critical damage, args and deps_cells

[Stonehouse]

I'm hoping someone can give a better explanation of how the damage location system works.

 

So far my understanding is you have a damage table and each entry in the table corresponds to a damage location. So eg the following refers to the left hand side of the fuselage as per comments in lines 41 - 137 in damage.lua:

 

[4] = {critical_damage = 12, args = {154}, deps_cells={1,56}},--cabin left

 

I believe the critical damage is the value of damage for that location that when reached triggers the damage animation referred to by the argument id in the args list. I believe this can be multiple arg ids so you could get multiple animation effects triggered.

 

I don't know for sure if the above is correct but I think it is from trial and error. I start to get a bit lost from this bit on. The deps_cells seem to correspond to the damage_cells listed in lines 142 - 370 so the 1, 4 and 56 above would be nose left, cabin left and tail left which I think is basically the front third, middle third and back third of the left fuselage.

 

The animation I've been given for argument 154 has different stages of damage which are displayed as the value changes so as the value increases to 1 the severity of damage displayed on the fuselage increases. Does this link to the deps_cells components reaching their critical damage value? So does this mean when nose left hits it's critical damage the first stage of damage is displayed, cabin left hitting critical damage gives next level etc? How does progressive damage work?

Since the deps_cells are listed under [4] does that mean that each deps_cells location is part of the critical damage for [4]? ie if location [1] is critical damage 4 and gets damaged to that level is that 4 points of the 12 for location [4] or is the 12 points for location [4] unaffected by damage to location [1]?

 

I also know that you can specify droppable = false for the location. I believe that this Boolean defaults to true and can be used to control whether a damage part will fall off or not when the location reaches critical damage, possible also needing the locations in the deps_cells list to also be critically damaged?

 

If someone can talk me through the above and give me a clearer picture of how it works it would be really appreciated. Even just confirmations of things I have correctly understood or not or some clues would be great.

 

Thanks,

Stonehouse

 

PS I really have searched by the way but the best I could find was this which doesn't really do more than something very basic and unconfirmed. http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1771619&postcount=12

Edited June 16, 2016 by Stonehouse

[Riddick]

It would be interesting to know how to assign damage to certain airframe elements using a script. 
I need this to design a mission in which a TF-51D must fly through an acidic contamination zone.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Riddick