Ship resources

[PM]

All stock ships (and other directional missiles) should have forty facings, except maybe ships with very fast turning (e.g., Hornet, Wind Slaver). This would let modders who want forty facings ships to use them without the need to upload ~15MB mods (currently) to mod repositories.

I noticed that AI controlled ships with more than forty facings and/or turning speed slowed (due to excess cargo) may get stuck rotating back and forth, while drifting away from its ideal yaw. Ships controlled by AI should be given more time to rotate one way to reach their ideal yaw.

[Lmoy]

I agree that all ships should have 40 facings. Especially because many large ships have very choppy turning (Phobos is probably the worst in that regard) and it takes away from the otherwise impressively rendered ship models.

[FAD]

You do realize the pain staking time and effort it would take to re-render ALL the ships with 20 facings to 40 in this game, right? Be patient, as George has been converting some (the more important ones) as he goes and has time for.

Also bear in mind the file size that T will end up having by the time it's a complete, finished product. It's going to be huge and cumbersome for those of us on dial-up to try and download the game.

Will it be worth the long wait? You bet your Tinkers tricks it will be!

[shanejfilomena]

You do realize the pain staking time and effort it would take to re-render ALL the ships with 20 facings to 40 in this game, right? Be patient, as George has been converting some (the more important ones) as he goes and has time for.

Also bear in mind the file size that T will end up having by the time it's a complete, finished product. It's going to be huge and cumbersome for those of us on dial-up to try and download the game.

Will it be worth the long wait? You bet your Tinkers tricks it will be!

I searched and searched and tested : this was the only game that delivered everything I needed for action, adventure: no " the same same" with every game.......and it was not dependent on the internet....which is great because it cost a fortune here.

file size.......too big is too much, I rejected alot of things because of the size and it would cost me to download with no real knowledge of would i even want to keep it.

file size is very important: alot of the demands on the game and great minds and especially George I often think are huge , and we always assume they deliver it with ease because they are awesome people that do with such style it is amazing .

I love the game, I do not always appreciate some of the non official version differences ( thats because I love the game and any variant that is not perfect would drive me nuts ) ......but it is a " process" and I do not care if it turns into a 300mb file : if it is official and approved by the Great Designer: I would spend the internet allowance to get it.
===========
My only concern is for new players that would not know what they are really getting, so I would suggest.........
Leaving the original smaller file of the game for download for new players to experience this awesomeness and THEN after they do they will undoubtedly go for the larger file after they know what to expect.

In my research, I know this game had reviews that raved to no end long before the rest of us found it......I would copy and paste a few but the players were so excited they forgot to use PG- rated words preceding the word S COMMENTS :
" AWESOME!!" ; " i CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS FREE!" ; " THIS IS THE BEST GAME I EVER PLAYED !!!!! "
( same stuff we say just alot older comments )

[PM]

Of course I realize the time it takes to re-render all of the ships, and make armor and shield HUD graphics for them. I did just that, with relatively few exceptions, for Playership Drones v3, and the work was tedious. I pity other mod makers who want forty facings for most ships in their mods. At the very least, they will need to split their mod into multiple files at Xelerus.

[Hatsuya Kanzaki]

So I'm the black sheep of the modders: I have 36-facings, 10-degrees each.

[RPC]

Don't forget that Djohaal (these are some epic suns he made http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23352181/SunZ.bmp and http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23352181/Hacked ... ion%21.png) and Digdug Crystal Clear Iocrym are our re-rendering the Vanilla stuff in 40 facings (Djohaal would have done 60 or more facings but AI can't handle it I guess )
This is the close we can get without asking George to redo them himself. (and in the process delay Trans 2.0 a bit longer...)

[digdug]

Digdug Crystal Clear Iocrym are our re-rendering the Vanilla stuff in 40 facings (Djohaal would have done 60 or more facings but AI can't handle it I guess )

Actually, the Command ship in Crystal Clear Iocrym is 60-facings (300x18000 pixels), and works very well, the AI has no problem with it. I just had to change the maneuver value so that the ship would turn the same amounts of degrees/tick. (maneuver12*20facings/60facings = manuever 4)

The problem comes with small fast and agile ships, the manuever value is already too small, so you can't have a higher-facings ship that turns with the same speed.

In any case, I believe that at least the large ships should have a higher facings number: phobos, xenophobe worldship and ark, and CSC can be 60-facings, since they are slow enough to have the manuever value increased to compensate.

So in my opinion, a project to re-render large ships could be feasible.

[PM]

In an early version of Playership Drones v2, I had a 60 facings Aquila (with maneuverability scaled down to a third). During a (godmode) playthrough, I noticed the Aquila could not consistently follow the player. Sometimes, it would drift away from the playership while wobbling and sidewinding in a futile attempt to point its nose toward the playership. It would simply rotate back and forth. When I scaled the Aquila back to 40 facings (and half maneuverability), the problem was fixed. I came to the conclusion that the AI does not support more than 40 facings. This is a shame. I would like to rerender many ships with more facings, even up to 180 facings for very slow turning ships like the Antares and CSCs.

[Ttech]

I think you have become another person to discover the that in game AI is rather drunk. Seriously though I have heard that the AI does not support as many facings and the player ships and that the player ships work strangely past a certain amount. Though I don't remember the exact numbers.

[digdug]

I had a 60 facings Aquila (with maneuverability scaled down to a third). During a (godmode) playthrough, I noticed the Aquila could not consistently follow the player. Sometimes, it would drift away from the playership while wobbling and sidewinding in a futile attempt to point its nose toward the playership. It would simply rotate back and forth. When I scaled the Aquila back to 40 facings (and half maneuverability), the problem was fixed.

good to know, I thought it was only a maneuverability problem.

What about a 45-facings ship ?

[shanejfilomena]

reminder ??

The fundamental limit is the frame-rate, which is currently at 30 frames per second (and is actually pretty hard to change).

I believe that the Sapphire and the Wolfen are already turning at the fastest possible rate (one facing per frame).

Even if this were "fixed" by increasing the frame-rate of the game, it would then make the ship harder to aim (the player would have trouble turning by a single facing).

What I would consider (though probably post-1.0) is a modifier key that adjusts the turn rate (i.e., maybe hitting Alt+arrow turns the ship faster [by multiple facings per frame]).

Another possibility is to accelerate the turning when you hold down the key--that is, adding rotational momentum (this might make more sense for the freighter).

that is not to suggest I see these "facing" conversations just drag on and on :
but of course...................................telling you artists anything is like talking to a angry Teraton..

[PM]

(To digdug) I do not know, have not tried it. However, even ships with 40 facings have trouble if their turning speed gets slowed by excessive mass.

[PM]

I just tried an Aquila playership with 120 facings, and I liked what I saw: very smooth animation. I am hooked! I will render some more ships and rotate the exhaust sprites then see what happens. If AI gets changed to support large number of facings, one thing I like to do for Playership Drones is have every ship with a maneuverability of 2, and each ship have the proper amount of facings needed.

[PM]

I tried a CSC playership with 180 facings, and did not find any problems while piloting it. However, two files (bmp mask and jpg) of a 180 facings CSC are huge -- about 1.84 MB when zipped together. Also, 120 facings Aquila is about 672 KB zipped. I imagine a mod that increase the facings of all slow turning ships would be huge. In other words, not Xelerus friendly.