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I was considering something along those lines for use against REM missiles.
You are also overlooking that you will be able to lock onto a missile and shoot at it with your main weapons. 😛 Fighters will carry normal flares as well, so they can spoof some missiles. Also, there’s the logistics of it; fighters are going to be in abundance because of their very low cost. Fighters are most effective in swarms.
I’m sure you all are worried about the Storm Petrel :V this ship is unique, since it can carry more flares than a regular fighter and has two weapons rather than one, so it’s better at shooting them down. Plus, missiles with lower payloads or that explode farther away will not completely destroy it because of the larger size. Oh, and it is faster than normal fighters, and actually I plan for it to be faster than the cheap Harrower missiles, which are your only real missile-opposition in act 0, unless you tick off the cops or something.
In real life, missiles are faster and more agile than any fighter, and the absence of an atmosphere does not change that. Say space fighters can pull 250 m/s^2 of acceleration. A missile can easily do 500 or more. It’s not interested in conserving enough fuel to make long space trips; it’s just gotta kamikaze into a target.
Oh, and fighters rarely operate alone; they’re usually support for big ships or stations, and can fly near them for point-defense covering fire! 😀 When fighters are used in a scout role, they normally will not engage targets that potentially could be carrying lots of missiles. In act 0, the puffin and spider tugs you fight will only carry a few, and you can spoof them, shoot them, hide behind debris, or try to tank the hit. Tactics, boys. Tactics. 😉
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂I was considering something along those lines for use against REM missiles.
You are also overlooking that you will be able to lock onto a missile and shoot at it with your main weapons. 😛 Fighters will carry normal flares as well, so they can spoof some missiles. Also, there’s the logistics of it; fighters are going to be in abundance because of their very low cost. Fighters are most effective in swarms.
I’m sure you all are worried about the Storm Petrel :V this ship is unique, since it can carry more flares than a regular fighter and has two weapons rather than one, so it’s better at shooting them down. Plus, missiles with lower payloads or that explode farther away will not completely destroy it because of the larger size. Oh, and it is faster than normal fighters, and actually I plan for it to be faster than the cheap Harrower missiles, which are your only real missile-opposition in act 0, unless you tick off the cops or something.
In real life, missiles are faster and more agile than any fighter, and the absence of an atmosphere does not change that. Say space fighters can pull 250 m/s^2 of acceleration. A missile can easily do 500 or more. It’s not interested in conserving enough fuel to make long space trips; it’s just gotta kamikaze into a target.
Oh, and fighters rarely operate alone; they’re usually support for big ships or stations, and can fly near them for point-defense covering fire! 😀 When fighters are used in a scout role, they normally will not engage targets that potentially could be carrying lots of missiles. In act 0, the puffin and spider tugs you fight will only carry a few, and you can spoof them, shoot them, hide behind debris, or try to tank the hit. Tactics, boys. Tactics. 😉
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Actually, in EoC there is a minimum ship size, below which your weapons will have no dispersion/scatter whatsoever. I hated it and thought it was completely unrealistic and massively “gamey” so I ain’t replicating it. So, even though your weapons will track more intelligently, the chance of a shot actually going directly center to the target is fairly low unless you upgrade the heck out of your weapon. You’ll have to either spam shots with a rapid-fire weapon, get really close (hard to do to a fighter) OR do what I intend: use a missile. Even a simple harrower missile can wipe out a fighter, and the missiles in the game are getting serious buffs to flight capabilities and intelligence. Basically, you’re not dodging. :V A fighter can potentially spoof missiles with flares, but it isn’t guaranteed, and you can spam a whole swarm at them if you want them dead. Finally, a reason to pack missile launchers in the medium hardpoints! 😀
Imagine the glory that will be deadshot missiles :3
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Actually, in EoC there is a minimum ship size, below which your weapons will have no dispersion/scatter whatsoever. I hated it and thought it was completely unrealistic and massively “gamey” so I ain’t replicating it. So, even though your weapons will track more intelligently, the chance of a shot actually going directly center to the target is fairly low unless you upgrade the heck out of your weapon. You’ll have to either spam shots with a rapid-fire weapon, get really close (hard to do to a fighter) OR do what I intend: use a missile. Even a simple harrower missile can wipe out a fighter, and the missiles in the game are getting serious buffs to flight capabilities and intelligence. Basically, you’re not dodging. :V A fighter can potentially spoof missiles with flares, but it isn’t guaranteed, and you can spam a whole swarm at them if you want them dead. Finally, a reason to pack missile launchers in the medium hardpoints! 😀
Imagine the glory that will be deadshot missiles :3
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂“WARNING: WALL-O’-TEXT LAUNCH DETECTED”
Many apologies for completely failing to keep updating this thread; I’ve mostly just been posting updates on the Discord. 😛 I have quite a bit of stuff to mention!
Update on personal stuff: It seems my last post here in this thread was in September. o.O It does make sense though; at that time, I got sick and tired of being in high school, bent down, and worked my face off. I graduated at the end of last December, had already enrolled in college classes in November, and last spring was my first semester in college. It went great and I can confirm I am majoring in Computer Science. 😀 It did leave little time for hobbies, since I took 16 credits (full-time is 12) and I am gonna take 16 again in the fall semester which starts at the end of August. I’m also under a bit of pressure to find a part-time job as well, since I need to fund college from financial aid and out-of-pocket. I’m very skeptical of student loans and would prefer not to have to take any, even if it means working part-time while doing college full-time. 😛 Hence, the remake activity will likely be slow, except during summer breaks.
So enough about me! Let’s talk remake! 😀
There’s a time limit on post edits, so I cannot actually edit the post I reserved on the first page. I’m gonna PM Schmatzler and ask for MOAR PARMESANS. I am going to put a to-do list there, containing all the individual components of what I’m announcing in the next paragraph. As I complete them, I’ll edit the post to reflect that.
I’m in a good place to now announce that I am working on a playable prototype-test of the remake. 😉 Contain your excitement; it’s gonna be very basic. Here’s the gist: you’re in a Heavy Corvette, armed with (at the current stage of planning) two PBCs, a light PBC, two racks of Seekers, and a countermeasure launcher. Enemies (also Heavy Corvettes (subject to change though), with similar or identical armament) spawn about 15km away. First wave has 1, each successive wave has 1 more. You will eventually die, I guarantee it. :3 The idea is for people to provide feedback on the “feel” of the combat, and how much it immerses one into a universe that can clearly be identified as I-War. Probably, the models are gonna be untextured gray, the visual effects will be simple, and the damage model will be exactly the same as EoC but without system damage.
As likely none of you want to wait around for me to edit the first-page-post with status, bouncing in your seats like a toddler who needs to go, I’ll give you a rundown here of the progress towards this instant-action style playable test.
-Turreted and gimballed capability are both fully implemented, though no damage modeling yet. (It’s so simple I haven’t done it yet.)
-The ability of weapons to track and predict target movements is 100% implemented. I’m telling you, it’s crazy effective. There’s partial compensation for acceleration, something EoC had nothing of, and the target is tracked based on the location of the actual weapon, whereas EoC tracked from the center of your ship, making large ships with wide-flung weapons inaccurate.
-Turrets will track targets individually, based purely on proximity. They do ignore targets outside of range/firing-arcs, and will return to their rest position when no viable targets are available. Tested using a Gunstar model I dragged in. :3 The same one you’ve seen me post a couple screenshots of.
-Those four little brackets around a target, at the corners, are now implemented in a basic form. You have no idea how hard it is to do something so simple-seeming. XD If you saw the code I had to write to calculate the farthest-bounds of the collider, in screenspace, you’d have a seizure.
-A glorious, fully functioning sensor system, with persistent data on targets no longer detected. (Meaning once a hostile ain’t detected and you re-detect them, they’re still hostile. :V That bug was embarrassing.)
Yet to do:
-The rest of the HUD. XD Seriously. This will be kinda slow; HUDs aren’t easy.
-Missiles. Actually not that hard; I have a prototype created already.
-Basic combat AI. Oh boy, will this be hard, but gloriously fun to write. 😀 Won’t have collision avoidance though, not yet.
-A spawning algorithm. I have one in another project that I’ll just copy-paste, edit to work in 3-D space, and we’re good to go.
-The damage system. As simple as “shot deducts 100 health from 1,000 HP pool, once at 0, boom.” No damage modeling for systems will be in the test, nor will collisions inflict damage, since the AI won’t be unstupid enough to avoid those. :V I also have one of these in another project that I’ll just copy over.
-SHIELDS! The I-War franchise has the absolute best shield mechanic of any game I’ve ever seen, and I’ve played way too many. Implementing this will be FUN. 😀 It will be more realistic than EoC, with lighter weapons draining less shield power, and aspects of the EoC shields that they claimed were functional but actually weren’t (like the shield being unable to block a second shot within a minimum time) will be there. Oh boy, I genuinely cannot wait to work on this 😀 Plus the bugs will be hilarious. 😛 Oh, and because shielding, enjoy rippling refraction effects! 😀
-Music. Not like this is hard; literally just slap an audio file on the camera, set to loop, done. :3 You’re doing literally one thing: combat. I’ll use the vanilla game’s instant action music, obviously 😀
-Controller ID swapper. Lemme elaborate. Unity keeps track of game controllers by the numbers assigned to them, which is done by Windows. Unfortunately, if you have two identical controllers attached, Windows picks #1 and #2 at random when first detecting them, unless you plug them in while running in the order you want them. Even so, now and then, upon rebooting, it’s swapped them. 😛 It’s annoying, and Unity unfortunately has no way of distinguishing between identical sticks. In my case, i have two Thrustmaster T.16000M sticks. Left is translational control, right is attitude, but every now and then, Windows randomly swaps their IDs. So, I will implement a button in the Escape menu that will swap Unity’s ID on controllers 1 and 2, as long as you have two plugged in. Don’t use if you ain’t having this problem, though :V
Things that definitely won’t be in the test:
-LDS. Sorry, you’re not escaping these attackers. 😛 If you somehow do manage to get far enough away, maybe I’ll just kill you. I dunno. c: No capsule drive either, obviously.
-Graphics settings. Seriously, it’s not like there’s much in there to start with. 😛 If your PC is so potato that you can’t run a prototype test with the models literally pulled from the original game and untextured, with simple effects, then I have no words for you. :V
-Literally anything else I haven’t mentioned, with the possible exception of small random things I forgot.I started typing this at 5 AM and there’s a fair chance I forgot something obvious at some point. 😛 Hit me with your questions and comments, I wanna hear them. :3 Off to announce this post on the Discord,
then start pestering our dear Schmatzler.Edit: he has been pestered, and the second post in this thread now has a beautiful outline/roadmap of the progress towards the playable test for you to enjoy! 😀Happy Hunting!
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂“WARNING: WALL-O’-TEXT LAUNCH DETECTED”
Many apologies for completely failing to keep updating this thread; I’ve mostly just been posting updates on the Discord. 😛 I have quite a bit of stuff to mention!
Update on personal stuff: It seems my last post here in this thread was in September. o.O It does make sense though; at that time, I got sick and tired of being in high school, bent down, and worked my face off. I graduated at the end of last December, had already enrolled in college classes in November, and last spring was my first semester in college. It went great and I can confirm I am majoring in Computer Science. 😀 It did leave little time for hobbies, since I took 16 credits (full-time is 12) and I am gonna take 16 again in the fall semester which starts at the end of August. I’m also under a bit of pressure to find a part-time job as well, since I need to fund college from financial aid and out-of-pocket. I’m very skeptical of student loans and would prefer not to have to take any, even if it means working part-time while doing college full-time. 😛 Hence, the remake activity will likely be slow, except during summer breaks.
So enough about me! Let’s talk remake! 😀
There’s a time limit on post edits, so I cannot actually edit the post I reserved on the first page. I’m gonna PM Schmatzler and ask for MOAR PARMESANS. I am going to put a to-do list there, containing all the individual components of what I’m announcing in the next paragraph. As I complete them, I’ll edit the post to reflect that.
I’m in a good place to now announce that I am working on a playable prototype-test of the remake. 😉 Contain your excitement; it’s gonna be very basic. Here’s the gist: you’re in a Heavy Corvette, armed with (at the current stage of planning) two PBCs, a light PBC, two racks of Seekers, and a countermeasure launcher. Enemies (also Heavy Corvettes (subject to change though), with similar or identical armament) spawn about 15km away. First wave has 1, each successive wave has 1 more. You will eventually die, I guarantee it. :3 The idea is for people to provide feedback on the “feel” of the combat, and how much it immerses one into a universe that can clearly be identified as I-War. Probably, the models are gonna be untextured gray, the visual effects will be simple, and the damage model will be exactly the same as EoC but without system damage.
As likely none of you want to wait around for me to edit the first-page-post with status, bouncing in your seats like a toddler who needs to go, I’ll give you a rundown here of the progress towards this instant-action style playable test.
-Turreted and gimballed capability are both fully implemented, though no damage modeling yet. (It’s so simple I haven’t done it yet.)
-The ability of weapons to track and predict target movements is 100% implemented. I’m telling you, it’s crazy effective. There’s partial compensation for acceleration, something EoC had nothing of, and the target is tracked based on the location of the actual weapon, whereas EoC tracked from the center of your ship, making large ships with wide-flung weapons inaccurate.
-Turrets will track targets individually, based purely on proximity. They do ignore targets outside of range/firing-arcs, and will return to their rest position when no viable targets are available. Tested using a Gunstar model I dragged in. :3 The same one you’ve seen me post a couple screenshots of.
-Those four little brackets around a target, at the corners, are now implemented in a basic form. You have no idea how hard it is to do something so simple-seeming. XD If you saw the code I had to write to calculate the farthest-bounds of the collider, in screenspace, you’d have a seizure.
-A glorious, fully functioning sensor system, with persistent data on targets no longer detected. (Meaning once a hostile ain’t detected and you re-detect them, they’re still hostile. :V That bug was embarrassing.)
Yet to do:
-The rest of the HUD. XD Seriously. This will be kinda slow; HUDs aren’t easy.
-Missiles. Actually not that hard; I have a prototype created already.
-Basic combat AI. Oh boy, will this be hard, but gloriously fun to write. 😀 Won’t have collision avoidance though, not yet.
-A spawning algorithm. I have one in another project that I’ll just copy-paste, edit to work in 3-D space, and we’re good to go.
-The damage system. As simple as “shot deducts 100 health from 1,000 HP pool, once at 0, boom.” No damage modeling for systems will be in the test, nor will collisions inflict damage, since the AI won’t be unstupid enough to avoid those. :V I also have one of these in another project that I’ll just copy over.
-SHIELDS! The I-War franchise has the absolute best shield mechanic of any game I’ve ever seen, and I’ve played way too many. Implementing this will be FUN. 😀 It will be more realistic than EoC, with lighter weapons draining less shield power, and aspects of the EoC shields that they claimed were functional but actually weren’t (like the shield being unable to block a second shot within a minimum time) will be there. Oh boy, I genuinely cannot wait to work on this 😀 Plus the bugs will be hilarious. 😛 Oh, and because shielding, enjoy rippling refraction effects! 😀
-Music. Not like this is hard; literally just slap an audio file on the camera, set to loop, done. :3 You’re doing literally one thing: combat. I’ll use the vanilla game’s instant action music, obviously 😀
-Controller ID swapper. Lemme elaborate. Unity keeps track of game controllers by the numbers assigned to them, which is done by Windows. Unfortunately, if you have two identical controllers attached, Windows picks #1 and #2 at random when first detecting them, unless you plug them in while running in the order you want them. Even so, now and then, upon rebooting, it’s swapped them. 😛 It’s annoying, and Unity unfortunately has no way of distinguishing between identical sticks. In my case, i have two Thrustmaster T.16000M sticks. Left is translational control, right is attitude, but every now and then, Windows randomly swaps their IDs. So, I will implement a button in the Escape menu that will swap Unity’s ID on controllers 1 and 2, as long as you have two plugged in. Don’t use if you ain’t having this problem, though :V
Things that definitely won’t be in the test:
-LDS. Sorry, you’re not escaping these attackers. 😛 If you somehow do manage to get far enough away, maybe I’ll just kill you. I dunno. c: No capsule drive either, obviously.
-Graphics settings. Seriously, it’s not like there’s much in there to start with. 😛 If your PC is so potato that you can’t run a prototype test with the models literally pulled from the original game and untextured, with simple effects, then I have no words for you. :V
-Literally anything else I haven’t mentioned, with the possible exception of small random things I forgot.I started typing this at 5 AM and there’s a fair chance I forgot something obvious at some point. 😛 Hit me with your questions and comments, I wanna hear them. :3 Off to announce this post on the Discord,
then start pestering our dear Schmatzler.Edit: he has been pestered, and the second post in this thread now has a beautiful outline/roadmap of the progress towards the playable test for you to enjoy! 😀Happy Hunting!
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Thanks Chessking 🙂
Oregon is a character in a regular game mission; he’s not one of the generated missions. Generated missions are a big pile of entirely optional missions the game might throw at you; they’re simple things, usually a targeted piracy or assassination. In return, you’ll get a couple relatively rare goods or some equipment. (There’s one you can get from the MCA that will let you earn up to four PBCs – considering it’s impossible in the regular game, that’s a handy deal. Although I just go and load up six Pulse-Accelerated PBCs on my Corvette… 😛 ) They’re just nifty extra things you can do. They’re well written though, with great tying into the story line.
What triggers them? Honestly, I am not entirely sure, but I know that the first one pops up after your first stint at piracy, when Jafs informs you that he’s having trouble finding trade deals. I suspect that it’s triggered by having a good score after that first trip. I know that in my earlier years of I-War 2, I rarely got the missions, but now they’re run pretty much every single time. So, I believe it’s something to do with how much skill the game thinks you have.
You have me intrigued now… I’ll have to utilize my knowledge of the game’s file organization and try to find something that links to their trigger. 🙂
Happy Hunting!
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Thanks Chessking 🙂
Oregon is a character in a regular game mission; he’s not one of the generated missions. Generated missions are a big pile of entirely optional missions the game might throw at you; they’re simple things, usually a targeted piracy or assassination. In return, you’ll get a couple relatively rare goods or some equipment. (There’s one you can get from the MCA that will let you earn up to four PBCs – considering it’s impossible in the regular game, that’s a handy deal. Although I just go and load up six Pulse-Accelerated PBCs on my Corvette… 😛 ) They’re just nifty extra things you can do. They’re well written though, with great tying into the story line.
What triggers them? Honestly, I am not entirely sure, but I know that the first one pops up after your first stint at piracy, when Jafs informs you that he’s having trouble finding trade deals. I suspect that it’s triggered by having a good score after that first trip. I know that in my earlier years of I-War 2, I rarely got the missions, but now they’re run pretty much every single time. So, I believe it’s something to do with how much skill the game thinks you have.
You have me intrigued now… I’ll have to utilize my knowledge of the game’s file organization and try to find something that links to their trigger. 🙂
Happy Hunting!
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Wowwww… I feel really, really bad for forgetting to check this forum for a whole month. 🙁 And for not doing more work on the remake… college has seriously chewed off my face.
Meh, it may be 3 AM but I’m not sleepy and don’t really have much else to do… I might as well open it once again. 🙂 Now that I’ve a twin-stick setup I can easily test the thrusters properly, and my card means I can play around with graphics shenanigans as much as I like. For now though, I think getting some basic gameplay in besides dueling invincible gunstars in an invincible command section is in order. XD
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Wowwww… I feel really, really bad for forgetting to check this forum for a whole month. 🙁 And for not doing more work on the remake… college has seriously chewed off my face.
Meh, it may be 3 AM but I’m not sleepy and don’t really have much else to do… I might as well open it once again. 🙂 Now that I’ve a twin-stick setup I can easily test the thrusters properly, and my card means I can play around with graphics shenanigans as much as I like. For now though, I think getting some basic gameplay in besides dueling invincible gunstars in an invincible command section is in order. XD
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Oh jeez, that was three years ago now?!
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Oh jeez, that was three years ago now?!
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Haha, thank you! I got a smartphone round about a week ago and now I can browse this place more easily with it. 😀 Also, I love that background! It looks like the Drake system in the Gagarin cluster. :3
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Haha, thank you! I got a smartphone round about a week ago and now I can browse this place more easily with it. 😀 Also, I love that background! It looks like the Drake system in the Gagarin cluster. :3
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Well, to be quite honest, the mod itself is not going to function as intended. It simply creates a countermeasure in space next to the player, which will not attract missiles. I went through the code once and heavily tested it out, and just went through the code again to refresh my memory. I believe a countermeasure launch needs to be done by the game’s own code, not by merely creating an inert flare, and I don’t think it’s actually possible to code a manual countermeasure launcher without also writing code that manually forces the missiles to target the flare.
As for your issue with the keybinds, [ScriptKeys.PreviousPlayerShip] is already in the config file by default, so adding it again may be causing conflict which confuses the game.
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂
