How's this done?

Couple of guys were playing around with dynamic lighting a little while ago, check the FX Showcase thread for who they were exactly.

light animation, nothing technical. Doesn’t work 100% of the time from my experience though, depends how much action is going on.

Two files required:

FX/lightanim.ini
effects.ini

example of entry in effects.ini would be:

[Effect]
nickname = pi_plasma_01_proj
effect_type = EFT_WEAPON_PROJ
vis_effect = pi_plasma01_proj
vis_generic = pi_plasma01_proj
lgt_effect = red_proj_flash
lgt_range_scale = 10
lgt_radius = 12

In lightanim.ini:

[LightAnim]
name = red_proj_flash
frame = 0.000000, 255, 115, 115, 2.500000
frame = 0.200000, 255, 55, 55, 1.900000
frame = 99999.10000, 255, 55, 55, 1.900000

There’s a thread somewhere in the lancers archive where you can find a proper description on how to implement this. Can’t remember what it’s called but it was by the plasmafire guy, firekiss I think. Probably something along the lines of dynamic effects or lighting.

Found this tutorial

If you do this on effects that use the beam functionality (effect defined in beam_effects.ini) and if the beam gets destroyed (i.e. hits something) before the corresponding light effect completes, Freelancer will crash. We kinda solved this by some hacky workarounds in Freeworlds but it’s still under testing.