@ReinMcDeer
You're probably right, it's a compromise
Are variables/part variables in general known to make a noticeable difference, (lets say on older mobile devices) though?
I know that at least in some cases, it's better to use variable setter and keep the FT input short than to have long FT on every part that uses the input (having long FT as a custom variable and shorter FT for parts input saves a tiny fraction of loading time, someone on a discord tested that for me (I think on python))
Here's a quick tip,
If you set the partCollisionResponse of a part from Default to None, that part stops taking damage from collision (like when it crashes into the ground, or hits another plane). Custom track (crawler) system tends to explode if this value is set to Default, but changing it to None will prevent that.
Info update, current wing gun damage seems to be 30. When you set damage value to 30 in xml with Overload and open xml again, "damage" parameter disappears (Overload does this with some parameters when the value is default). Doesn't happen with anything higher, or anything lower.
Looks really nice!
I think the plane is a little too light, which makes the engine feel a bit too powerful for the weight though (jumps like rodeo horse when taxing, haha). I think increasing the weight to make it weigh as much as the actual plane (about 12,000kg empty according to wikipedia) might improve the ground handling, just my two cents.
Fun to fly nonetheless!
1)Parachute 'floor smooth/& argument' bug
Parachute with this code causes a bug where the plane spawns below sea level and game crashes. I suspect the presence of & argument or the two arguments within the activation part + parachute quirks/bugs is what's causing the glitch.
I tried another code with the '&' argument part as a custom variable (using clamp01), but the result was the same.
2)Gauge 'hide option' bug
In designer, if you set a gauge's "hide base" property to true and hide and unhide the part (with the general designer option), base shows up again (stays hidden in flight mode).
3)Beacon light activation group bug(?)
Neither the Beacon Light or Formation Light part accept FT for its activation group.
Aug 5 Update
4)Small Pylon
Top attachment point of Small Pylon cannot be attached to a fuselage block, weapons, or another small pylon (unlike its larger counter part), and probably many other. I suspect it can't be attached to anything but wing parts.
I find this rather inconvenient.
Got another one. FT related bug
iOS - Perfectly good FT stops working under certain circumstances. Might be an issue specific to certain type of parts (so far experienced this with rotators and gyro).
Haven't gotten a pin on the cause of this, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the amount and complexity of FT present in a given build. Gyro/rotators with FT that work on its own (with performance cost of the build being below 1500), when brought as a subassembly to a larger build with more stuff (higher performance cost--about 2000 to 2800), it no longer works.
FT that stops working is something like this: "clamp01(rotator current angle)) + clamp01(Activation Group) = X." Pretty simple. Or, even something simpler like "LandingGear=1."
I was using these to activate/deactivate rotators and gyros. 1 assembly of these, works fine (with 9 rotators and 3 gyros).
2x this, still fine. But when I bring this assembly to a larger group of assemblies (as a unit disconnected from the cockpit, since that's crucial to what I'm trying to do) with another 18 gyros and 39 rotators (3 gyro/9 rotators per unit, and each unit has performance cost of about 380, and only one unit is connected to the primary cockpit, rest disconnected), it suddenly stops working. It only uses part variable setter, and these variables take over when the unit is saved as sub assembly.
I'd like to submit an example of this, but the build is a WIP and I don't want to publish it yet, so this might not help much.
I'll probably submit an example once the project is published.
Also, I'll list some other things that might be related to this.
-Number of aircrafts (more than 800)
-Number of sub assemblies (more than 600)
-Available storage space on device (8GB out of about 260gb)
1. Camera related bug
When a camera or primary cockpit goes into the ocean, regardless of whether it's floating or sunk, game forcibly "Auto Orients" camera, and and skips some of the remaining cameras that are not touching the water seemingly at random.
This does not happen when a bomb or missile with camera enabled touches and or sinks in the water. Although there is a workaround in the form of aforementioned bomb/missile camera, I still find this troublesome as it limits the utility of camera parts especially for custom missiles or bombs with camera on it.
2. Parts rotation bug(?)
This might be an old bug, or even a feature, but I've noticed that Y-axis Parts Rotation does not account for the current X or Z axis rotation of the part. What I mean is that whatever the X-axis rotation value, changing the Y-axis rotation value always rotates the part perpendicular to the floor of the build screen. This causes (pretty often, especially with labels) a quite annoying situation where changing either Y rotation or Z rotation doing the same thing, and you are unable to rotate the part in Y-axis perpendicular to the part itself.
Edit
@11qazxc mentioned that (thanks!) it's a gimbal lock and not a bug. That would explain it, but I'd still like there to be a feature where you can toggle between this mode and rotation based on part orientation. It would be great if we can have two modes for all 3 axis.
3.Camera enabled Bomb/missile bug
When a camera enabled bomb or missile explodes or breaks, camera doesn't get disabled, and the bomb or missile (their models) remains intact. Sorry, don't have a working example at the moment. May be more likely to happen with bomb/missile with low explosion scale?
Forgot to mention, but these are issues I've encountered on iOS. Can't speak for other platforms.
This is cool!
If you don't mind a suggestion.. it would be nice to be able to see the directions of locations outside the map. Like some kind of symbols or names that display at the edge of the map.
Hey peeps, here's a little video I made with the truck! ...that you upvoted! Now have the misfortune of being tagged! Muwahahaha!... jk, haha. Joke aside, I think you guys might enjoy it, so here it is.
@mahardika
@CRATE52PART2
@Scratchoza
@TRD6932
@Th3rmoplylae
@DEN12345
@IceCraftGaming
@X99STRIKER
@GrFrog
@PilotBug
@Monarchii
Glad to be of service;)
I couldn't find the Natter though, unfortunately. But if I remember right, I think it used sum(clamp01(condition)) (=shows/gives you the time since the condition is met in second) to limit its engine run time.
Something like the following for engine activationGroup. Disables the engine 10 sec after AG1 is turned on.
sum(clamp01(Activate1)) < 10
You have every right to do things the way it suits you and at your own pace with this game & the site chii, I for one am just happy to see you around again:)
@KSB24
Since I've uploaded the flak cannon, I've learned that there's a much simpler, easier & cost efficient way of doing this (thanks to @PlanariaLab). All you have to do is, instead of detaching 1/3 of the total parts count, lose over 1/2 of the total (starting) wing area. Just one big wing on a detacher in other words. (you can scale down the wing part, of course) Just two parts!
@Astro12
Very true. I really needed something like this for a turret that uses autoaim (which is for AI) especially, since it can't even make a manual adjustment unlike a human player.
.
I was very lucky to come up with this method (using a secondary cockpit to get the data on how much the ship's roll angle--this is most likely not the first one to use it), since alternatives (like doing crazy calculation based on ship hull's heading, pitch/roll angle, turret rotation etc.) get pretty complex and way beyond my brain's computing power and math skill. lol
@WinsWings
Thanks, that would make sense.
I think I'll try to make each class of gun/cannon AA distinct in terms of their effectiveness, based also on era. Looking back, I've made the 85mm flak too capable in the tracking department (rotates too fast).
Really cool build! I especially like the sequenced breath/laser attack. Tried it against some ground targets, and when the laser hit them, they'd just fly like a speck of dust brown by wind! Haha. Glorious stuff.
.
I got this issue though, on mobile version where the FireFuns button constantly flickers (perhaps due to something with activationGroups FT?) and never stayed on screen, which made it unable to use the laser. It was easily fixable though, with an extra hidden minigun or wing gun with burstCount of 1 and really long timeBetweenBurst. Not sure if it happens to others as well, but I thought I should let you know nonetheless.
@DatMaluchGuy19
Yeah. I've seen some arguments and mean comments thrown among users myself. And you kinda have to make some assessment on a person's character based on their history, and sometimes reputation, but it's good to remember that your image of the person is based on an incomplete picture (it depends, right).
And if it's a petty drama, it's better to stay away and don't touch on it in order not to contribute to the mess. If it's really bad, I'd probably tell them to use block feature though.
@Hannyboy
Go for it!
You can use this as the basis if you like. (You can easily remove or rearrange the planes.)
I'll probably upload the structures in a separate upload as a starter kit.
@WinsWings
Mm... But on a second thought, I'd guess it was probably the lighter AAA that were more prevalent post ww2 (I'm not well read on this).. so yeah, you're probably right it's more appropriate for the ww2 settings. Gotta the make the smaller AA guns at some point, haha
@WinsWings
Thank you. (And for highlighting that one, too)
The 52-K flak works in a Vietnam war settings, also! If I'm correct it was among the AAA models used by the North Vietnamese military.
.
Edit
Checked the page I got the info from just in case (I started to doubt my memory), it's listed as 85mm air defense gun M1944... phew, lol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeaponsoftheVietnamWar
@WinsWings
Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed it!!
Have you tried this build as well? https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/9i7JiL/AI-flak-gun-52-K-85mm-v1
It's an actual flak cannon made for aggressive AI. Creates a bunch of explosions in the sky, and sometimes hits you. You can spawn multiple of them around the base, and they only attack you or other AI planes.
@GUGA4721
I see, thanks for letting me know.
See if it improves the performance when you delete a couple of vehicles and maybe a barrack or two. (The triangular ones) Add some letters to the name and save as a separate file.
You can grab the aircrafts by the vertical stabilizers and disconnect them from the detacher. (You can scale them down to 0.1x the size, and rescale them back up to make it easier, but you probably don't need to.)
.
Also low-physics for some extra boost in performance.
@LunarEclipseSP
Thanks:) Yeah, I got a little greedy with some details, and the "destructible" feature for the buildings. I could save part count by quite a lot if I went with simpler block construction, but I had to keep that feature, lol
@ReinMcDeer
You're probably right, it's a compromise
Are variables/part variables in general known to make a noticeable difference, (lets say on older mobile devices) though?
I know that at least in some cases, it's better to use variable setter and keep the FT input short than to have long FT on every part that uses the input (having long FT as a custom variable and shorter FT for parts input saves a tiny fraction of loading time, someone on a discord tested that for me (I think on python))
+2Here's a quick tip,
+2If you set the partCollisionResponse of a part from Default to None, that part stops taking damage from collision (like when it crashes into the ground, or hits another plane). Custom track (crawler) system tends to explode if this value is set to Default, but changing it to None will prevent that.
Love the design, works great!
+2Info update, current wing gun damage seems to be 30. When you set damage value to 30 in xml with Overload and open xml again, "damage" parameter disappears (Overload does this with some parameters when the value is default). Doesn't happen with anything higher, or anything lower.
+2Looks really nice!
+2I think the plane is a little too light, which makes the engine feel a bit too powerful for the weight though (jumps like rodeo horse when taxing, haha). I think increasing the weight to make it weigh as much as the actual plane (about 12,000kg empty according to wikipedia) might improve the ground handling, just my two cents.
Fun to fly nonetheless!
1)Parachute 'floor smooth/& argument' bug
Parachute with this code causes a bug where the plane spawns below sea level and game crashes. I suspect the presence of & argument or the two arguments within the activation part + parachute quirks/bugs is what's causing the glitch.
(activationGroup)
floor(smooth(SelectedWeapon="R61" & ammo("R61")=0)<1,1/1))
I tried another code with the '&' argument part as a custom variable (using clamp01), but the result was the same.
2)Gauge 'hide option' bug
In designer, if you set a gauge's "hide base" property to true and hide and unhide the part (with the general designer option), base shows up again (stays hidden in flight mode).
3)Beacon light activation group bug(?)
Neither the Beacon Light or Formation Light part accept FT for its activation group.
Aug 5 Update
4)Small Pylon
Top attachment point of Small Pylon cannot be attached to a fuselage block, weapons, or another small pylon (unlike its larger counter part), and probably many other. I suspect it can't be attached to anything but wing parts.
I find this rather inconvenient.
Playing on iPhone (1.12.128)
+2Incredible build! Works great, and the model looks very moe, and... yknow... winks awkwardly
+2Got another one.
FT related bug
iOS - Perfectly good FT stops working under certain circumstances. Might be an issue specific to certain type of parts (so far experienced this with rotators and gyro).
Haven't gotten a pin on the cause of this, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the amount and complexity of FT present in a given build. Gyro/rotators with FT that work on its own (with performance cost of the build being below 1500), when brought as a subassembly to a larger build with more stuff (higher performance cost--about 2000 to 2800), it no longer works.
FT that stops working is something like this: "clamp01(rotator current angle)) + clamp01(Activation Group) = X." Pretty simple. Or, even something simpler like "LandingGear=1."
I was using these to activate/deactivate rotators and gyros. 1 assembly of these, works fine (with 9 rotators and 3 gyros).
2x this, still fine. But when I bring this assembly to a larger group of assemblies (as a unit disconnected from the cockpit, since that's crucial to what I'm trying to do) with another 18 gyros and 39 rotators (3 gyro/9 rotators per unit, and each unit has performance cost of about 380, and only one unit is connected to the primary cockpit, rest disconnected), it suddenly stops working. It only uses part variable setter, and these variables take over when the unit is saved as sub assembly.
I'd like to submit an example of this, but the build is a WIP and I don't want to publish it yet, so this might not help much.
I'll probably submit an example once the project is published.
Also, I'll list some other things that might be related to this.
+2-Number of aircrafts (more than 800)
-Number of sub assemblies (more than 600)
-Available storage space on device (8GB out of about 260gb)
1. Camera related bug
When a camera or primary cockpit goes into the ocean, regardless of whether it's floating or sunk, game forcibly "Auto Orients" camera, and and skips some of the remaining cameras that are not touching the water seemingly at random.
This does not happen when a bomb or missile with camera enabled touches and or sinks in the water. Although there is a workaround in the form of aforementioned bomb/missile camera, I still find this troublesome as it limits the utility of camera parts especially for custom missiles or bombs with camera on it.
2. Parts rotation bug(?)
This might be an old bug, or even a feature, but I've noticed that Y-axis Parts Rotation does not account for the current X or Z axis rotation of the part. What I mean is that whatever the X-axis rotation value, changing the Y-axis rotation value always rotates the part perpendicular to the floor of the build screen. This causes (pretty often, especially with labels) a quite annoying situation where changing either Y rotation or Z rotation doing the same thing, and you are unable to rotate the part in Y-axis perpendicular to the part itself.
Edit
@11qazxc mentioned that (thanks!) it's a gimbal lock and not a bug. That would explain it, but I'd still like there to be a feature where you can toggle between this mode and rotation based on part orientation. It would be great if we can have two modes for all 3 axis.
3.Camera enabled Bomb/missile bug
When a camera enabled bomb or missile explodes or breaks, camera doesn't get disabled, and the bomb or missile (their models) remains intact. Sorry, don't have a working example at the moment. May be more likely to happen with bomb/missile with low explosion scale?
Forgot to mention, but these are issues I've encountered on iOS. Can't speak for other platforms.
+2This is cool!
+2If you don't mind a suggestion.. it would be nice to be able to see the directions of locations outside the map. Like some kind of symbols or names that display at the edge of the map.
Well made nice vehicle!
+2@Lake
+2No, no, no, nooooo! Nooooooo....
Haha
Hey peeps, here's a little video I made with the truck! ...that you upvoted! Now have the misfortune of being tagged! Muwahahaha!... jk, haha. Joke aside, I think you guys might enjoy it, so here it is.
+2@mahardika
@CRATE52PART2
@Scratchoza
@TRD6932
@Th3rmoplylae
@DEN12345
@IceCraftGaming
@X99STRIKER
@GrFrog
@PilotBug
Nice boat! I really enjoy your mobile friendly ships.
+2This is just... incredible. Thanks for this ship, i can have a lot of fun with this!
+2This is a niice looking Thunderchief!
+2Five, six, seven, o, nine.
+1@DatTrainGuy19
+1My habit/policy to always include the name of the creator when saving a build has paid off:)
@Monarchii
+1Glad to be of service;)
I couldn't find the Natter though, unfortunately. But if I remember right, I think it used
sum(clamp01(condition))(=shows/gives you the time since the condition is met in second) to limit its engine run time.Something like the following for engine activationGroup. Disables the engine 10 sec after AG1 is turned on.
sum(clamp01(Activate1)) < 10
@Monarchii
+1Oh man, you made me brush heheh
I'll be looking forward to seeing whatever you're cooking up... x)
You have every right to do things the way it suits you and at your own pace with this game & the site chii, I for one am just happy to see you around again:)
+1@DatMaluchGuy19
+1Whenever I got time & drive
This is just sugo-incredible.
+1@KSB24
+1Since I've uploaded the flak cannon, I've learned that there's a much simpler, easier & cost efficient way of doing this (thanks to @PlanariaLab). All you have to do is, instead of detaching 1/3 of the total parts count, lose over 1/2 of the total (starting) wing area. Just one big wing on a detacher in other words. (you can scale down the wing part, of course) Just two parts!
@DatMaluchGuy19
+1Sure, you and me, or KSB and me?
I should write a quick tutorial on how to remove marker at some point, it's pretty simple & useful.
Nice house!
+1Another great FT weapon!
+1Pleasant to fly even on smartphone, with nice turn rates and such (there are so many planes out there I can't fly on mobile). Nice build!
+1Love this! Camera aim and nice flight characteristics actually allow me to let it fly in circles and hit things on the ground. Well done.
+1@DatMaluchGuy19
+1Thx lol
Had to have something there to simulate the rolling/pitching motion, so I figured it may as well be a ship
@Astro12
+1Very true. I really needed something like this for a turret that uses autoaim (which is for AI) especially, since it can't even make a manual adjustment unlike a human player.
.
I was very lucky to come up with this method (using a secondary cockpit to get the data on how much the ship's roll angle--this is most likely not the first one to use it), since alternatives (like doing crazy calculation based on ship hull's heading, pitch/roll angle, turret rotation etc.) get pretty complex and way beyond my brain's computing power and math skill. lol
Love this! It's kinda ugly as an aircraft (sorry, lol), but the build quality is very high.
+1@WinsWings
+1Thanks, that would make sense.
I think I'll try to make each class of gun/cannon AA distinct in terms of their effectiveness, based also on era. Looking back, I've made the 85mm flak too capable in the tracking department (rotates too fast).
Really cool build! I especially like the sequenced breath/laser attack. Tried it against some ground targets, and when the laser hit them, they'd just fly like a speck of dust brown by wind! Haha. Glorious stuff.
+1.
I got this issue though, on mobile version where the FireFuns button constantly flickers (perhaps due to something with activationGroups FT?) and never stayed on screen, which made it unable to use the laser. It was easily fixable though, with an extra hidden minigun or wing gun with burstCount of 1 and really long timeBetweenBurst. Not sure if it happens to others as well, but I thought I should let you know nonetheless.
Thanks for the tag, looking forward to seeing more!
+1@DatMaluchGuy19
+1Yeah. I've seen some arguments and mean comments thrown among users myself. And you kinda have to make some assessment on a person's character based on their history, and sometimes reputation, but it's good to remember that your image of the person is based on an incomplete picture (it depends, right).
And if it's a petty drama, it's better to stay away and don't touch on it in order not to contribute to the mess. If it's really bad, I'd probably tell them to use block feature though.
Love how you made this, looks very well polished. Great build!
+1@Hannyboy
+1Go for it!
You can use this as the basis if you like. (You can easily remove or rearrange the planes.)
I'll probably upload the structures in a separate upload as a starter kit.
@WinsWings
+1Mm... But on a second thought, I'd guess it was probably the lighter AAA that were more prevalent post ww2 (I'm not well read on this).. so yeah, you're probably right it's more appropriate for the ww2 settings. Gotta the make the smaller AA guns at some point, haha
@WinsWings
+1Thank you. (And for highlighting that one, too)
The 52-K flak works in a Vietnam war settings, also! If I'm correct it was among the AAA models used by the North Vietnamese military.
.
Edit
Checked the page I got the info from just in case (I started to doubt my memory), it's listed as 85mm air defense gun M1944... phew, lol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeaponsoftheVietnamWar
@GUGA4721
+1You're welcome:)
@WinsWings
+1Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed it!!
Have you tried this build as well?
https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/9i7JiL/AI-flak-gun-52-K-85mm-v1
It's an actual flak cannon made for aggressive AI. Creates a bunch of explosions in the sky, and sometimes hits you. You can spawn multiple of them around the base, and they only attack you or other AI planes.
@GUGA4721
+1I see, thanks for letting me know.
See if it improves the performance when you delete a couple of vehicles and maybe a barrack or two. (The triangular ones) Add some letters to the name and save as a separate file.
You can grab the aircrafts by the vertical stabilizers and disconnect them from the detacher. (You can scale them down to 0.1x the size, and rescale them back up to make it easier, but you probably don't need to.)
.
Also low-physics for some extra boost in performance.
@Sparky6004
+1Took me a looong time to, it was way above my brain-power grade, lol
@VenusLancer
+1It was about time!
@LunarEclipseSP
+1Thanks:) Yeah, I got a little greedy with some details, and the "destructible" feature for the buildings. I could save part count by quite a lot if I went with simpler block construction, but I had to keep that feature, lol
Tag redo (this is the last one), AA gun for endmy AI!
+1@PlayMinecraft
@DEADSHOT16
@kyomunosekai
AA flak cannon for enemy AI, tagging again
+1@Hannyboy
@DimitriIqbal91
@C47skytrain
@ThomasRoderick
+1DHANK YOU, FRIEND!
@Hannyboy
+1@DimitriIqbal91
@C47skytrain
@DatMaluchGuy19
@rexzion
@VenusLancer
Figured you may be interested in this:)