[logomancer]

How does the effect play out on smaller ships like cruisers?

[bkd86]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

[pecenipicek]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

thank you for applying to model and texture those bits as well. We eagerly await your contributions.

Cant do it? Sorry, shut up then.

[The E]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

Which, as pece has remarked, is kinda impractical unless you build your models from the ground up with this effect in mind. Since 100% of all models aren't done that way, making it look good is a matter of chance.

The hull dissolve bit of this works pretty well, it's just the vertex deformations that fail a bit. Which is the price that has to be paid when experimenting with this stuff, sometimes an idea doesn't really pan out as you would expect.

[Dragon]

Would it be possible to change the destruction mechanism a bit (optionally, of course), so that instead of turning into "debris" submodels, a destroyed ship would retain it's main mesh and all non-subsystem submodels (subsystem ones would turn into "destroyed" variant if there's one and disappear if there isn't), and change it's textures to a destroyed variant via shader? Combined with this effect, it could look really awesome, not to mention more realistic. Of course, it won't be used by Mediavps, but think of possibilities it'd open for mods.

[Valathil]

Dragon what you want is basically how Starlancer did it. The thing is we cant just remove the ship breaking up aspect it's just a part of the game that was in since FS1. What i do want to ask you guys since I experimented a bit with the mesh deformation and it really doesnt look good on most ships because of low poly count I need some suggestions that are not going to be Performance hogs like Kolgena's particle suggestion but might spice up the dissolve effect I have now. Again Mesh Deformation will not be in the final version. We wont go into Geometry shading and tesselation any time soon now. Also i'd like to hear from the MediaVP guys how we gonna regulate the integration of the noise texture so people can get it when the next release comes with the feature.

[Dragon]

Like I said, my proposition wouldn't be of any use for Mediavps, but I'd like to be able to enable it for mods, especially those that aren't set in FS universe. Perhaps even have the game chose between this and FS-style destruction based on the way the ship was destroyed, but that would be for the future (plus I'm not exactly sure how to do it to make it both controllable and realistic).

As for suggestions, I think that Kolgena's idea with variable dissolving speed and particles splitting off is the way to go. I can't really think of any way to made it look more awesome without killing performance. Perhaps adding a way to control the dissolving effect speed and color on a per-ship basis could be a good idea.
Also, on some retail models, there are "split" subsystems, which aren't referenced in tables. I wonder what they do, maybe you could do something interesting with them.

[pecenipicek]

Like I said, my proposition wouldn't be of any use for Mediavps, but I'd like to be able to enable it for mods, especially those that aren't set in FS universe. Perhaps even have the game chose between this and FS-style destruction based on the way the ship was destroyed, but that would be for the future (plus I'm not exactly sure how to do it to make it both controllable and realistic).

As for suggestions, I think that Kolgena's idea with variable dissolving speed and particles splitting off is the way to go. I can't really think of any way to made it look more awesome without killing performance. Perhaps adding a way to control the dissolving effect speed and color on a per-ship basis could be a good idea.
Also, on some retail models, there are "split" subsystems, which aren't referenced in tables. I wonder what they do, maybe you could do something interesting with them.

just use bigger chunks of a ship if you want non-"small bits everywhere" debris. oh, wait, that'd mean that you'd have to learn a proper 3D app, sorry.

Spoiler:

yes, i'm cranky.

[Dragon]

just use bigger chunks of a ship if you want non-"small bits everywhere" debris. oh, wait, that'd mean that you'd have to learn a proper 3D app, sorry.

Spoiler:

yes, i'm cranky.

Your "solution" is worthless. I don't want chunks at all, I want the mesh to be intact, but as a charred, burnt out hulk. Also, it should keep the parent ship's velocity (and coast to a stop after a while), don't explode randomly and don't spin randomly. If this was just about not having small chunks, it wouldn't be a problem, HTL Fenris is done that way. It does look good, but definitely not the effect I'm after. Think Starlancer of Wing Commander Prophecy for what I want the effect to be like (except more awesome, of course).

[The E]

I need some suggestions that are not going to be Performance hogs like Kolgena's particle suggestion

I think that Kolgena's idea with variable dissolving speed and particles splitting off is the way to go.

 

Your "solution" is worthless. I don't want chunks at all, I want the mesh to be intact, but as a charred, burnt out hulk. Also, it should keep the parent ship's velocity (and coast to a stop after a while), don't explode randomly and don't spin randomly. If this was just about not having small chunks, it wouldn't be a problem, HTL Fenris is done that way. It does look good, but definitely not the effect I'm after. Think Starlancer of Wing Commander Prophecy for what I want the effect to be like (except more awesome, of course).

Use change-ship-class to swap the healthy and hulked versions, use ship-maneuver to induce rolls, use explosion-effect to cover up the transition, use force-glide to force gliding et voila, instant hulk using technology already present.

[pecenipicek]

just use bigger chunks of a ship if you want non-"small bits everywhere" debris. oh, wait, that'd mean that you'd have to learn a proper 3D app, sorry.

Spoiler:

yes, i'm cranky.

Your "solution" is worthless. I don't want chunks at all, I want the mesh to be intact, but as a charred, burnt out hulk. Also, it should keep the parent ship's velocity (and coast to a stop after a while), don't explode randomly and don't spin randomly. If this was just about not having small chunks, it wouldn't be a problem, HTL Fenris is done that way. It does look good, but definitely not the effect I'm after. Think Starlancer of Wing Commander Prophecy for what I want the effect to be like (except more awesome, of course).

okay, use the mesh of the original ship, cut it up in parts which you want to be a bit on the "banged up" side. take the texture of the ship, mess it up, make it "trashed hulk".

or what the E said.

But wait. Any of that would require for you to have actual abilities to actually DO things. Your "texturing" attempts were just recolors of normal tiles. Your help with the mods whose badges you have collected are "look at assets, ***** about something unrelated, pretend you did constructive criticism".

Everything you try to do is "i wanna dis, i wanna dat!", then pretend you know better than people who actually work on these things. You ignore plainly shown information and ask useless stuff. Stuff that you could've learned if you actually did/tried to do something yourself. But noooo. You continue to be a little demanding dude who cant do **** other than to take others work, modify a few bits and bobs here and there and then try to pass it off as something awesome/new/whatever.

[Valathil]

Whoa whoa whoa guys slow down there. You can flame each other in IRC can we please keep this on topic.

[mjn.mixael]

Well, as for the noise texture..

I would think that we can't require people to have the MediaVPs for mods or to run FSO. So the noise texture (If I'm understanding this right) can be packaged with the MediaVPs, but there should probably be (perhaps low-res or something) one built into the shader/code/however this works...

Zacam, can correct me if I'm wrong though.

[Dragon]

or what the E said.

But wait. Any of that would require for you to have actual abilities to actually DO things. Your "texturing" attempts were just recolors of normal tiles. Your help with the mods whose badges you have collected are "look at assets, ***** about something unrelated, pretend you did constructive criticism".

Everything you try to do is "i wanna dis, i wanna dat!", then pretend you know better than people who actually work on these things. You ignore plainly shown information and ask useless stuff. Stuff that you could've learned if you actually did/tried to do something yourself. But noooo. You continue to be a little demanding dude who cant do **** other than to take others work, modify a few bits and bobs here and there and then try to pass it off as something awesome/new/whatever.

This is obvious trolling, so I won't comment on it anymore. Not to mention this solution doens't work either, but I've considered it. I don't want any mesh modifications, save for destroying subsystems (I could make a damage texture, and my suggestion does in fact require doing so). And it'd still be subject to randomly exploding, drifting and other such behavior, which is a bad thing. And please refrain from making ad hominem (personal) attacks in a serious thread.

As for The_E's solution, it relies too much on SEXPs, making it somewhat unrealiable, especially when dealing with capships that don't follow waypoints, not to mention the transition will be instant in this case, while the entire reason I posted that suggestion here was to point out that it'd go really well with Valathil's dissolution improvements. Also, explosion-effect was, last time I checked, quite limited, so the whole thing would end up looking rather bland. Not to mention the game would never consider the ship destroyed, which creates a load of other problems (most of them not insurmountable, but the player won't be able to score a kill that way). Granted, you could emulate WCP-style capship explosions with this (and it's not a bad idea overall), but my suggestion was about making an effect similar in style, but looking a lot better, a lot more intuitive to use and more realiable.

[zookeeper]

Would it be possible to change the destruction mechanism a bit (optionally, of course), so that instead of turning into "debris" submodels, a destroyed ship would retain it's main mesh and all non-subsystem submodels (subsystem ones would turn into "destroyed" variant if there's one and disappear if there isn't), and change it's textures to a destroyed variant via shader? Combined with this effect, it could look really awesome, not to mention more realistic. Of course, it won't be used by Mediavps, but think of possibilities it'd open for mods.

Can't you do that simply by giving the ship only one debris piece, which is a copy of the normal version but with a different texture? Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you want or maybe there's something about debris behaviour that renders it an unworkable idea, but without testing, I can't think of much obstacles besides inheriting velocity and so on, which you could probably script.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

Hey, this man has a point. When this effect makes it into trunk, it would look awesome when combined with framework debris models. It might be worth redoing the debris for the ships that blow up often, like Fenrises or Cains, and it's definitely something to keep in mind when making debris from scratch. Disembodied framework floating about...

What I'm wondering now is, how does the peeling effect look on more complicated geometry? The Orion explodes outward, that's easy, but what about say the Karuna with that hollow bow? It might look odd if the effect is not coded with this in mind.

Would it be possible to change the destruction mechanism a bit (optionally, of course), so that instead of turning into "debris" submodels, a destroyed ship would retain it's main mesh and all non-subsystem submodels (subsystem ones would turn into "destroyed" variant if there's one and disappear if there isn't), and change it's textures to a destroyed variant via shader? Combined with this effect, it could look really awesome, not to mention more realistic. Of course, it won't be used by Mediavps, but think of possibilities it'd open for mods.

Would a POF with a single debris piece accomplish this effect? Or does FSO really want to split a ship in half? (Ninja'd by zookeeper)

[Dragon]

Would it be possible to change the destruction mechanism a bit (optionally, of course), so that instead of turning into "debris" submodels, a destroyed ship would retain it's main mesh and all non-subsystem submodels (subsystem ones would turn into "destroyed" variant if there's one and disappear if there isn't), and change it's textures to a destroyed variant via shader? Combined with this effect, it could look really awesome, not to mention more realistic. Of course, it won't be used by Mediavps, but think of possibilities it'd open for mods.

Can't you do that simply by giving the ship only one debris piece, which is a copy of the normal version but with a different texture? Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you want or maybe there's something about debris behaviour that renders it an unworkable idea, but without testing, I can't think of much obstacles besides inheriting velocity and so on, which you could probably script.

The main obstacle I see is that default debris are:
a). Slowly rotating (or not so slowly) and moving in a random direction with random velocity.
b). Spontaneously exploding right after the parent ship.
c). Comparatively easy to blow into nothingness.
As I said, I considered this. Maybe this can be mitigated somewhat, but I'm not sure how much. They should either inherit parent's velocity and keep it, or coast to a stop, like a disabled ship. Also, I'm not sure if a debris piece can have subobjects.

[bkd86]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

thank you for applying to model and texture those bits as well. We eagerly await your contributions.

Cant do it? Sorry, shut up then.

I don't know you from Adam, and you have no idea what I can or can't do.  I'm not telling anyone what to do, just making a suggestion. And for your information I could do both the model and texture. Thanks now shut up.

Is the debris specific to each model currently or just a generic set of props.

[pecenipicek]

What the debris needs to have to sell the effect is to look like hull frame work with the skin peeled off. That would look really neat. Either have the debris retextured or remodeled.

Hey, this man has a point. When this effect makes it into trunk, it would look awesome when combined with framework debris models. It might be worth redoing the debris for the ships that blow up often, like Fenrises or Cains, and it's definitely something to keep in mind when making debris from scratch. Disembodied framework floating about...

What I'm wondering now is, how does the peeling effect look on more complicated geometry? The Orion explodes outward, that's easy, but what about say the Karuna with that hollow bow? It might look odd if the effect is not coded with this in mind.

Would it be possible to change the destruction mechanism a bit (optionally, of course), so that instead of turning into "debris" submodels, a destroyed ship would retain it's main mesh and all non-subsystem submodels (subsystem ones would turn into "destroyed" variant if there's one and disappear if there isn't), and change it's textures to a destroyed variant via shader? Combined with this effect, it could look really awesome, not to mention more realistic. Of course, it won't be used by Mediavps, but think of possibilities it'd open for mods.

Would a POF with a single debris piece accomplish this effect? Or does FSO really want to split a ship in half? (Ninja'd by zookeeper)

that is pretty much what i told him, but apparently "its worthless"

[mjn.mixael]

Valathil asked that we stay on topic and stop debating something that can be done perfectly fine with SEXPs (regardless of whether or not Dragon wants to do that much work.) If you guys want to keep discussing how to have ships burn into hulks, I recommend taking the discussion to Modding or a new thread.