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AAX Raven

Terminate those who stand in your way with the AAX Raven, the toughest gunship at one's disposal.


In the video game Red Faction: Guerrilla, the RE-1 AAX Raven is considered to be a lightly-armored military aircraft that is used by the Earth Defense Force (EDF) as standard air support to carry out critical military operations. It possesses an arsenal of mounted turrets ranging from a rotary cannon to a gauss cannon to even a rocket system that are used to pick off individual targets from above. It also has hover and VTOL capabilities, providing easy maneuverability and brisk dodging tactics to evade incoming projectiles.

This addon incorporates the AAX Raven into Garry's Mod and allows full operating capabilities in which the player is able to pilot the aircraft and use the rotary cannon. If you want more flexible options in terms of firepower, I recommend installing the AAX Raven Expansion Pack as well, which contains two different mounted turrets.

The model is ported directly from Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered along with its textures. Its sound design has been slightly altered for improved player gameplay and immersion. The aircraft's movements, controls, and its physics had to be manually coded in, and its particle effects had to be manually implemented.

Here is a comparison between its appearance from both games:

Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered


Garry's Mod


Features:

• Detailed mesh and high quality textures
  
• Normal-mapped textures and reflections
  
• Model has "gibbed" components (separate parts of the model which are also models)
  
• Accurate physics collision
  
• Animations for its landing struts which activate and deactivate based on altitude
  
• Custom particle system that handles the thrusters and explosions
  
• Custom muzzle flash and bullet tracers
  
• Sounds that have been directly ripped from the base game (some are modified)
  
• Dynamic lights and sprites
  
• Ability to use the rotary cannon
  
• Alternate between third person view and rotary cannon view
  
• Alternate between faster speed or greater maneuverability (Toggle feature)
  
• Health system
  
• Custom ConVar attributes (e.g. can change speed and health)

Controls (Primary):

1. Foward, Left, Back, Right → W, A, S, D (Respectively)
   
2. Hover, Descent → Jump [Space], Shift (Respectively)
   
3. Toggle AAX Maneuverability Mode → Reload [R]
   
4. Toggle Third Person View/Toggle Rotary Cannon → L-CTRL

Controls (Rotary Cannon):

1. Fire → Mouse 1

Console commands you can use to alter the AAX Raven's attributes:

• "flyer_setaccel" → Changes the acceleration factor of the AAX Raven.
  
• "flyer_sethealth" → Changes the health of the AAX Raven.
  
• "flyer_setgibdespawntime" → Sets the despawn time for the AAX Raven's destroyed components (gibs) upon the vehicle being destroyed ('0' for gibs to never spawn, '-1' for gibs to never despawn).
  
• "flyer_takebulletdamage" → Toggles whether or not the AAX Raven should take bullet damage.
  
• "flyer_takedamage" → Toggles whether or not the AAX Raven should take any damage.
  
• "flyer_hideplayer" → Toggles whether or not the player should be visible inside the AAX Raven.

It took me quite a while to carefully analyze and match the AAX Raven's consistencies between Garry's Mod and Red Faction: Guerrilla as both games are made in completely separate game engines. The engine limitations made the creation of this addon difficult. Minor caveats for using particle systems in the Source Engine are that it is not only costly in terms of performance, but it also may not render the particles in some circumstances (e.g. entering a server with a user already flying the AAX Raven would not show up any particles for you). But overall, this was a fun project that I enjoyed working on and I hope you enjoy it as well. Feel free to ask any questions or address any bugs or issues.

Please note that this addon is intended for personal use and educational purposes only. It has been reversed-engineered solely for review between the mechanics in Garry's Mod versus its original counterpart. I only wish that other people may learn from the endless amount of possibilities that can be achieved through scripting and designing.

Credit goes to Volition and the rest of the Red Faction: Guerrilla developers for the model, textures, sounds, etc. Thank you for making such an awesome game.


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