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Yay! (yes)

5 (71.4%)

NAY! (no)

2 (28.6%)

Total Members Voted: 6

[Hyph_K31]

Heres an idea:

I think it would be very hand if weapons had an extra option in the .wpn file, that would allow weapons that are asymmetrical to always have the appropriate side facing the centre line of a ship.

This would be great for modding, because you would be able to design a weapon that looks like it's actually an integral part of the ship.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

Not sure I understand what you mean by an asymmetric weapon. Or how it relates to a weapon looking like a part of a ship's hull.

[Hyph_K31]

Ah, I'll put it another way then.

The asymmetric option would make the centre line of the ship act like a mirror, so if the right had side is the side the stays the same, weapons of the same type on the other side would be mirrored from the right side.

did that make more sense?

[Darloth]

I'm fairly sure that Hyph means that if you have a weapon graphic where the left side of the turret is a huge long gun part, and the right hand side is a glowy red thing...

If you put two of those on, say, an Eagle - they're going to look weird, because both of the weapon-graphics will have their asymmetry facing in the same direction, and that tends to look wrong (especially on symmetrical ships!)

As such, it should (when the proposed weapon file option is set) mirror the weapon sprite using the ship's centre-line.

This would let people make weapons that blend in with a ship hull, and use them on both sides of a ship.  As to -why- you would want to do that, well, it could mean for a total-conversion mod that a missile variant of a ship could have huge missile bays built into the wings, an energy ship would have several barrels, but the base ship would have only the stubs of the wing drawn on, and would probably look weird without this.

As it stands this isn't possible, because you'd get two wings both pointing left if you tried this.

[WKOB]

Really it's just best to make two separate versions of the weapon, I wouldn't expect Alex to go through the pains to support this as it's not that common an issue.

[Hyph_K31]

Spoiler

I'm fairly sure that Hyph means that if you have a weapon graphic where the left side of the turret is a huge long gun part, and the right hand side is a glowy red thing...

If you put two of those on, say, an Eagle - they're going to look weird, because both of the weapon-graphics will have their asymmetry facing in the same direction, and that tends to look wrong (especially on symmetrical ships!)

As such, it should (when the proposed weapon file option is set) mirror the weapon sprite using the ship's centre-line.

This would let people make weapons that blend in with a ship hull, and use them on both sides of a ship.  As to -why- you would want to do that, well, it could mean for a total-conversion mod that a missile variant of a ship could have huge missile bays built into the wings, an energy ship would have several barrels, but the base ship would have only the stubs of the wing drawn on, and would probably look weird without this.

As it stands this isn't possible, because you'd get two wings both pointing left if you tried this.

[close]

Exactly that.

Really it's just best to make two separate versions of the weapon, I wouldn't expect Alex to go through the pains to support this as it's not that common an issue.

You have a point, but It would be far more intuitive if weapons mirrored automatically than you having to hunt down each version. It may not apply to starfarer at the moment, but it already can apply to modding - I understand that this is something very low on the devs list of things that would be nice to have.

[Rowanas]

Having to hunt down the left-hand version of a weapon you want to use, just so your ship doesn't look ugly, shouldn't be something the player has to do. I fully support the mirroring idea, because I can't stand to equip my ships without at least a plane of symmetry involved.

[DelicateTask]

I understand what you're getting at, and would like to see mirroring, but I don't know about having it built in and automatic. If it was built-in, it would have to be part of the ship hull file and likely be something like flip_weaponmodel: true. That would certaily be the easiest to code, requiring no UI elements. On the other hand, I'd like an option to, say, hold down F and place a weapon mirrored, but that would likely take significantly more work to add and possibly need UI elements to make people aware that it does that.

[Hyph_K31]

It would be better if the option to mirror a weapon was actually in the .weapon file, that way odd weapons would always be mirrored if that option was set as true.

And it "should" be "relatively" simple to add something like this to starfarer.

[DelicateTask]

It would be better if the 'option' to mirror a weapon was in the weapon file, but that would only work if it took the more complex route of being done in the refit screen. Otherwise, how would it know what mounts to mirror? If strictly behind the scenes, then you could introduce a dependent system where the asymmetric weapon would state, for example, asymmetric: true, but the weapon would only be mirrored if the mount in the ship file also had mirror: true.

[Hyph_K31]

I shouldn't think the .ship file would need a "mirror: true." line, I would think it'd only need to specify were the mirror line is, and since that line is almost always dead centre (except in extreme cases), even that line wouldn't be nessisary. although for the sake of modding and afore mentioned extreme cases the line stating were the mirror is would be needed.

[Faiter119]

Definitely moose.

[Darloth]

If you'd said Meese (plural - not the real one, sadly) I would be with you all the way, but as it is I'm gonna have to go with Horse.

Never include silly options on a poll unless you're prepared for them to be far more popular

[Hyph_K31]

Kinda hoping people might notice the joke, removed the animal options.

[DelicateTask]

I remember a friend of mine who submitted a name for the new message board for some class in DFO and won with MooseChamp. Never give silly choices.

I don't know about a 'mirror line', such a thing sounds like it would be more work within the engine, instead of keeping it in the files.