Jump Improvements?

Can you make a center tube that has the same kind of red glow as the station reactors? Even if we don't keep it, it would be interesting to see. How about an easy first try of just building one for the straight sections? (not the end piece until we move the player start position) If we like how it works, then we can consider adding it to the curves. Having a center object would add to the challenge considerably. I would make that center section a part of the outer tube sim. Meaning one avatar so the ends match up correctly.

It might be possible to spawn lights out of the center piece, if we get it to work.

I have another idea we can try. We change the lights so they don't end the player game, instead the player can pass through them. (there is a no-collision function used between docking ships). Instead of having the game end instantly, the light either does a bit of damage to the player, and/or slows the player down. Then the player might even use the lights on some runs. Like if you are boosting down a straight section with a hard turn at the bottom, then you smack into a group of lights to kill your velocity, and then make the turn. It opens up some gameplay options.

I could do that. I am not sure how much that is going to add to the simulation. With some work it might. How did you make the connections between the lights in that old hacking sim you made? Something like that might work.

Also, what about having some kind of invisible ship firing beams or bolts through the tunnel, to simulate 'energy' spikes of some kind? I think I can offset the end of the mounted weapon so such a ship will be missing the player most of the time, whilst adding some pizzaz to the sim.

I used beam weapon sims. The problem with those is that they are very thin. I what I would like to try is something at least at thick as the ship. Something that constrains movement inside the tunnel. The prototypes dont have to glow. Can you just create the inside tube as a narrower version of the outside tube?

Weapon bolts are sims like any other and can be created by pog directly and placed into the game. So we could create "bolt generators" that toss bolts down the length of a section. The trick is getting them aimed down the tube correctly, since the whole sim can twist and turn.

I think it is pretty easy to change the thickness of the sims. Just a setting in the lws file. I am imagining them not running the length of the tunnel, but rather cutting across it perpendicular. Arcing I guess. If they were thick enough They would be significant barriers that the player would have to fly around.

For those who have not played EoC in a long while, check out Outro.bik for the movie version of the capsule jump.

The idea for the central core is to block off some player paths. The central core can snake independently of the walls, allowing it to block some paths.

I tried it in the straight section and it works pretty well. The player has to move around it inside the tube. This would allow setting up clusters of lights that pretty well block up some paths.

I could add some code that would allow placing beam sims. They would have a sim name, a start position and an end position. The beam is stretched from start to end (length can be controlled from pog, but not width.) They don't really look much like arcs. They could run between glowing lights, giving a lightning effect. Or used to run beween lights and the outer walls.

The walls and lights cannot be destroyed, so the beams will not damage them.

I am working on code that disrupts the player ship near some types of lights.

Here is a link to the forum post describing how to make some textures glow. I was trying to remember how this was done. Now I just need to find my lightwave install disks...
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1590

One issue that's really bothering me lately is the fact that during the first three seconds of entering capsule space, your ship is nearly unmaneuverable and if there are any PCBs in the way, you're completely helpless to do anything about it.

Is it possible to start the player's ship moving at the same speed he entered the L-point? People who want to throw caution into the wind can thread a needle at 10 km/s for all I care -- people like me who like being a little more careful can thread the needle at 250 m/s and then accelerate once they can actually see where they're going.


Another issue that's bugging me is that the 3.0 km range before transitioning to capsule space seems really high, given that I'm used to flying directly through the green ring in the centre of the Lagrange point to transition. Is it possible to be more mathematically precise (to compute whether the player is flying through the ring using mathemagics) or at the very least to drop that down to about 1.0 km?

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This is a public service announcement: Please look through all six degrees of freedom before crossing the L-point.