Changing effect of thruster

I decided to give this a go. (First FL modding since… well, a long time)

The thruster ALEs function in a very peculiar way. They have a bit of obscure code that allows them to be toggled on and off. As such, I just spent the last hour trying to duplicate the effect you were looking for but I was unable to. The problem comes from the way that the thruster effect is turned on and off.

More details on how the thruster ALE works:

In essence, the thruster is always emitting particles, even when its off. This is because any effect attached to the thruster will play as soon as the ship is spawned. If you put a muzzle flash for example, then the muzzle flash effect plays out when the ship spawns, then thats it. If you put a missile effect on the thruster, then the effect is simply constant, as if the thruster is always on. To counter this the ALE has a setting that means… something. I’m not sure precisely what the code means, but what it does is that when the thruster is off, it emits particles at a frequency of 0. When the thruster is turned on, it emits particles at a set rate.

Why, is that similar to the Contrail or throttle variation on engines? Or something previously unnoticed?

@Mini_Me:

Why, is that similar to the Contrail or throttle variation on engines? Or something previously unnoticed?

I do not recall exactly how engine and contrails worked, but I am pretty sure its something either very similar or the exact same thing.

I dont know about being able to re-create those Viper engine effects through the thruster. 1 reason for a start is you would need to have the same amount of thruster hardpoints and thrusters as you do engines on the ship you intended using the effect on. But you could do it easily through the cruise engine. You could just make the cruise flame as close to size, shape and pressure as your normal impulse engines. And then use the charge glow to recreate the flash right before you enter cruise.

Although this could also be done by the timing through the thruster.ale just have it work up to the flash and then instead of haveing the larger flame at the end of the effect when the thruster is at max have the smaller flame. But like i said i think the only way this could work using the Viper as an example. Is to have 3 thrusters on the ship.

@SilentAssassin82:

Although this could also be done by the timing through the thruster.ale just have it work up to the flash and then instead of haveing the larger flame at the end of the effect when the thruster is at max have the smaller flame. But like i said i think the only way this could work using the Viper as an example. Is to have 3 thrusters on the ship.

That is precisely what I set out to accomplish the other night, and I had in my mind several methods of doing so. However due to the unique way that the thruster ALE functions, I could not figure out a way to replicate the effect. I threw every ALE editing trick in my book at it, but could not find a satisfactory solution.

That is precisely what I set out to accomplish the other night, and I had in my mind several methods of doing so. However due to the unique way that the thruster ALE functions, I could not figure out a way to replicate the effect. I threw every ALE editing trick in my book at it, but could not find a satisfactory solution.

No your right mate. I did kind of get it to work, but the thruster only fired once and once only. You had to either log off or dock to get it to fire again. And thats about as much use as a chocolate firegaurd.

Methinks first ye should decide what you’re actually trying for here. It sounds like you’re going for the flash of engines firing up and then regular thrust. FL uses “Thrusters” more like boosters than they actually are used in space. Thrusters on current vehicles are for small force corrections in direction. FL uses them like a Nitrous injection

So, with that said, which part are you going for? via Engine? or via afterburner? because vanilla is probably closer to what afterburn should look like.

If you’re going for engine flicker, add a new section in, along with a new texture and emitter, specific to the flash. Tailor the animated section to drop off at about 10% throttle, while starting at about 3 or 5%. With 6 digits of floating point precision, that leaves plenty of animation time to play with in between.

Why, have you added throttle to a weapon effect yet? If so, that should be a pretty direct route to get there.

If you haven’t, here’s my modified ku_gunboat_maingun.ale
just decompile like usual and compare with a decompiled vanilla on your local system. Though at the time I was just taking a stab in the dark so to speak, you probably have quite a bit more experience in manipulating the values towards a useful state, so no laughing ;-(

Going by that you should be able to add in a diff section for just the flash.

What I am trying to do, is make it so that when you use the thruster, the thruster gives a huge flare, and then stabilizes at the normal small flame.

Basically, you press [thruster], and you see a huge flare. As you hold it, the thruster stabilizes down to the regular thruster flame.

Due to the way the thruster works (based on throttle), there is no real way to do this. A thruster is either at 100% throttle, or 0%. There is no inbetween. And at any given throttle, it can only have one given emitter frequency and particle definition.

it should be possible to change the effect to do it, but if im correct it loops the effects, so it would continue doing it, however it might be possible, i would work at decoding half of the main FL structure and looking for what it means by the loops, maybe some way to change it from looping the effects to making a single effect to and then have it continue the final effect for a while.

If you are in engine kill and enable your thruster, your engine ‘grows’ from the (in enginekill normal) 0 speed flame to the flame the engine would normally show up at speed 80. Couldn’t this effect be used?

The problem is that that is entirely in the engine. That has nothing at all to do with the thruster. While it would get the effect I’m looking for, it would only be in that specific situation. I want it to happen all the time.

Also using this “quick boost” effect on the engines (with the method described by Mini_Me) will be more complicated. The ship engine ALEs are much more complex than most ALEs I’ve encountered. (Which would really just be explosions and missiles now that I think of it.) Not to mention the fact that I may have to modify every individual engine to get what I am looking for. Which would obviously be very tedious and annoying.

my biggest ALE problem is the tradelanes tbh, its hard, all the ALE are linked (in tradelane effect, for example, changing the tunnel to lightnings is IMPOSSIBLE so far as ive digged into it )