08-15-2022, 07:31 AM
This *could* be implemented with 'associate part', rather than having to add other custom UIs and panels. Say for the helm; flipping on the 'grav drives' turns on the contrails and if present+associated, extends some section for wings or engine mounts. Same with PNN / Warp drives being engaged. If you wanted to get fancy, percentage of throttle + time at or above those values could key an action also. I was hoping associating a console with a set of faces could activate its effects channel too, for mining, teleport pads, scanning, firing, and warp. Firing because you could use frame animated textures to fake things like an ammo drum rotating, shells ejecting and fading away, or charge gathering along a plane down the barrel for EWs, etc. Mining, you could glow an assigned mesh, or activate the effects channel there. TP pads could be in their off position without the effects channel active. Warp.. yeah that always looks fun, especially the one from ... damn, what was that horror sci-fi movie with Sam Neil and the ship from Hell? "Where we're going we won't need eyes to see!"
Wanted this with Freelancer too, but always had to resort to the 'eject cargo' or 'cruise mode' functions as the only player-initiated states you could assign an animated mesh to, which was less than optimal. The rest were static, repeating mesh animations, added into the base model with rotational speed, axis, and distance for variables (translation animations were a bit more rare but there and used the same format, just a different hex code). Well, you could also tweak the engine contrails' particle sprites, distribution, and color a bit, and the same with weapon flash +beam / bullet. But those and texture animations added a lot on stations and ships if you got creative. Stations always looked great with some rotating ring with emitters attached to it.
Wanted this with Freelancer too, but always had to resort to the 'eject cargo' or 'cruise mode' functions as the only player-initiated states you could assign an animated mesh to, which was less than optimal. The rest were static, repeating mesh animations, added into the base model with rotational speed, axis, and distance for variables (translation animations were a bit more rare but there and used the same format, just a different hex code). Well, you could also tweak the engine contrails' particle sprites, distribution, and color a bit, and the same with weapon flash +beam / bullet. But those and texture animations added a lot on stations and ships if you got creative. Stations always looked great with some rotating ring with emitters attached to it.