[IceFire]

CptWhite on the TBP internal forum mentioned a neat idea.  Sunglares for exploding ships.

Basically, the idea is that when a ship explodes, in addition to its explosion and shockwaves, there is also a brief brightening in the screen if your looking directly at the vessel that has just gone up.  Its been a common special effect since the days of Wing Commander.

I propose a $ExpGlare tag that specifies the level of glare.  For instance $ExpGlare: 0.0 would do it FreeSpace 2 standard mode with no glare.  $ExpGlare: 1.0 would fully white out the screen for that brief moment when the ship goes up.  I suspect that something like 0.6 through 0.8 would do nicely for most large capital ships.

[Solatar]

*bump*

I like the idea.

[diamondgeezer]

[kasperl]

would look nice, good ideae!

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Sound's good. and perhaps the bigger the ship, the brighter the glow, so a Sath would blind you.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB


Sound's good. and perhaps the bigger the ship, the brighter the glow, so a Sath would blind you.

Thats the idea.  So roasting marshmellows would have a whole new meaning

[aldo_14]

Or, base the glow proportionally on the blast (or whatever it's called) / shockwave stting in the tbl.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Or, base the glow proportionally on the blast (or whatever it's called) / shockwave stting in the tbl.

Great idea.  And allow a $Special Glare mod just like $Special Exp.

[LAM3O]

A very good idea, reminds me of this thread:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,12050.0.html

[Bobboau]

now just rendering a bit map would be extreemly easy,
I know that the flash thing isn't too hard but I don't know how any of it works so I'll let someone else do it

[Petrarch of the VBB]

what sort of parameters would the specialglow thing have, though?

Things like radius, brightness, colour etc?

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
what sort of parameters would the specialglow thing have, though?

Things like radius, brightness, colour etc?

Just like when you look at a sun.  It glares....except the glare would be present for a second or less while looking directly at a large ship exploding.

So...expolosion, explosion, ship breaks apart, white flash, fading flash, explosions and debris spewing out.

[Nico]

nah, make a flash with each shockwave.

[diamondgeezer]

If the player wasn't looking at the exploding ship, would the glare effect still be drawn, ie. draining system resources?



Good God, a half-way intelligent question. I think I need to lie down in a dark room for a bit...

[IceFire]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
If the player wasn't looking at the exploding ship, would the glare effect still be drawn, ie. draining system resources?



Good God, a half-way intelligent question. I think I need to lie down in a dark room for a bit...

I would hope not...but its probably a fairly simple thing anyways.  It'd be just like a sun glare....FS2 has no problems with those.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
If the player wasn't looking at the exploding ship, would the glare effect still be drawn, ie. draining system resources?

The FS2 sun glare doesn't draw anything. It just makes everything onscreen bright and washed-out.

So basically, everytime a shockwave ani is triggered, this code would temporarily create a local-space "sun" light point (as opposed to the regular suns which are infinitely distant), which would start at maximum intensity and then drop off in synch with the frames of its shockwave, hitting zero by frame 10 or so.

Something like that.