Dev's Limit Breaking 101 Techniques

BTW, anybody tried to fix ship shaking(that annoying when far from the centre)?

There was an idea to make a system with multiple centres, but nothing is heard of results….

Is there any way to fix this code mistake???

It’s not a “mistake” so much as it is an inherent problem with how FL stores positions internally. I doubt there’s a solution without requiring extensive rebuilding of the game…

A similar question is if it is possible to prevent ships from shaking when getting hit while having shields offline.
Can this be fixed?

Has anyone found out yet how to rename freelancer.ini?

Change the reference to it in Freelancer.exe?

Which offset is it at then?

Do an ascii search mate.

Found it after trying several hex editors. Thanks for the hint!

Not a problem man! Glad you got it figured out.

Guys, i’m after increasing some visual FX on a black hole. I want to view the effects from 50k away. I’ve edited the server dll thinking the vis beam needs increasing, no joy. I’ve edited the effect type setting to 1mil and defined it to be used by the effect, no joy.

Only entries i can see without altering ale files are for smoke, explosion and large proj. Are there any specific to normal visual effects where i can change the viewable range and pbubble settings?

Before anyone says anything, this all works up to about 4 or 5k away from the blackhole, then the FX stop showing so its def a visibility setting or hack for standard fx view distances that i’m after. Cheers in advance

The EffecType’s radius and pbubble values are properly setup?

the values in effect type are radius set to 1mil, same for the pbubble settings. As per your entry in the list of hacks i even altered the vis beam in server dll, thinking that would increase the range, no joy. I haven’t altered anything in the exe file yet as those values listed seem to be for other FX types

Does modifying the [EffectLOD] values in FX\effects.ini have any effect?

@adoxa

No, but i can go and alter some values and see what happens

EDIT

Don’t see any changes.

Ok, here’s small video to show what’s happening. I’m 5.4k from the effect and all is fine. I move back to 5.5 and it disappears. I move forward and it comes back. Very odd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLld_UTRpsI

How did you attach the effect on the solar?

That was the easy bit. Shoved an FX hardpoint onto the model, and made it so it uses one of the unused effects in FL. I’ve seen this used by a couple of people but maybe not on a black hole before. Partly the reason why i want to be able to see it from further away.

This topic was touched on a while back between LS and Sushi as the FW-TOW was suffering from the same issue. I know a couple of the values listed are in the wrong place at the start of this thread, i just need to know which ones so i can make this all happen.

[Edit] solved no help needed

@ Gibbon

You need to edit the values in the dacom.ini to increase the draw distance of the effects, aswell as the values in the effect_types.ini.

to somthing like this, now these could be wrong i can’t realy remember, it’s been a while.

dacom.ini

; (note: 1000 is default poolsize)
FxBasicAppearance.poolSize = 100000 ; each particle can generate: 4 verts 6, indices
FxRectAppearance.poolSize = 40000 ; each particle can generate: 4 verts 6, indices
FxPerpAppearance.poolSize = 25000 ; each particle can generate: 4 verts 6, indices
FxOrientedAppearance.poolSize = 0 ; each particle can generate: 4 verts 6, indices
FLBeamAppearance.poolSize = 68000 ; custom app from flalchemy.dll: each particle can generate: 5 verts 24 indices
FLDustAppearance.poolSize = 25000 ; custom app from flalchemy.dll: each particle can generate: 4 verts 6 indices
;–-------------------- total = 260000 -------;
;
FxMeshAppearance.poolSize = 50000 ; generates meshes not particles; need enough of these for all tradelane rings in a system.
FxParticleAppearance.poolSize = 10000 ; generates effects not particles

What i can remember is, if you set them wrong you will get a buffer overflow error inside flspew and somtimes if there is alot of action going on ingame with alot of effects involved, they go nuts and spread all over the screen.

Then what you need t do is look in he effects.ini ans see what type of effect your neutron star is using.

example

[Effect]
nickname = pi_neutron_03_proj
effect_type = EFT_WEAPON_PROJ <== this ((there may be mor than one))
vis_effect = pi_neutron_03_proj
vis_beam = pi_neutron_03_beam

then go to the effect_types.ini and look for EFT_WEAPON_PROJ or what ever it may be. Then change it to somthing like this.

effect_types.ini

[EffectType]
nickname = EFT_WEAPON_PROJ
priority = 0.500000
generic_priority = 1.000000
lod_type = EFT_LOD_WEAPON
radius = 10000.000000
visibility = EXIST_OFFSCREEN
update = CULL_UPDATE
run_time = -1
pbubble = 10000, 10000

Now like i said, it’s been a while for me so if i’m wrong on anything then don’t feal bd about correcting me, but it’s the along these lines, you should be able to see the effect up till around 50k with these setting.

Cheeers for that. I tried it and …… it didn’t work for me at least

I still suspect its some numbers in the FL.exe somewhere. Sushi, i know you know the answer to this bud, any chance of some enlightenment please?

All I did was change the effect type of the blackhole effect to that of the effect_types that are hacked. So, using these

eft_damage_large_smoke (infinite duration):
– 20f in freelancer.exe, 0x212DE8, 0x212DE8 = on-screen radius of effects
– -1f in freelancer.exe, 0x212DF0, 0x212DF0 = max run time of effects
– 100f in freelancer.exe, 0x212DF8, 0x212DF8 = unknown, likely the first value of pbubble
– 500f in freelancer.exe, 0x212DFC, 0x212DFC = visual cutoff range of effects (second value of pbubble)

I added the eft_damage_large_smoke type to the blackhole effect. With the hack, I increased the size of the on-screen radius, max run time of effects, pubble values to fairly large values. That’s all there is to it, that I know of. If it’s not working for you, I don’t really know why.