[Pnakotus]

Yeah, this is why I hope it gets changed back to [v]-like beams.  I'm glad I'm not the only one this happens to, nor the only one who doesn't like it.

[miskat]

I vote for VA's thrusters as the default 3.6.9 MediaVP thruster.  XD  And older :V: like beams.

FreeSpace always struck me as pseudo arcade-realistic... if I were playing an anime-like mod, then crazy beams would be alright, but for FS1/FS2... I like the old realistic stuff.

[Commander Zane]

Well, personally I don't think a beam would stay perfectly in one spot even in space. The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull and cause little damage. If the energy is dispersed, it would cause more damage to a larger area.

[neoterran]

I vote for VA's thrusters as the default 3.6.9 MediaVP thruster.  XD  And older :V: like beams.

FreeSpace always struck me as pseudo arcade-realistic... if I were playing an anime-like mod, then crazy beams would be alright, but for FS1/FS2... I like the old realistic stuff.

Right, because massive visible wavelength gazajiggawatt lasers are realistic.

[Pnakotus]

Well, personally I don't think a beam would stay perfectly in one spot even in space. The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull and cause little damage. If the energy is dispersed, it would cause more damage to a larger area.

1)  Wrong.  A beam playing over a surface instead of concentrating on one spot is retarded.  Hence, the worthless slash beams.  'The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull' seems to be ignoring how directed energy weapons work, particularly in a game based on hitpoints.

2) What neoterran said.  The even wobble about!  They appear to 'suck' little light-goblins into the emitter before firing!  Asimov, it ain't.

I'm sticking to 'the current Shivan beams look like poo'.  I don't care about some fannish rationalisation: every time one is fired I think 'gee, I should fix that'.  Observers who see them say 'what's wrong with the red ones'.

[Mongoose]

I'm not a huge fan of the current Shivan beams either; having them as one (mostly) continuous mass makes them seem far more "solid" (and yes, I realize that they are, in fact, beams of light ) and powerful.  I'll also throw in a vote for whatever thruster glows VA comes up with, since that screenshot he posted earlier was indeed the hawtest of hawts.

[Gregster2k]

Is it possible to make each and every ship have different glows on their engines? Why not make it so the Perseus CAN have that "weird" texture on its thruster and the Ulysses has another one entirely?

[Herra Tohtori]

I'm not a huge fan of the current Shivan beams either; having them as one (mostly) continuous mass makes them seem far more "solid" (and yes, I realize that they are, in fact, beams of light ) and powerful.  I'll also throw in a vote for whatever thruster glows VA comes up with, since that screenshot he posted earlier was indeed the hawtest of hawts.

I agree on both counts. The thruster glows that VA posted screenies of look really good - at least, on Ulysses.

As far as beams go, I have always imaged that they should look more like this (image attached), so I'll keep using those. Whatever makes it into MediaVP's as far as beams go, I'll probably post the latest incarnation of my beams around the same time the new MediaVP's are released... I wouldn't necessarily put them into public MediaVP's however; they might be somewhat too off-canon to some people. But whoever wants it can get it to complement the MediaVP's.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Turey]

* Turey votes for Herra's beams.

[Shade]

See, now we're talking. I wouldn't at all mind having beams that look like that in my adveffects

[muttoneer]

Herra's beam in that picture looks really solid and energetic. I'm a big fan. 

[MetalDestroyer]

I prefer the actually one in the MediaVP 3.6.8 Zeta.

[Pnakotus]

I looks a bit 'simple' for pulsating, textured FS2 beams.  Fine for a Macross mod, not so appropriate for FS2 standard.  However, way better than the current beams.

[Kaine]

yes please! just sharped up the edges a bit (or not, depending on the animation). can you give us a link to those please (and info on where to put them for someone who hasn't worked out the filesystem exactly yet)

[Mongoose]

Ooh...now that is good stuff.

[Herra Tohtori]

I looks a bit 'simple' for pulsating, textured FS2 beams.  Fine for a Macross mod, not so appropriate for FS2 standard.  However, way better than the current beams.

To tell the truth, I tried to make it a bit more like the beams were in cutscenes, so they are somewhat more stable than the retail or current MediaVP ones. Screenshots never tell the truth about animated effects though, so without further ado, here are my beams (with latest table settings) to be tried in-game. Mind you though, they also replace the Terran, Vasudan and anti-fighter beams, not only the Shivan ones.

Also, I recommend that you use MediaVP 3.6.8 zeta in conjunction with these, not the 3.6.9 beta MediaVP's... Reason for this? The only way I could get the mv_effects-wep.tbm to stop ordering the game to use the older MediaVP beam textures in multimod configuration was to replicate that file in the beam VP with same name, but necessary changes for the beam section, and arrange the multimod command line so that the beam mod directory supercedes the MediaVP directory, overriding the old mv_effects.tbm.


Feedback is much appreciated. And remember to post screenshots too.

Here be the download link.


...by the way, is the $Tile Factor number (in 1-mode) supposed to announce what? Is it a length-to-width ratio or is it supposed to tell the actual length of the texture in metres? I'm asking because the wiki documentation was somewhat ambiguous, and I also got some anomalous behaviour with tiling beams, so it would be nice to get a clarification to that issue.

[Pnakotus]

1) good work, and don't take my comments as criticism.

2) how the smeg did you work out how the beam stuff worked?  I tried to work it out (to fix the Shivan beams) but I couldn't make head nor tail of it.  And I hope the answer isn't 'wiki', because then I'll be embarrassed.

[Wanderer]

Errr... FSwiki, weapons.tbl.. sorry...

And iirc the tile factor in mode 1... IIRC it is the lenght in meters... that is it is not relative to beam width.

[Herra Tohtori]

1) good work, and don't take my comments as criticism.

2) how the smeg did you work out how the beam stuff worked?  I tried to work it out (to fix the Shivan beams) but I couldn't make head nor tail of it.  And I hope the answer isn't 'wiki', because then I'll be embarrassed.

1. Thanks, and criticism is always good IMO.

2. I got loads of help, and of course the wiki was helpful. Actually, my beams are a lot simpler then the current MediaVP ones. In most cases my beams consist simply of one layer animation, I just made it look like it has many levels. I *could* make it use up to three layers with different $Zadd values, but that would basically triple the memory use to no palpable effect in most cases.

The biggest problem in my beams is in my opinion is that when you view the beam from a very shallow angle, you can sometimes see the flatness. Most of the time they work fine though.

And iirc the tile factor in mode 1... IIRC it is the lenght in meters... that is it is not relative to beam width.

Well, that's what I thought, but as I said, I got some anomalous behaviour when I tried to use same aspect ratio for all same-coloured beams. I first calculated the tiling factor based on width so that it was same on all shivan beams, but surprisingly, some beams had very different texture aspect ratio when I did this. So I finally settled on using the (about) same tile value on all same-coloured beams, and that made the beams of same colour more consistent.

To clarify the previous problem, here's a screenshot.

Could someone find out what the code actually does with the tiling factor value? I'd really like to know. Obviously, I could've made some calculation error too. I would really like it if you could really specify the texture length in metres if it would work properly...

NB: The picture attached is somewhat older stuff. You can see that even though the tiling factor and beam width *should* have given same aspect ratio to the beams in this case, the smaller beam had the texture tiled in much denser than the wider beam. Currently, that's not a problem any more.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Zacam]

Holy hanna..... Gotta say, I _love_ both VA's and Herra's works. They've got my vote for vp's.

Side note, combining VA's and Bobboau's effects is pretty shiny too.