Flying vehicles in HL2

[Jovin]

Hey folks, first time post. I'm wondering if it's possible to develop flying vehicles for HL2 that use the physics engine to fly (I don't have the game yet, looking for a game to mod that suits my needs). I've heard a lot touted about the HL2 physics implementation, I'm wondering if it could be used for a flight/space sim.

Cheers!:cheers:

 

[Angry Lawyer]

It's definately doable. Needs a bit of code, though.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Jovin]

It's definately doable. Needs a bit of code, though.

-Angry Lawyer

Lovely!

Next question:
What is the limit of the map size? Say I were to want to do a low orbit scenario around a planet. I'm guessing that modeling a planet sized sphere with a texture/bump map on it would probably cause the game to HORK (no?), would I have to represent this kind of object as part of a "sky" texture?

Next, next question:
I'm not afraid of coding. Is there a complete API reference somewhere? (i.e. in the Source release(s)?)

Just to let you know where I'm going with this .. I'd like to develop a Star Wars space mod ... crazy?

Thanks!

 

[Angry Lawyer]

There's no API reference - everything has to be learnt from reading code D:

Representing a planet would be best done with a distant object in a Skybox.

The maps have an upper limit, but this can be circumvented by making players smaller :shh:

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Jovin]

Far out. Thanks for the hints! Sounds like I'll have to dig in there for a while ... Laydah!

 

[Lucid]

Eternal Silence implemented flight pretty nicely.

 

[Beerdude26]

Well, you have the default map sizes, right? Then you scale them to one sixteenth, giving you 256 times more space. Empires is doing that.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Eternal Silence also do that for their space stuff. It makes sense.

 

[Jovin]

Scaling down changes the physics though, right?

 

[Flyingdebris]

well a good place to start learning what hl2 is capable of is through garry's mod.

For instance, i was able to make an inert helicopter model flyable through attaching a combination of hoverballs and thrusters in gmod 10. So i think that if it can be done by jury rigging various shit together in a building block type manner, then it should be doable more efficiently in a vehicle modeled and coded specifically for flying.

as for the sizes of maps. Don't try to pull any battlefield level sizes while keeping any sort of quality. Source starts to lag out on really big maps since it was never designed for it. You can get big but you'll have to use some optimization tricks

 

[Jovin]

well a good place to start learning what hl2 is capable of is through garry's mod.

For instance, i was able to make an inert helicopter model flyable through attaching a combination of hoverballs and thrusters in gmod 10. So i think that if it can be done by jury rigging various shit together in a building block type manner, then it should be doable more efficiently in a vehicle modeled and coded specifically for flying.

as for the sizes of maps. Don't try to pull any battlefield level sizes while keeping any sort of quality. Source starts to lag out on really big maps since it was never designed for it. You can get big but you'll have to use some optimization tricks

Gotcha, thanks! This is looking promising but not quite where I want it to be yet. I'm thinking a year or two and what I want to pull off may be doable with Valve's stuff, depending on what their development priorities turn out to be. It's looking like I'll probably do what I want to do here in Orbiter first (free space sim, realistic physics, a blast in the fanny, word) and then take a look around at game engines to see where they're at.

(reposted, and slightly edited, from a post I made to the TNE (Star Wars: The New Era) boards because it sums up nicely where I want to go with this, at least initially)

I'm probably going to explore writing an Orbiter add-on first, before getting into a game mod, since my main interest is in seeing if I can reconcile real Newtonion physics with Star Wars 'physics' and fly around solar system sized spaces with planets, moons, and everything else around behaving Newtonion like.

Background on my thinking:
I'm positing that the "gravitic technologies" (referred to as "etheric rudders" somewhere, can't recall where ..) must somehow affect gravity as we can now affect electromagnetic energy. I'm assuming here that quantum mechanical theories describing gravity and electromagnetism as related forces would hold up somehow, implying that one of these is capable of affecting the other (given enough energy).

As such, I'm going to try to code a dll for Orbiter that uses energy from the (presumed) fusion power source (there is an ion thruster modeled within Orbiter already, wooohooo!) to alter a vessel's inertial trajectory, allowing the vessel to swing it's trajectory around by effectively 'sapping' the forward inertia and redirecting it to the sides (or even the front, to slow down) using the "etheric rudders" (effectively represented, physically, by the side panels on Tie fighters and the 'wings' of an X-wing, for example).

This approach would also explain why starships in the SW galaxy always seem to have their ion thrusters on; they're sapping the forward inertia generated by their ion engines to manuever the craft up/down and side-to-side, with the engines compensating automatically to maintain the velocity set by the pilot. Of course this is all nonsense by our current understanding of physics, but plausible enough for sci-fi.

There's no 'real' math to represent this, per se, I'm going to base my calculations on the most closely related Newtonion examples I can find concerning inertia and energy. I'm going to incorporate mass into this code, as I'm assuming that the reason Star Destroyers aren't flipping wheelies is because there must be an exponential energy cost as mass increases. So the less massive the vessel, and the less velocity it has, the less energy required to change trajectory. That would also explain why fighters tend to stay around the same velocity, possibly a "sweet spot" for their mass and energy resources.

In any case, my goal is to be able to fly around solar systems in SW starships, so the scale of most vidgame engines is not up to what I'm going for.

I think I may really be aiming a bit above or over to the side with respect to what these game engines are trying to accomplish. The thing is, I really wanted to have the 'multi-player supported, collision detection, 3D planet/moon surfaces, starship combat thing' in there already. The Orbiter mod community is already working on collision detection, weapon simulation, multi-player support, and the rest, but most of it is in alpha right now. About another year or two and Orbiter may be able to support multi-player SW starship stuff.

Woohoo! :bounce: