I've been continuing to work to develop the idea of bombable/damageable AI tanks, jeeps, and now ships and aircraft. Now thanks to suggestions downthread, this has expanded to include working multiplayer dogfighting.
The result as a download you can install in FlightGear with these features:
- Multiplayer dogfighting with Sopwith Camel, SPAC VII, Fokker DR 1 Triplane AND NOW A6M2 ZERO
- AI dogfighting scenarios against planes that dodge, turn, attack, shoot at you, and generally act like fighter pilots would
- Shootable/bombable moving tanks, jeeps, ships, and aircraft that catch fire, burn, explode, sink, crash, etc.
- AI scenarios that allow you to use FlightGear aircraft for air-to-ground, air-to-sea, and air-to-air combat missions against these targets
- Explode/burn when you crash
- Exceeding aircraft limitations (excess g-forces, overspeed) adds damage to your aircraft and finally leads to shutdown/crash
- Four specially modded aircraft are included--and they all work especially well--but you can use most any FG aircraft that has working guns or bombs with the AI scenarios (ie, fly the A-10 Warthog to dive bomb or fly ground support missions; shoot down A-10s with an F-16 or Mig fighter, etc.) (For MP dogfighting you must use one of the four aircraft included in the distribution.)
Download here:
http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable3o.zip
Updates Aug 2009-June 2010: The whole package has been re-written, with lots more features including dogfighting Sopwith Camels, SPAD VIIs, Fokker DR 1 Triplanes, and Zeros. Lots of improvements in the scenarios, movement of ground objects, speed, etc. Updated documentation.
If you have downloaded a previous version, please download and install the version above in place of it (you can just unzip this version over the top of any previous versions you have installed--follow the instructions in the readme).
These routines can be fairly easily be added to make any AI/MP aircraft work with AI or MP dogfighting and it is also easy to enable any regular aircraft that has guns or bombs to be used to dogfight via MP or use the AI bombing scenarios.
The multiplayer system is a very simple one, only needs to pass a little bit of data, and now seems to be quite reliable.
INSTALLATION
To install the package, simply unzip it to the FG/data directory.
Detailed instructions/caveats in the readme file--please do read it!
Here's the background:
I've abstracted the techniques used to make the M1 Abrams tanks bombable, and the techniques used to make the tanks and jeeps move across the surface, to allow those same characteristics to be added to any AI object (aircraft, ship, carrier, vehicle, etc.) by adding just a few lines of code to the AI craft's XML file.
So, for instance, now we still have the "tank and jeep invasions" with a fleet of vehicles moving through various locations, but also fleets of large ships, Cessna 172s, and A-10 Thunderbolts flying through the California mountains at 300 ft AGL--just waiting for you to track them down and catch them.
(Well, the ships don't move through the mountains at 300 ft AGL, they just float sedately around the bay, but the Warthogs do plow through the mountains, pretty convincingly at 300 AGL and 200 MPH. Catch them if you can . . . )
Each of these objects shows damage and catches fire and burns rather satisfyingly when damaged sufficiently.
In addition, each type of object crashes, sinks, burns, explodes, etc., in a decently realistic kind of way.
I believe the techniques used here can be rather easily extended to create true multi-player dogfighting capatibilities.
With these routines, any AI aircraft can easily be made "bombable"--ie, able to keep track of damage from hits by different types of ammo.
All the multi-player function would have to do, then, is pass back & forth damage levels--a single value for each aircraft and relatively easy to handle.
In the meanwhile--tracking down a pack of A-10 Warthogs as they zoom through the mountains and canyons at 300 ft AGL and 200 MPH is a pretty good second place.
MAKING YOUR OWN BOMBABLE AI AIRCRAFT
The same techniques used to make these AI aircraft bombable could be used on any aircraft. The method for specifying the parameters for each aircraft needs a little refinement yet.
MAKING YOUR OWN MP DOGFIGHTING AIRCRAFT
You can mod pretty much any aircraft with weapons to be used for multiplayer dogfighting. See the enclosed documentation for details.
BOMBABLE SCENERY
I believe the same techniques could be used to make selected, or possibly all, scenery objects bombable.
