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AI & MP Dogfighting now working! Bombable ships, aircraft...

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AI & MP Dogfighting now working! Bombable ships, aircraft...

Postby flug » Mon Aug 24, 2009 8:39 am

Yet another update to Bombable as of September 2023 - it is now at version 5.0, is a proper FlightGear add-on, and is completely compatible with FG 2020.

Bombable converts FlightGear into full fledged combat flight simulator, with realistic weapons, dogfighting, bombing, and strafing--either with AI opponents or via multiplayer.

As with the FlightGear project as a whole, the goal of Bombable is to create a fun, realistic, and challenging combat flight simulation environment--since combat capabilities, training, and engagement have been an important part of the design and history of many of the historical aircraft modeled in FlightGear.

Here is the link to download Bombable 5.0, the current recommended version:

https://github.com/bhugh/Bombable/releases/tag/v5.0

The 5.0 version includes (among MANY other things) the JSBSim Sopwith Camel ver. 2.0--a historically realistic reconstruction of the famous Camel, completely compatible with Bombable. Ver. 2.0 of the Camel has many new updates and features and far greater realism.

Bombable now has a page on the FlightGear Wiki.

A video explains how to use Bombable, demonstrates it, and explains what the various menu options do.


Bombable is an add-on to FlightGear that has these features:

- Multiplayer dogfighting with Sopwith Camel, SPAD VII, Fokker DR 1 Triplane, A6M2 ZERO, F6F Hellcat, A-10 Warthog, and others
- AI dogfighting scenarios against planes, ships, and vehicles 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.
- You can shoot/bomb scenery elements and you will see explosions, fires, etc.
- Bombs and weapons affect Flightgear scenery as well as the main FG aircraft--so be careful that you don't drop a bomb too close to yourself . . .
- Explode/burn when the main aircraft crashes, rather than just bouncing off or ploinking into the ground
- 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
- Exceeding aircraft limitations (excess g-forces, overspeed) adds damage to your aircraft and finally leads to shutdown/crash
- Several specially modded aircraft are included. They are tuned to work better with Bombable AI scenarios, but for the AI scenarios you can use most any FG aircraft that has working guns or bombs (ie, fly the F-16 in dogfights; shoot down A-10s with an F-16 or Mig fighter, etc.)
- For MP dogfighting you **must** use one of the aircraft included in the distribution. (Or, if you are an aircraft developer, add some fairly simple code to your own aircraft to make them Bombable-compatible.)

Bombable now works with FlightGear 2.0.0 through 2020.3

Downloads:

https://github.com/bhugh/Bombable/releases/tag/v5.0 (current version, for FG 2020 and later)

If you are running Flightgear 1.9 or earlier, I suggest using the old version of Bombable (the new version hasn't been tested on FG 1.9 or earlier--though you're welcome to try the new version and report in this thread what happened):

http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable3p.zip (old version, FG 1.9 and earlier)

If you are using FG 2.2 or 2016, you might need to use https://github.com/bhugh/Bombable/releases/tag/4.6delta (Bombable ver. 4.6delta).


Extra Aircraft to use with Bombable
Bombable includes a number of Bombable-optimized aircraft as part of the base distribution, including a historically accurate Sopwith Camel flight development model (choose the JSBSim version of sopwithCamel-Bombable).

In addition to the aircraft included in the base distribution, you can download these additional aircraft that are also Bombable-optimized:

* F-15E Strike Eagle (added weapons to the flyable/main aircraft version and bombable attributes to the AI/MP version, includes two scenarios, you can dogfight with Sidewinder missiles and guns with the F-15E or other FG aircraft such as the F-14b): http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/F-15E.zip - unzip to your 'data' directory (it includes an aircraft AND AI scenarios, all will be in the right place if you unzip to your data directory)

Based on the F-15E Strike Eagle project by StuartC.

* B-17F with working guns (Bombable includes an AI version of the B-17 but this adds a flyable/main aircraft B-17 that has working/firing guns; use with the Zero, Hellcat, and B-17 scenarios included in Bombable or fly over MP with B-17s, Zero, Hellcats, and similar aircraft.): http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/B-17F.zip - unzip to your Aircraft directory.

Based on the B-17F from Dave's Hangar. You'll need the DavePack from Dave's Hangar to make it work.

Image

INSTALLATION

To install the package, simply unzip it to the FG/data directory.

Detailed instructions/caveats in the readme file--please do read it!

The package does **not** over-write any FlightGear files (except previous version of Bombable) and uninstalling Bombable is easy--it does **not** require reinstalling FlightGear. Uninstall instructions included.


Here's the background:

I've abstracted the techniques created by others as demonstration of concept, and actually made them work for a wide variety of ground vehicles, ships, and aircraft.

The same techniques allow any developer to add to a few lines of code any AI object (aircraft, ship, carrier, vehicle, etc.) and turn it into a Bombable-aware object that can move, chase you, shoot at you, and take damage and be destroyed.

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. As you are trying to track them down and catch them, they will also be working to track YOU down and shoot you.

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.

And . . . Bombable now extends those same techniques to create true multi-player dogfighting capabilities. Join your friends on FlightGear via multiplayer and fight it out.

MAKING YOUR OWN BOMBABLE AI AIRCRAFT AND YOUR OWN MP DOGFIGHTING AIRCRAFT

The same techniques used to make these AI aircraft bombable and make them work over MP can be used on any aircraft. Detailed instructions here:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:_Addin ... ith_damage


BOMBABLE SCENERY

Now the FG's scenery, buildings, bridges, etc, explode and catch fire when bombed or shot with enough of the right type of ammo.
Last edited by flug on Sat Sep 23, 2023 5:02 pm, edited 67 times in total.
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Re: Towards dogfighting (dogfighting with AI, bombing ships etc)

Postby Fahim Dalvi » Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:46 am

Hi,
Great to Hear about the Improvement! But the Link seems to be dead....
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Re: Towards dogfighting (dogfighting with AI, bombing ships etc)

Postby flug » Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:42 pm

Fahim Dalvi wrote:Hi,
Great to Hear about the Improvement! But the Link seems to be dead....


Sorry, it's fixed now:

http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable3g.zip
Last edited by flug on Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Towards dogfighting (dogfighting with AI, bombing ships etc)

Postby 2011futuremarine » Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:51 pm

Glad to see someone working on this idea! Great job flug ;)
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Re: Towards dogfighting (dogfighting with AI, bombing ships etc)

Postby flug » Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:04 pm

2011futuremarine wrote:Glad to see someone working on this idea! Great job flug ;)


I tracked & shot down six of the A-10s heading north from SF today . . . ended up in the mountains about 100 miles north of the city.

I've played various flight sims & combat sims over the years . . . there really something different (and better . . . ) about FG and that same quality comes through under these scenarios even more so IMHO.
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby flug » Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:42 am

If you downloaded the new AI bombing/dogfighting scenarios, you might want to download again (you can just install right over the top of your previously installed files).

1. Made aircraft, ships, jeeps, etc. start turning and dodging when you start shooting at them. Makes things MUCH more interesting. I chased one A-10 all the way around San Francisco before I finally caught up with him . . .

2. Looked a little more into how aircraft that have weapons work, and the result is the scenarios & targets should now work with most all planes that have weapons in FG.

Download here:

http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/bombable3g.zip
Last edited by flug on Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby flug » Tue Aug 25, 2009 11:19 am

A quick photo of one of the A-10 Warthog dogfights. Somehow this guy ended up crashing exactly on the bridge:

Image

Have your own dogfights: http://brenthugh.com/flightgear/JeepTankFerryCessnaWarthogInvasions3.zip
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby Fahim Dalvi » Tue Aug 25, 2009 12:48 pm

Hi,

Just Tried it out, works great! I've learned that Cessna;s ARE very difficult to hit!

P.S. Cessna's always have contrails, which help in spotting them, but the whole contrail turns orange sometimes, (I think thats when I Hit them).
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby 2011futuremarine » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:20 pm

where would you extract the file to? :)
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby Gijs » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:02 pm

2011futuremarine wrote:where would you extract the file to? :)

Reading the README ussually works ;)
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby flug » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:48 pm

2011futuremarine wrote:where would you extract the file to? :)


You have to copy things to three different spots--plus make sure the A-10 aircraft (regular A-10, not the AI version) is installed:
INSTALLATION


1. SCENARIOS TO FG/data/AI:

The XML files in the top-level directory are AI scenarios. Copy them to the FlightGear/data/AI directory (exact name will vary according to your operation system and installation options).


2. Aircraft files to FG/data/AI/Aircraft:

Copy the entire Fire-Particles directory to the FlightGear/data/AI/Aircraft. Do the same with all the aircraft subdirectories, including M1-Abrams, jeep-bombable, ferry-bombable, c172-bombable, A-10-bombable, etc.


3. Copy bombable.nas to FG/data/Nasal

Copy the file "bombable.nas" to FG/data/Nasal


4. Make sure the A-10 aircraft is installed

There is one dependency (other than FG itself)--for the A-10-bombable AI aircraft to work correctly, the A-10 aircraft (regular FG version, NOT the AI version) must be installed in FG/data/Aircraft.

If you don't have the A-10 installed already, you can find the download link here:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Fairchild_A-10

The A-10 appears to be the best aircraft to use to fly the scenarios, so installing it is worthwhile twice over.
Yeah, it's in the readme but the readme is a bit long, isn't it?
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby geneb » Tue Aug 25, 2009 5:14 pm

This is AWESOME WORK!

Congrats on this. It looks great!

When does the multi-player component get done? *Evil Grin*

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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby Student_Pilot_Noob » Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:38 am

What do I do with Kansas-City-East-Bottoms-Bombing-Range.data? It's not an xml file or anything.
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Re: AI Dogfighting--new download w/bombable ships, aircraft, etc

Postby flug » Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:34 am

Student_Pilot_Noob wrote:What do I do with Kansas-City-East-Bottoms-Bombing-Range.data? It's not an xml file or anything.


Sorry, that's just a scratch file that got in the zip by accident. (It's a file generated by the UFO aircraft, that I used to determine positions etc for placing the tanks around.)
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Camel on Camel action . . .

Postby flug » Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:38 am

Just a little taste of what's coming up soon . . . .
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