Mouse aim and strafing, is it possible?

Freeform discussion about anything related to modding Transcendence.
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mordrax
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I've been loving this game over the years but the thing that's always frustrated me is the inability to use any weapon other than 'Omni' ones effectively for ship to ship combat. (Kinetic weapons would be alot more fun and skill-intensive with mouse aim and strafe.)
Having to micro-manage rotation of ship to the nth degree becomes increasingly harder the further you are away from the target. This post hits the nail on the head(https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... use#p63486)

I'd like to mod in strafing and mouse aim. Is this possible to do and how would I start down this path?
Please be nice if you've already had to answer this over and over, my preliminary search came up with the question, but no answers:
https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... use#p63486
https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... use#p62331
https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... use#p61843
etc...

I'd imagine that it would need to be supported natively... at least onscreen position of the ship and mouse has to be available. Even if the memory location of these coords were available, you could then manually send windows events for directional keydowns.
bzm3r
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I'd be interested in knowing if this is possible too. Just out of curiosity. Likely, George would be the best person to answer it.
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Song
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Mouseaim's pretty much the second most requested feature ever (behind multiplayer), but it's technically challenging to implement. I think the last time George answered questions about it (IRC day last year) it basically boiled down to a "We'll see in due course". CSC America may make things a bit more possible since it may require some mouse support additions to the engine....but CSC America is standalone, so if that sort of code does exist, it'd need to be ported back. It's certainly not impossible, but don't hold your breath.


In terms of strafing, there was a mod that did that, years ago. I think Prophet made it as a proof of concept. It's not as useful as you'd think, but it's kinda neat at times.
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george moromisato
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In order for mouse aim to work we would have to radically change the mechanics of the game. Definitely check out Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ) for an example of how it would work.

The biggest difference is that ships have to move very slowly for mouse aim to work (otherwise you won't be able to click on your target). You would be unable to have swarms of little ships moving fast. In fact, you'd probably have to fight only a few ships at a time rather than dozens.

At some point (not in the 1.6 release) I'll implement some way to get mouse input. At that point, it should be possible to create a mod to simulate mouse aim. But I suspect the results will not be that great. Still, it is worth trying.

p.s.: CSC America is more like an RTS. Instead of aiming with the mouse you click on targets with the mouse. The AI then does all the dog fighting for you. This works for an RTS (where you control dozens of ships) but note for a one-ship game like Transcendence.
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Shrike wrote: In terms of strafing, there was a mod that did that, years ago. I think Prophet made it as a proof of concept. It's not as useful as you'd think, but it's kinda neat at times.
This mod: http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=738 installs a launcher weapon with infinite ammo and invisible/virtual shots which have sideways momentum
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Atarlost
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Strafing really needs to either be hard coded or for mods to have lower level UI access. 'h' and ';' are unbound and in workable places for strafe keys, but we can't listen for keypresses outside dockscreens. I'd wanted them for single facing rotation, but unless we move the map from 'm' there's a shortage of open keys in the control cluster.
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mordrax
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Great responses guys, looks like I won't be tinkering with it just yet.
The biggest difference is that ships have to move very slowly for mouse aim to work (otherwise you won't be able to click on your target). You would be unable to have swarms of little ships moving fast. In fact, you'd probably have to fight only a few ships at a time rather than dozens.
I'd argue this is not the case because what I was looking for was just a alternative way of aiming the player ship rather than using left/right rotational keys (sorry 'mouse aim' is ambiguous here, mouse rotate?). It shouldn't affect gameplay at all. The benefit would be to be able to line up the mouse with the visual display enhancer or track enemy ship trajectory as they fly by. It would also make mining with a mining laser so much easier and fun... hehe
Currently, I set a very small velocity perpendicular to the asteroid field I want to mine, hold space and press 'a'. So my ship flys by and the laser kinda does a scan through the whole field.

It sounds like you are talking about implementing a click to target mechanism with the mouse. I think the current hotkeys t/f to cycle between friend and foe works great for auto targetting weapons.

Strafing would be great so you don't have to turn in the direction you want to accelerate in, being able to more easily dodge missile/canons without doing circles and losing the target. With stations, I find myself either bruteforcing it with guns and missiles or sniping with thermo rounds from afar and the latter is tricky because you have to align yourself quite accurately with the visual aid (red dot on border of screen).

SPAZ looks like what I want to mod into Transcendence. I don't particularly like the inertia decay in that game, makes it just like any other top/down shooter. But the mouse rotate and 360 deg thrusters are what I'd want to try out.
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