Mid-Air Explosion? Setdammage won't do it.

[Hovis 0]

What can one do to make an aircraft literally explode in mid-air? Anything simple? Or does it all have to be scripted etc? I wouldn't know how to do any of that old nonsense

If I had to guess it would be something along the lines of a sabot or bomb hitting the aircraft. (I'm using this for another one of my videos. I don't know what I'm going to call it yet. Perhaps base attack 3 )

Here's how I did this for the intro to a mission.

First, I grabbed a pre-made IED script. This one by Jeevz to be exact. You can download it as a file somewhere, but I'm sure if you just cut and paste this into an ied.sqs file you're sorted.

Quote[/b] ]

; Improvised Explosive Device Script

; By Jeevz

; v1.2 12/13/06

; This script will create an explosion of a

; selected size on any object when called

; The arguments are [objectName, explosionPower]

; Explosion Power will be 1 of 4 choices

; Small - Good for Anti-Personnel use

; Medium - Will usually disable a Humvee without killing the occupants

; Large - Will usually destroy a passing humvee and kill or severly injure all occupants, will disable the tracks and possibly engine on M1A1

; Huge - Nothing will survive, I mean... it's HUGE :-)

; Example script call --> [theCar, "Small"] exec "IED.sqs"

;start script

_theObject = _this select 0

_theExplosion = _this select 1

;locate the Object to be blown up

_bombLoc = GetPos _theObject

_bombLocX = _bombLoc select 0

_bombLocY = _bombLoc select 1

_bombLocZ = _bombLoc select 2

; Deterimine the ordinance used to create the explosion

? (_theExplosion == "Small") : _ammoType = "R_57mm_HE"

? (_theExplosion == "Medium") : _ammoType = "M_Sidewinder_AA"

? (_theExplosion == "Large") : _ammoType = "M_Sidewinder_AA"

? (_theExplosion == "Huge") : _ammoType = "Bo_GBU12_LGB"

civvy1 globalchat _ammoType

; Get the explosion size and blow the object up

? (_theExplosion == "Small") : goto "SMALL"

? (_theExplosion == "Medium") : goto "MEDIUM"

? (_theExplosion == "Large") : goto "LARGE"

? (_theExplosion == "Huge") : goto "HUGE"

#SMALL

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_theObject setdammage 1

civvy1 globalchat "Small"

exit

#MEDIUM

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_theObject setdammage 1

civvy1 globalchat "Medium"

exit

#LARGE

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_theObject setdammage 1

civvy1 globalchat "Large"

exit

#HUGE

_ammoType createVehicle[_bombLocX, _bombLocY, _bombLocZ]

_theObject setdammage 1

civvy1 globalchat "Huge"

exit

Then the first time I tried it I made a helicopter explode with this line:

[Heli1, "Large"] exec "ied.sqs";

Bind that to a trigger the helicopter flies through and POW. It goes nova. But it doesn't look great, and still didn't, even when I stepped it up to a "huge" explosion.

What worked for me in the end was not exploding the aircraft itself, but exploding one of the crew inside it. In this case I used an Mi17, so I stuck a guy in the back called Bomb, and ran this script on the trigger.

[bomb, "small"] exec "ied.sqs";

Sure enough there's a small explosion, like a grenade hit but bigger, inside the helicopter, which does enough damage to cause a fuel leak and to effectively force it to land, fast and hard, and bingo, you've got a cinematic crash sequence.

Now I haven't tried this with a single seater aircraft, and no matter which way you try it with this premise you're going to get a fatal crash (cos your pilot is obviously sprayed all over the cockpit). But you should get a nice trail of smoke and crash into the ground effect, rather than a burst in mid air job.

[lethal 0]

I quit.. I'm just going to face facts... It's impossible.

wow - you're giving up easy!

i don't know your complete script but from what i see in that error msg, i'd try to remove that lonely

/

at the beginning of the script in

line 1

[BLSmith2112 0]

That Ied script worked first attempt no problem. Thanks guys for your patience w/mine.. even though I lacked some. I'll have the video done and in the videography section later tonight.

[BLSmith2112 0]

Alright cool. Thanks again guys. I added the video to my sig. Now you can see the 4-5 hours of searching and asking for help.. for literally 3 seconds of video.

[Leopard2 0]

Nice video...