Just checking. Still no sensor/stealth hotkey?

Man, I haven't been in back in this community in . . . years... It's nice to see that it's still around.

I just got back into EoC, squeezing out every red cent of my GameCommander 2. I'm just wondering if anyone has figured out a way to have the active sensors/stealth components togglable via keyboard hotkey. I ran a search -- the last post about this (that I found) was in Feb of 2003.

No one has yet discovered an easy way to manipulate the drive/power consumption/ Sensor brightness that's simulated by flux in the engineering screen.

On the other hand there is a very easy way to hide your ship completly. It would only require a little pog script and a keybind. Theoretically one could also reduce brightness to nearly any value by the same, or a simular, method. That would however be independent of the settings in the Eng. screen or the TRI and might "unbalance" the game.

It depends on what you wanted it for?

Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Well basically, I wanted to have a voice command tied to the active sensors and stealth. So isntead of miandering through the engineering screen, I could just say, "Active sensors on/off," without taking my attention away from the action.

And the way GameCommander works; it ties a voice command to a keyboard key. So when I say, "Initiate dock," it will tap the F8 key for me instead of having me reach over to do it.

Heh. I know it sounds lazy, but my joystick setup puts the keyboard a bit of a stretch from my chair. But still, the game feels so much more involved when you're screaming orders at your T-fighters, or cursing at Jafs for taking his sweet ol' time.

'-p

Hi Wes,

So how well does the GameCommander work? How much CPU time does it take? I thought speech recognition was pretty processor intensive?

How long are the phrases? Could you put in something like

"Station, requesting docking clearance".

If I understand the system right, that would turn into a request-for-dock keybind. That would start a pog function. And the pog function would prompt the station to say:

"Answering. Docking request granted, you are cleared for approach."




-Gtrout

Hey, GT.

Well, I'm using an Athlon 2400, so processor speed is not a big deal for me. '-p Though, I did buy it when I still had my old Pentium 200 Mz -- and it ran like crap. The games chugged whenever I issued a command, and there was like, a ten second delay. But now, it's almost instantanious with no performance troubles in the game itself.

I don't mess with the scripting though. I have all my commands tagged to the regular hotkeys. But I do have quite a few commands. And in the middle of combat, the microphone is assaulted with sounds and such. So to avoid accedental commands, I sat each command to end with a "sleep" function that blocks out all sound until the program picks up on the wake-up word, "Computer." I also have sounds associated with each command so I know what's being done.

So if I want to dock, I do the following.

Select the target.

Me: "Computer."

*computer beeps*

Me: "Initiate dock."

Computer: "Dock."

GameCommander presses F8 for me.

Or if I want to undock.

Select the target.

Me: "Computer."

*computer beeps*

Me: "Go for undock."

GameCommander presses U for me.

Computer: "Docking hatch cleared."

Most of the commands require me to say "Computer" in order to be picked up, to avoid sound confusion. Wingman and T-Fighter commands, however, are set to activate without the wake-up word.

But as you can imagine, it can get pretty cool in the middle of combat.

"Fire at will! Fire at will!"

*T-Fighters autofire engaged*

"Computer, manual aim!"

Manual aim...

"Fighters, go go go!"

"All wings to me!"

"Protecting you..."

"Computer, bring up engineering!"

"Engineering online."

"All wings, attack target!"

"Attacking..."

-- And when it's all done --

"Ladies, come on home."

*T-fighters dock up*

"Computer, call Jafs."

"Calling..."

Etc amd so forth... You get the general idea. Perhaps the best thing about GC is that you don't need to train with it. In fact, it's almost better if you *don't* train. I find that it recognizes my commands 99% untrained, and about 85% trained... Go figure. Of course, untrained runs the risk of outside sounds activating a command -- which is why all my crucial navigational commands are locked with the wake-up word.

Anyway... I just wish I can just activate the active sensors and stealth programs with a voice command instead of flicking through the engineering screen.

You coders should know... What's so difficult about binding a hotkey command for the sensors? Is it something hardcodded into the EXE?

The issue is that we really only code in a scripting language with a defined interface to the game engine. So if the interface gives us no way to do this thing, then we can't. Or better said, it gets much, much harder. Quite a few things have been worked around. And Flamineo did write a POG layer for subsystems that makes controlling them much easier. It does allow turning off active sensors from the compact engineering screen. So it is possible, but not simple.

Funny how that works sometimes. You want to create 200 stations near your ship with a single keybind? Easy, about 20 lines of code. You want to turn off your active sensors with a keybind? Very hard, 1000 lines of code and no promises it will always work.

PS: sounds like GameCommander would really increase the immersion. Can you use other "lockout" words, besides "computer"? It would be fun to give your ship crew stations: Navigation, Engineering, Comm, Weapons, that kind of thing. Or use multiple words?

-Gtrout