Re: Effects showroom!

Some great eye candy here, looks like I need to quit being lazy or risk being left behind
@Chili: did you extend the engine glow forward to engulf the whole ship? Rather nice effect against the dark blue background of space, proves pink does work with the right color combination.

@Firekiss: is there some setting in that shader which would limit the desaturation to only occur above a certain brightness level and concentration?

@Trent: me likes the colors here as well, and a nice blend of effects in the fuse. Gotta also think of how things act in space; no gravity, so explosions are omni-directional -unless of course it’s a hull breach.

@Jong: the corona around the explosion is a nice touch, and (if I’m correct) the use of animated texture. You may wish to reduce the number of particles to smooth out the explosion animation.

@Aden: is that a modification of a tractor beam? The electric particles blend together quite well and almost appear random -a good thing I recognize the particle texture, nice recolor as well. Oh and that nuke explosion looks great, nice ending.

@Nieckey: you might have fun with the Glyphs for those as well (\data\FX\glyphs.txm and one other file I forgot ) Was thinking something similar for use on Shield hit effects.

@FriendlyFire: is that a custom Tube effect also? Seems I recall the standard tube looks like someone went nuts on acid and tie-dyed the walls. But the one in the video actually resembles what a wormhole might really look like.

Nah i never extended the beam / flame length in the .ale that much although I did some minor tweaking to change the size slightly. it’s actually another engine hardpoint, but since that screenie I have moved it forward to the front so there is engine at front and back ;D just to be a little different

would adjust the front one to give a cascading / waterfall effect down the outside of the ship, instead of it going through the body itself. Maybe i can do a seperate non engine effect like this and just assign it to that hardpoint that way. Needs a little more work to get that though, i kinda like how it is now anyway…

edit: In fact I just had another idea! gonna give it a try quickly tonight and post some srceens up if it works…

@Chili:

Species 8472. Damn, there are a lot of Freelancer Trekkies.

edit: In fact I just had another idea!

Oh dear. Hide all women and children and proceed to the nearest safe zone. ;D

Ya know, it might be good to post some of my effects. They’re simple recolors and were made before LS made the editor, but I think they’re good.

MK

Engine FX example

The FX below will give you a new engine trail (real long) and the classic Star Trek blue flash when entering cruise. Also contains additional comments on what each section is for and how some of the commands work.

Click here to download the SSM Warp FX files

I like this big cruise effect
BTW I also have some sweeties to show:
Fatal accident:

Shield resistance:

Almost…

Into the jumpgate during combat:

Baltimore Shipyard:

Don’t try to dock (gun: Justice MK II) with Fort Bush!

No traffic:

Inside:

@ Mini_me: I’m still working on the desaturation shader, but I have a problem: if there is a difference of saturation between dark and bright scenes, colors get messed up (sometimes they become even negative)

Note: This post is basically a bunch of posts put together.

Also Note: This thread is useless without links.

This link is for the shortened working missiles

This link is for the broken, but really awesome missiles

It took me a couple hours to figure out how the files are formatted but I’m starting to get the hang of it and have been playing with the missile values. It is glorious. It is a “has to be seen to be believed” kind of thing. This makes missiles look so much more awesome, and when you have missiles and missile trails crisscrossing through the battlefield as you fly through it… Just amazing. However I still am having the two second issue. Two seconds after the emitter dies, any particles that are still around get deleted. I’m trying to find away around it, but this may just be a hardcoded limitation.

So, despite having the disappear issue I decided to apply the effect to the rest of the missiles and do some stress testing. First I tried to get into big dogfights with a lot of missiles. There weren’t that many, but it was an awesome dogfight made even more awesome with the missile trails.

So I needed something a little more excessive. I hopped onto my LAN test server and loaded up a Kusari Gunship with all missile turrets and had some fun. Still no framerate drop no matter how many missiles I fired.

So then I decided to just play the game normally and see what situations come up. I remembered that the weapon platforms used to spam missiles in crazy amounts, and decided to check them out. Oh wow… Now that’s what I call missile spamming. The Cylons would be proud. Now in my defense, these weapon platforms have always caused lag for me. The enormous volume of high rate of fire bullets they put out lowers my framerate regardless of the missile effects. My framerate didn’t lower any more than it typically did though, so I guess it is good news. I especially like the Roboteching that’s going on here.

I am stumped. I really honestly don’t know what to do. The more I work on this the more I believe the only thing that can be done is find some hard coded value somewhere that will allow particles to survive for longer without their parent emitters. I wouldn’t know where, or how to begin looking for something like that. Unless I find some magical, incredibly clever workaround, this is pretty much shelved. The best I can do is this, not bad by any means, but I know it could be so much cooler.

Even though they don’t work 100%, I still use my broken missile effects. Nomad decided to take up missile spamming last night and the end result looked like a Macross Missile Massacre

;D base on original ;D

Hrm, is it possible to have damage parts on a projectile model? Or attach a fuse to one which keeps the emitter intact on a separated piece? You might extend the life of the part emitting its trail by giving that part more hitpoints than the explosion damage. But still you’d limited to the engine lifespan.
Either way, you may wish to bring back in a fade to 0 opacity. One which scales by the engine lifespan so the effect doesn’t just wink out all at once -but allows for enough distance to be less noticeable when it does end.

ps: I haven’t yet worked on ammo models, so forgive my lack of knowledge on the possibilities for the first two statements.

Well it’s possible “a bit”. I managed to create missile explosions which include the chunks of the missile mesh, with nice fire-trails:

Tell me if you are interested, I can help.

And this is my new ALE sun ;D

OMG!!!

AMAZING!

This is my new lens-flare effect for the ALE sun

in order for me 2 impress ya all i need HELP: http://the-starport.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,26/topic,781.msg5957/topicseen,1/#new

lol, i was waiting for someone to showcase a sun ALE, i wanna show ours but we dont wanna ruin it lol

O__o

I can haz sexy ALEs?

one of the most interesting topics and it’s dead ???

if i get a LITTLE more help in the effects topic i posted i promise ill post alot of effects

The majority of Firekiss’s stuff looks like modded textures as well as the effects. I’ve messed around a bit with the modified textures, I made my own smoke texture that nobody besides me could honestly tell the difference of, but I think it looks better. You can see it in the last batch of screenshots I posted with the missile spamming. It’s much smoother and not as spiky as the vanilla ones.

I seriously love them smoke FX Why, its just given me an idea ^^