[##UnknownPlayer##]

I know this has been brought up before, but I'm posting about it now because I finally had an idea on how it can be implemented.

Essentially if you shot out particles on one particlar plane in 3D around 360 degrees, then the effect is that they form a shockwave that gradually fades if you ramp down its alpha value enough. You can achieve the effect of bits trailing behind by randomly knocking down the speed of some of the particles or by programmatically ensuring some particles have certain speeds or are delayed in their generation.

How do I know this works you ask? Because I got it implemented in my own game and it looks very cool:

[Nico]

well, if you can code that...
pb is I rather imagine a "flat" shockwave, if you know what I mean... unless you can set a normal that the particles will align to ( and then the particles would have to scale up as they get away from the core of the shockwave ), it will always look like a ring...

[Ulala]

So no spherical shockwaves then, eh?

[Galemp]

Spherical shockwaves done that way would look like that 3D exploding ball screensaver...

[vyper]

Oh I can see it now - you fire off your load of Helios bombs and they smash into the hull of the Sathanas... and wow, all those particle based explosions make you ooohhh..... and then you think, why is nothing happening? Then yuo think - oh no, its trying to render too many of these fancy explosions and putting the frame rate down to about 3fps!

Sorry, it IS a nice idea but I don't think it'd work well.


oooh - when did this guy get added:

[J3Vr6]

Originally posted by vyper
Oh I can see it now - you fire off your load of Helios bombs and they smash into the hull of the Sathanas... and wow, all those particle based explosions make you ooohhh..... and then you think, why is nothing happening? Then yuo think - oh no, its trying to render too many of these fancy explosions and putting the frame rate down to about 3fps!

Sorry, it IS a nice idea but I don't think it'd work well.

Even with todays computer capabilities?  I mean, c'mon... I don't think it would take that much...

[Nico]

Originally posted by vyper
Oh I can see it now - you fire off your load of Helios bombs and they smash into the hull of the Sathanas... and wow, all those particle based explosions make you ooohhh..... and then you think, why is nothing happening? Then yuo think - oh no, its trying to render too many of these fancy explosions and putting the frame rate down to about 3fps!
 

you're still playing on a 486 dx400?

[phreak]

shock combo from UT2K3 would also be a good example

[CP5670]

yeah, or like the Deus Ex EMP grenade explosion.

This might be a good idea but will it be displayed from the same angle every time? Since in that case you could just modify the shockwave graphic without making any source changes.

[LtNarol]

What I'd like to see is another normal set in the pof for explosions (possibly one for each split subsystem), where if no normal is present, a random (or default) one is used.

Takers?

[##UnknownPlayer##]

With the system I've got programmed in my game, you just set the direction of the particle system and that determines the 'plane' on which the shockwave propagates. Interestingly though, I've been thinking that a similar concept could be applied to create a more solid looking shockwave - if we had a 3D model of a curved wave front or whatever and applied the same logic as I've got going for the particles to each of its vertices, then you could draw that with an alpha blended texture and have it expand outwards luminescently as a shockwave. What's more, unlike the particles which eventually dissociate with each other (i.e. no longer look like a contiguous circle) this would maintain its solidity. Best of all to, it could very easily be scaled up and down using the LOD system so it would cater to both high and low end systems.

EDIT:
For the record, my particle system in that example uses D3D point sprites - in that graphic there are about 500 particles and it runs quite well even on my laptop which doesn't have any sort of 3D acceleration.

[J3Vr6]

But could that be made into a sphere-type of explosion, semi-transparent or something maybe?  It looks cool now, but it seems as if now a shockwave like this could be flown over before it hits you.

If at all possible, and thats if even one can make 3d spherical shockwaves, it would be cool if that shockwave was semi-transparent (with whatver color), but shimmery.  If you were facing the shockwave and looking at an object that was caught in the blast or behind it the object wouldn't look completely crisp and clear, but distorted (i guess kinda like looking at something thru heat vapor rising off a hot road).

[pyro-manic]

What about just having an explosion.pof, like for the subspace vortex? Just make a sort of ragged rough-spherical shape, give it a good animated texture (like the subspace one), and have it replace the flat 2D ani that's there at the moment. It could grow in the same way as the subspace vortex as well.

I dunno, I'm no coder, but if you can do it for the subspace opening, then surely you can do it for this as well?

[Ulala]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
But could that be made into a sphere-type of explosion, semi-transparent or something maybe?  It looks cool now, but it seems as if now a shockwave like this could be flown over before it hits you.

Yeah, reminds me of the Death Star blast. Although, a spherical explosion off of a spherical station...
But yeah anyway, spherical explosions would be cool.

[NecroBob]

: pokes head out :
no *****es\complaints about GeoMod®©™???

/me whispers "explosions by selectable .pof file...!"

Bob

[LtNarol]

Well, a shockwave animation mapped onto a shockwave model would work rather well in my opinion.  Explosion blasts can still be handled the same too, so you wouldn't be able to fly over a wave without being hit by the "blast", but you could fly over a wave.

[Bobboau]

there is code for scaleing a model already for the warp model

[Shrike]

Oh no!  The Ring of Doom!

[##UnknownPlayer##]

I'd just like to point out that in the first iteration of that code I actually had a spherical particle shockwave going off, but it doesn't look nearly as cool as a ring expanding on one plane.

[J3Vr6]

No chance of having both in really big explosions?  With the ring blast growing larger than the sphere?