someone went too far punishig me for a bad habit (delete-a-holicism) and removed topic starting abilities....

carry on.

[Jester]

Yeah, it doesn't need to be an animation. It could just be "if Arwing is in roll for __ amount of seconds, shields are activated until roll stops" since I really doubt it will ever have the arcade feel of the real Star Fox games.

I don't think that would work. It'd feel pretty sloppy and it would be easier to just try to dodge.

That would also allow people to have an infinitely long barrel roll. Adding a timer to stop it after a certain amount of time to avoid that would just make things sloppier.

I wouldn't mind going without them really. Multi-player might even be better off without them.

[AqueousShadow]

Multiplayer actually be more fun with them. Since it's not exactly like the subpar multiplayer in the console games, having the barrel roll as a skill for one to master might give the multiplayer a new challenge and more fun.

[Blink]

Here's an idea: There would be a barrel roll button (two actually, one for each direction), like the boost/brake buttons, and when pressed (the left one or the right one) it would spin the arwing (in that respective direction) at an accelerated speed, ridiculously so, and enable complete shielding. This would disable piloting controls though until the roll was stopped, and it would indeed stop as quickly as it started.

I think this, for now at least, would be a way it could be replicated.

[Jester]

Multiplayer actually be more fun with them. Since it's not exactly like the subpar multiplayer in the console games, having the barrel roll as a skill for one to master might give the multiplayer a new challenge and more fun.

I know what you mean. I said it may be better off without because overuse could cause it to just be an annoyance to battles that could become way too long to keep interest.

*shrug*
Barrel roll enabled and barrel roll disabled modes? haha...

Of course if some moderating factor were added in to keep it from being overused like that, I'd be absolutely thrilled!

[Wanderer]

Lets just say there are ways of doing it but each and every one of them has some downsides

[DaBrain]

Here's an idea: There would be a barrel roll button (two actually, one for each direction), like the boost/brake buttons, and when pressed (the left one or the right one) it would spin the arwing (in that respective direction) at an accelerated speed, ridiculously so, and enable complete shielding. This would disable piloting controls though until the roll was stopped, and it would indeed stop as quickly as it started.

I think this, for now at least, would be a way it could be replicated.

Well... the pretty much describes what it should do, but not how we're supposed to do it...

Unless we find a coder to help us with it, it will be scripted.

[takashi]

im tempted to yell out "WMCoolMON!"

[Syphe D. Mar]

*doesn't get it*

Anyway, what's gonna be different if it's scripted?

[Jonathan_S47]

im tempted to yell out "WMCoolMON!"

The SCP coders have enough people bugging them as is. Leave them alone.

[Star Yoshi]

Scripting would definately work Da

Just a concept, cause I have no clue how to work this stuff.

The Arwing CAN rotate ingame on a 360 degree axis right? Well, couldn't you bind a button to make the ship do a 360 spin on a leveled plane? (ergo, you go straight and the camera stays straight but the ship rotates 360)

As you do this, you also bind it so that the Arwing's dmg resistence is raised exponentially so that it does barely any damage. However, you also make it so that you can only use this command sparringly, not all the time. This makes it so that it's not overused.

:D

Note: again, I have no clue how any of this works, so it's just an idea.

[Luigicheater]

You could make the barrel roll use up thruster power to prevent overuse... >.>

[Scourge of Ages]

Here's an idea: There would be a barrel roll button, like the boost/brake buttons, and when pressed it would spin the Arwing at an accelerated speed, ridiculously so, and enable complete shielding. This would disable piloting controls though until the roll was stopped, and it would indeed stop as quickly as it started.


I like this idea, but maybe there should be one button, that just increases roll speed to an nth degree. And a trigger or script or whatever to increase damage resistance as roll speed increases.
To prevent overuse, maybe it could drain boost power OR consider this: Rolling at normal speeds make it nearly impossible to steer in any coherent direction, rolling 3 times per second or so would make it impossible to maneuver at all, not to mention you would get powerful disoriented. Also, maybe there could be a "red-" or "black-out" effect if you spin for too long.
Sorry if any of this is impossible, I'm no programmer.

[takashi]

thruster power=the afterburner gauge, not expended when using brake.

what about other things, like brake? should energy be expended from stoppin only in atmosphere, or in both space and atmosphere(i say neither. they have G-diffusers, and dont need extra fuel to hover)? and if barrel rolls are scripted, how would you custom map the key? you wouldnt want to remap your gun key and find out every time you shoot you roll.

[Devestator]

you wouldnt want to remap your gun key and find out every time you shoot you roll.


Why not? It'd make you look rather cool. :p


I thought FS2 would tell you when you had a key assigned to 2 things. Meh.

[takashi]

in theory, a scripted functiopns key would be permanatley assing unless you changed the script, which would also invalidate your multi stats because of "hacked tables".

[Syphe D. Mar]

thruster power=the afterburner gauge, not expended when using brake.

what about other things, like brake?

Command doesn't seem to have problems with having barrel rolls and brakes depleting energy. That takes care of that.

You wouldn't want to remap your gun key and find out every time you shoot you roll.

No one figured out how to add extra functions in FreeSpace yet? It sounded easy but... I dunno.

[Turey]

Unless we find a coder to help us with it, it will be scripted.


If I get the time, I'll look into it this summer. I've really got very little on my plate FSO-wise so far.

[Scourge of Ages]

No one figured out how to add extra functions in FreeSpace yet? It sounded easy but... I dunno.

Since BtRL doesn't have shields, they remapped the "Q" key to glide. They also added lateral movement. Two examples of manuver-related features added by a mod team. Ask Turey if he knows anyone else who can help.

[takashi]

glide and lateral thrusters were already fso/fs2 feutures...they just included them.

[karajorma]

Glide was not a retail feature. It was added on. Thrusters were a retail feature.

The reason we can't add new keys are much more complex and all to do with sorting out the pilot file code.

[Scourge of Ages]

Oh, my bad. I never realized that. Sure would be sweet if I could actually use that in FS2 though.

[takashi]

Glide was not a retail feature. It was added on. Thrusters were a retail feature.

The reason we can't add new keys are much more complex and all to do with sorting out the pilot file code.


then what was i playing before 3.6.9?

anyway, back to barrel rolls.

maybe code it in so it only works with ships which have a speciic flag in their ship tables, since enemies never rolled in starfox (unless blink can come up with an exception other than star-wolf). maybe "barrelroll"?

[karajorma]

then what was i playing before 3.6.9?

3.6.7?

How would you expect me to know? :p

[takashi]

maybe it was the very first SCP build? a good amount of my post-tureys installer downloads came from the scp.indiegames.us site when i was desperately trying to get SOME build to work.

anyway, any thoughts on the flag-activated version of the coded barrel roll?