Jump tunnel colors

robocop

This is the code for the bretonia jump tunnels which are the default jump tunnels for all gates and holes in vanilla FL.

I’ve tried making different colored jump tunnels depending on which area of space you’re going to. (Red for Bretonia, Green for the Edge Worlds, Orange for Rheinland, etc.)
The problem is that the colors seem so garish when compared to the bretonia effect.

How exactly do the rgb values work? I’ve tried messing with the values but without being able to see sidebyside comparisons, it’s hard to tell which direction I’m headed.

What relation does jumptube and jumptube5 have to the color spread? Any?

[gate_tunnel]
nickname = gate_tunnel_bretonia
write_depth_buffer = 0
num_spline_control_points = 9
x_range = 500
y_range = 500
z_range = 20000
min_radius = 50
max_radius = 100
far_radius_factor = 0
min_speed = 0.003
max_speed = 0.08
time_to_max_speed = 5
fade_distance = 0.1
near_alpha = 1
far_alpha = 1
num_t_steps = 200
num_s_steps = 12
min_rotation = 3
max_rotation = -3
min_rgb = 0, 0, 30 <=== key value
max_rgb = 0, 0, 100 <=== key value

[layer]
texture = jumptube
color = 0, 0, 200 <=== key value (this should be about 75% blue or a dark blue if i’m not mistaken)
near_alpha_factor = 0.8
far_alpha_factor = 0
radius_factor = 1.5
u_offset = 0 <=== what is this?
v_offset = 0 <=== what is this?
du = 0.1 <=== what is this?
dv = 0.07 <=== what is this?
v_scale = 10 <=== what is this?

[layer]
texture = jumptube5
color = 100, 200, 255 <=== key value (this should be about 40% red, 75% green, 100% blue, whatever color that would be)
near_alpha_factor = 1
far_alpha_factor = 0
radius_factor = 1
u_offset = 0.5
v_offset = 0.33
du = -0.2
dv = 0.1
v_scale = 15

Also, let’s say you’re jumping from Bering to Rheinland. Bering still uses gate_tunnel_bretonia. Is there a way for the jump tunnel to start with one tube but end up with the other? ie. entry of tunnel is blue, but by the time you come out at your destination it’s orange?

adoxa

Presumably u_offset/v_offset are initial texture coordinates. du/dv is a delta added to each. v_scale is an additional multiplier applied to something before adding to v. Presumably these will affect (an aspect of) the animation of the tunnel.

Can only experiment with colors the same as you, although I can do it with the debugger and change them on the fly. If you’d like to give that a go, here’s how with OllyDbg. Open Freelancer.exe (F3) and then select File|Set new arguments and add -w; restart (Ctrl+F2) to apply the argument. Now goto (Ctrl+G) 4fe2b9 and set a breakpoint (F2). Now run (F9; you may need to Alt+Tab to it) and load a game. You’ll soon break, where you should see “default_jump_gate” in the comments - F9 twice more should get you to “gate_tunnel_bretonia”. Press F2 to clear the breakpoint. Go to the dump pane (Shift+Tab twice) and Ctrl+G ecx. Click on the first value (or move right and left) and right-click (menu key) to select Addressing|Relative to selection - that’ll make it easier to describe what comes next. Right-click again and select Float|32-bit (the colors are stored as decimals, divide/multiply by 255, which unfortunately OllyDbg won’t do for you). F9, select a gate (Console will help here) and Alt+Tab back to OllyDbg. At +14/18/1C you’ll find the first layer’s color; +48/4C/50 is the second’s; min_rgb is at +B0/B4/B8; and max_rgb at +BC/C0/C4. Change them to suit, then dock to see the effect. If using Console, select the Solars filter, then you can just press T to target the gate again and Enter/j/Enter to be directly in front of it, ready to dock.

robocop

I was able to pull colors from screenshots using PaintShop Pro and using the rgb values there in the jump tunnels. The new colors seem to look more reasonable than the more garish colors I had. Every now and again the colors seem much brighter and colorful than the ones I specified. Green can be too green, almost a St. Patrick’s Day green. I wondered if those u, v, du, dv values had anything to do with that.

Also, in the [gate_tunnel] section, there’s a min_rgb and max_rgb values.

min_rgb = 0, 0, 30 is a very dark blue, almost black
max_rgb = 0, 0, 100 is a dark royal blue

I’m gonna mess with those values a little to see where those apply. I’m thinking they might be related to the background color of the jump tunnel.

I’m still trying to figure out what each jump tunnel does. I thought that jumptunnel was the tunnel you were in when you entered the gate, and jumptunnel5 was the tunnel you were in at the halfway point after the screen goes white. It doesn’t seem to work that way though.

adoxa

Have a look at the textures themselves, in FX\jumpeffect.txm. Jumptube seems to the smoke/cloud/fog/whatever whilst jumptube5 looks to be the sides (it’s very spiky). I don’t think u et al relate to color, but a simple test would be to make du & dv 0 - that will stop them changing (you’ll probably end up with a static tunnel).