Ship Break Up

[Ozymandias]

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 3:35 pm

Last edited by Ozymandias on February 2nd, 2009, 8:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is actually something I doubt I will ever see but I bet you guys have already considered it.

I was hoping something might be added to the patch project to control how a ship breaks up when it explodes. I really don't like the way it just breaks into large fragments at the moment it looks very unrealistic.

The way I see this working in my head is that when a ship explodes you can replace the ship with a SOD of your choosing completely so there is no breaking apart it just disappears and this SOD appears. So you can have this SOD that appears animated to look like the ship breaking up the way you want.

This idea has some problems (baring the fact it's probably impossible) in that it would be difficult to have parts vaporised unless you had large chunks of ship left to hide them in but then what happens to these parts do they just hang around or do they vanish.

Anyway I just wondered if you guys had any thoughts.

posted on February 2nd, 2009, 9:54 pm

I think this goes along with the whole "it would be cool if not all the ships blew up... but some classes were salvageable after being 'killed'" argument... which I really like too 

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 4:44 am

Ah you can already ajust that. Just open your ART.CFG file and find these lines near the top

// Storm3D chunk manager parameters.
int  ST3D_CHUNK_MANAGER_MAX_CHUNKS = 5000;
float ST3D_CHUNK_SIZE_FACTOR = 0.0000005;
float ST3D_CHUNK_LIFETIME_AVG = 3.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_LIFETIME_DEVIATION = 4.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_MAX_ANGULAR_VELOCITY = 8.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_MAX_VELOCITY = 120.0;

I will assume the what each line does is self explanitory

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 12:42 pm

Ah you can already ajust that. Just open your ART.CFG file and find these lines near the top

// Storm3D chunk manager parameters.
int   ST3D_CHUNK_MANAGER_MAX_CHUNKS = 5000;
float ST3D_CHUNK_SIZE_FACTOR = 0.0000005;
float ST3D_CHUNK_LIFETIME_AVG = 3.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_LIFETIME_DEVIATION = 4.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_MAX_ANGULAR_VELOCITY = 8.0;
float ST3D_CHUNK_MAX_VELOCITY = 120.0;

I will assume the what each line does is self explanitory

That's pretty cool I have seen that before just completely forgot about it still I'd really like to have more control.

Take a sovereign for example you could have it break up into big or little chunks but that wouldn't be the same as a SOD animation showing it break down into large chunks of ship with innards showing and stuff like that.

What I suggested would give you the freedom to have small ships basically obliterated and large ships just break up.

Still thanks for reminding me about that stuff starfox

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 1:00 pm

Like in Bridge Commander & Legacy? I think someone mentioned that before.

posted on February 3rd, 2009, 6:34 pm

You are welcome Crazy Moose. The only other "control" besides break nodes which would function before the ship is destroyed I can think of would be the chunk manager. But if to make changes of then the ART.cfg controles Thwould requier a major reprogram.

posted on February 6th, 2009, 2:42 am

Possibly if the ship is being hit with a very powerful weapon or allot of weapons at the pond of exploits the expiation would levee nothing but particles but if the ship that exposed is being hit with a smaller or modest weapon it would have larger fragments.

What do you think?

posted on March 29th, 2009, 9:01 pm

Like in Bridge Commander & Legacy? I think someone mentioned that before.

That was me 

I think it would be cool if the team could find a way to make each ship have its own values for the above mentioned variables, and if the team or some volunteers spent a month or so playing around with them on each ship it wouldn't take long to have good looking effects.

And if we want to implement ewms idea, then just make the variables assigned by the weapon hit instead, and choose whether it should override the ships values, have some kind of explosion type "priority" on weapons and ships, deciding which explosion parameters get used for every ship/weapon combination with minimal coding effort...damn I want to code this so much 

posted on March 31st, 2009, 2:08 pm

The way I see this working in my head is that when a ship explodes you can replace the ship with a SOD of your choosing completely so there is no breaking apart it just disappears and this SOD appears. So you can have this SOD that appears animated to look like the ship breaking up the way you want.

yea, optec had exactly the same thought. we have discussed it and though you can make some very cool effects with this possibility, we came to the conclusion that it might look strange if every vessel explodes exactly the same way plus you had to preload a lot of sods for each vessel not to forget all the work you had for every ship model to script a nice looking explosion...
i think a breakup model or something similar would be the better approach, as parts could have a dynamic movement. but yea, i haven't a good solution for that yet.
i like ewm's idea with the size of the 'chunks' depending on the used weapon.

posted on March 31st, 2009, 10:20 pm

Now I have this image in my head of a destroyer hit by the Negh'var Weapon Overload just...ceasing.  No chunks, just gone, because there wasn't enough of it left to fly apart.

posted on April 2nd, 2009, 8:00 pm

yea, optec had exactly the same thought. we have discussed it and though you can make some very cool effects with this possibility, we came to the conclusion that it might look strange if every vessel explodes exactly the same way plus you had to preload a lot of sods for each vessel not to forget all the work you had for every ship model to script a nice looking explosion...
i think a breakup model or something similar would be the better approach, as parts could have a dynamic movement. but yea, i haven't a good solution for that yet.
i like ewm's idea with the size of the 'chunks' depending on the used weapon.

Hmm great minds think alike maybe .

Wouldn't it just be one extra SOD for each ship? I like the dynamic breakup idea and it's a better system than what he have now but it lacks freedom for the modders.

Perhaps it would be possible to select an explosion mode for a ship so you could have a2 original shattering effect, dynamic break up or for a select number of special ships the replacement on destruction.

Just an idea, to be honest the reason I ask is only because I have a mod in mind where I may want ships to implode before exploding and perhaps others would like to have that option to, I'm assuming it wouldn't be possible with dynamic explosions.

posted on April 2nd, 2009, 8:13 pm

1324 .sods in the game?!?!?  Is it just me or does the game already run slow on some computers

posted on April 2nd, 2009, 10:13 pm

sure, that would mean an extra sod for each vessel, or to find a way to incorporate a breakup model in existant sods. but it's not working yet anyway

posted on April 2nd, 2009, 10:22 pm

Maybe you guys could write a 3D explosion program.   It would be cool to see a ship loosing atmosphere then break apart.  No Fireball though. That would be unrealistic. (if any body cares about realism.)

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 12:22 am

What makes the fireball unrealistic? Wouldn't the atmosphere escaping the ship sustain one for a very brief period?