The Big Huge Effects Pack!

He is talking about the flaming debris trail. Yes that effect is in the pack. It is called gf_continous_damage. However it has occurred to me that I forgot to put in how I implemented the debris trails for the larger capital ships explosions like you see in the Itano Circus videos. It is fairly simple though.

For example, the Kusari Battleship explosion.

Shiparch.ini

Under the Kusari Battleship I have the line “explosion_arch = explosion_ku_battleship” to call the explosion. The explosion is then defined in the “explosions.ini”

Explosion.ini

This comprises of several parts. The first part, is the explosion itself. For which the code is here.

[explosion]
nickname = explosion_ku_battleship ; Name
lifetime = 0.000000, 0 ; Not sure
process = disappear ; Other value is "shatter" I am not entirely sure what the differences are
effect = gf_capital_explode_yellow, 0.000000 ; This is the ALE effect that will be called on the explosion
debris_type = debris_capital_death, 1.000000 ; To be honest I'm not sure what this is or where its defined, I just copied it off the old explosions
debris_impulse = 150 ; How fast the debris gets thrown outwards
innards_debris_start_time = 0.000000 ; Presumably sets a delay before the debris spawns
innards_debris_num = 50 ; How many bits of debris are spawned in the explosion
innards_debris_radius = 100 ; Radius at which debris are spawned from the center of the object 
innards_debris_object = simple_torpedo_debris01 ; Very important, which debris object is used for the debris

The second part, is the debris itself.

[Simple]
nickname = simple_torpedo_debris01 ; Name 
DA_archetype = Equipment\models\weapons\dummy_round.3db ; Model of the debris, I used a dummy model I made, its also included in the effects pack
material_library = equipment\models\ku_equip.mat ; Material for the model of the debris
Mass = 10 ; How heavy the debris is

@crashbx:

Can implement this and use this on any vanilla server ? I will try now

The gf_continuous_damage can be implemented safely on its own. It replaces a vanilla effect so you can just drag-drop and it will be used in whatever situations vanilla calls that effect for.

However the debris-spraying as demonstrated above actually involves editing of the ini files. I do not think there will be any trouble caused by using those particular ini edits online, as a suprising amount of Freelancer is client side during multiplayer play. However, admins will be very wary of the fact that you actually modifying ini files to be different from what the server is using, even if it is for something harmless like this.

I have updated the Effects Pack. It was missing the updated textures that I used for my effects. In the smoke.txm, there is the missile smoke texture that I use for all my missiles. In the standardeffects.txm, is the updated explosion sprite I made. It also has the documentation for the debris explosions.

Oh I see. Thank you for catching that. It is true that I left that out. In fact when I was writing the tutorial I had completely forgotten what the the "debris_type = debris_capital_death, 1.000000 " even meant. I will update the Filefront link now.

Filefront link now updated.

Shoot, looks like I missed that part in my little tutorial. As was pointed out, I created the new vis_effect from scratch. In general I tried to do that for every new effect I made just so I don’t have to overwrite any vanilla references.

In retrospect, it would have made sense to include a general tutorial for referencing a brand new ALE from scratch. Specifically because I just threw all the ALE files into a zip and figured that people could figure out on their own how to utilize them. People who aren’t very familiar with FL modding really wouldn’t know where to start if they wanted to integrate the new effects into their mod.

Thanks for pointing the issues out you two.