FX ideas

**Here is a link to get an idea of how many convex and concave parts the city model has.

http://www.galacticenigma.com/Cpm/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=50

The method I used was to get the path that the emitter is travelling on. Since I only needed the path between the current position and the next position, the length of the path was fairly short. In graphics jargon what I used is a form of ray casting. This is where you send out a straight line from the current position and end at the position you wish to be at. If it collides with something it will return the location, mesh and the face it collided with. DirectX has a ray testing routine but it requires alot of setup to get it to work. Plus each object that has to be checked has to be tested separately. I did speed up the code by making it only check for collisions if a ‘coll =’ command was part of the FX script. Another way I sped it up was by using the final matrix from the object tested and converting the ray into object space. What this means is that I won’t have problems with matrix instability testing collisions for objects near the outer edge of the systems.**

**Hehehe, so true it isn’t Freelancer at all

Disclaimer

The FX posted above are for Galaxy Empire, I don’t have any idea on how to recreate these FX in Freelancer. GE is of my own design and has no connection with Microsoft in any way. So feel free to post any ideas you have because I may be able to write the code for it.

Anyways, thanks for pointing that out Bejaymac, I’ve seen them mistake it for FL before :)**

Screwing with the nebula scripts

Added ring nebula support