There's been something annoying me quite a bit for awhile. When you get hit by a beam and it has a beam flash effect defined, odds are the beam hits close to your eyepoint and for a few brief seconds, your view is completely obscured for a few seconds while the animation runs out. (most beams post-3.6.12 mediavps have the beam flash effect added)
To me this is terrible, its right up there with EMP effects in terms of "how to greatly annoy the player". (Actually its worse than EMP since the AI doesn't get penalized at all). I mean we have a damage flash anyway.
So I have a half-done PR done that won't generate that beam flash on a ship if the camera is in the cockpit of that ship. But it was suggested that it should maybe be a flag, because its not reeeally a bug.
So here's the options on how it could be implemented,
In the situation of getting hit by a beam flash effect while in the cockpit:
- Never generate the effect (This is my choice!)
- Have a game_settings/mod.tbl option to choose if it should be generated or not (default to show or not show?)
- Have a weapons.tbl option to shoose if it should be generated or not (default to show or not show?)
- Have both a game_settings and weapon.tbl flag. Weapon.tbl flag overrides the game_settings choice
My own feeling is it just shouldn't be generated in that instance at all. FS's style is to always make sure you have a clear view of the action, even when getting hit. But if people like having that flash obscure their view, then okay I can compromise... But the last two options start to make this a more complicated affair for a single highly localized effect.
