Rockets and Rails

This entry is not about the life of pioneer George Stephenson. The pylons seem capable of configuring themselves, got some elevation in there for aim assist if/when we add that.

I removed the LUA based weapon loading, it wasn't working out the way I hoped it might. There's a level of disconnect between LUA and the game-engine which added to the complexity of something that is already complex, when it didn't need to be.

Can finally get started on the arming now. Got a little sidetracked with testing what I call compound entities which seemed like a good idea but don't actually work outside of the editor due to some engine bug. It would have been a great way to make villages but we've adopted a different approach. Both would give us destructible buildings.

* update * Stores jettison is working too well. The whole things comes off the rail...and drops through the floor. All corrected. Rail and pod weights are effecting the centre of gravity a little too well, that's going to require a bit of tweaking to correct. I need to check my notes on stores weights and extrapolate how heavy these pods and rails are when empty. Then I had to create a custom physical shape to fit flush with the Hellfire rails as the connectors and actuator were causing collision events to trigger. And it turned out that my function to set those collisions was never called, it was removed after the 2.31 engine update. Restoring the function worked a treat. Now I need to add to the SFX required list, store jettison and stores hitting ground.

Overall it's been a frustrating evening but a result at the end. Lots of fixing up to do to complete the arming, might take until the end of the weekend before it's fully functional. End of April is pencilled in as the blowing things up milestone, the campaign map is well under construction and I think we're almost at the point where the campaign data that sits on the map can start going in.

It's bloody hard work, often tedious but the results make it almost worthwhile. Tomorrow however I have to face a reality I've not been looking forward to. And it might scupper everything.