F.A.Q. - The 'What you want to know about DFS' thread

[ShadowGorrath]

If you want to know anything about the project ( setting, modpack, etc. ), anything at all related to DEFCON FS, just ask your questions here and I'll answer them ( unless it's a secret :p ).

[shiv]

How are you going to animate that skybox with Nuclear explosion? Is it event triggered?

If I slow to 0 speed will I start falling?

[ShadowGorrath]

The skybox is event trigered, and will probably be fully animated.

And yes, you do. You won't manage to slow to 0 though.

[dragonsniper]

How exactly could you animate a skybox? :confused1

[shiv]

How did you implement that artifical gravity?

[ShadowGorrath]

I won't animate the skybox. I got another idea for animating the explosion.

And I implemented improvised gravity it via Events in FRED, of course.

[shiv]

I guess Lua scripting might work better.

[ShadowGorrath]

Besides the bugs that it'd produce alongside a gravity system, yes, it would work better. Now, try and find a coder that can do that.

[shiv]

No I won't find any coder for you :P It's your job since it's your project :P

[ShadowGorrath]

That was not a request, more like a challenge :P

[starlord]

I recall nuke having tried that kind of challenge...

[shiv]

Now go, find and ask him, my young padawan.

[Syphe D. Mar]

Is there a story yet? What are the factions?

[ShadowGorrath]

There is a story. You'll play as 3 pilots for the 3 factions: USA, Russia and a third, still secret, faction. The 3rd faction will be revealed a bit later, as soon as I finish a few things for it.

Of course, the factions you'll be flying against are not limited to these three.

[starlord]

Is the story somewhat linked to freespace? perhaps during the unification wars?

[ShadowGorrath]

That, you'll have to find out for yourselves :P

[Thulius]

How do you end a Mission? In Freespace it was just Warping out. How did you fix that?

[ShadowGorrath]

Oops, didn't notice this one.

Mission ends with Alt-J, or just end-mission. The "warp" types have been changed to 'speeding up and flying to an off-mission location' instead of the usuall subspace warp.

[dragonsniper]

'speeding up and flying to an off-mission location' instead of the usuall subspace warp.

So that will have to be customly done, right? There isn't (AFAIK) a switch in FRED that will let you do that I assume.

[ShadowGorrath]

No, but it's in the tables. All the fighters and bombers already have that.

[Dragon]

It's also possilbe to make the mission end by landing on a carrier or wherever player is stationed, so I think it will be used in low altitude (airports, it would be great to see sea-borne carriers) and space (space stations) missions.

[starlord]

Would be great to have sea warfare... I quite agree!

Can the SCP handle maritime fleets (carriers, cruisers, battleships, etc...)?

[ShadowGorrath]

Quite probably. But getting models of those will be a challenge, if at all possible.

[Black Wolf]

That'd be cool - frigates lobbing missiles from 50 or 60 kms away, carriers pumping flak into the atmosphere to defend against them while fighters flit around trying to shoot them down, and not themselves get shot down. Like FS2 combat, but quicker, and with a ground.

Only issue'd be there's no horizon in FS modded surface combat, so over the horizon is obviously out of the question.

[ShadowGorrath]

What do you mean about the horizon? I already got surface working. Just gotta modify the stuff extensively before I can show it...

[Black Wolf]

]No curvature = no horizon

[Syphe D. Mar]

Why Russia? Kinda sounds like they became the Soviets again.

[ShadowGorrath]

It's partially because of the 3rd faction. The 3rd faction is somewhat related to Russia in this storyline.

[dragonsniper]

I'm amazed that FRED can even work with atmosphere stuff. How exactly do you get that to work (I myself never could figure it out.) Also, is 450 km going to be the typical speed for the fighters?

[ShadowGorrath]

That's 340m/s, a.k.a. Mach 1. 450m/s is with afterburner. And yes, it'll be a typical speed for fighters. With minor differences, besides afterburner performance variety and acceleration/decceleration speed. I know it's a bit slow, compared to what modern fightercraft can reach ( Mach 2 and so on ), but it's the highest speed without making it impossible to play or frustrating.

I got atmosphere to work with various somewhat-hackish solutions. Rather complicated to explain, yet simple, IMO, to produce. I might release a demo of some sort, once the modpack is done, to show how everything works and improve it. And then afterwards work on the campaigns.

[Dragon]

Most of modern fighters cannot fly at supersonic speeds without burners (F22 can, due to it's "Sonic Cruise" feature, but even then it's not Mach 2) and 700m/s afterburner is perfectly doable, as evidenced by Wings.
I have a ship that reaches even 850m/s on burners (an interceptor) and it works fine.

[dragonsniper]

Ok. I'm just used to the FS2 ships chugging along at a mere 70 clicks. Only time I've played a ship going even close to that fast was in the BtRL demo. :)

[ShadowGorrath]

Don't worry. Primary weapons have semi-guided bullets.

[Snail]

Don't worry. Primary weapons have semi-guided bullets.
awesome

[Dragon]

That's just the autoaim.
Of course, it doesn't mean that it's not awesome, but bullets are not technically semi-guided. It's the gun barrel that moves (though you won't see it) and this system is also featured on some modern fighters.