Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
>Hm, not many comments around, so I thought I'd give it a go.
>Before I read the text, I was somewhat stumped. What are those green boxes,
>those white lines, what are they for? Then I read the text and understood.
>The problem with these animations is that I can't see why and how a ship
>turns, and the shooting-lines don't help much either.

The thruster firings are indicated by small white sticks, but I don't think
they survived the encoding process because of poorly chosen codec settings.

>Aside of that, the
>movement looks very fluid and soft, I like that. You should model some
>preliminary ships and bullets, add some bullet-hit-effects (even if its just
>a little partice-explosion or -sparks), take care that the thrusters are
>visible, and then you've got something really fancy for us to look at.

I'm glad you like it. The fluid motion is a result of the dynamics
simulation - I like the results I get from this much more than those from
splined paths (I'm inept with splines and can never visualise how the
velocity of an object following the path changes without rendering it all
through).

The appearance of the thrusters is specified by the ship model, and since
this model is intended for test renders I used sticks instead of something
flashy. The hit/damage effects and so on will soon be completely
user-specified, requiring no changes to the script, but first I've got to
make the script allow this...


>Its always complicated to show off some code using place-holders, cause all
>*we* see are the place-holders, the only one with knowledge of the
>complicated script behind that is *you*. Making the script visually pleasing
>is what I've found is best for displaying some script. What I do is prepare
>and experiment with placeholders, but when I want to post it, I use actual
>objects, or at least some crude ones. After all, people can only comment on
>looks, not on the script itself.

All very true. I'll re-render soon with some more appropriate models
(although they'll still be place-holders before I get some decent ones
finished) - I think a battle consisting of the POV logo vs. the lightwave,
XSI and 3D studio Max logos will be my first choice.

>PS: I hope you make some nifty Include, so that we all can create our own
>battles and such. Would be even better if you'd make it that Users might set
>the initial positions and orientations for a given amount of ships, and then
>they can compete. That would be awesome! (Especially if Users might modify
>the looks of their spacecraft)

As you rightly point out, it can't be apparent from these animations but the
system is designed to support such a goal. The ships are completely
user-designable - all that you need beyond just an include file for your
ship's object is to specify where thrusters and weapons are placed.  The
visual effects like weapons fire, damage and explosions will be
user-designable soon. The AI is going to be user-designable, although with
a reasonable default. The current test file looks something like

// Begin

#include "gundrone.inc"  <-- The test ship
#include "battle.inc"    <-- The work

AddShip(GunDrone, ...starting orientation, position and velocity...,
whose_side)
...
.....3 more of them...
...

UpdateBattle() <-- Do the work for this frame

// Camera and lights ...

......
// End


That's it - minor variations on that file were used to render all of the
animations. You just specify what you want and where you want it and it'll
carry on from there. The biggest problem at the moment is collision
detection between ships. Although none of the ships in the posted
animations collide because their thrusters are quite weak and they all
start off moving at different speeds, if they did collide they'd pass
through each other without interacting. That needs some work - I'm not
really sure how to handle it at the moment.

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