Direct Fire/Facing Ideas

[Vastin]

I offer up these suggestions because the one part of Transcendence that makes me really sad is the ship facing limitations. It limits my weapon selection a lot by making direct fire weapons a lot less cool than they should be because of all the firing shadows the facing limitation creates at mid to long range.

- Free-Angle-Targeting (a small target cursor that smoothly circles the outer edge of the screen as you turn, indicating the exact facing and firing angle instead of being limited to your ship's graphical facing, along with a short ramp-up/ramp-down on the turn rate to allow fine aim)(note, an added bonus could be more exact hyper-jumps!)

AND/OR

-Adding angle correction to direct weapons (an auto-targeting arc just wide enough so that all weapons can fire in-between the turn angle arcs, effectively eliminating the targeting shadows - a more limited fix than the free-angle-targeting, but probably easier to implement?)

Either of these additions would make combat with direct-fire weapons immensely less frustrating!

[evilbob]

yes, can you believe we had to make do with only 20 facings? the default playerships had this doubled to 40, which I think is enough- turning becomes awkward with any more, as I overshoot the direction I want to face

[Aury]

yes, can you believe we had to make do with only 20 facings? the default playerships had this doubled to 40, which I think is enough- turning becomes awkward with any more, as I overshoot the direction I want to face

on certain larger ship, even 40 gets fairly bad. Burst weapons however seem to have proximity sensors past their blast radius from you so they are OK.

[Vastin]

yes, can you believe we had to make do with only 20 facings? the default playerships had this doubled to 40, which I think is enough- turning becomes awkward with any more, as I overshoot the direction I want to face

Yeah, I was playing back when it was still 20 facings. The pain.

But firing arc shadows can be completely eliminated without any real drawbacks if a clean turning system can be implemented. The trick is not to increase the number of facings any more, but to track the exact facing and display it with an aim cursor as far from the ship as you can reasonably draw it - thus the edge of the screen, though you can ALSO draw one in the radar view for long range targetting if you desire.

Fine/Gross control is maintained in systems of that short by having a short ramp up of turn rate. That lets you do very fine aiming with short taps, but gives you your regular turn rates when you hold the key.

If that sounds awkward, it's far easier than targeting something at long range by jetting around trying to line it up with one of your firing lines (especially when you're shooting at an angle other than a cardinal line).

[Fossaman]

Hehehe...sorry, but this debate is as old as the game itself, I think. We got into some very vitriolic discussions about it back on the UTF.

First off: As I understand it, because of the way ships are rendered, smooth turning would be very difficult. If you go into the source images, you can see that there are forty different frames for each of the player ships. To get smooth turning you'd have to either add a whooooole bunch more of those, or set up a 3D image of the ship that's rendered in real time as it turns to preserve the shadows and such.

Secondly: Way back in the day the community in general tested a mod that gave all weapons a swivel arc, (woah, I was the one who suggested that? Soooo long ago...) so that all angles were covered. It was a nightmare. Something about the game AI completely flubbed shooting at circling enemies with that dang thing, and it was nearly impossible to hit stuff like hornets and sung slavers. It just felt weird too.

First thread I could find on this

I can't find where the one with the mod is.

Anyway, I think that adding in side and reverse thrusters would be sufficient; it might make play without a numpad difficult, but they're not really vital functions.

[Lokarin]

Silly idea...

Mathematical sprite rotation and averaging.

Then even the 20 facings ships can have 360+ facings although they'd look terribad at certain degrees.

[digdug]

I can't find where the one with the mod is.

If somebody is interested kaypy updated the mod up to 0.98b and it's been since then on xelerus.

18-deg swivel mod here:
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=5

[george moromisato]

The only time I have this problem is when I'm chasing an enemy and he is:
1. Just far enough away that his size does not subtend a big enough arc.
2. Not moving tangentally (i.e., not circling around me)

Both have to be true for the facing limit to be a problem.

If #1 is not true, then the enemy will be too big to fit in the "hole" and I'll always be able to hit him.

If #2 is not true, then I can time my shots so that I can hit him.

In fact, if either #1 or #2 are true, you won't even notice that there is a limited number of facings. [This is why Star Control never had this problem even though it only used 16 facings.]

I would like to try to make some AI improvements to avoid these two conditions. For example, I can change the AI so that ships (particularly low-level ships) get closer to the player to fire.

[Vastin]

The only time I have this problem is when I'm chasing an enemy and he is:
1. Just far enough away that his size does not subtend a big enough arc.
2. Not moving tangentally (i.e., not circling around me)

Both have to be true for the facing limit to be a problem.

If #1 is not true, then the enemy will be too big to fit in the "hole" and I'll always be able to hit him.

Eh. I like the direct fire weapons, but I can say that I find them very much weaker than they could be because of those shadows. At long range the shadows are huge (far larger than most ship cross sections), and at short range the angular velocity difference makes it difficult to hit any fast moving enemy with direct fire regardless, so they tend to kind of suck at all ranges in terms of accuracy.

I use direct fire for base cracking, against cap ships that are too tough for my omni, and for firing into masses of smaller ships that are chasing me (SOMEONE will always be in the line of fire in that case). But for dogfighting and closing engagements they are only good for landing sparse strafing hits, or for precision shots with a super powerful weapon like a Fusionfire.

I actually found it most frustrating when I was practicing mining! I'd maneuver into the middle of a field with good sight lines to all the asteroids I wanted to hit, and found that just 1/2 a screen away the shadows became large enough that I'd have to constantly tweak my position to hit the smaller asteroids.

Just annoying, and an artifact of the UI that has nothing to do with combat tactics.

[Bobby]

but remember that those shadows apply to your enemies as well... the player has the upper hand in combat with direct fire weapons because he/she can be twice as precise as the enemy. oftentimes the enemy can't hit you, but you can hit it.(depending on speed and combat style)

[Vastin]

First off: As I understand it, because of the way ships are rendered, smooth turning would be very difficult. If you go into the source images, you can see that there are forty different frames for each of the player ships. To get smooth turning you'd have to either add a whooooole bunch more of those, or set up a 3D image of the ship that's rendered in real time as it turns to preserve the shadows and such.

Secondly: Way back in the day the community in general tested a mod that gave all weapons a swivel arc, (woah, I was the one who suggested that? Soooo long ago...) so that all angles were covered. It was a nightmare. Something about the game AI completely flubbed shooting at circling enemies with that dang thing, and it was nearly impossible to hit stuff like hornets and sung slavers. It just felt weird too.

I bet you I know exactly why your swivel guns didn't work, assuming you basically hooked up the same AI that the Omni's use - the gun is in all likelihood selecting the closest ship in its firing arc (assuming you haven't chosen a target manually), but then it is trying to LEAD that target, and more often than not the lead firing point is OUTSIDE the designated firing arc.

This would happen constantly with any target in your forward arc that had any real lateral velocity, the gun would constantly try to select a target that it cannot possibly lead sufficiently, so it would probably fire as far over as it could, and miss anyway and look idiotic - indeed, it would make it impossible for you to hit targets because it would take away your ability to aim manually.

The way around this is a bit complex, and not necessarily foolproof. The AI has to generate a 'lead point' for every feasible target in range when you fire, and then fire on an enemy who's LEAD POINT (not their actual position) is in your firing cone. This should make the gun far more accurate, and generate the behavior the player expects out of it.

Now, that's potentially a lot of calculation to do every time you fire the gun, but computers are impressively fast these days, so I don't know if it would hamper performance or not. You've already got all the code for the AI to handle target leading I believe?

In any case, I would prefer a smooth targeting cursor instead as that doesn't take any skill out of the game the way swivel mounts might, but anything to get rid of those painful firing shadows.

[Vastin]

At this point I should add the caveat of being careful what I wish for.

Any sufficiently smooth targeting system would probably also increase the accuracy of the enemies quite a bit... Wolfen pilots beware...

[Fossaman]

That's probably a good partial explanation for why it misses; the crux of it is that it fires at where the target will be if it keeps going straight, though. Circling ships do not keep going straight, obviously.

I'm still opposed to swivel weapons, though. Even with the arc requirement reduced to 9 degrees, that's more control over my shots than I want the computer to have. The brake key and the finer turning already implemented mean that filling in your 'holes' in weapon coverage is really, really easy to do.

I'm not averse to smoother turning, which would be the ideal solution in a perfect world. But I just don't think that you could keep the current keyboard control scheme and maintain fast reaction times while still achieving the precision you're after. An empty wolfen or sapphire is already difficult to maneuver by just one facing, and it would be nightmarish with more. You could add in a 'slow turn' modifier key, but that would mean that you were...you know...turning slowly. All that would add up to even less precision and more frustration when trying to hit an enemy.

Now, as for cursor targeting...no. Please, no. If it was added on maybe one or two weapons, that would be fine. But any sort of mandatory cursor aiming system would make me stick to the last version of the game without it. I play transcendence because the battles are difficult. Adding in cursor aiming would make it feel like a slightly shinier flash game.

I would like to see more weapons like the PK25 Morningstar cannon, or more seeker weapons (does anybody even use the smartcannon?). Maybe not quite as seeky a seeker as the smartcannon, but rudimentary homing capability on some things. Anything that adds options for alternate play-styles is just peachy.

Any sufficiently smooth targeting system would probably also increase the accuracy of the enemies quite a bit... Wolfen pilots beware...

Nah. Unless you get sucked into a joust I can't see this being much of a problem. Just jink back and forth. Dodging is a wonderful thing.

[Aury]

Yes, dodging is great

Especially when the gun leads it's target... then just rapidly tap the arrow keys and watch the projectiles whiz by...

[Vastin]

That's probably a good partial explanation for why it misses; the crux of it is that it fires at where the target will be if it keeps going straight, though. Circling ships do not keep going straight, obviously.

If the swivel gun were firing on a lead point within its arc, it should be exactly as accurate as an Omni - which is to say with a fast weapon like a particle cannon or laser it would have no problem hitting a fast circler like a hornet or sung raider at medium to short range, as long as you can turn fast enough to keep your facing arc in the right place.

But I'm not going to belabor the point further. It sounds like the player base is pretty entrenched with the idea of limited lines of fire and doesn't want to 'fix' that problem any more, so it's not for me to argue. I've slammed my head against that particular wall too many times before.