Diedel wrote:I don't believe there is such a limitation in the UT2K engines. With certain cheat codes, you can fly through the air in any arbitrary direction. All that's lacking is the "wiggling" of a Pyro. So?
Actually, if you try to do "fly" in the console, you can see exactly what I'm talking about. You can fly around however you want, but your character is always oriented perpendicular to the ground. In other words, your view cannot rotate or bank (i.e. buttons '7' and '9' in Descent). Now, this may or may not be significant. It depends on how closely you want to truly resemble Descent in such a mod, as opposed to an easy-to-grasp variation of Descent.
I did some more research. The Raptors are similar to fly mode in that they are always oriented toward the ground. + and - will change cruising elevation, but forward/back/left/right movement is limited to that elevation plane. However, the fighters in the AS-Mothership level do seem to have arbitrary banking. Orientation is reset to the plane only when the pilot presses the crouch button. Otherwise, they can fly wherever they want.
The only thing about this is that they were implemented solely in the AS-Mothership level as a mod. I don't think they are even a generic vehicle type you can add to a level - it could well be "hardcoded" into AS-Mothership.
While these vehicles prove it can be done, there is one other problem - weapons.
By default, weapons in Unreal can not float like they do in Descent or abide by zero-gravity rules. From what I understand, it is assumed by the engine that all item pickups are made from a ground surface. You'll notice that the inability to pick up weapons or anything else in the AS-Mothership level while flying is a conspicuous exclusion. So, that's something that would have to be addressed even if you get Pyro physics right. UnrealEd 3 returns the error:
NewWeaponBase0: xPickupBase is floating
).
