Raz

23rd February 2003 04:12 UTC

new ship
sorry for posting an entire new thread for this but...
I made a bit of a different ship to my in pursuit one and it shoots out some texered dots. only sometimes the dots fire out at the right place though. can anyone help me sort them out so they fire out at the right place every time?
thanks in advance...

anubis2003

23rd February 2003 04:37 UTC

Alright, first off, the missiles/whatever shouldn't turn with the ship - they should just go off in a straight line. And I'm not sure what is causing the shots to go off from weird places, but it is probably a small mistake with the numbers keeping them in synch.

dirkdeftly

23rd February 2003 19:16 UTC

Anubis: The missles SHOULD turn with the ship cos otherwise it looks like the ship is just turning around shooting randomly. However, a starfield should be added to clarify the fact that it's a camera movement, and the ship itself is actually moving. And, as we said in the starbug thread, USE DEPTH COLORING AND MAXBLEND. Otherwise it looks like the back node of the ship is in front of it's body. Remember, superscopes aren't drawn in the order they appear to the camera - they're drawn in the order they're placed :)
Also, those missles could be a lot smaller and clearer to the observer. You should also make about 6 of them all together (3 shots) so if you get a beat and another beat you don't have a pair of shots suddenly dissapearing. And when they go off into the distance, have them dissapear instead of sticking to a position and being a distraction.
Lastly, you've kept the missles hanging onto the ship on-load. Ugly :p

Raz

23rd February 2003 20:04 UTC

I just havent made a starfield yet, too lazy. I id use the maxblend on everything at first but i didnt like the way the two lines went through the middle bit. Redone it a bit now. The lazer thingys are better now, i think they shoot from the right place anyway. They still need work though. Like they should disappear into the distance instead of hanging in the distance. Irritating

anubis2003

23rd February 2003 22:02 UTC

Alright, I didn't realize that the camera was moving around. I thought the ship was moving and the camera was merely following it - that's why I thought it looked weird when the shots didn't travel in a straight path, but turned with the ship.

Raz

23rd February 2003 22:22 UTC

yeah its a little confusing without a decent background, heres a decidedly shit starfield. Ill make a better one or a different location when i can be arsed.

anubis2003

23rd February 2003 23:23 UTC

The starfield clumps together a bit too much. It isn't terrible though.

UnConeD

24th February 2003 00:51 UTC

- Fix aspect ratio
- Fix the starfield random generator to be more uniform
- Vary star brightness
- Make the ship rotation less bouncy and smoother
- Code several missile scopes that can coexist (and get turned on in sequence) so older ones don't disappear onbeat. Make missiles fade out to make it managable
- There's something weird going on when it rotates, as if the ship flips around. It's happening because you're using max blend... if you want to use maxblend, you need to use z-colorcoding. Otherwise you'll need to sort the scopes from back to front when drawing. Either you'll need to limit the angle of drawing, or you'll need to use some smart scope coding to avoid unnecessary duplication.
- The stars look wrong and unsynched... not sure why.

Raz

24th February 2003 00:56 UTC

Thanks for the tips, going to do more work on it. the starfield is a piece of shit i know, its one of the sphere scopes made really big with dots turned on, ill make an independant starfield when my laziness lets me, right now its just a background.

Raz

24th February 2003 04:24 UTC

jesus, the time i spent on this and the best comment i got was "its not terrible"...... :igor:

anubis2003

24th February 2003 04:46 UTC

I'm just having trouble seeing how it is shooting - this looks weird to me. And then the starfield isn't that great either, but you said you're going to work on that, so it could be nice when you get done.

Jaheckelsafar

24th February 2003 05:15 UTC

How's this for a better commant.

Things are getting better. Can't wait to see the finished product.

edit:

You gonna make it so the ship travels in more than one direction?

shreyas_potnis

24th February 2003 15:29 UTC

I dont know whether this technique is correct, but it works allright:
to make a starfield, just duplicate one of the sychronized scopes,
then replace:
x1=sin(i*some huge no.);y1=cos(i*anotherhugeno.);
z1=sin(i*one more huge no);
then for the 2d/3d conversion use;
x=x3/z3;y=y3/z3;
then you dont have to bother about the camera for the stars, it just works fine

Raz

24th February 2003 16:12 UTC

if the huge numbers are the same it makes a huge circle, if you do them different it just makes some dots in the screen. It needs to move with the same camera rotation as the ship so that the different bits of the preset work together in harmony, ive already done a better one but it needs work and a better colour coding thing. Its not bad but you can get the same effect from just adding a starfield.

dirkdeftly

24th February 2003 20:52 UTC

x=i*91261.6+i*i*47562.4+i*i*i*76994.9+i*i*sqrt(i)*41838.7;
y=i*12842.3+i*i*69613.2+i*i*i*92433.1+i*i*sqrt(i)*71737.4;
x=((x+i*i*i*sqrt(i)*(7126+asx)+sin(i*31)*(3169+ssx)+sx)%w)/w*2-1;
y=((y+i*i*i*sqrt(i)*(9243+asy)+sin(i*40)*(6512+ssy)+sy)%h)/h*2-1;
that's a generator i'm using in a preset for tff3 (or 4, i can't decide whether i want to release it now...it just dwarfs all of my other presets :D )
the unknown variables you see there are just timers, btw
anyway, it's basically just a matter of combining a bunch of powers of i and/or it's periodic trig functions.

x=((i*91261.6+i*i*47562.4+i*i*i*76994.9+i*i*sqrt(i)*41838.7)%w)/w*2-1;
y=((i*12842.3+i*i*69613.2+i*i*i*92433.1+i*i*sqrt(i)*71737.4)%h)/h*2-1;
that's a simplified, static version of the above generator. it doesn't (or, at least, it shouldn't) take much effort to apply that to the z-axis also. to make it look spherical, you could either a) use 3D polar coordinates and apply the same algorithm to r1, r2, and d, or b) cut out/fade out anything where x^2+y^2+z^2>1