The events in 'Mutation City' led me to believe they switch to some kind of rocket propulsion when hovering. They couldn't have had another way of having thrust underwater. That, or the side engines are reversible and become intakes when they hover in normal circumstances. It's never explained, but there are several possibilities, like those red grille-like things on the hull that could also be intakes.

Btw, side view. It really is too large. Partly my fault (I think the real one is shorter), partly too large of a scale for CC. I'm going to have to shrink it down some more.

Actually that's a good size, but it needs some slimming height-wise, mostly near the front.

I can't really slim it height-wise, I was trying to keep the heights proportional to the front view. Although if you consider the effects of perspective, maybe it could be made slimmer. I'll see what I can do.

That size, is going to be even bigger than an MPAM, or would fit into small maps.

Shrink it in all dimensions, maybe. If that don't work, you might have to try to chibi-fy it.

So, I tried to stick my Turbokat sprite into the game, as a simple Dummy dropship resprite for now.

Despite my original fears induced by ye people, it doesn't seem overly gigantic, rather "appropriately supersized".



Still, it's damn big. I'm not against reducing it further, to maybe 250-200px in width, but I won't be "chibifying" anything. Exaggerated details don't look too good, in my opinion.

I've also tried to get the sideways Turbokat to work. And got a slight problem - its center of mass is WAY off. Combined with non-vertical thrusters, it makes for some funky control issues. Hopefully, I can resolve all that by simply expanding the sprite and making it rotate around the center of mass instead of the actual center...

Next up is setting up "virtual attachments" and testing the viability of controlling via AddAbsForce. The results of a few Octopus missiles hitting a dropship indicate that it is a viable way of getting something going the way you want, let's see if it's possible to control it.

That's awesome.
Incredibly awesome.

Also, the sideways version appears to be larger in size than the frontwards facing version.
Whether or not this is actually true is secondary. This means you could probably change the size of it successfully relatively easily.

*Feels inferior in both spriting and coding*

I told you it was a good size. Don't shrink it. It's fine there.

Arright, I'm having a bit of a problem with physics. I can't seem to get my angles and velocities aligned.

So, the Turbokat is now a craft held up by three virtual thrusters. The center thruster is used exclusively to adjust lifting force, and the other two are used to roll the craft.

I tried to make the craft handleable with sheer manual prowess, but it turned out that without any visual representation of the parameters, it would take T-Bone's piloting skill to fly the craft. So I am now making an improvised autopilot, with automated procedures for flying up, down, left, and right.

Here's how it works.

First, we check for input and adjust the internal variables for desired X and Y velocity.
If either of the height controls are touched, the desired altitude variable is reset to current height.
If the X velocity is too different, we adjust the craft's target roll to point it in the desired direction.
If the X velocity is still different, but the roll is sufficient, we apply a little more thrust to keep the craft going.
If the X velocity is close enough, we readjust the craft's target roll to a more neutral stance.
If the craft's target roll is different from its actual roll, we adjust the desired roll rate.
If the roll rate is different, we adjust the thrust of the two side thrusters to roll the craft.
If the altitude (Y pos) is different from the desired value, adjust center and side thrusts to keep the craft steady.

It seems to cover most holes the craft should encounter in normal flight (that is, it should allow it to perform basic AI dropship duty), but I can't get all of the angles and velocities straight.

Right now I've fixed the altitude maintaining (to some extent), but whenever I try to move it sideways, it goes into a barrel roll and crashes into terrain. I have some thrust tweening to help mitigate the sudden lurches of thrust the autopilot would cause, but it seems it doesn't help me much. I'll give it a few more tries and post the code here so maybe someone can fix it for me.

(I realise it can be easier done with directly setting AngularVel or RotAngle, but that's not what I want at this point)

And in the end, the culprit was a single typo in thrust tweening. Oh well, it's fixed now.

The first step towards having a working Turbokat is thus complete - it can hover using three virtual attachments, and generally keep itself in the air during common flight tasks: i.e. hover, ascend, descend, strafe left and strafe right - and all of this with just three downward thrusters!

Now, onto some bigger problems. The virtual attachments cause CC to crash whenever the jet can't reference them to update their position - usually when the craft itself is dying, but it already happened once mid-flight (I suspect wrapping issues). Any help with fixing that?

I'll upload the WIP jet and some pics when I get the internet back on my laptop.

Have it check if they're null values in front of the code involving them.
Something like if !(attachment == null) or something in actual syntax.

Hey wow, I made it spin! With no extra effort, just like I designed it. Now I need the transition sprites, some code to tween them, and a fix to the periodic CTDs, and I can start working on horizontal flight and weapons!

Yeah, me internet just had to run out today. I'll go try uploading it through the PDA, maybe some pics too.

Oh, and I also need some way to make a non-child MOSR display in front/behind of another. And some way to alter thrust on AEmitters through code. That possible yet?

Edit: Alright, here it is. Normal move controls to fly, 'Z' toggles autopilot, 'R' and 'T' spin the craft left and right, respectfully. No gamepad controls yet, will have to think about that one (maybe double-tapping a key will work).

I'm testing it. I really like the animated fluffy tail, and they looks just like in the show, except in CC-style, brings back memories , ahhh-good old animations back in the 90s

*Ahem*, anyway. Couldn't it be just one button for the side-changing?

Well, nothing stops you from using just one button. It will wrap around to the other direction. Btw, I guess I'll have to make the back-facing sprite as well now, huh?

Back-facing? Not necessary. Besides, the center thruster in the FG will fry you troops...no wait, or the enemy's too. Yea, it could be done

However, after really piloting the Turbokat, I seriously think it is gigantic. It's nearly twice the size of a regular dropship, it's just, not natural when you fly it near other stuff, even actors.

I think I'm failing at this...




WAAAaaaaaggh EJECT! EJECT!




*CRASHHH*




Nice flying, T-Bone! >: /




Right...
I must say its rather tricky to control because it lacks correcting thrusters that dropships usually have to keep them upright, but I must say it was pretty fun anyways... until it crashes and it does it often. Most notably when it dies. At least one crash happened when I flew the jet out of the map's borders (same thing happened like in above pictures). It seems just like you said the virtual engines have problems when the jet is destroyed or other wierd stuff happens.

Another thing is the controlling design of this thing. I would dare say its a bit cumbersome when you need to press another button to make the jet turn around and such. It could a bit more handy if you could, say use the normal movement keys to turn around and accelerate/decelerate. And to keep the steady flying hovering mode, just have a button that could switch the jet between jet/hover modes.

Btw cute tail animation on the Kats, I like em.