Questions on adding friction.

[PM]

* Is there a way to add friction to objects like ships and missiles, without adding space environment entities like nebula?

* If not, is there a way to make the environment invisible on the LRS (no gray haze on radar) and on the map (no purple nebulas on the [M]ap grid)?

[digdug]

For missiles, what about using accelerationFactor ? A number slightly less than 100 should give a nice mild friction effect.

For ships, I'm not sure how to do it without a spaceEnviroment. If I'm not wrong, Prophet was testing long ago some drives with negative thrust for weird effects, I wonder if you could use something like that.

[EDIT]
What about a device on the ship with an OnUpdate event that constantly apply some thrust to slow down the ship ? That might work well.

[pixelfck]

The resolution (once every 30 ticks) of OnUpdate would cause a non-smooth effect. (which is a shame).

~Pixelfck

[PM]

For missiles, what about using accelerationFactor ? A number slightly less than 100 should give a nice mild friction effect.

Missiles simply go progressively slower. Not useful when (smart) missile has its own propulsion to maintain speed despite friction.

The resolution (once every 30 ticks) of OnUpdate would cause a non-smooth effect. (which is a shame).

dragFactor used in nebula works exactly like this. At dragFactor="73", ship speed gets reduced to 73% each second.

Also, dragFactor does not seem to apply to missiles, only ships.

What I need friction for is to emulate friction in classic arcade games that slow the playership if not thrusting. In Star Castle (which I try to remake in a Transcendence mod), this is very important because mines eventually fly as fast as the playership and the player must thrust constantly or die.

I found out that space environment can have map color defined, and "0x07 0x03 0x0f" blends in with the [M]ap background color, if the width is small enough.

EDIT: I want to avoid tampering with object velocity directly, in case of side effects; but I might try it, given what is available. In the Star Castle Arcade adventure, I already have a recurring event that runs every tick. I need it to check boundaries and wraparound as needed.

EDIT #2: I added (objSetVel gPlayerShip (sysVectorDivide (sysVectorMultiply (objGetVel gPlayerShip) 99) 100)) within my event for friction. Called thirty times per second, this is roughly equivalent to dragFactor="74". Works even better than dragFactor. (No need to add a space environment and suffer its artifacts.)

[digdug]

EDIT #2: I added (objSetVel gPlayerShip (sysVectorDivide (sysVectorMultiply (objGetVel gPlayerShip) 99) 100)) within my event for friction. Called thirty times per second, this is roughly equivalent to dragFactor="74". Works even better than dragFactor. (No need to add a space environment and suffer its artifacts.)

Nice !

Can we do that with every moving spaceObj in the system, basically simulating dragFactor at system scale ? Or would the game slow down to a crawl ?

[PM]

If used on missiles, they will slow down and stop. It is only useful on ships.

I would not (want to) use friction per tick in normal Transcendence - probably too many objects.

The Star Castle Arcade adventure has very few objects, if the energy rings are excluded.