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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 12:54:30 pm

Title: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 12:54:30 pm
Hi, i just downloaded the newest version of BP: AoA DC but as far i can see it, i'm not having the new beam-piercing effect.
I'm using 3.6.12 INF SEE" RC3 Build.
I had an older version of BP: AoA installed beforce, with the older core file. With the older version i had the beam-piercing effect. Was the effect weakend with the new version, or did i do something wrong?

Thanx
Mav
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 18, 2010, 12:57:40 pm
Hey hey.

Do you have the 3.6.12 Feature Pack installed?

If not, don't worry about it - War in Heaven will be coming out soon alongside the 3.6.12 MVPs, and said MVPs now contain the BP beam pierce effect.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 18, 2010, 01:03:04 pm
The effect is triggered by a script, right? Can you copy and paste its content here? :)
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: The E on July 18, 2010, 01:08:43 pm
No, it's triggered by a tbl. A tbl that is included in the 3.6.12 feature pack.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Droid803 on July 18, 2010, 01:10:58 pm
The effect is triggered by a script, right? Can you copy and paste its content here? :)

Its a combination of Armor.tbl and weapons.tbl, to be precise.
Armor.tbl controls when the effect will appear, weapons.tbl controls how the effect appears.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 18, 2010, 01:11:23 pm
Link, please? :)
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Droid803 on July 18, 2010, 01:13:14 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68214.0
- special effects mod is what you're looking for.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: The E on July 18, 2010, 01:15:09 pm
I should add that, once the .12 MediaVPs are out, we will release an update for BP to take advantage of the new features, as well as to fix a few bugs that have cropped up.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 01:19:00 pm
Thanx, i reinstalled the Feature Pack. I thought it would be necessary anymore...

General Battuta, you said War in Heaven and the 3.6.12. MVPs would be released soon, how long we have to wait? Days, Weeks, Month? :)
Nevertheless, keep up the great work. Best Mod ever!

Mav
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 18, 2010, 01:20:31 pm
Thanx, i reinstalled the Feature Pack. I thought it would be necessary anymore...

General Battuta, you said War in Heaven and the 3.6.12. MVPs would be released soon, how long we have to wait? Days, Weeks, Month? :)
Nevertheless, keep up the great work. Best Mod ever!

Mav

Thank you, good sir!

I shouldn't put hard numbers down in case anything comes up, especially as I can't speak for the FSU side, but if you used weeks, the numbers involved would be small.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: The E on July 18, 2010, 01:22:17 pm
The 3.6.12 MediaVPs will be released in a few weeks (We're planning to release them in August). The 3.6.12 final exe is due then as well.

War in Heaven will be released after we have received our last missing model, and after the .12 mvps are out.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 01:30:09 pm
Great, you really made my day!

Do you plan a Directors Cut for War in Heaven too?
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 18, 2010, 01:32:34 pm
It's definitely possible, but for the moment we're focused on War in Heaven R2 and then BP3. After that we can kick back and think about voice acting everything.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: The E on July 18, 2010, 01:33:44 pm
We plan to finish WiH first.

Be aware that the coming release will be only the first half of WiH. The second half will follow some time later, and then we're going to work on BP3.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 18, 2010, 01:37:18 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68214.0
- special effects mod is what you're looking for.

Thanks!
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 18, 2010, 01:39:42 pm
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68214.0
- special effects mod is what you're looking for.

Thanks!

Be aware that if you use that mod as is in total, you will break compatibility with the 3.6.12 MediaVPs and render your own mod unplayable.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 02:31:27 pm
How many missions has the first half of War in Heaven? Is it as big as AoA or is it a shorter campaign?
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: The E on July 18, 2010, 02:47:35 pm
Shorter, in terms of number of missions. In terms of gameplay length, it should be about equal, if not longer.

Among the 22 missions of AoA, several are filler missions, and others are different parts of a single mission (For example, Journey of a thousand miles 1 - 3 and Frankensteins Monster are, essentially, one mission).

WiH definitely has a longer, more involved story than AoA.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 18, 2010, 03:17:30 pm
Great, can't wait.
Do we get the second half of War in Heaven in 2010?
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 18, 2010, 03:18:24 pm
R1 took about a year. Plan on the same for R2 - nominally it should go faster as there's less to do, but it never hurts to be cautious, and RL can always interfere.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 11:59:28 am
Sorry if my upcoming request is a bit OT, but... can anyone please post working table entries of the piercing effect? I'm used BP's as a template, made the necessary changes to weapons.tbl and armor.tbl and tried it ingame: it didn't work properly, and when I made additional changes I don't remember ATM it stopped working at all.

Beam weapon effect here. I haven't tested the negative value for splash effect velocity, though:

Code: [Select]
    +Beam Flash Effect: ParticleSmoke01
    +Beam Flash Radius: 70.0
    +Beam Piercing Effect: exp06
    +Beam Piercing Radius: 70.0
    +Beam Piercing Effect Velocity: 500.0
    +Beam Piercing Splash Effect Velocity: -500.0
    +Beam Piercing Effect Variance: 0.0
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 19, 2010, 12:00:19 pm
Wait for the 3.6.12 MVPs. The beam pierce effect has been ported to the MVPs and improved.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Fury on July 19, 2010, 12:07:46 pm
Those values in the code snippet should work fine. You really need to reduce that splash effect velocity though. Velocity of 200 and splash velocity of 10 should be fine.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 12:14:41 pm
Wait for the 3.6.12 MVPs. The beam pierce effect has been ported to the MVPs and improved.

Ok, thanks. I've been working on armor.tbl and weapons.tbl for hours, but to no avail. Will wait for the new MVPs, then. :)

Those values in the code snippet should work fine. You really need to reduce that splash effect velocity though. Velocity of 200 and splash velocity of 10 should be fine.

Will do, but the problem is that I don't see anything other than an additional explosion effect when the beam hits. Also, beams seem to pierce all cruiser-sized ships (and smaller) by default.  :wtf:
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 19, 2010, 12:19:35 pm
Sounds like a problem with your armor.tbl. Beams should only pierce when ships drop below 10% health.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 12:28:04 pm
Code: [Select]
$Damage Type: CapBeam
    +Calculation: Multiplicative
    +Value: 1.00
    +Weapon Piercing Effect Start Limit: 5
    +Weapon Piercing Type: Default
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Fury on July 19, 2010, 12:32:57 pm
Also, beams seem to pierce all cruiser-sized ships (and smaller) by default.
By this I assume you mean the beam pierces small ships right upon impact? It is not an issue with beam piercing effect or armor.tbl, it's an issue with beam's width.

The wider the beam is, the higher chance there is that the impact area is not large enough to contain the beam. Which results in beam going right through. If you're using mediavps and retail beams, this is a known issue as mediavps 3.6.10 added those additional beam sections that made beams significantly wider than what they were in retail. This has since been fixed through .12 addition +BeamWidth to scale beams back to their retail widths without altering visuals.


You armor type entry looks fine as well, except that you don't need damage calculation part.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 12:39:28 pm
Oh, I get it. So, if I reduce width, I may actually get the piercing effect?

The damage calculation part is just an example. I got it from an armor type which sustains normal damage from capship beams, but I make use of armor types with different multipliers. :nod:
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: General Battuta on July 19, 2010, 12:42:58 pm
You can use the new 3.6.12 +BeamWidth field to change the width of your beams without having to alter the graphics.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Fury on July 19, 2010, 12:43:32 pm
Nope, those two have nothing to do with each other. I don't know what your problem is, both effect and armor type bits look correct here.

You don't need to set damage calculation if damage taken is 1.0.
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 01:03:21 pm
I'll reduce the width back to 40 or so meters, hoping that it'll be enough.

You don't need to set damage calculation if damage taken is 1.0.

Yeah, it's totally unnecessary, but since there's no harm in keeping it and the value may be changed to make that armor type more or less resistant to beams... well, I'll leave it as it is. I may change it to something like this:

Code: [Select]
$Damage Type: CapBeam
    +Calculation: Cutoff
    +Value: 800
    +Weapon Piercing Effect Start Limit: 5
    +Weapon Piercing Type: Default

:)
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 19, 2010, 01:37:55 pm
Interesting how my simple question transform into some complex discussion about table entries :)
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: Mobius on July 19, 2010, 01:43:41 pm
Argh, sorry for posting in your thread but my problem has something in common with yours and I thought this was the perfect place to ask for help... :(
Title: Re: No Beam-Piercing Effect
Post by: [Wolf]Maverick on July 19, 2010, 02:27:19 pm
Of course, i don't mind... my problem was solved after a few minutes.