More hooks for animations

[jmf]

It would be good to have more hooks for animations like:
[*]on_land -> Animation when docking like opening cargo door, cargo ramp
[*]on_start -> Animation when undocking like
[*]on_atmosphere_enter -> Folding down wings, supplying heatshields and similar
[*]on_atmosphere_exit -> Folding up wings, retracting heatshields and similar

Please post what you think about the idea and what else hooks you can think of.

[bszlrd]

These would be nice.
An additional phase for landing gear, would be nice, where the weight of the ship settles on the gears. So there would be a relaxed gear position when you are flying, and a flexed one when you are on the ground and played in reverse when taking off.
There could be one for jettisoning cargo, maybe with a tag for the position of the ejected cargo.
And for externally mounted weapons in the future, there could be recoil of the barrel.

[Zordey]

+1 :)

Recoil on the gun would be a nice effect but is only really necessary with kinetic weapons and Pioneer currently uses some sort of plasma / energy weapon (I don't like the descriptive term "laser" because lasers are beam weapons IMO)

[jmf]

When something is accelerated there is always a same force in the opposite direction.
So there can be recoil from plasma/energy weapons since plasma isn't weithless and compressed plasma could be quite heavy.

[bszlrd]

Plus it gives a sense of force and mass, which is desirable thing in my opinion.

[FluffyFreak]

We could do with an "on_idle" animation that plays constantly.