My feelings on the Star Wars mod.

I assume moons would have atmospheres since, as far as flux is concerned, they are just plantes parented to other planets instead of suns.

Anyway, once I know what an "arena center" is I'm sure it'll be no prob.

Sorry, I guess I took too much for granted in that post

The "Arena center" has (needs) a name. In the mp source we use the name "touch", because as you guessed, it is the reference point for the placement of all the sims listed in the multiplayer <map_name>.ini

"Touch" is placed by (current) code exactly in front of the second map entity in the system at a distance 3 time it's diameter.
(x =0, y =0, Z = 3*diameter of the entity)

The .map entities don't need a specific name because the source doesn't look for them specifically by name. (it just grabs the second one it finds)
(The main reason I noted that is because 3 posts up I mentioned that "Epyon" is the planet you see in the background.)
i.e It doesn't matter what you name the planets or moons in the .map file, use any name you like.

With this method, you can place your system center for your .map anywhere you need it. The MP code will then place "touch" independent of your system center, so the players will get a good view of the planet (or moon or whatever is there) in the background. That object also serves as an orientation point so it should be <font size="4">big</font id="size4">.

You'll note in the copy of the mod you have, we have 6 or 8 different .map files and corresponding .lws files. The different .map files are just renamed copies of the original map. The .lws scenes (with the same name as the .map) allow us to control the color of the background nebula.
The problem is, in the .map used, there is only one planet and we always have the same planet and planet texture in the background on all the maps. That gets boring after a while.

If you could make a .map with 3 planets, we could alter the location of "touch" and thus use the same map for 3 different locations, each with a different planet in the background.

All the stuff on the MP map is actually placed by pog. The multiplayer <map_name>.ini is simply a template for the placement function. It's easier to change the template if you want to make a custom map than to re-code the pog placement functions. ( i.e the <map_name>.ini is a mini-map. It allows you to place scenery stuff(furniture?) extremly close together in a system that has been previously created via a <system_name>.map

In addition to the objects in the template above you can also place sims dynamically via pog (in either MP or SP)

Now the DS:
If you want to visualize the DS as a "station" thats ok.
From a pog perspective it doesn't matter if the DS is a "Station", a "Cargo Pod" a "Gunstar" a "Ship" or an "Asteroid".
As demonstated above with the cargo pod wall we can attach anything, to anything we want to, using several different methodologies, in the SP game.

(If we don't use a .map approach for MP the DS .ini file will have to be a either a gunstar or a ship because of the way iMultiplay is set up)

Once the basic DS is created in the "world" (either MP or SP) it is still possible to attach other things to it dynamically via pog (either visually or physically). Those "things" could be, for example a special "trench" sim ( type CargoPod) with a very detailed collision hull and matching avatar or a big gun turret (type Gunstar). Initially, neither of the two examples would actually be "there" untill you come around the corner (curvature of the DS).

Bummer!

Not quite sure what you mean? Imo it's not a bummer if a gun turret can't be physically attached to the DS. The turret will still be visually correctly positioned and explode when you shoot it's hit points down to 0. It will also damage the DS when it explodes.
In fact, you can't control how much damage an attached subsim causes it's parent. You can however, control the amount of damage an exploding turret (or dish) does, via it's specific deathscript if it is a separate sim. (ok, I do visualize the DS as a immobile sim in this case, or did you expect it to fly around too?)

I guess the confusion arises because, as we were discussing different methods of creating the DS, we came to the conclusion we should look at one DS version for SP and one for MP.
Although I have the SP version in the back of my mind, the MP version has a higher priority for me currently because the other pog stuff for the StarWars mod is almost finished and ready to go.







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or did you expect it to fly around too?

Well now that you mention it, the death star did have engines...

I assume moons would have atmospheres since, as far as flux is concerned, they are just plantes parented to other planets instead of suns.

I meant that, if atmospheres was hardcoded, moon objects might be treated differently than planet objects by flux. Otherwise, there's no point in identifying it as a moon in the map file. And since moons are identified as moons (as opposed to planets), I thought it might be a reasonable assumption. But who knows.

I also noticed this interesting notation in the planets.ini file: I'm not sure how atmospheric pressure is determined, buuuuut. . .

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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Unfortunatly it seems the atmospheric preasure has nothing to do with the effects that are triggeres when nearing a planet.

I changed "atmosphere_threshold" to several different values (below and above 0.1) and also tried several combinations of "atmosphere_height" and "atmosphere_threshold".

The response was always the same. Whenever you get less than 3750 km from the planet the ship overheats and weapons go offline.

The effects are probably based on a simple (hardcoded) check for the distance of the player ship to any planetary entity.




Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

I wanted to present another idea for the DS model breakup. What about instead of slicing a normal sphere into sections you use the individual polygons of a geoshpere. Since every poly is an identical triangle, you wouldn't have to worry about the shape of each section. And there are many ways in which this shape could be used to make the DS project easier. Anyway, just trying to get some more ideas out there.



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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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