[StargateSpankyHam]

I have finished putting in the additional ships I needed for my mod, and I am finished making/adding additional weaponry. I am now technically ready to begin fredding (as the new default weapon configurations will replace the older ones).

However, a few things have been bothering me here lately, special-effects wise.

First of all, the shockwaves from bombs and exploding ships. The super-bright blue rings just don't look all that good. Is there a way to decrease the opacity of all the game's shockwaves?

Also, I came across the hollywood special effects pack - and I really liked their ship explosions. Does the mod pack make any ship explode (near) instantly, and in a spectacular ball of flame, or does it only work with retail ships?

The particle spray generated by beam cannons when they hit capital ships is bothering me too - it produces a large, corny, square, animated overlay. Has someone made a decent replacement for this? I saw that the blue planet mod has advanced special effects for beam cannons - how would I go about implementing those?

In addition, I grabbed the Shivan Recolor Pack. Would it be difficult to have the Shivan ships fade from the red glow to a cyan glow when they engage their subspace drives? If you look carefully in the original FS1 video, the Lucifer's conduits glow blue when it is exiting subspace.

Oh, by the way, does anybody know where I can get a HUD icon for the SB Yali? (this ship: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SB_Yali)

[General Battuta]

Also, I came across the hollywood special effects pack - and I really liked their ship explosions. Does the mod pack make any ship explode (near) instantly, and in a spectacular ball of flame, or does it only work with retail ships?

Don't use this. Everything in it is in the 3.6.12 MediaVPs, but better.

The particle spray generated by beam cannons when they hit capital ships is bothering me too - it produces a large, corny, square, animated overlay. Has someone made a decent replacement for this? I saw that the blue planet mod has advanced special effects for beam cannons - how would I go about implementing those?

Blue Planet donated these effects to the 3.6.12 MediaVPs, they're in there.

[Shivan Hunter]

First of all, the shockwaves from bombs and exploding ships. The super-bright blue rings just don't look all that good. Is there a way to decrease the opacity of all the game's shockwaves?

Yes. Edit the shockwave file and darken it. (The current shockwave has no alpha channel, so the effect's "opacity" is simply the brightness of the shockwave). Alternatively, I think there's another shockwave (by Nighteyes IIRC) that's not as bright as the current one.

Also, I came across the hollywood special effects pack - and I really liked their ship explosions. Does the mod pack make any ship explode (near) instantly, and in a spectacular ball of flame, or does it only work with retail ships?

If you simply want ships to explode quickly, reduce the damage done by the ship's explosion. (A higher damage can still be done by using an explosion-effect in FRED at the ship's location a few seconds after it dies).

The particle spray generated by beam cannons when they hit capital ships is bothering me too - it produces a large, corny, square, animated overlay. Has someone made a decent replacement for this? I saw that the blue planet mod has advanced special effects for beam cannons - how would I go about implementing those?

Go into the BP VPs and have a look at their tables. Copy bits and pieces if you want. Best way to learn TBLing.

In addition, I grabbed the Shivan Recolor Pack. Would it be difficult to have the Shivan ships fade from the red glow to a cyan glow when they engage their subspace drives? If you look carefully in the original FS1 video, the Lucifer's conduits glow blue when it is exiting subspace.

Simple answer: It's bloody difficult but it could be done.

Complicated answer: You could have an EFF (animated glowmap) that starts at blue and fades to red, through whatever progression of colors you like. Make it a few seconds long, and then using a SEXP, wait till the effect is at the "red" stage and either replace the texture with the regular one or (if that's not possible, though I think it is) replace the model with an identical model that uses the regular texture instead of yours.

[EDIT] looks like texture replacement can't be done SEXP-side, but you could make a second ship class (in the tables, like Lucifer#Subspace) (IIRC texture replacement can be done table-side, correct? ), and use change-ship-class.

Oh, by the way, does anybody know where I can get a HUD icon for the SB Yali? (this ship: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SB_Yali)

HUD icons aren't all that hard to make, except for having to convert through the horrendous pcx into ani format. The "Bright" texture converter (a command line tool) can help with that.

[Getter Robo G]

If you chose to, IIRC you don't need to make a HUD icon anymore, the game will generate one for you.

As you can see it make a top down icon of my models/namesake.

I forgot how or why...

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/Star-Dragon/Getter%20Project/gettericon.jpg

However, if you do that you won't have shield quadrants shown IIRC...
I didn't get to do a lot of testing cause if moved, that particular model caused a crash.

[StargateSpankyHam]

Alright...as far as editing shockwaves go...which files should I edit? I have a "shockwave.ibx" in cache, a "shockwave.tsb" also in cache, a "shockwave.pof" in models, "shockwave3D-Glow_000.dds" through "shockwave3D-Glow_158.dds" in maps, a "shockwave.eff" in effects, and "shockwave01_0000.dds" through "shockwave01_0095.dds" also in effects.

Plus, photoshop does not recognize these file types. Is there a converter or a file editor or something that would allow me to manipulate these?

[Shivan Hunter]

Shockwave.ibx and Shockwave.tsb:

These are cache files, a FS-generated format used for storing the model itself.

Shockwave.pof:

This is the actual model file.

shockwave3D-Glow_*.dds:

We'll get back to that later.

shockwave.eff (Do you mean shockwave3D-Glow.eff or shockwave01.eff?):

This is a FS-specific format which defines an animation, telling FS to use a certain number of files in a certain format, displayed at a certain FPS.

shockwave01_*.dds:

These are most likely the files for the 2D shockwave effect (I don't have the MVPs here so I can't check), rendered as a sprite always facing you (so it's always a circle).

shockwave3D-Glow_*.dds:

These are the files for the 3D shockwave effect, rendered as a model so it's seen at an angle.

---

The 2D effect is the brighter one, and I'm assuming that's the one you want to change. Extract the files shockwave01_0000.dds through shockwave01_0095.dds from the VPs.

You'll need a Photoshop plugin to edit DDS files, and once you can read them, change the Hue/Sat/Lum or the Brightness/Contrast by the same values for each DDS file so as to darken it a bit. (with these effects, which lack an alpha channel, brightness = opacity. it's an "additive" effect.) Batch processing could make this a bit quicker although I don't know how to do that in PS (GIMP ftw).

I also recommend saving the effects as TGA files, then using a program like ATI's Compressionator to convert back to DDS using DXT1 compression.

[StargateSpankyHam]

I found a suitable plugin.

As far as batch processing goes...that would have saved time. But since everything in photoshop has hotkeys, it wasn't that big of a pain in the butt to write a macro for my programmable keyboard to bring up the windows, type in the correct entries, apply, and save over the original files.

Despite not knowing how to run the plugin, it appears as if I have blundered into the solution somehow. Either that, or FS2 is not picky at all about the formatting minutiae of its DDS files. It worked great.

I don't care all that much about the 3D shockwaves...but at some point in the future, I may go back and dim those too.

[Shivan Hunter]

IIRC Nighteyes' pack has a version that's darker than the current one.

[Nighteyes]

Also, I came across the hollywood special effects pack - and I really liked their ship explosions. Does the mod pack make any ship explode (near) instantly, and in a spectacular ball of flame, or does it only work with retail ships?

Don't use this. Everything in it is in the 3.6.12 MediaVPs, but better.

correct, all 3.6.12 effects have the effects that the hollywood effects package contained, just better looking and more optimised, so use those.
if what you'r speaking about is the way the actual capships explode(lots of explosions spam), then you will need to grab the flashy death script from the mediavps and alter the ships to spam more explosions, and bigger size when they die, look at the file it pretty straight forward