What a wonderful work. Does anybody even remember how the vanila FL looks like Been playing mods for so long I forgot vanila FL. I guess it would be boring

get a fast firing gun… 20 per sec…
Short to medium “beam”
then turn that last param (auto_turret between true and false…

hehe you’ll see then ;D

notice the way it now almost “locks” onto the target, hehe there’s your answer

and the other 2…?? ??? just as stumped… but i feel they might be a mounting thing… never
seen that explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBuiq3wDwbY
x)

Revive great thread!

One of Freelancer’s great conundrums is the lack of any proper beam weapon. I’ve never actually tried to make a beam weapon myself, so I decided to try it out today. I know a beam weapon cannot be done right, so I decided to see how close I could get making it look like it’s done right. Right now all I’ve got is a spiffy charging animation for the gun. It is very heavily based off of Freespace 2s beam weapons.

Before anyone gets too excited, much of this has no real practical application. It is mostly an effects exercise. In order for this to work properly, I’m actually using three separate guns.

This is all WIP, so it is subject to change.

The animation is what it looks like, the little dots in particular are what is called sucking in lines and is exactly what it sounds like. Freespace 2s beams did this, so mine do too.

Hey guys, how do you do all those fancy effects? WIth the ALE editor? How exactly? Can someone explain me please?

So bad that “ALE Editor” program is just exporter… it will be great to find a program which can edit ALE’s and show result without running a game…

Yeah that would be nice! It will make editing effects easier for everyone!
The problem is that making souch a tool will be a hard work, and souch a tool may even cost money.

Although the beam effect isn’t 100% finished, I think it’s close enough for my purposes.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLG1JywpP0I

Why, i dont know if i love you or hate you for that XD

Holy #$%%, that is amazing o_O

awesome work man

Do you fire the 3 guns at once? Or is it 1 for the charge, 1 for beam, 1 for end?

Is it a real beam or it is a pen named beam?

Here are all the source files, as well as details on how it works, and how to implement it.

The guns themselves can probably be tweaked a bit to produce a slightly better result. I stopped in the middle of such tweaking and decided that it was close enough.

I’m including a redundant mirror just in case.
http://www.filefront.com/17151413/FreelancerBeamFX.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/?s6fkhzfprn12m6c

Excerpt from the readme:

=======================
Intro

This was simply an effects modding exercise to see if I could recreate a beam similar in style to Freespace 2s beam effects. Unforuntely, beam weapons cannot be properly done in the Freelancer engine. The closest thing to a real implementation you can do is an extremely fast firing, high muzzle velocity, short lifespan bullet.

I had no intent for anything with a practical use, so I decided to see how close I could get to just looking like a working beam.

Rail-Knife Turret

Warning: I recall that modders said that weapons with an extremly high refire rate (iirc more than ~15) do costs A LOT OF performance.

Why485 wrote:
Although the beam effect isn’t 100% finished, I think it’s close enough for my purposes.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLG1JywpP0I

http://a.imageshack.us/img199/2599/beam01.jpg
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4586/beam02.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img820/9742/beam03.jpg

Try to move mouse while firing and it become a #^$%&.
It won’t be a beam while turning/targeting and firing.
A screenshot why:

It is not a ray.

FriendlyFire wrote:
Why’s done something really nice. If you think you can do better (hahaha), feel free to show us. Otherwise, be thankful he gave the source and that this is even possible.

Yes, this is very ok… if shoot in one direction
Anyway i saw nothing new for me - just very fast bullets - there is no hard work. Its wrong way to make real ray. We should attract patience to programming (hacks, plugins) to enable graphic engine to do a ray (kion lasers in X2/X3R/X3TC is not a fast bullets).

I know it’s not the same thing, but could you possibly simulate something similar by using an extremely long beam length? i.e slow refire rate but long lasting effect lifetime. Totally useless against fighters I suspect but might not look unfeasable when fired between slower moving capships.

Wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t already been there and done that though.