Here's the formatting guide. Beyond that, some people have figured out more advanced things (like view counters) that you'd have to ask them directly about.
On a serious note, if you haven't taken a look at the rules yet, make sure to do that. Beyond those, basically just have decent behavior and you shouldn't run into much trouble here.
Trying to model every last detail (down to the internals of the engine) is already a hugely daunting prospect, and SimplePlanes would just make everything easily 20 times harder.
@IMFLYINHERE Hmm.......
Uh. If you were to work on it 24/7/365 without any breaks, you could probably get it done in about a year. Maybe. I honestly have no idea how long it would take. The engine alone would at least take a month nonstop, plus however long it takes to make it move properly.
SAMs do funny things, yeah (as I unfortunately discovered yesterday while trying the Missile Evasion challenge again). As for cannons, there's some code you can add to them that makes them airburst once they've traveled a certain distance, but other than that you need to achieve a direct hit on the target. Also note that unlike gun bullets, cannon shells will pass through their target (if it's another build) if the cannon has aircraft collisions disabled.
Here's a few of mine, one with the nice sunset angle (and dust from the convoy) and one showing most of the folks that were involved (missing Venus and jangelelcangry because they had left by then)
It's pretty clear that the ship is based fairly directly on the B-17 bomber, both in design and performance. As shown in the initial bombing run on the dreadnought, the StarFortress' main characteristic is its ability to fly in formation, in a straight line, to deliver a prodigious quantity of ordinance over a relatively large area, again pretty similar to the WWII-era bomber it is based on. However, the main thing that differs from the B-17 (in fact the StarFortress' main weakness) is its incredibly poor survivability.
During the Second World War, one of the most notable properties of the B-17 bomber, other than its sheer quantity and effectiveness, was the aircraft's ability to take massive amounts of damage and keep flying. Fortresses returned to base with destroyed engines, gaping holes shot in the fuselage, occasionally entire stabilizers missing, and, on at least two occasions, after being nearly blown in half. The B-17 was originally dubbed the Flying Fortress because of its large quantity of defensive armament, but lived up to the name through sheer durability.
This is the main thing missing from the StarFortress. As depicted in the unfortunately quite poorly-thought-out opening sequence, the MG-100s are really not capable of taking any damage whatsoever. In fact, given how rapidly they fall victim to TIE fire (which even X-Wings are able to survive, and many other ships are able to shrug off with little to no damage), I wonder whether the deflector shielding on the StarFortress is even military-grade, as it does very little to protect the bomber from damage.
The numbers are for the blueprint scale, which you can adjust to make the image be whatever size you want to build from. I typically will start by just laying out a bunch of fuselage blocks to get the overall length (as determined via the craft properties tab of the Menu window in the editor), and then scale the blueprint to fit that.
The position is just if you need to move it horizontally/vertically from the default for whatever reason. Blueprint position is locked to the active cockpit block, so if you move that to a different spot on the build you might need to readjust your blueprint so it isn't shifted out of position.
At the time of posting this forum, your build that "didn't even get seen by people" had been up for approximately three hours. That's both within your "5 hours" window and an utterly insignificant amount of time for a build to be on the site, sorry.
Plus, keep in mind that the time you post stuff matters, particularly for your "5 hours" window. People might be sleeping or working or whatever.
Definitely looks like a carrier with the way the upper deck is shaped. Interestingly, though it's visible in both Google Maps and Google Earth, it is not visible on Apple Maps or other publicly available software (that I've seen, anyway). Which carrier, though, is a bit of a mystery, since none of the Black Sea navies have a carrier with that profile and the US Navy's task group is supposed to be in the Mediterranean.
Under Game Settings (Pause menu -> Settings -> Game Settings), set AI Air Traffic to "None". This will make the game stop automatically spawning AI planes.
A lot of learning how to make "good planes" comes from digging into planes that other people have made, seeing and then understanding the methods and techniques they use, and then adapting those techniques to fit your own personal building style. It isn't just a flip-of-the-switch, "follow these steps and you'll build good planes" thing.
Sure, there's general tips to be had ("use blueprints", etc.), but there can be no definitive answer on what makes a "good plane", because everyone has their own standards regarding what makes something "good".
Additionally, clickbait posts like this are really not helpful for those who are actually looking for information and tips on how to advance their building skills.
Pretty easy to check. Spawn at the airport you want to measure from, spawn an AI on your head (while paused), then change locations to another airport and measure how far away the AI plane is.
Wright <--> Krakabloa is thirtysomething miles (depending on whether you're measuring Yeager or Bandit)
Wright <--> Snowstone is 67ish I believe
Wright <--> Maywar is somewhere between 40 and 60 depending on where on Maywar you measure from
And Wright <--> Sky Park City is like five or six I think.
@Mrgoofy Apologies, I've been preoccupied with more important things (no offense intended) this week, so I haven't had time to respond.
If you want to tag me on an unlisted post of your tank, I can check it out, sure. Should be a super easy fix for you to do, but I can still take a look if you want.
Hard to say for certain given the lack of specifics, but the likely issue is the weight of the turret relative to the weight of the body. Either make the turret weigh less or make the body weigh more.
Are you, by chance, crashing or exploding? The cockpit is an indestructible part (barring the rare glitch where it too vanishes after a particularly nasty crash), meaning that if enough force is involved in the crash it can go quite far, and fast. However, I haven't heard of it yeeting itself into oblivion just all on its own. It generally occurs due to collision or explosion.
@Jaspy190 Yeah, that's the other problem with it. Not sure how to fix that since a dedicated height variable for the bomb isn't possible, apparently. The only other thing I can think of is to just scrap the code entirely and set the chute to whatever activation group the pylon itself is on, so it activates immediately when the bomb is dropped. Not nearly as interesting but it should work without issue.
@Jaspy190 ...Okay, so unfortunately after some testing it seems that the parachute can't be activated by a custom variable, so the altitude would in fact be dependent on the altitude of the plane (meaning that on the plus side you don't need the flight computer, but on the minus side you'll either have to dive after dropping the bomb or just have the chute deploy immediately). I have no idea why this is the way it is, but the parachute has always been particularly difficult to work with when it comes to custom inputs.
Anyway, for this method you'll need to set the parachute's input (*via Overload because otherwise it won't work since the parachute makes things difficult for no reason) to: GS > 1 & Altitude < 200 & Activate1. You can change the numbers around if you want, so the chute will only activate above a certain speed or below a different altitude (in meters), and change the activation group to whatever you want.
Then, you'll need to attach the bomb to a detacher or pylon set to whatever group you set the chute to use, and launch the bomb with that group (dropping it with the "drop bomb" button will not trigger the chute).
It's somewhat of a clunky process, but the parachute doesn't seem to quite work properly with FT code, so it's the best I can come up with.
@Jaspy190 They're basically equivalent to cockpit blocks, except they're smaller and don't have a camera associated with them. You need it in this case because just telling the parachute to read the standard Altitude variable would make it depend on the altitude of the plane, instead of the altitude of the bomb. Attaching a flight computer with its own separate Altitude variable to the bomb itself avoids this problem (in theory; I haven't tried this myself but it should work).
A parachute activating by height after being dropped can be done, though I believe you'd also need a flight computer attached to the weapon, and it would need to be fired from a detacher or otherwise armed with an activation group or button.
If you set the flight computer's Altitude variable to something (e.g. BombAltitude), you could then set the parachute's input to (Activate1 & BombAltitude<100) ? 1 : 0 and I believe it should open when the bomb reaches 100 meters above sea level. I'm not sure how to do an air burst bomb though, since you can't "tell" the bomb to blow up, but I do believe I've seen it before so it's probably possible.
@U2 1GB VRAM should be fine. I'm on half that and don't have any significant problems with anything even on close-to-max settings. I'm not certain whether the part count a device can run is more dependent on the graphics card, the processor, or the RAM, but I'm able to run up to 2000 parts and still hold 15-20FPS, which is an entirely playable framerate for SP.
Regarding the mods you mentioned, smoke trails will be fine. I haven't had any noticeable performance impact from it unless I were to put like forty emitters on one plane and turn them all at once or something. Tracks2 has a bit more of a performance impact just due to the complexity of the track parts, but again there aren't many issues unless you just go completely overboard with things. Pearl Harbor is a fairly intensive map just due to its size, but you should still be able to run it pretty well. Turning Aircraft Reflections back to Static instead of Dynamic is good for getting framerate back if things get too laggy (I have to do that on the Nordschleife map), but again you shouldn't have any major issues.
You can see which activation groups are, well, active by hitting the little arrow on the right side of the main HUD (next to the fuel gauge; the same panel where you can toggle your landing gear or select weapons), or by hitting Right Shift (I believe that's the default) if you're on PC. Active groups will be highlighted in blue, inactive will be gray.
As far as which groups do what, there's a few ways to do this. First is to check the craft instructions (Pause menu -> Craft Instructions). If the builder put any instructions or lists of what buttons do, they'll be in there. (Do note that this is a relatively new feature so most older planes won't have them in-game. Also check the plane's description on the website too just in case, since builders can also often just forget to add them to the instructions in-game).
If there aren't any instructions or lists of what-does-what anywhere, the other option is to just start pressing things and figure out which button does what. Be warned, you might explode if one of the groups is "drop weapons" and you're testing on the ground!
@DeutscheLufthansaAG Neat
@DeutscheLufthansaAG Yeah. I don't have it with me currently (because college) but I do have one.
(I guess that's the other reason why I can't reply from it.)
That didn't take long.
Here's the formatting guide. Beyond that, some people have figured out more advanced things (like view counters) that you'd have to ask them directly about.
Hans
Get ze panzer
I would try on my Wii but the internet part of it doesn't work
Mods are stored at:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\LocalLow\Jundroo\SimplePlanes\Mods. You can delete them from there.THE BRICK
@isniffarmpits101 Uhhhhhhhhhhh
No.
Sure, here's one.
On a serious note, if you haven't taken a look at the rules yet, make sure to do that. Beyond those, basically just have decent behavior and you shouldn't run into much trouble here.
And most importantly, welcome!
Trying to model every last detail (down to the internals of the engine) is already a hugely daunting prospect, and SimplePlanes would just make everything easily 20 times harder.
@IMFLYINHERE Hmm.......
Uh. If you were to work on it 24/7/365 without any breaks, you could probably get it done in about a year. Maybe. I honestly have no idea how long it would take. The engine alone would at least take a month nonstop, plus however long it takes to make it move properly.
The... what? There are usually many gray things on an aircraft.
SAMs do funny things, yeah (as I unfortunately discovered yesterday while trying the Missile Evasion challenge again). As for cannons, there's some code you can add to them that makes them airburst once they've traveled a certain distance, but other than that you need to achieve a direct hit on the target. Also note that unlike gun bullets, cannon shells will pass through their target (if it's another build) if the cannon has aircraft collisions disabled.
Is this another one of those horror games specifically marketed to children for the sole purpose of selling toys?
Here's a few of mine, one with the nice sunset angle (and dust from the convoy) and one showing most of the folks that were involved (missing Venus and jangelelcangry because they had left by then)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/998493137649541120/1095886156681466038/Screenshot_407.pnghttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/998493137649541120/1095886157184762007/Screenshot_403.pngIt's pretty clear that the ship is based fairly directly on the B-17 bomber, both in design and performance. As shown in the initial bombing run on the dreadnought, the StarFortress' main characteristic is its ability to fly in formation, in a straight line, to deliver a prodigious quantity of ordinance over a relatively large area, again pretty similar to the WWII-era bomber it is based on. However, the main thing that differs from the B-17 (in fact the StarFortress' main weakness) is its incredibly poor survivability.
During the Second World War, one of the most notable properties of the B-17 bomber, other than its sheer quantity and effectiveness, was the aircraft's ability to take massive amounts of damage and keep flying. Fortresses returned to base with destroyed engines, gaping holes shot in the fuselage, occasionally entire stabilizers missing, and, on at least two occasions, after being nearly blown in half. The B-17 was originally dubbed the Flying Fortress because of its large quantity of defensive armament, but lived up to the name through sheer durability.
This is the main thing missing from the StarFortress. As depicted in the unfortunately quite poorly-thought-out opening sequence, the MG-100s are really not capable of taking any damage whatsoever. In fact, given how rapidly they fall victim to TIE fire (which even X-Wings are able to survive, and many other ships are able to shrug off with little to no damage), I wonder whether the deflector shielding on the StarFortress is even military-grade, as it does very little to protect the bomber from damage.
(1/2)
Ooooooo, that looks great!
T
@YeetDoctor They work for me
Unfortunately not (devs please)
T
@NawcandoAK47 Sorry, my mistake. I meant the "Cockpit Interior" section.
There's a text label part under the "Cockpits" section.
The numbers are for the blueprint scale, which you can adjust to make the image be whatever size you want to build from. I typically will start by just laying out a bunch of fuselage blocks to get the overall length (as determined via the craft properties tab of the Menu window in the editor), and then scale the blueprint to fit that.
The position is just if you need to move it horizontally/vertically from the default for whatever reason. Blueprint position is locked to the active cockpit block, so if you move that to a different spot on the build you might need to readjust your blueprint so it isn't shifted out of position.
At the time of posting this forum, your build that "didn't even get seen by people" had been up for approximately three hours. That's both within your "5 hours" window and an utterly insignificant amount of time for a build to be on the site, sorry.
Plus, keep in mind that the time you post stuff matters, particularly for your "5 hours" window. People might be sleeping or working or whatever.
Definitely looks like a carrier with the way the upper deck is shaped. Interestingly, though it's visible in both Google Maps and Google Earth, it is not visible on Apple Maps or other publicly available software (that I've seen, anyway). Which carrier, though, is a bit of a mystery, since none of the Black Sea navies have a carrier with that profile and the US Navy's task group is supposed to be in the Mediterranean.
Here's the Google Maps coords for anyone who wants to take a look themselves.
Those are some nice pictures!
Theoretically I think it should be possible through some (ab)use of the control base, but I'm not sure how.
Under Game Settings (Pause menu -> Settings -> Game Settings), set AI Air Traffic to "None". This will make the game stop automatically spawning AI planes.
[text you want to display](url)For example:
This link goes to the main page of the site
[This link goes to the main page of the site](https://www.simpleplanes.com)Ok bye.
A lot of learning how to make "good planes" comes from digging into planes that other people have made, seeing and then understanding the methods and techniques they use, and then adapting those techniques to fit your own personal building style. It isn't just a flip-of-the-switch, "follow these steps and you'll build good planes" thing.
Sure, there's general tips to be had ("use blueprints", etc.), but there can be no definitive answer on what makes a "good plane", because everyone has their own standards regarding what makes something "good".
Additionally, clickbait posts like this are really not helpful for those who are actually looking for information and tips on how to advance their building skills.
T
Main Menu -> Settings -> On-Screen Flight Controls
Pretty easy to check. Spawn at the airport you want to measure from, spawn an AI on your head (while paused), then change locations to another airport and measure how far away the AI plane is.
Wright <--> Krakabloa is thirtysomething miles (depending on whether you're measuring Yeager or Bandit)
Wright <--> Snowstone is 67ish I believe
Wright <--> Maywar is somewhere between 40 and 60 depending on where on Maywar you measure from
And Wright <--> Sky Park City is like five or six I think.
@Mrgoofy Apologies, I've been preoccupied with more important things (no offense intended) this week, so I haven't had time to respond.
If you want to tag me on an unlisted post of your tank, I can check it out, sure. Should be a super easy fix for you to do, but I can still take a look if you want.
Hard to say for certain given the lack of specifics, but the likely issue is the weight of the turret relative to the weight of the body. Either make the turret weigh less or make the body weigh more.
@Phox e
I imagine it would be pretty easy doing it that way, yes...
Are you, by chance, crashing or exploding? The cockpit is an indestructible part (barring the rare glitch where it too vanishes after a particularly nasty crash), meaning that if enough force is involved in the crash it can go quite far, and fast. However, I haven't heard of it yeeting itself into oblivion just all on its own. It generally occurs due to collision or explosion.
But why?
@Jaspy190 Yeah, that's the other problem with it. Not sure how to fix that since a dedicated height variable for the bomb isn't possible, apparently. The only other thing I can think of is to just scrap the code entirely and set the chute to whatever activation group the pylon itself is on, so it activates immediately when the bomb is dropped. Not nearly as interesting but it should work without issue.
@Jaspy190 ...Okay, so unfortunately after some testing it seems that the parachute can't be activated by a custom variable, so the altitude would in fact be dependent on the altitude of the plane (meaning that on the plus side you don't need the flight computer, but on the minus side you'll either have to dive after dropping the bomb or just have the chute deploy immediately). I have no idea why this is the way it is, but the parachute has always been particularly difficult to work with when it comes to custom inputs.
Anyway, for this method you'll need to set the parachute's input (*via Overload because otherwise it won't work since the parachute makes things difficult for no reason) to: GS > 1 & Altitude < 200 & Activate1. You can change the numbers around if you want, so the chute will only activate above a certain speed or below a different altitude (in meters), and change the activation group to whatever you want.
Then, you'll need to attach the bomb to a detacher or pylon set to whatever group you set the chute to use, and launch the bomb with that group (dropping it with the "drop bomb" button will not trigger the chute).
It's somewhat of a clunky process, but the parachute doesn't seem to quite work properly with FT code, so it's the best I can come up with.
@Jaspy190 They're basically equivalent to cockpit blocks, except they're smaller and don't have a camera associated with them. You need it in this case because just telling the parachute to read the standard
Altitudevariable would make it depend on the altitude of the plane, instead of the altitude of the bomb. Attaching a flight computer with its own separate Altitude variable to the bomb itself avoids this problem (in theory; I haven't tried this myself but it should work).A parachute activating by height after being dropped can be done, though I believe you'd also need a flight computer attached to the weapon, and it would need to be fired from a detacher or otherwise armed with an activation group or button.
If you set the flight computer's Altitude variable to something (e.g.
BombAltitude), you could then set the parachute's input to (Activate1 & BombAltitude<100) ? 1 : 0 and I believe it should open when the bomb reaches 100 meters above sea level. I'm not sure how to do an air burst bomb though, since you can't "tell" the bomb to blow up, but I do believe I've seen it before so it's probably possible.Still there as far as I can tell. Here's the link.
@U2 1GB VRAM should be fine. I'm on half that and don't have any significant problems with anything even on close-to-max settings. I'm not certain whether the part count a device can run is more dependent on the graphics card, the processor, or the RAM, but I'm able to run up to 2000 parts and still hold 15-20FPS, which is an entirely playable framerate for SP.
Regarding the mods you mentioned, smoke trails will be fine. I haven't had any noticeable performance impact from it unless I were to put like forty emitters on one plane and turn them all at once or something. Tracks2 has a bit more of a performance impact just due to the complexity of the track parts, but again there aren't many issues unless you just go completely overboard with things. Pearl Harbor is a fairly intensive map just due to its size, but you should still be able to run it pretty well. Turning Aircraft Reflections back to Static instead of Dynamic is good for getting framerate back if things get too laggy (I have to do that on the Nordschleife map), but again you shouldn't have any major issues.
Edit: My hardware
AMD Ryzen 5 4500U
Radeon Vega 6 iGPU (512MB VRAM)
16GB RAM
T
@Gabriel747 Direct from the rules page: While we allow photoshoped thumbnails, post with misleading thumbnails will be removed.
You can see which activation groups are, well, active by hitting the little arrow on the right side of the main HUD (next to the fuel gauge; the same panel where you can toggle your landing gear or select weapons), or by hitting Right Shift (I believe that's the default) if you're on PC. Active groups will be highlighted in blue, inactive will be gray.
As far as which groups do what, there's a few ways to do this. First is to check the craft instructions (Pause menu -> Craft Instructions). If the builder put any instructions or lists of what buttons do, they'll be in there. (Do note that this is a relatively new feature so most older planes won't have them in-game. Also check the plane's description on the website too just in case, since builders can also often just forget to add them to the instructions in-game).
If there aren't any instructions or lists of what-does-what anywhere, the other option is to just start pressing things and figure out which button does what. Be warned, you might explode if one of the groups is "drop weapons" and you're testing on the ground!