Hard Light Productions Forums

Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: DaBrain on January 13, 2007, 02:16:21 pm

Title: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 13, 2007, 02:16:21 pm
Although I've already put together those two VPs, there are still a few things I'd like to get some oppinions on.

I can replace stuff in a matter of minutes now and it would be quite disappointing to replace stuff after the final release. So I'll ask you now.


First: The thruster glows

Some people stated that they like the glows in Taylor's VPs.
I like them too, but I think they're kinda 'unusual'. So, which set of glows would you like?

Did you like the shivan glows in the last MV package?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CP5670 on January 13, 2007, 02:18:31 pm
Can you put up screenshots? I have been using a set of thrusters different from the ones in the current vps, but I don't know if they're the same as the alternate ones you're referring to.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 13, 2007, 02:32:52 pm
Some screenshot would be great to compare between the old one to the new one. It's difficult to see.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: 666maslo666 on January 13, 2007, 03:10:49 pm
I dont like shivan thruster glows they look live lava.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 13, 2007, 05:47:50 pm
I've been helping DaB test in a small way, so I think he's talking about 3d thrusters vs Taylor 'bright trails' thrusters.  In the current test version, at least, he is using retail-eque textured poly thrusters.  The most recent vp release used very different bright glow trails.

I think the taylor thrusters look better and avoid the blending problem, and obscure the strange/silly Shivan 'lava pool' effect.  However, they do look 'strange' from certain angles.

I've provided a comparison here.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/pnakotus/compare.jpg
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on January 13, 2007, 06:13:00 pm
Errm, wow. When I made those glows now in Taylors VP I didn't expect them to be considered for the effects VP. Seeing as they're pretty much my very first attempt at propper effects, I'm honoured. Thanks. :D
(even if no-one remembered who did 'em :p )

However - because mine are .dds and the ones in the current VPs are tgas/pcxs, they tend to get overridden most of the time. Case in point, I don't think they're visible at all in Pnakotus' comparison.

MediaVP glows are on the left, the newer ones on the right.
(http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Pics/ThrusterComparison.jpg)

I should point out here though that I still think they could be a lot better.

edit: Changed the pic link.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 13, 2007, 06:35:43 pm
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/pnakotus/compare.jpg

I like the 3D thruster in normal mode and I prefer to keep the Taylor one for the Afterburner.

http://sectorfiles.net/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Pics/ThrusterComparison.jpg

I should point out here though that I still think they could be a lot better.

Is it possible to see the shivan thruster with their appropriate ship. Because, in some case, the Old one are still pretty good and give some sort of experimental engine. Well, I don't have the word in mind but it give really something to shivan ships. However, the old version are also a little weird.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turey on January 13, 2007, 07:14:47 pm
/me votes for VA's thrusters.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 13, 2007, 07:19:43 pm
I like taylors, but i like mars' orange color after burner color. Teal Afterburners are disgusting looking.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Huggybaby on January 13, 2007, 07:30:47 pm
I can't tell, isolated like that, the shots are...out of context.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Dark Hunter on January 13, 2007, 07:36:36 pm
/me votes for VA's thrusters.

Seconded.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on January 13, 2007, 07:50:16 pm
Can I vote against my own for now? (For the terran glows anyway. I really dislike the farts-on-fire glows of the media VP shivans.)

(http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Pics/TerranGlowsInGame.jpg)

They just plain don't look right in-game. :\
Give me a while to get them all looking good and I'll see if I can improve them and match them up with all the other components of the thrusters. :)

Edit: Changed the pic link.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 13, 2007, 08:13:21 pm
Thanks for posting the pics. ;)

I do like them, but not on all ships. They look fine on the Persus, but wrong only the Ulysses.


Well and I'm glad I can replace the shivan glow. It doesn't look bad... but it's not a thrusterglow imho (unles it was animated).
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 13, 2007, 08:24:23 pm
The Shivans and GTVA are very different, and the Shivan thrusters have always been a bit naff.  I like the taylor 'red trail' because it blends well with the thrusterglow.  As VA shows, the thrusterglows don't look very good without a thrustercone thingy, and the Shivan thrusterglow is often far too large for the thruster, so it looks like a huge disk attached to the ass of a ship.

MetalDestroyer - the 3d cones are strange, and they don't seem to blend properly into the AB thrusterglow (as you can see in those pics).  My problem with the 3d cones is that they look rubbish, not the idea of 3d cones, and since the 3d ones actually fade as they trail (woo textures) instead of the inflatable look for taylors it's arguable how much of 'the look' is the effect and how much is the art used.  Either variant could be fine, but thrusters have always looked more-or-less rubbish in FS, and I think we need to sit down and decide how we want them to look and what the best way to get that look is.  Also, taylors 'glowcones' look MUCH better on capships than the 3d cones, as the 3d cones are far too short (barely visible) and so capships just get stuck with the thrusterglows.  This is a significant problem with Shivan caps, as their thrusterglow looks awful.

Also, teal AB = the lose.  That's something I'm prepared to just come right out and say.  AB should look awesome and aggressive, not soothing and relaxing.

EDIT - For what it's worth, huge thrusterglows and long thrustercones aren't prominent in cutscenes etc.  It's arguable, then, that they aren't very 'Freespace', and that smaller glows and shorter cones are the order of the day.

Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on January 13, 2007, 08:45:14 pm
Where can I get the effects on the right side of that screenshot?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turey on January 13, 2007, 08:50:34 pm
Where can I get the effects on the right side of that screenshot?

That's what we're voting on - whether or not to include them in the 3.6.9 mediavps.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 13, 2007, 08:52:50 pm
As an aside, is it possible to change the orientation of the glows?  VA's glows are pretty awesome, but they're clearly assymetrical and it's going to look pretty rubbish if a ship banks or rolls and it's assymetrical glows stay the same way...  :lol:

Regardless of preference, simply changing the glows is not going to satisfy people who want attractive thrusters on all types of ships.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on January 13, 2007, 08:53:13 pm
Oops.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 14, 2007, 05:31:29 am
The Shivans and GTVA are very different, and the Shivan thrusters have always been a bit naff.  I like the taylor 'red trail' because it blends well with the thrusterglow.  As VA shows, the thrusterglows don't look very good without a thrustercone thingy, and the Shivan thrusterglow is often far too large for the thruster, so it looks like a huge disk attached to the ass of a ship.

MetalDestroyer - the 3d cones are strange, and they don't seem to blend properly into the AB thrusterglow (as you can see in those pics).  My problem with the 3d cones is that they look rubbish, not the idea of 3d cones, and since the 3d ones actually fade as they trail (woo textures) instead of the inflatable look for taylors it's arguable how much of 'the look' is the effect and how much is the art used.  Either variant could be fine, but thrusters have always looked more-or-less rubbish in FS, and I think we need to sit down and decide how we want them to look and what the best way to get that look is.  Also, taylors 'glowcones' look MUCH better on capships than the 3d cones, as the 3d cones are far too short (barely visible) and so capships just get stuck with the thrusterglows.  This is a significant problem with Shivan caps, as their thrusterglow looks awful.

Also, teal AB = the lose.  That's something I'm prepared to just come right out and say.  AB should look awesome and aggressive, not soothing and relaxing.

EDIT - For what it's worth, huge thrusterglows and long thrustercones aren't prominent in cutscenes etc.  It's arguable, then, that they aren't very 'Freespace', and that smaller glows and shorter cones are the order of the day.



The 3d thrusters aren't new. They're still from the FS2 retail version.
I've figured out why they look so weird now.

Actually the there are three thrusterglows, but in the other shot we only see two of them, so the 3d effect becomes visible.

Ah....sorry I hit 'edit' instead of qoute again. ;)
So much about the 'edited by DaBrain" thing.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Wanderer on January 14, 2007, 05:51:58 am
I prefer the thrusters based on three 2d bitmaps (thrusterglow version) above the 3d cones (which imo are very ugly) but as i will in any case disable the 3d cones in my local version it really doesn't matter to me.

I kinda like the older terran glows but the new shivan glows are very good compared to the old 'lavapool' thrusters .
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on January 14, 2007, 06:36:21 am
Right, I think I've finished with the terran glows now:

(http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/Pics/NewTerranGlows.jpg)
Not a terribly good pic, but it gives you the basic idea.

I've redone the afterburner trail, and all 6 actual glows, including getting rid of the apparently unpopular teal burner.
All glows for normal and burner glows seem to mesh together quite well, and look reasonably good from all angles now.

So, have a look at them for yourself in-game:

http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/TerranThrusterGlows.zip

(they've all been left as TGAs to fit into a small zip, but if people like them enough to go into the media VPs, I *think* they should be changed to dds? Some of them could probably be halved in size with little quality loss)

Hope you like them. :)
Shivan glows or the HTL Zeus (http://www.sectorgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2288) are next. Haven't decided. ;)

Edit: Made the glows 20% smaller so they better match the sizes of the engines they come from.

Edit: Changed the pic and download link.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Shade on January 14, 2007, 06:42:38 am
I like those last ones. A lot.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 14, 2007, 07:03:55 am
Thank god !! Your HTL Freespace 2 models are totally awesome !! Is there a good chance to see them into the next Media VP 3.6.9 ?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on January 14, 2007, 07:08:47 am
Not all of them sorry. The Zeus probably will, but the Valk needs a new texture that doesn't assign the largest area on the ship an scrap of texture the size of a thumbnail. :\
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 14, 2007, 07:14:52 am
VA, that's neat.  I must test them, oh yes. :)

DaB, I know the textured cones are old retail - but I think redone, with a new mesh and new textures (nb I don't know how they're done) they would look heaps better for fighters.  I don't think they'd be good for caps, though, I think the solid, stretchy taylor cone looks better for that.  But I'll have more thoughts when I'm done testing the hell out of VA's latest.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bobboau on January 14, 2007, 08:29:19 am
well I'm still using the old reliable.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bobboau on January 14, 2007, 08:30:09 am
cont...

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 14, 2007, 11:47:02 am
VA, that's neat.  I must test them, oh yes. :)

DaB, I know the textured cones are old retail - but I think redone, with a new mesh and new textures (nb I don't know how they're done) they would look heaps better for fighters.  I don't think they'd be good for caps, though, I think the solid, stretchy taylor cone looks better for that.  But I'll have more thoughts when I'm done testing the hell out of VA's latest.

I just wanted to point out, that the 3d thrusters are there in both versions. You can't 'turn them off', unless you remove their textures.



Hmm I like VA's and Bob's glows a lot...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CP5670 on January 14, 2007, 11:56:13 am
It looks I'm using the old ones from two or three years ago. They look similar to Taylor's thrusters but are larger. I'll need to give these newer ones a try and see how they look ingame.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 14, 2007, 12:32:43 pm
I like VA's new ones, especially the color
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Wanderer on January 14, 2007, 12:42:09 pm
3D cones can be turned off if that is wanted... IIRC 3.6.8 zeta mediavps turn the modeled cones off.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: taylor on January 14, 2007, 01:39:00 pm
They look similar to Taylor's thrusters but are larger.
Yeah, I resized the ones that I use to be a little smaller.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 14, 2007, 05:43:55 pm
DaB, do you mean that the old 3d ones are 'under' taylors cones?  Wierd. ;)

Not knowing much about the code for thrusters, I'm not sure what can be done with them.  It's surprising to me how many are using really old cones, though...  :confused:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 15, 2007, 03:15:06 pm
I thought so... but maybe I was wrong... I don't really know anymore.

MediaVPs spreaded chaos on my whole (new) PC.

Anyway, I think I'll pick the best glows of the posted stuff and add it.


Second issue:
The animated shivan beam.
Not the beam glow, but the beam.

Some people even thought it was a bug... I quite like the 'flashyness' of the animation
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turey on January 15, 2007, 03:41:34 pm
Second issue:
The animated shivan beam.
Not the beam glow, but the beam.

Some people even thought it was a bug... I quite like the 'flashyness' of the animation

/me has no idea what this is, needs pics to compare.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 15, 2007, 05:44:34 pm
Second issue:
The animated shivan beam.
Not the beam glow, but the beam.

Some people even thought it was a bug... I quite like the 'flashyness' of the animation

Oh, is this a 'feature'?

For clarification, on all the systems I've tried the Shivan beams have sharply constrasted red/white components, instead of the blended white/colour of the GTVA beams.  I thought it was a bug, because it looks like ass (especially when you're being shot at yourself, and can pick the individual elements out as the hit your windscreen).

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/pnakotus/candy.jpg)

My non-Shivan beams look like everyone elses.  If this is what he's asking, then I think the effect needs more work.  :p
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 16, 2007, 12:58:08 am
Personally, I do not like this look.  AFAIC (As Far As I'm Concerned), all the beams should be their brightest at their core, nearly white, transitioning into the designated color for its edges.  Basically, I like it the way :V: had it, though with some slight shimmering, flickering, and even marginal degrees of thickness of variation.  This thing with the deep color at the core, flanked by white strips, makes me think that either there's more than one beam being fired, or that this beam isn't particularly well focused and thus not very destructive.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 16, 2007, 01:22:31 am
Or that it's made of candy canes. :)  I'm with you: I'd prefer an FS2-ish look to all the beams, not just the GTVA ones.  These red beams are even worse moving, as the solid red/white parts move in a 'fake' way, making it look like a bad special effect.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 16, 2007, 01:34:56 am
Well, I'll most likely keep using my own beams anyway along with mediaVP's, so it doesn't matter much to me if that beam goes in or not, but I have to see that I agree that it looks like it's inverted. The brightest part of the beam should be in the middle and the colour should deepen towards the edges.

Are the Cain/Lilith textures fixed, by the way? Looks like it by the picture.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Shade on January 16, 2007, 02:04:20 am
To be honest I've so far preferred the original [V] beams to any animated versions I've seen. I especially dislike the current adveffects beams that split up. They need to look focused and powerful, almost solid. Not flashy and jumping about. Also, I agree with TP about the colours - Definitely need to be brightest in the center, anything else just looks wrong.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 16, 2007, 05:55:39 am
Yeah, this is why I hope it gets changed back to [v]-like beams.  I'm glad I'm not the only one this happens to, nor the only one who doesn't like it.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: miskat on January 16, 2007, 08:39:35 am
I vote for VA's thrusters as the default 3.6.9 MediaVP thruster.  XD  And older :V: like beams.

FreeSpace always struck me as pseudo arcade-realistic... if I were playing an anime-like mod, then crazy beams would be alright, but for FS1/FS2... I like the old realistic stuff.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on January 16, 2007, 04:29:04 pm
Well, personally I don't think a beam would stay perfectly in one spot even in space. The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull and cause little damage. If the energy is dispersed, it would cause more damage to a larger area.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 16, 2007, 05:56:08 pm
I vote for VA's thrusters as the default 3.6.9 MediaVP thruster.  XD  And older :V: like beams.

FreeSpace always struck me as pseudo arcade-realistic... if I were playing an anime-like mod, then crazy beams would be alright, but for FS1/FS2... I like the old realistic stuff.

Right, because massive visible wavelength gazajiggawatt lasers are realistic.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 16, 2007, 06:38:41 pm
Well, personally I don't think a beam would stay perfectly in one spot even in space. The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull and cause little damage. If the energy is dispersed, it would cause more damage to a larger area.

1)  Wrong.  A beam playing over a surface instead of concentrating on one spot is retarded.  Hence, the worthless slash beams.  'The energy should disperse otherwise the beam would literally punch straight through the hull' seems to be ignoring how directed energy weapons work, particularly in a game based on hitpoints.

2) What neoterran said.  The even wobble about!  They appear to 'suck' little light-goblins into the emitter before firing!  Asimov, it ain't. :lol:

I'm sticking to 'the current Shivan beams look like poo'.  I don't care about some fannish rationalisation: every time one is fired I think 'gee, I should fix that'.  Observers who see them say 'what's wrong with the red ones'. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mongoose on January 16, 2007, 07:02:29 pm
I'm not a huge fan of the current Shivan beams either; having them as one (mostly) continuous mass makes them seem far more "solid" (and yes, I realize that they are, in fact, beams of light :p) and powerful.  I'll also throw in a vote for whatever thruster glows VA comes up with, since that screenshot he posted earlier was indeed the hawtest of hawts.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Gregster2k on January 16, 2007, 07:41:32 pm
Is it possible to make each and every ship have different glows on their engines? Why not make it so the Perseus CAN have that "weird" texture on its thruster and the Ulysses has another one entirely?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 16, 2007, 08:42:46 pm
I'm not a huge fan of the current Shivan beams either; having them as one (mostly) continuous mass makes them seem far more "solid" (and yes, I realize that they are, in fact, beams of light :p) and powerful.  I'll also throw in a vote for whatever thruster glows VA comes up with, since that screenshot he posted earlier was indeed the hawtest of hawts.

I agree on both counts. The thruster glows that VA posted screenies of look really good - at least, on Ulysses. :p

As far as beams go, I have always imaged that they should look more like this (image attached), so I'll keep using those. Whatever makes it into MediaVP's as far as beams go, I'll probably post the latest incarnation of my beams around the same time the new MediaVP's are released... I wouldn't necessarily put them into public MediaVP's however; they might be somewhat too off-canon to some people. But whoever wants it can get it to complement the MediaVP's.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turey on January 16, 2007, 09:28:19 pm
/me votes for Herra's beams.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Shade on January 16, 2007, 10:50:54 pm
See, now we're talking. I wouldn't at all mind having beams that look like that in my adveffects :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: muttoneer on January 16, 2007, 11:51:37 pm
Herra's beam in that picture looks really solid and energetic. I'm a big fan.  :nod:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 17, 2007, 12:37:45 am
I prefer the actually one in the MediaVP 3.6.8 Zeta.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 17, 2007, 01:08:09 am
I looks a bit 'simple' for pulsating, textured FS2 beams.  Fine for a Macross mod, not so appropriate for FS2 standard.  However, way better than the current beams.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Kaine on January 17, 2007, 01:31:52 am
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/pnakotus/candy.jpg)

yes please! just sharped up the edges a bit (or not, depending on the animation). can you give us a link to those please (and info on where to put them for someone who hasn't worked out the filesystem exactly yet)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mongoose on January 17, 2007, 01:36:51 am
Ooh...now that is good stuff. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 17, 2007, 02:31:18 am
I looks a bit 'simple' for pulsating, textured FS2 beams.  Fine for a Macross mod, not so appropriate for FS2 standard.  However, way better than the current beams.


To tell the truth, I tried to make it a bit more like the beams were in cutscenes, so they are somewhat more stable than the retail or current MediaVP ones. Screenshots never tell the truth about animated effects though, so without further ado, here are my beams (with latest table settings) to be tried in-game. Mind you though, they also replace the Terran, Vasudan and anti-fighter beams, not only the Shivan ones.

Also, I recommend that you use MediaVP 3.6.8 zeta in conjunction with these, not the 3.6.9 beta MediaVP's... Reason for this? The only way I could get the mv_effects-wep.tbm to stop ordering the game to use the older MediaVP beam textures in multimod configuration was to replicate that file in the beam VP with same name, but necessary changes for the beam section, and arrange the multimod command line so that the beam mod directory supercedes the MediaVP directory, overriding the old mv_effects.tbm.


Feedback is much appreciated. And remember to post screenshots too. :)

Here be the download link. (http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/modified_beamz/mv_beamz_HIGH.7z)


...by the way, is the $Tile Factor number (in 1-mode) supposed to announce what? Is it a length-to-width ratio or is it supposed to tell the actual length of the texture in metres? I'm asking because the wiki documentation was somewhat ambiguous, and I also got some anomalous behaviour with tiling beams, so it would be nice to get a clarification to that issue.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 17, 2007, 05:51:17 am
1) good work, and don't take my comments as criticism.

2) how the smeg did you work out how the beam stuff worked?  I tried to work it out (to fix the Shivan beams) but I couldn't make head nor tail of it.  And I hope the answer isn't 'wiki', because then I'll be embarrassed.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Wanderer on January 17, 2007, 09:36:54 am
Errr... FSwiki, weapons.tbl (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24BeamInfo:).. sorry...

And iirc the tile factor in mode 1... IIRC it is the lenght in meters... that is it is not relative to beam width.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 17, 2007, 11:29:14 am
1) good work, and don't take my comments as criticism.

2) how the smeg did you work out how the beam stuff worked?  I tried to work it out (to fix the Shivan beams) but I couldn't make head nor tail of it.  And I hope the answer isn't 'wiki', because then I'll be embarrassed.

1. Thanks, and criticism is always good IMO. ;)

2. I got loads of help, and of course the wiki was helpful. Actually, my beams are a lot simpler then the current MediaVP ones. In most cases my beams consist simply of one layer animation, I just made it look like it has many levels. I *could* make it use up to three layers with different $Zadd values, but that would basically triple the memory use to no palpable effect in most cases.

The biggest problem in my beams is in my opinion is that when you view the beam from a very shallow angle, you can sometimes see the flatness. Most of the time they work fine though.


Quote
And iirc the tile factor in mode 1... IIRC it is the lenght in meters... that is it is not relative to beam width.

Well, that's what I thought, but as I said, I got some anomalous behaviour when I tried to use same aspect ratio for all same-coloured beams. I first calculated the tiling factor based on width so that it was same on all shivan beams, but surprisingly, some beams had very different texture aspect ratio when I did this. So I finally settled on using the (about) same tile value on all same-coloured beams, and that made the beams of same colour more consistent.

To clarify the previous problem, here's a screenshot.

Could someone find out what the code actually does with the tiling factor value? I'd really like to know. Obviously, I could've made some calculation error too. :confused: I would really like it if you could really specify the texture length in metres if it would work properly...

NB: The picture attached is somewhat older stuff. You can see that even though the tiling factor and beam width *should* have given same aspect ratio to the beams in this case, the smaller beam had the texture tiled in much denser than the wider beam. Currently, that's not a problem any more.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Zacam on January 18, 2007, 03:00:58 am
Holy hanna..... Gotta say, I _love_ both VA's and Herra's works. They've got my vote for vp's.

Side note, combining VA's and Bobboau's effects is pretty shiny too.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turambar on January 18, 2007, 08:31:21 am
are those alpha blended?

you could get much deeper reds with alpha blending, as it is now, its a little pinkish.
there's also a dim white area on the outer edge of the beam, and it kinda detracts from the effect
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 18, 2007, 08:38:12 am
True alpha blending doesn't work with beams... Well, not very well, to say the least. These ones have a black background and FS_Open uses the black as pseudo-alpha channel. I can post screenies of alpha-blended beams (which I did try first) if you wish to check it out, but you'll risk severe retinal hemorrhage if you look at them too long.

I'm working on the whitish stuff to reduce it. Also, in the green beams the core is way too thick and bright, the edges lose most of their detail... But as I said, I'm working on it.

And what comes to colour tone, I tried to make the beams consistent with the tones on the beamglow animations.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turambar on January 18, 2007, 10:41:01 am
well, can i see the awful horrible blended ones?

im probably gonna give it a shot myself eventually, and i want to see what it looks like.

Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 18, 2007, 10:46:08 am
Well, here is one example what happens. :rolleyes:

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turambar on January 18, 2007, 11:46:20 am
eew

someone get a coder on this, stat!

well, it looks like the transparency actually works right, but the colors and brightness are off.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 18, 2007, 03:01:48 pm
I think Taylor already knows about that because he gave me a lot of advice when I started making these beams. Anyway, I have some questions regarding two Beam Section values. +Tile Factor and +Translation.

I'd like to know on what these two Beam Section entries actually do. The wiki entries are somewhat lacking when it comes to documenting at least these two:

Quote
+Tile Factor:
Implemented before FS_Open 3.6.5
Defines the beam texture tileing factor. Second number defines the tileing type. Type 0 tiles the graphic in the beam as many times as defined by the 1st number. Type 1 uses the 1st value as the lenght of the tile.
Syntax: Value, Value


Okay. While trying to figure out suitable table values for my beams I have become slightly frustrated in this documentation, because it doesn't actually offer any information. The second value is either one or two, and it defines how the first value should be interpreted. And if the second value is "1", the first value should define the length of the beam texture.

The problem is this: The length of the texture is definitely not as many metres as I put into the field. It's much, much more... Most beams are about ~50 metres wide. That kind of beam looks (usually) rather good with Tiling Factor values from about 15 to 30. It doesn't make any sense at all. So it doesn't use metres as units, that's for sure. But using aspect ratio doesn't feel like working either.

What I would like is that someone who knows what the code does with these values would check and update the wiki as to what units does the beam system use as "texture length", or does it perhaps even take a fixed aspect ratio multiplier (?) or something instead of actual length...

What I would like is that all same-coloured beams would have the same aspect-ratio in-game. But I cannot achieve this because thetable entry documentation is what it is and to be honest, I'm done with trial and error. If I don't know what to expect I can never get suitable values for all the beams, and I can't really go and read the code to find out what the hell it's supposed to do so... :sigh:

Another one:

Quote
+Translation:
Implemented before FS_Open 3.6.5
Defines the speed of translation of the beam, a positive value moves from the impact point to the firing point, while a negative value moves away from the firing point towards the impact point.
Syntax: Value

Value? Value? What value? How big should the value be? Metres per second? Or should the values be positive/negative integers?

Metres per second didn't seem to work that well. I tried to make them go forward two times their width per second, and they became a fuzzy line, which makes me think that the speed was tad bit too high... But any other units just don't make any practical sense, so I'd like to know what units does it use.


Don't get me wrong now, the wiki is excellent tool, but it's just plain irritating to try and interpret some ultimately ambiguous definitions for some table values.

So, thanks if someone takes the time to find answers to these questions. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turambar on January 18, 2007, 03:50:01 pm
look out Herra

your next post is 1000

make it a good one!
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 18, 2007, 04:46:40 pm
Hey, thanks wor warning, I'll make it good.

...Oh bugger. :lol:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: brandx0 on January 18, 2007, 04:50:41 pm
Best thousandth post ever...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 18, 2007, 07:52:56 pm
There's nothing special in numbers. :)


By the way, if someone is interested in slightly less hideous Bakha... :)

(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_1_thumb.jpg) (http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_1.jpg)(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_2_thumb.jpg) (http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_2.jpg)(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_3_thumb.jpg) (http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/Less_Hideous_Bakha_3.jpg)

With 1024x1024 texture, glow- and shinemaps. It's simply made on top of the old texture because I haven't figured out how to do UV mapping, so some parts may be a little screwed up but in my opinion it's better than the hideously low-res retail map, so it'll do for me until someone decides to to a proper HTL Bakha. If someone else wants to use this until that, it's fine by me, just tell me if anyone wants this, and I'll post it.

And, I hope I'll have some answers on the mysterious beam table entries sooner or later... ;7
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: WeatherOp on January 18, 2007, 08:18:48 pm
Those Shivan beams are much better than the current ones. :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: WMCoolmon on January 19, 2007, 01:45:00 am
Kudos to whoever it was (taylor, I think) who made lighting apply to decals. They look much better now. :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mongoose on January 19, 2007, 03:27:49 am
That Bakha map is almost infinitely better than the current low-res monstrosity.  Kudos. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 19, 2007, 04:04:41 am
Bakha maps (http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/FS2_Open/Less_Hideous_Bakha/GVB_Bakha_maps.7z), enjoy. :)

If someone really wants the TGA files, be my guest and PM me. This one was surprisingly easy to pull off. You gotta love what kind of a surface you can get in Gimp with noise->gaussian blur with value 2... It creates nice amount of detail and structure to completely blurred surface. The hull plating was almost all that I had to do to it after all. Glows turned out rather nice, and speculars were (imo) spot-on at first try, although some may dislike the metallic look on the plates. But I figured that they probably are metal, as they look like exposed armour plating.


But, the beam table trouble is still there. Is still don't know for sure what the tile factor value does and that causes inconsistensies in the beams, which is something I do not want to happen. So, no properly configured beams after someone who knows the code takes a look at the values and what the code does with them. Pretty please. :D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 19, 2007, 05:44:54 am
I already reworked the Bakha maps, but I'll take a loook at your maps when I'm back home.

The look nice on the screenshots, but it's really hard to tell if they're better, cause the pics are pretty small.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 19, 2007, 11:06:06 am
The pics are thumbnail links to 1280x1024 shots... :nervous:

There are some parts where the armour plating is not spot on in relation topolygons in the model, that's because I simpley drew the lines on top of the old texture which had the gaps between the plates about a mile wide so I had to kinda guesstimate where the actual poly edges were in the model and so on. But in fact it looks kinda good to my eye in-game.

Though, if you have already reworked them, I don't doubt your job will most likely surpass mine in quality. Could you post some screens too? :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 20, 2007, 06:12:05 pm
I made them in like ... ten minutes or less. Therefore, my maps do not looks very great.
On the other hand, the texture isn't that hard to upgrade.

Afaik UnknownTarget is working on a HTL version of it, that will use new maps, so it's only temporary anyway...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Turambar on January 20, 2007, 10:11:25 pm
i dunno, last time UT worked on a vasudan ship, he kinda chickened out halfway through

*hacking cough* PTAH *cough*
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 21, 2007, 11:50:05 am
A shot of my version:

(http://i14.tinypic.com/48cinf4.jpg)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 21, 2007, 12:24:36 pm
Cool. :yes: The hull plating lines looks better there than on my version IMO. And the cockpit also seems to be more seamlessly attached to the hull.

Wanna try my glow map on it?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on January 21, 2007, 12:34:24 pm
I don't think the brown stuff is supposed to glow to be honest...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 21, 2007, 12:49:51 pm
Perhaps not. I always imagined that it should, though. Matter of opinion I guess... Did any of the retail ships even have glow maps to begin with?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: castor on January 21, 2007, 02:44:32 pm
[shout]The glow looks sexy to me :yes:[/shout]
*runs*
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Taristin on January 21, 2007, 07:34:37 pm
The Bakha does not and should not have any glow maps.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on January 27, 2007, 05:05:26 am
The new beams when dab created them were cool at first, but i quickly found them to be too sporadic and all over the place as compared to more coherent beams which is how they're supposed to be. Hell, even the beam mega man charge up affect is cool, that should be like retained. I mean when a beam charges up with the mega man charge up affect it's like a sginification of the fact that that beam is not good news. The place where dab made a lasting impression on his beams are the beam glows from the ship charging up and firing. Herras beams are good from screenshots, take a look in the 3.6.8screenshots thread for more of his stuff. The thing about his beams that sort of needed to be worked on is that they look flat, idk if he's worked on them or not since then, but they're good.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 27, 2007, 05:44:32 am
I'll continue work on them as soon as my two questions are answered:

How exactly does the $Tile Factor work in the code? What units does it use, because it doesn't seem to work well with either raw metre value for length of the tecture nor with fixed aspect ratio value.

How does the $Translation work in the code? What kind of values am I supposed to feed into the table? Integers? Decimal numbers? What units? Metres per second value was definitely not a very great success, so I'm kinda in the dark as to what it's supposed to use.

It's probably easy enough to make textured beams consist of several layers, of which the "base" layer would have greatest width and top layer being thinnest, with different $Zadd factor so they look like they are not on one layer but on top of each other. At least it should be easy in GIMP. The problem is that using two layers would basically double the memory requirement, depending on resolution of course, but still. Three layers, threefold memory use. With :v: beams, the sections didn't originally have big animated textures, they were generated on the fly by table values.

The other thing is that transparency blending feels rather weird to me when I tried to actually do this in-game. True alpha blending doesn't work, and when I stack two layers on top of each other they easily become overbright, somehow. Then again, my current animations were designed to be used as single layers. Ironically, the frames were actually originally made of three layers that were combined into single layer frames, but individual layers do not exist anymore. So basically, the beams should look 3D enough when viewed from side - save for the hitpoint, which sometimes looks a little... weird.*

So, the question is what are you ready to sacrifice - looks or memory? It's obviously no problem if you have RAM to spare. You could have ten layered beams if you really want that much 3D effect into them, but the thing is, the beams will still mostly look flat in most cases when you view them from sides, since your monitor will alway remain flat. Even looked from shallow angle, you really need to see the hitting point to see the fact that the beam only consists of a single layer. So I can try what gives with more layers, but the key problem right now is to get accurate information about what the table values are expected to be.


To any degree, I don't think rushing these beams to 3.6.9 mediaVP's would be such a marvellous idea, unless I get them worked to satisfactory condition with help of information from coder side before the new MVP's are released...


*Personal opinion: Beam hitpoint needs more explosions to cover the actual point of impact, where the one-layerness of the beam is apparent. Starting point is not a problem currently, because the beam blends nicely into brigh center of beamglow ani. How do I increase the amount of stuff released in the point of impact?

By the way, here's one of the cooler recent screenshots... Just for fun.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 27, 2007, 08:31:36 am
Those beams look a little too wide for the size of the beamglow.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Slime on January 27, 2007, 04:05:51 pm
After testing those Herra's beams in action, I have to admit that they are one of if not the best beams I've seen. They're not going everywhere from my folders for some time! Hyvä hyvä!
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: phatosealpha on January 28, 2007, 01:14:59 am
I kinda liked the animated shivan beams.  My only real gripe is with the shivan engine glows - they look flat.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 28, 2007, 01:39:49 am
I kinda liked the animated shivan beams.  My only real gripe is with the shivan engine glows - they look flat.

Were they proper animated (with a coherent, flickering core) for you?  Anyone who noticed seems to think they were broken and the white core elements were all over the place and it looked terrible.

I liked the old-fashioned flickering beams: it's one of the things that sets FS beams apart from all the other beams in science fiction.  :nod:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: phatosealpha on January 28, 2007, 02:29:02 am
No, rather, they looked like a single white core with a red glow that would split apart into two smaller pararrel beams with a red glow that would then come back together.  Thought it gave it a nice swirling, tightly focused chaos feel that I kind of liked - and at any rate, did something to break apart the lightsaber blue+green are good/red is bad effect.

I ain't gonna be heartbroken if it gets changed - it's a matter of aesthetics, and does differ from the stock feel an awful lot - but I still kinda liked it.  The only thing I really hate is those shivan engine glows - the round uniform ones fake being 3d very well.  The textured one doesn't do it at all.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 28, 2007, 02:45:43 am
No, rather, they looked like a single white core with a red glow that would split apart into two smaller pararrel beams with a red glow that would then come back together.  Thought it gave it a nice swirling, tightly focused chaos feel that I kind of liked - and at any rate, did something to break apart the lightsaber blue+green are good/red is bad effect.

I ain't gonna be heartbroken if it gets changed - it's a matter of aesthetics, and does differ from the stock feel an awful lot - but I still kinda liked it.  The only thing I really hate is those shivan engine glows - the round uniform ones fake being 3d very well.  The textured one doesn't do it at all.

Really?  I don't think I've ever seen it 'work': the white elements in the beams just go completely bonkers. If they moved with a purpose like you describe I wouldn't have a problem with it - then again, the complex beams are quite obviously built up from many different segments, and it looks quite naff when they hit you or something near you and you can see the obvious layering.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Slime on January 28, 2007, 05:09:34 am
After playing some more, I have a problem using H. Tohtori's beams, as the shivan ships use the terran-blue as their anti-fighter beam colour. It wouldn't be near as bad if they didn't still have the red glows that appear on other ships, so it looks very confusing. Did I install them wrong or what's the case? I blended them with my MediaVPs by placing the beam VP in the mediavp(s) folder, and then placing the table file to mediavps/data/tables. I didn't use the mod.ini, naturally.

EDIT:  Found the problem, one of the beams had the wrong textures.
Code: [Select]
Name: SAAA
+nocreate
$BeamInfo:
+Muzzleglow: S_Beamglow
$Section:
+Index: 0
+Width: 8
+Texture:   aaa-beam
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 0
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0
+Flicker: 0.2
+Zadd: 2.0
+Tile Factor: 64, 1



$Section:
+Index: 1
+Width: 0 ;6
+Texture:   aaa-bar
+Flicker: 0.1
+Zadd: 1.0

I changed this to:

Code: [Select]
Name: SAAA
+nocreate
$BeamInfo:
+Muzzleglow: S_Beamglow
$Section:
+Index: 0
+Width: 8
+Texture:   shivan-beam
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 0
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0
+Flicker: 0.2
+Zadd: 2.0
+Tile Factor: 64, 1



$Section:
+Index: 1
+Width: 0 ;6
+Texture:    shivan-bar
+Flicker: 0.1
+Zadd: 1.0

And now it works. It seems the shivan anti-fighter beam had the "normal" terran/vasudan specs. It anyone else has this problem, mv_effects-wep.tbm needs to be fixed.



Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on January 28, 2007, 05:26:48 am
Something that should definitely be kept is the AAA beams that are already in the vp's. Yet another time for my informational screenshots. Here's two good up close pretties of the current AAA beams which are so beautiful.
(http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/3664/untitled70us0.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
(http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/1166/untitled71uy9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
And here's an example of the shivan beams.
Good old shivan coherence.
(http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/3747/untitled105id8.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
What's happening?
(http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/1993/untitled107cs9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Oh, man...wtf happened here?
(http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/3387/untitled108ou4.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
YOU DON'T KILL WITH DISCO LIGHTS!!! THIS LAST SCREENSHOT CAME FROM THE 70'S!!! It's like the shivan beams were like a 60 year old guy with ED...the sath could only keep them good and strong for a second. Anyway, sorry for the big images, but this should square away anybody taking up the task of describing how these shivan beams are. Not to mention also, but like the final explosion of the hecate here looks like crap. They've been like that for a while.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 28, 2007, 05:35:33 am
S-99, the 3.6.8 Shivan beams don't do that for me.  I've got some screenshots around somewhere, but the two white segments that move apart just go insane and wave around at random, with two distinct white sections visible and moving over the whole width of the beam.  This is why I don't like them: the shots you posted look *silly*, but not obviously broken.

Ah, here it is: (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/pnakotus/candy.jpg)

You can see that the white parts have moved much further apart than in your screenshots, but what you can't see is those white segments moving around at high speed.  It's chaotic, messy and unattractive, but I've never been able to work out why it happens to myself and a few other posters here and not everyone.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on January 28, 2007, 05:53:29 am
Well yes of course, it looks better when they're actually in their high speed motion. I use to like them for that, but it got old fast. I think it's safe to say we have the same beams, i just didn't want to go posting 6 shots of the beams transition. I can if you really want to. I was just showing off the beam when it's coherent, when it's in the middle of separation, and when it's done separating, then the process would repeat with the agreeable "chaotic messy unnatractive" description.
My shots do contain the same beams, but plz don't think i had different ones, these are with my crazy ass flag settings, but the thing that matters here is the beam animation.

The transition of the white parts of the beam you describe are happening in my shots. There's a second of coherence, then it starts separation, and my ugly shot of a very similar wide separation, but even more so on the final shot that the white parts also thin out.
But even though the shivans might look cool on cruiser sized vessels and corvettes, they look hideous on any ship bigger, especially these sath beams. The chaotic thing was cool and all, itd be cool to even keep the chaotic thing, but in a much different form than it currently is.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 28, 2007, 06:18:11 am
After playing some more, I have a problem using H. Tohtori's beams, as the shivan ships use the terran-blue as their anti-fighter beam colour. It wouldn't be near as bad if they didn't still have the red glows that appear on other ships, so it looks very confusing. Did I install them wrong or what's the case? I blended them with my MediaVPs by placing the beam VP in the mediavp(s) folder, and then placing the table file to mediavps/data/tables. I didn't use the mod.ini, naturally.

EDIT:  Found the problem, one of the beams had the wrong textures.
Code: [Select]
Name: SAAA
+nocreate
$BeamInfo:
+Muzzleglow: S_Beamglow
$Section:
+Index: 0
+Width: 8
+Texture:   aaa-beam
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 0
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0
+Flicker: 0.2
+Zadd: 2.0
+Tile Factor: 64, 1



$Section:
+Index: 1
+Width: 0 ;6
+Texture:   aaa-bar
+Flicker: 0.1
+Zadd: 1.0

I changed this to:

Code: [Select]
Name: SAAA
+nocreate
$BeamInfo:
+Muzzleglow: S_Beamglow
$Section:
+Index: 0
+Width: 8
+Texture:   shivan-beam
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 0
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0
+Flicker: 0.2
+Zadd: 2.0
+Tile Factor: 64, 1



$Section:
+Index: 1
+Width: 0 ;6
+Texture:    shivan-bar
+Flicker: 0.1
+Zadd: 1.0

And now it works. It seems the shivan anti-fighter beam had the "normal" terran/vasudan specs. It anyone else has this problem, mv_effects-wep.tbm needs to be fixed.






That's not a bug, it's a feature... I actually noticed that and it was a conscious choice at time. I had a mental image of all AAA-beams - also Shivan ones - being blue, but I didn't check how it was in retail, so it ended up like that in the first version and has been like that since... :rolleyes: As it happens, the SAA seems to have been red on retail so I'll change it in the tables accordingly. Thanks for pointing it out.

Here's the retail entry, if someone is interested.

Code: [Select]
; NOTE : most of the fields here are irrelevant and are only included so as not to break the parser
;        beam weapons are a very special case weapon
$Name:                          SAAA
$Model File:                    none ; laser1-1.pof
@Laser Bitmap:                  laserglow01
@Laser Color: 250, 30, 30
@Laser Length: 0.0
@Laser Head Radius: 0.60
@Laser Tail Radius: 0.60
$Mass:                          4.0
$Velocity:                      1000.0          ;; speed of the weapon (initially) -- may or may not change
$Fire Wait:                     5.0             ;; in seconds
$Damage:                        9
$Armor Factor:                  1.0
$Shield Factor:                 1.0
$Subsystem Factor:              1.0
$Lifetime:                      50.0            ;; How long this thing lives
$Energy Consumed:               0.30            ;; Energy used when fired
$Cargo Size:                    0.0             ;; Amount of space taken up in weapon cargo
$Homing:                        NO
$LaunchSnd:                     124          ;; The sound it makes when fired
$ImpactSnd:                     88        ;; The sound it makes when it hits something
+Weapon Range: 1500 ;; Limit to range at which weapon will actively target object
$Flags:                         ("Big Ship" "beam")
$Icon:                          icongun05
$Anim:                          LoadGun07
$Impact Explosion:              ExpMissileHit1
$Impact Explosion Radius:       10.0
$BeamInfo:
+Type: 3 ;; 0 - 4 are valid #'s
+Life: 3.5 ;; how long it lasts once the beam is actually firing
+Warmup: 1000 ;; warmup time in ms
+Warmdown: 1000 ;; warmdown time in ms
+Radius: 20.0 ;; muzzle glow radius in meters
+PCount: 12 ;; particles spewed every interval
+PRadius: 1.2 ;; particle radius
+PAngle: 65.0 ;; angle of the random "cone" where the particles are generated
+PAni: particleexp01 ;; particle ani
;; +Miss Factor: 2.4 2.0 1.5 1.25 1.0 ;; magic # - higher == miss more (only really applicable to type 0 and type 3 beams)
+Miss Factor: 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 1.5 ;; magic # - higher == miss more (only really applicable to type 0 and type 3 beams)
+BeamSound: 179 ;; the looping beam-firing sound
+WarmupSound: 182 ;; associated warmup sound
+WarmdownSound: 189 ;; associated warmdown sound
+Muzzleglow: thrusterglow01 ;; muzzle glow bitmap
+Shots: 3 ;; only used for TYPE 3 beams
+ShrinkFactor: 0.0 ;; what
+ShrinkPct: 0.0 ;; what percentage of max width we subtract per second
$Section: ;; one section of the beam (you can have up to 5)
+Width: 2.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-red ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 255 255 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 150 150 150 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 2.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 6.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-red2 ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 160 160 0 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 60 60 0 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 1.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 8.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-white ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 0 0 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 60 0 0 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 0.0 ;; hehe

 :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: 666maslo666 on January 28, 2007, 07:55:43 am
Not to mention also, but like the final explosion of the hecate here looks like crap. They've been like that for a while.

I had the same problem heres the thread http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,43945.0.html hope it helps  :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Zacam on January 29, 2007, 02:17:04 am
On a somewhat related note: While I was running tests on some changes, I accidentally ran my 3.6.9 with its options enabled but without the mediavp's selected.

The original shockwave actaully looks pretty damn decent AND fast (could probably use only a minor facelift). Not so sure about the beams, but the ones on Terran and Vasudan vessels don't look as terribly as I thought they would. Thrusters are set to amber afterburners for terran vessels (and no abtrails), so I'm sorta curious how/why they got changed. The engine glows.....well, it could go either way.

So, while we're looking at what we're updating, I definately recommend looking at what was and how the current engine handles it.
(If you already are, then well, you're already on top of it! )
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: TrashMan on January 29, 2007, 06:04:04 am
Whatever engine glows get chosen one things is a must (IMHO) - they must be short. A half a mile long engine trail for a ship that moves at 10m/s is moronic to say the least..

EDIT: Taylors glows look beter to me for now..
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: brandx0 on January 29, 2007, 06:01:35 pm
On a larger note... any ship that goes 10 m/s is moronic too... My grandpa drives faster than that, and he's blind.

10 m/s = 22.4 mph.... for the record.

But alas, I digress

</freespace physics rant>
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 29, 2007, 06:02:54 pm
the ships move in km/sec, not m/sec.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on January 29, 2007, 06:11:41 pm
Wrong, the ships move in meters a second, otherwise you'd pass the Orion in far less than 2 seconds
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 29, 2007, 06:18:40 pm
oh, you're right.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on January 29, 2007, 08:17:41 pm
Whatever engine glows get chosen one things is a must (IMHO) - they must be short. A half a mile long engine trail for a ship that moves at 10m/s is moronic to say the least..

EDIT: Taylors glows look beter to me for now..

I think most of the messing about is just with the glows, not the cones which form the 'trail'.  Big stretchy white bubbles might look cool, but they're hardly FS-ish, given the appearance of thrusters in the cutscenes.

I wouldn't complain about the ship's speeds, though: they're the only thing that keeps the game more playable than an astrogation calculation. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on January 29, 2007, 10:10:20 pm
oh, you're right.

Wish you were right... the whole M/S thing hurts my suspension of disbelief.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Zacam on January 29, 2007, 10:15:29 pm
Why not just make it km/s? Everything will still move at the same rate it is, just update any/all speed references to title m/s as km/s.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on January 29, 2007, 10:18:16 pm
because then orions would be 1000 times longer ?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on January 29, 2007, 10:29:37 pm
Quote
Why not just make it km/s? Everything will still move at the same rate it is, just update any/all speed references to title m/s as km/s.
You know that little guy in the cockpit of a Herc?

Not so little after that.

See if we make M/S to KM/S than we make M into KM, and therefore the everything will be, as neoterran said 1000 times larger.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on January 29, 2007, 10:36:01 pm
Wing Commander 1 was KM/s and look how fast Hornets went... :D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Zacam on January 29, 2007, 10:44:36 pm
I didn't mean internally to the engine, just cosmetically to the dispalys as appropriate for enumerating speed.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on January 29, 2007, 11:06:46 pm
But that still doesn't solve anything, as far as suspension of disbeleif, because the problem still exists that fighters are 20 Km long, and I don't mean the engine, I mean that's the way it would be.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on January 30, 2007, 02:17:38 am
What's with fighters 20km long thing?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 30, 2007, 02:21:23 am
Relative speed increase causes equal relative increase in size.

If a fighter moves its own length ten times in a second and you say that the speed is 160 m/s or 160 km/s, there's a big difference between 16 metres long and 16 km long fighter...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: aldo_14 on January 30, 2007, 04:44:32 am
On a larger note... any ship that goes 10 m/s is moronic too... My grandpa drives faster than that, and he's blind.

10 m/s = 22.4 mph.... for the record.

But alas, I digress

</freespace physics rant>

I'm not sure the ships need to move faster; after all, if they really want to shift space quickly then they simply jump out.  The rest is simply maneuvering speed.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 05:53:24 am
Just increase their speed to something near to 200 m/s in normal speed and 350 m/s in top speed with afterburner.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Slime on January 30, 2007, 06:08:48 am
I still remember flying that Ulysses in Revenge... Nothing like passing by a couple of Sathan/ases/i/nazizis under 10 seconds, although dogfight missiles would become strange as you flew faster than them...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 06:33:34 am
although dogfight missiles would become strange as you flew faster than them...

It's not really a problem if you modify their speed too.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Taristin on January 30, 2007, 08:46:23 pm
Wanna know why fighters in FS don't fly at 200 m/s?

Change all the ships to fly at that speed. Play a mission. Watch all of the AI kill themselves.

That's why.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 31, 2007, 02:34:10 am
Wanna know why fighters in FS don't fly at 200 m/s?

Change all the ships to fly at that speed. Play a mission. Watch all of the AI kill themselves.

That's why.

I've try this, and 80% of the main Freespace 2 campaign work pretty well. However, only Bombs speed aren't modify  due to the unability to the player or to the AI ships to intercept those bombs before their impact.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Slime on January 31, 2007, 04:31:59 am
It's not really a problem if you modify their speed too.

That was the problem with the campaign, they weren't  :p
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Polpolion on January 31, 2007, 03:38:27 pm
I know what we should do with the next set of media VPs? We should completely wreck the balance and game play style and feeling of FS. That is a really good idea, don't you think?

[/sarcasm]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on January 31, 2007, 09:22:29 pm
I know what we should do with the next set of media VPs? We should completely wreck the balance and game play style and feeling of FS. That is a really good idea, don't you think?

[/sarcasm]

I don't think anyone is pushing for that, I think this is just an extended rant by a number of people.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: brandx0 on January 31, 2007, 11:07:54 pm
It was never my intent to suggest changing the game balance at all, for the record
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 02, 2007, 01:55:26 am
Someone should make a campaign with really fast ships, but the downside is that capships get to target them with real beams. That sounds really fun to me. Make an ares fly really fast, at least that ship can withstand a beam hit like once, and then you're at 2% hull integrity.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on February 02, 2007, 08:43:49 am
Because going faster clearly makes it easier to aim huge guns at you. :D

There are plenty of games that maybe someone 'should' make: they're all Not Freespace.  So go play IWar and get back on topic.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bob-san on February 02, 2007, 07:55:07 pm
I'll say those from Taylor; it looks alot more smooth then the 3d poly ones.

One more vote to Taylor.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Polpolion on February 02, 2007, 11:01:17 pm
It was never my intent to suggest changing the game balance at all, for the record

It's really difficult to multiply all the ship's speed and maneuverability by 3 and still have a balanced game. Not to mention a game that has a game play style  anything like freespace.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be neat to have ships zipping along at 225 m/s shooting at each other, but I am saying that it wouldn't be freespace.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Gregster2k on February 03, 2007, 03:52:01 am
We already have a speed increaser (time acceleration). It's been there since retail.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on February 04, 2007, 11:36:43 am
That isn't the same though, that increases the global game speed, and it's used to skip boring hunks of missions / playtest / kill Hades class destroyers, the player chooses to increase the game speed in that case. What your suggesting is changing all of the ships to have more speed, and that would screw everything up.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bob-san on February 04, 2007, 03:04:11 pm
I'm tempted to triple all the speeds of all ships in the game... probably keep some stuff like rotation time and speed dampers.

It will probably be a bit harder if i don't change actual acceleration/stoppping times.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on February 04, 2007, 05:00:25 pm
I'm tempted to triple all the speeds of all ships in the game... probably keep some stuff like rotation time and speed dampers.

It will probably be a bit harder if i don't change actual acceleration/stoppping times.

Have fun trying to hit anything.  Wait, you did think about angular velocity, rates of fire, and control sensitivity right?   :lol:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bob-san on February 04, 2007, 05:45:12 pm
The only thing that i might change is actual speeds... :lol: nothing about rotation, turning, STOPPING, or accelerating! Just speed... lol...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Pnakotus on February 04, 2007, 05:47:49 pm
The only thing that i might change is actual speeds... :lol: nothing about rotation, turning, STOPPING, or accelerating! Just speed... lol...

So, everything will go faster and cross your view at greater rates... but somehow this won't make it harder to hit?  There's this little thing called 'geometry' you might want to look up.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mischief Maker on February 06, 2007, 08:46:37 pm
If it's not too late for requests, could you get rid of those white puffballs that replaced the sparks trailing from damaged ships?  It just looks like a white smear on my machine and if I get close to a damaged ship, the puffballs give my framerate a kick to the groin.  Surely they don't need to be as memory-intensive as they seem to be.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: TrashMan on February 07, 2007, 04:39:59 am
This thread was supposed to be about EFFECTS!

When I complained about slow ships I was refering to the TOO LONG ENGINE TRAILS COMPOARED TO CAPSHIP SPEED..
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on February 07, 2007, 01:38:14 pm
If it's not too late for requests, could you get rid of those white puffballs that replaced the sparks trailing from damaged ships?  It just looks like a white smear on my machine and if I get close to a damaged ship, the puffballs give my framerate a kick to the groin.  Surely they don't need to be as memory-intensive as they seem to be.

that replaced the sparks? They always were white puffballs unless you're talking about retail i guess. Anyway in the latest versions they're hot sparky particles not white smoke, but the performance hit is still there because it relies on the particle code which is problematic until taylor can fix it.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Kon on February 11, 2007, 07:49:49 pm
I vote for the MediaVP Thrusters, and  the current beams as well.  Sorry VA, but I really cannot stand your thruster glows.  They are all the same, just different colors.  When the current oval ones first came out, I was really in awe.  That softer, more dispersed light really seems like how a thruster should look.  I like how the Shivan ones are different, and I actually think the teal is a big improvment over the old fire-ish ones.  Herra's beams are OK, but they look a bit simple.  Whatever we do with the beams, they need to be more stable.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 11, 2007, 08:22:50 pm
When it comes to the beams I agree. My beams are not ready to be put onto MediaVP's. And rushing them there half-assed would not be a particularly good idea. Anyone who wishes to use my current beams instead of whatever goes to MediaVP's is free to do so. :)

I'll keep improving them, but I'd really like to also see the two beam section documentation issues solved... Because I still don't know how the tile factor and translation values are supposed to be used.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: taylor on February 11, 2007, 09:32:33 pm
@Herra Tohtori:  This might interest you, I just committed a new feature to CVS which lets you delete old beam sections with a tbm.  After the "+Index:" line for each section, just add a "+remove" and that section will be removed after parsing.  So you can easily just create a beam with one section, then put a "+remove" on all of the others to make sure that you are always left with th eone beam section. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Huggybaby on February 11, 2007, 09:43:39 pm
But can anyone answer the man's question? He's been asking forever. It seems that tayler would know---

How are tile factor and translation values supposed to be used?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 11, 2007, 09:51:57 pm
I was doing the section-erasing manually by setting the rest of sections to zero width so that the conflicting possible layers from earlier tables were overriden by zero width sections. But it's obviously way more neat (and better documentable) to just be able to remove the rest of the sections.  :)

EDIT: And, well, saying that I don't know how the tile factor and translation values are supposed to be used is perhaps a bit exaggereated... I know exactly what they are supposed to do and how the syntax goes, but setting the actual values for them is kinda shooting in the dark because the documentation doesn't tell what units they use. It would seem that the tile factor value uses some kind of aspect ratio instead of actual texture length in the game renders (in metres), because using same values for the same kind of beams tends to make similar beams more consistently tiled. Using the actual length of the texture in relation to width of the section brings out anomalously squeezed/elongated beams.

Of the translation value units I don't have a clue really. Metres per second would seem most logical, but alas, it doesn't seem to be working very well.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on February 11, 2007, 09:53:24 pm
sounds like a plan. I like your beams Herra, don't give up on them just because of some minor issues.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 11, 2007, 10:02:02 pm
I won't, but it's kinda frustrating to try and find suitable values for each and every beam weapon by shooting in the dark and then trying to test how the beams look like after every change.

Much better to know exactly how the table values are interpreted by the game engine. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Huggybaby on February 11, 2007, 10:51:01 pm
So again, no answer.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 11, 2007, 11:30:27 pm
Meh, huggy, the coders have their hands full with bugfixing, introducing new features and living their lives. It's not a pressing issue... just something that would be nice to have clarified.

I never expected a straight down from the line answer, because having done some small code stuff for school myself I know that actually checking what the code does for particular table values is possibly not as simple as one could imagine... Undocumented or poorly documented code can be hell to go through. In this kind of checking, I'd imagine that first you have to check how the table file is parsed, then how it's handled forwards and finally what kind of graphics is rendered. It's many things to check out. It's not the coders' fault if a retail function like Tile Factor is poorly documented.

So, an answer will be appreciated when it eventually comes out, but there is bound to be more important issues to fixed, added and made to actually work... Documenting existing code better is a low priority business, but it can be just as time-consuming as coding new features and/or bugfixing. I know there's a lot of work being done that is not always noticed by the unknowing.

So, take your time... meanwhile, I'll be trying to do the best I can with existing documentation. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: taylor on February 11, 2007, 11:39:24 pm
How are tile factor and translation values supposed to be used?
Don't know.  Don't have time to figure it out.  :)


I was doing the section-erasing manually by setting the rest of sections to zero width so that the conflicting possible layers from earlier tables were overriden by zero width sections. But it's obviously way more neat (and better documentable) to just be able to remove the rest of the sections.  :)
The problem with the width thing is that it's a hack.  I had to make it actually deal with zero width to avoid rendering issues, but that was cheap and stupid.  The obvious problem, of course, is that using the width hack still requires the section bitmap to exist to avoid getting a warning message in debug builds.

The new option fixes both of those issues, and gives you the ability to just remove all other sections quite easily.  It doesn't matter whether that section actually exists in the first place, so you don't have to check the original tbl first.  Simply add the section that you want and set all of the others to +remove.  Problem solved.  :D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 13, 2007, 08:43:40 am
It was never my intent to suggest changing the game balance at all, for the record

It's really difficult to multiply all the ship's speed and maneuverability by 3 and still have a balanced game. Not to mention a game that has a game play style  anything like freespace.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be neat to have ships zipping along at 225 m/s shooting at each other, but I am saying that it wouldn't be freespace.

Have you tried it already?! :D It will feel more freespace than you can ever imagine, trust me :)

However, this is unviable for already released campaigns... however new campaigns could make use of a nice velocity mod (and I mean a WELL DONE velox mod) to break away that dull thing that is "chasing" heavy fighters\bombers...

A long time ago ive done some test on this: made the changes to the tables (explained below), and done some missions specially designed to take advantage of the speed modifications... worked wonders, just meant a slight rethink of mission design convention ofc.

The .tbl changes were as follows (as far as I can remember):
Speed of fighters\bombers\small craft in general x2
Speed of missiles\bombs x2
Speed of energy weaps x2
Lock time of IR missiles 1\2
Lifetime of missiles\energy weaps 1\2
Effective range of AAA beams increased by 1\4

Also tampered with the AI.tbl so it would cope better with the above changes (cant remember what ive done exactly here)

The result (at medium dificulty): much more imersive dogfights, no more turkey shoots against heavier classes and endless waves of enemies, and it wasnt as easy to kill a space superiority fighter whn you were flying a heavy fighter, and uber hard to do it on a bomber.
So basically you had the imersion factor (lightning flybies when head to head, etc), a different (imo better) differentiation in the doghfight capabilities of the various classes of fighters. And most important of all, no more "Alpha1 kills hundreds of drones by himself", that is, when against other fighters, you were actually flying against another PILOT (so to speak), instead of going against the shivan grandmas.

Keep in mind that wasnt near as refined as it could\should be, but it was already a good start.

Now heres a question: is it possible via scripting, to implement above changes generaly, but WITHOUT seeing those changed values ingame (for example, a perseus would b flying at 160 m\s in reality, but ingame it would still show 80m\s)... im just curious

Soz for the topic derail :P
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Huggybaby on February 13, 2007, 12:57:09 pm
That sounds very cool Raven2001, I'd love to try flying under those conditions.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CaptJosh on February 15, 2007, 08:40:49 am
Sounds like you've just gone from WWII with prop planes to the early MiGs and F-86s in the skies over Korea, speed wise.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: brandx0 on February 15, 2007, 02:32:48 pm
Except for the fact that WWII fighters are faster than the fighters in freespace...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 15, 2007, 03:14:29 pm
Well, I dunno... 100 m/s = 360 km/h, which is kinda common dogfighting speed with WW2 planes.

180 m/s (top speed for Horus with afterburners IIRC) = 648 km/h

Bf 109 G series had top speeds of somewhere around 650 km/h at 5000 metres, so it's not that far off. Later planes flew faster, IIRC the Bf 109 K-series had tops over 700 km/h as well as some FW-190 models, but generally the air speeds are way lower than that in dogfights.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 15, 2007, 04:17:05 pm
Sounds like you've just gone from WWII with prop planes to the early MiGs and F-86s in the skies over Korea, speed wise.

Well not really, if your meaning that during WW2 the prominent offensive method was machine guns, and those early Migs\F-86 were more missile based.

In fact the above changes made the game be more like WW2 combat than anything else... only more hectic doghfighting, which is somthing I find a bit lacking on FS most of the time
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 15, 2007, 05:47:43 pm
That's because FS2 ships are more like the size of WW2 bombers, but their speed is of fighter. That's why it's easier to hit the enemy with primaries on FS2 than IL-2 Sturmovik. Herc 2 is 17 metres long, typical WW2 fighter are closer to half that... Supermarine Spitfire VB is 9.12 metres long, Bf-109 G series is 8.95 metres long.

So, FS2 fighters are roughly double the size of WW2 fighter, but move at same speed. That makes the targets bigger at same angular speed.

If you double the speed, then the speed/size ratio is much closer to what WW2 fighters have, which causes the relative target at same angular speed to decrease to a quarter (by inverse square law, when distance doubles, apparent diameter quadrifies [is that a word]). Which obviously makes it that much more hectic and harder to dogfight.

It's a shame you can't use energy tactics in FS2. In fully newtonian flight mode it would obviously be possible... Or perhaps a script that would allow greater speed at straight flight, but decrease speed at tight turns. Not like in XvT, where maneuverability is the function of throttle setting, but instead maneuverability should be a function of relative speed... :drevil:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 15, 2007, 06:04:11 pm
oh man, i wish we had newtonian physics. I could just do an afterburner burst and remain at that speed going in a straight line while i'm rotating my fighter to a spray a cruiser or something as i pass by, so i'm not some dumb**** ship sitting there just shooting.
Though ww2 fighters are smaller and move at the same speeds of fs fighters and ****. Fs fighters and **** are like what the other dude said like twice the size of a ww2 bomber. Not to mention the ursa is like the biggest. The fact that these bigger fighters move at the same speed as the smaller ones ww2 ones is really cool. Of course everyone knows that as fighters get smaller in fs, they get seriously way faster. One good example of speed is the pegasus vs size is the pegasus.
Of course you can't get too small, a few steps past the pegasus, and you have a pilot strapped to the front of an engine holding a little blaster.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 15, 2007, 06:16:27 pm
(http://www.freemars.org/mnfan/StarWreck6/star_wreck_ivanovitsa_ja_sherrypie.jpg)

-Are you... drunk?!?


Not that it's wrong in any way... It's just that I can't make much sense from your message, S-99. :nervous:

 :p
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 15, 2007, 06:20:30 pm
No i was just talking about being able to do some bsg maneuvers in fs with newtonian physics. After that the fact that fs fighters are huge and just as fast as ww2 fighters which are smaller is cool and just means that the smaller stuff will be really fast, such as the pegasus. A few steps past the pegasus and you have something really small and fast but would probably consist of no more than a pilot strapped to an engine blasting around in space holding a star wars blaster in his hand...also meaning you can't make stuff too small.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on February 15, 2007, 06:37:40 pm
Isn't that the Crusade series?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 15, 2007, 06:54:49 pm
The picture? No, it's not... It's something better (http://www.starwreck.com/). :lol:

As to what comes to newtonian physics, there was/is a build that does that, but you have to enable the glide feature in all craft for it to have any use at all (means tablework).

I've tried it, and the biggest problem then is that FS2 ships have ridiculously small acceleration values to every direction, excet with afterburners. Obviously the acceleration values can be increased in tables, but that kinda makes it a bit too far from FS2. The other problem is that there is no vector indicator in the HUD, which would tell you the exact speed and direction where you are going. Without it, you have no way to accurately manage the horizontal and vertical speeds, and backward speed as well, since the velocity indicator only tells the speed you're going toward's the craft's heading.

Other than that, it's rather fun to play FS2 campaign with those settings... You get from place A to place B that much faster when you can accelerate to halfway and decelerate the rest of the way. Overshooting targets becomes way easy though, without proper instruments even more so. So in a way it disrupts the mission balance. You can actually reach the NTF Iceni... If you had some Stilettos you could disable it in the mission where it escapes the second time.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on February 15, 2007, 08:27:28 pm
I WANNA SEE THAT MOVIE!!!
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 15, 2007, 09:33:03 pm
Well, go and download it. :)

Or order a DVD, whichever method you like more.


Before you ask, it is not only completely legal to download but also encouraged by the Star Wreck team. It is the main method of distribution for this movie. And will be for their next movie too AFAIK. I bet MPAA dudes are still scratching their heads over this piece of movie history... :lol:

</shillage>
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Slime on February 16, 2007, 05:28:00 am
We Finnish seem to have some sort of cosmic gene that forces us to link SW everywhere   :p. Not that there's anything wrong with it, on the contrary ;7.

It would be interesting to see a couple of missions made with higher speeds in mind, and then test them with those settings.

Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 16, 2007, 05:44:57 am
After that completely awesome finnish metal. Star wreck with some finnish metal for the battle scenes would be cool.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 16, 2007, 08:16:48 am
The picture? No, it's not... It's something better (http://www.starwreck.com/). :lol:

As to what comes to newtonian physics, there was/is a build that does that, but you have to enable the glide feature in all craft for it to have any use at all (means tablework).

I've tried it, and the biggest problem then is that FS2 ships have ridiculously small acceleration values to every direction, excet with afterburners. Obviously the acceleration values can be increased in tables, but that kinda makes it a bit too far from FS2. The other problem is that there is no vector indicator in the HUD, which would tell you the exact speed and direction where you are going. Without it, you have no way to accurately manage the horizontal and vertical speeds, and backward speed as well, since the velocity indicator only tells the speed you're going toward's the craft's heading.

Other than that, it's rather fun to play FS2 campaign with those settings... You get from place A to place B that much faster when you can accelerate to halfway and decelerate the rest of the way. Overshooting targets becomes way easy though, without proper instruments even more so. So in a way it disrupts the mission balance. You can actually reach the NTF Iceni... If you had some Stilettos you could disable it in the mission where it escapes the second time.

So the style of play would be more along the lines of I-War from what I gather? Is cool, but rly not my cup of tea FS related :P

Was thinking more of a mix of what we have and Newtonian physics... Starlancer\Freelancer, those had cool doghfights due to the engine, although freelancer suffered from the same "slow motion" illness... Starlancer was very nice speed wise
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 16, 2007, 10:52:04 am
After that completely awesome finnish metal. Star wreck with some finnish metal for the battle scenes would be cool.

Like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE3QBk2wLs)? :lol:


Anyway, I like how the battles wind up in I-War physics. After a while you learn to appreciate full control of your ship. It's true however that it doesn't work with current FS2 HUD gauges, because you can't tell the direction accurately. But I think the BtRL team is going to make the flight dynamics more like you describe, Raven.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 16, 2007, 11:37:07 am
Dont get me wrong, I LOVED I-Wars style of flight... was original and a challenge to master it... tbh the only problem I found in that game was that once you finish the campaign, its all over :P

But that kind of flight rly seems a big jump from what FS is, thats why I complained :P
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 16, 2007, 04:03:16 pm
I remember playing the independence war 2 demo a long time ago when i had my voodoo 3. I like didn't really understood how my the test ship flew at all until i put myself in 3rd person view, and then i could see the air blasting out to maneuver the ship when i moved the joystick, and i was like **** it doesn't control like fs :lol:

Of course back then i was surprisingly unfamiliar with space physics, and only recently saw how cool they can be if fs can fight them.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: 666maslo666 on February 16, 2007, 04:09:49 pm
I liked WCsaga dogfights  :yes: fs2 is just a bit slow I think
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on February 16, 2007, 05:26:14 pm
There wouldn't happen to be an English version of Star Wreck would there?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 16, 2007, 05:39:19 pm
English subtitles version.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on February 16, 2007, 06:27:05 pm
Oh joy... :doubt:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 16, 2007, 06:30:17 pm
Trust me... youll prefer it has subtitles once you see it... their so funny on their own, cant imagine any1 translating what they do with their voices correctly :D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: S-99 on February 16, 2007, 11:28:47 pm
Subtitles are great. You only want to hear dubbed into english stuff if the english speakers do a good job such as having a different voice for every character and no ****ty voice acting.

This reminds me when i was in ukraine. Several movies on tv were in english but had ukrainian voiceovers, and pretty much it was a really low toned ukrainian dude just doing nothing more than reading out the lines very unpassionately in ukrainian and every single man in the movie had only one ukrainian voice. And any women in the movie got a high pitched ukrainian woman voicing over. The ukrainian dubbing was so ****ty it was laughable, after that i could hear the english good enough to watch bad boys on tv undisturbed (ukrainians love bad boys with will smith a lot, it was on tv at least once a day for like two months, after that they went back to showing random movies daily).
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Polpolion on February 23, 2007, 11:56:01 am
Did anyone fix the un-centered eyepoints for the new media VPs?

[/random]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Darklord42 on February 23, 2007, 04:31:25 pm
if its also not to much trouble some of the models have ablack hud right in the center of your reticle, if a) you can remove them, b) find a way to make them transparent without messing up the ship
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on February 25, 2007, 04:21:02 am
So... which beam effects do you guys want.

How do think Bobboau's effects are better then the current set of effects?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on February 25, 2007, 04:41:00 am
Well there are a number of options for most things now. Ie, there's Bobboau's set and then my set that uses modified versions of his graphics for the terran/vasudan beams.

I'll see if I can make a youtube vid or something displaying all the options for each of them in motion, because that's the only way they can be fairly compared.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on February 25, 2007, 09:59:28 am
Ok, done.
Oh, and I also made some Shivan beams of my own that turned out a bit better than expected, so I put them in too. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMa3LXe6oVc

So, have a look people! Pick one of each beam to be used in the next media VP set.

(BTW, I've made more than the beams displayed in that vid - I've done versions of all non AAA beams in the game now actually, so if any those beams are chosen as the style to use for that species in the next Media VPs, there's a full set ready to go.)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Wanderer on February 25, 2007, 10:36:25 am
For shivan beams i prefer Bobboau's beams.. as for others...

BGreen.. 1st VA, 2nd Bob, 3rd MediaVP
SGreen.. 1st VA, 2nd Bob, 3rd MediaVP
BVas.. harder to say.. perhaps VA
SVas isnt even used in FS2 (iirc)

As for beam glows the current Terran glow are imo too complex... Bobs new simpler one looks better. As for others its harder to say.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on February 25, 2007, 11:27:10 am
Not beeing objective... I'll still vote anyway. ;)

BGreen 1st VA, 2nd MV, 3rd Bob
SGreen 1st MV, 2nd VA, 3rd Bob
BVas     1st VA, 2nd MV, 3rd Bob
SVas     1st VA, 2nd MV, 3rd Bob
LRed     1st Bob, 2nd MV, 3rd VA (However... I don't like Bob's glow better than the MV one, while the beam is awesome.)
SRed     1st Bob, 2nd MV, 3rd VA (same here)


Thanks for making this video.  :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: m2258734a on February 25, 2007, 01:59:33 pm
First of all, thanks for supplying the video. My laptop is nowhere near capable of running Freespace SCP, let alone running it smoothly, so I really haven't had a chance to see the beams in action for myself.

This is really hard decision; both Bobboau and your beams look incredible. I was wondering if you fired the beams in the same direction relative to the camera in each shot when you made the video. I ask since some of the beams of the same type appeared to be larger than others and I wasn't sure if this was due to perspective or design. Also, if I may ask, may we see what improvements you and Bobboau have made to all the other non-AAA beams in the game? If it's too much out of your way then don't bother.  :)

Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mehrpack on February 25, 2007, 02:35:49 pm
hi,
shivans: Bob, its look more alive and more like a particle stream.

bgreen: Bob or VA; looks both good

sgrean: VA

bvas: bob or VA; looks both good too

svas: VA

Mehrpack
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: neoterran on February 25, 2007, 02:43:42 pm
VA has better slashers than Bob, but I prefer Bob's Shivan Beam.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: aRaven on February 25, 2007, 03:10:11 pm
i like Bobbau's beams with VA's glows
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Darklord42 on February 25, 2007, 05:40:15 pm
Personaly I prefer Bobbau's beam glows especaily the shivan ones.  The terran ones are interesting.  I vastly prefer the effect of bobbau's beam animations over your's VA however I, and I'm sure others will agree, prefer VA's lighter green color as it feels more cannon.  For the Vasudan beams id say VA's are generaly better and more flame like. Plus i pfrefer the star type glob as oposed to the smooth spherical one as the beams are building up.

On the other note some of us were wondering if cockpits will be fixed on the next version of the media vps.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on February 25, 2007, 06:21:04 pm
Cockpit fix?

What do you mean?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on February 26, 2007, 01:52:32 am
Some ships have their eyepoints situated off-center or otherwise strangely. So if someone wants to use the show ship flag it looks strange, otherwise it could affect where the weapons fire seems to be going if it's badly off-centered.

Take the HTL Ursa for example. It has a perfect view from the front canopy - but the eyepoint is located at the rear canopy, where you get this huge, perhaps a metre wide cockpit strut bar thingy right on front of you, which makes flying a bit frustrated. I personally changed the viewpoint to where the front cockpit's occupant's eyes would be and it is way, way better that way.

In any case, the cockpit hud transparency issues should be solved before most fighters can use the show ship flag to full extent, so it's not a critical fix. But it's something that has to be done if cockpit view is ever going to be officially supported.

Right now making the cockpits visible requires a bit of table magic anyway, and it's not that big a deal to change the eyepoints yourself if you really want...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on February 26, 2007, 05:43:03 am
Ok, well here's my complete beam set now. The media VP man can pull out whichever beams and effects get decided upon. :)
http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/PurdyBeamSet_V1.1.zip
(I've also taken down the older set to avoid confusion)

And in answer to this:
Also, if I may ask, may we see what improvements you and Bobboau have made to all the other non-AAA beams in the game? If it's too much out of your way then don't bother.  :)

Well I've tried to give most of them slightly different characteristics mainly, so they're not carbon copies of each other on different scale. It seems to have worked decently enough.
Here they all are:

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/TerSlash.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/LTerSlash.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/GreenBeam.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/MjolnirBeam.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/SGreen.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/BGreen.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/BFGreen.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/LRBGreen.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/SVas.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/BVas.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/VSlash.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/SRed.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/LRed.jpg)

(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Effects/PurdyBeamSet/BFRed.jpg)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on February 26, 2007, 07:32:13 am
THOSE ARE AWESOME!!!
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: m2258734a on February 26, 2007, 01:11:15 pm
OK, after reviewing the video and VA's latest post I vote as follows:

Terran and Vasudan beams/glows: VA
Shivan beams/glows: Bobboau

Thanks for taking the time to make and show off the pictures. :D



Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Raven2001 on February 26, 2007, 01:40:48 pm
Terran: Bob
Vasudan: VA
Shivie: Bob
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Darklord42 on February 26, 2007, 01:58:16 pm
Some ships have their eyepoints situated off-center or otherwise strangely. So if someone wants to use the show ship flag it looks strange, otherwise it could affect where the weapons fire seems to be going if it's badly off-centered.

Take the HTL Ursa for example. It has a perfect view from the front canopy - but the eyepoint is located at the rear canopy, where you get this huge, perhaps a metre wide cockpit strut bar thingy right on front of you, which makes flying a bit frustrated. I personally changed the viewpoint to where the front cockpit's occupant's eyes would be and it is way, way better that way.

In any case, the cockpit hud transparency issues should be solved before most fighters can use the show ship flag to full extent, so it's not a critical fix. But it's something that has to be done if cockpit view is ever going to be officially supported.

Right now making the cockpits visible requires a bit of table magic anyway, and it's not that big a deal to change the eyepoints yourself if you really want...

Well the average joe who dls scp or gets a cd from a freind won't want to have to muckabout with table values if they wan't to take a look at the effect.   It's simplicity that is the key with the media vp's/instaler/launcher so why cut out now? Aslo the hercs 1+2 viewpoints don't line up in the cockpit.
 The herc 2 is too far back so it appears if you have a postage stamp of the  cockpit on your reticle and i think the herc is too far forward so you don't see the cockpit.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: jr2 on February 26, 2007, 04:11:21 pm
Terran / Vasudan: VA
Shivan: Bob  (If he can get rid of the hot pink effect ;) )
- Bob's Terran beams have too much Yellow
- Bob's Vasudan beams look too much like a rocket trail or something, rather than a beam... although VA's aren't too much better, IMO.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mars on February 26, 2007, 08:06:18 pm
I love them all...

I like the BF Green because of it's look of being a river of energy... sort of scattered, overblown, raw power.

The SGreen looks like the little side arm it should.

Mjollnir has too many spikes in the glow, but I like it otherwise

Zod beams are all excellent
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Polpolion on February 26, 2007, 09:05:14 pm
Terran Beams: Vasudan Admiral
Vasudan Beams: Vasudan Admiral
Shivan Beams: Bobbau (maybe make it a bit more red)

:p
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: takashi on March 06, 2007, 10:39:14 pm
thrusterglows: the ones on the right. (the left ones look like retail, and even smell like retail)
terran and shivan beams: VA's
vasudan beams: bob's
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Zacam on March 07, 2007, 07:39:05 pm
VA, I seriously like your beams, but I have one small little nit.

I can understand the beams needing to have "build up" time prior to the beam itself going out.

But I can not understand why it takes visually apparent "drop off" time that exist for almost as long as the "build up" time.

If it's cycling the anims forward and then backwards, try cutting it off to just a few after the beam is done instead of recycling all of the way back to the begining again.

I realize there will be downtime from one firing until the next.....but the discharge dissipitation from firing the beam should be a lot more instantaneous than it is now.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on April 15, 2007, 11:06:34 am
Does anybody have VA's beam set 1.1? I only got the first one and the link is dead. :(

I need it today, asap.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: jr2 on April 15, 2007, 12:32:57 pm
I realize there will be downtime from one firing until the next.....but the discharge dissipitation from firing the beam should be a lot more instantaneous than it is now.

Have you ever watched a 500 or 1000 watt halogen bulb get turned on?  Ever watched it get turned off?  :p  When the power is applied, it warms up almost instantly.  However, when the power is cut, the heat left in the bulb bleeds off slowly, as there is no power to force it to turn on/off.  However, with a fluorescent bulb, it is almost the opposite; when you turn it on, it immediately starts to about 60-80% of its brightness, then slowly warms the rest of the way up.  When you cut the power, it blacks out almost instantly.

Beams, however, are totally unknown to the Real WorldTM, so speculating about warmup / warmdown times is rather useless.  If indeed beams could exist in the Real WorldTM, they would have heretofore unknown properties, as we don't have them yet!  ;)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vretsu on April 15, 2007, 01:36:06 pm
Wow. WOW.

VA ---> everything.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bobboau on April 15, 2007, 04:10:45 pm
don't forget about the vasudan turret thing. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45657.0.html)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 15, 2007, 05:15:12 pm
Sectorgame's bandwith kinda ran out. :\

Anyways, I've uploaded another copy here: http://webzoom.freewebs.com/twisted-infinities-va/PurdyBeamSet%5FV1.1.zip
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on April 15, 2007, 05:48:39 pm
Thanks. I'll use some of your and some of Bobboau's beam effects.

I'm not sure if I want to do it, but would any of you mind me editing your effects?

@Bob I'll take a look. ;)


Sidenote... it's late... I need to go to bed... and the download is slow... so slow... so late.  :blah:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Bobboau on April 15, 2007, 05:53:01 pm
you might need to edit them, most of them are too big they need to be down sampled, though you might need the originals for that, but downscaling will probably destroy any compression artifacts so...
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: DaBrain on April 15, 2007, 06:18:53 pm
4*1024 isn't that bad imo. ;)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on April 15, 2007, 09:52:11 pm
I'm not sure if I want to do it, but would any of you mind me editing your effects?
No worries about editing any of my stuff - the models included. :)
'Specially since I have every faith in your ability to make it all much better. Do whatever you reckon needs doing.:D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on April 16, 2007, 08:15:09 am
Beams, however, are totally unknown to the Real WorldTM, so speculating about warmup / warmdown times is rather useless.  If indeed beams could exist in the Real WorldTM, they would have heretofore unknown properties, as we don't have them yet!  ;)
I really like the way you put that. :lol:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mobius on April 17, 2007, 06:41:22 pm
Beams, however, are totally unknown to the Real WorldTM, so speculating about warmup / warmdown times is rather useless.  If indeed beams could exist in the Real WorldTM, they would have heretofore unknown properties, as we don't have them yet!  ;)
I really like the way you put that. :lol:

In the FreeSpam thread there's something similar, posted by DySkO:
"In Real LifeTM they cannot use their fake IPs. And in the Real LifeTM, they can be killed."[(i]



As for the beams...do whatever you want with the adv media vp, but please upgrade the normal beam effects that appear when you don't use the adv mvp.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: jr2 on April 17, 2007, 06:43:08 pm
Yah, I got the TM part of that from his post..
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 17, 2007, 06:45:56 pm
What is this Real Life you are talking about?

Is it as bad as Real Player? If it is, please tell what it's like so that I don't need to try myself.

 ;7


Oh, and for the MediaVP's - Bobbaus new beam textures = teh win, no contest.

Also, VA's engine glows are cool. :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Grizzly on April 20, 2007, 05:13:49 am
I would go for the 3d poly.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: takashi on April 20, 2007, 09:27:48 pm
as long as we dont have the flat retail glows. you look at a ship from the side and its...realistic o_o
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: lefkos on April 24, 2007, 11:24:28 am
Sectorgame's bandwith kinda ran out. :\

Anyways, I've uploaded another copy here: http://webzoom.freewebs.com/twisted-infinities-va/PurdyBeamSet%5FV1.1.zip
erm im very noob at this but were must i place these? i already tried something(placed all in the effects map) but that didnt work :rolleyes:
can someone please tell?!
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: jr2 on April 24, 2007, 11:45:00 am
the DDS files go to \data\effects, it looks like the .eff files go there, too**
the tbm file goes to \data\tables
the fs2 files goes to \data\missions

-so, if you're using mediavps, put them in \freespace2\mediavps\data\whatever (effects, tables, or missions)

** EDITED.  Scratch putting them in \data\maps *smacks self*
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: 666maslo666 on April 24, 2007, 12:04:48 pm
dont forget to fix this bug in tables http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,43945.0.html in next mvps.  :p
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: lefkos on April 24, 2007, 02:13:27 pm
thanks guys!  :) :yes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: takashi on April 24, 2007, 05:06:24 pm
and get the tables validated for multi. i cant stand ugly multiplayer. (btrl has spoiled me)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 25, 2007, 02:11:10 am
Well, there are many things I can't stand, but we don't always get what we want (immediately).

At any rate, I seem to remember certain someone complaining about how the new effects don't work well on older systems (what a surprize). Wouldn't it kinda, you know, suck if you had an older system but were forced to use new effects'n stuff just to have multiplayer-validated tables.

I can't fathom the depths of the abyss of your logic. :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: jr2 on April 25, 2007, 09:34:09 am
1) He's now got a new graphics card
2) You could validate both the new and the old effects to work with each other, couldn't you?
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 25, 2007, 09:47:04 am
1) He's now got a new graphics card

I know. And now that he's got it, his opinion about high quality effects has changed entirely in this regard.

Quote
2) You could validate both the new and the old effects to work with each other, couldn't you?

To my best knowledge - not at the moment, no. That's the point. At least as far as I know, the multiplayer table validification is on SCP list of "to-improve" but if I've understood correctly, it will be partially or entirely connected to the long-hyped pilot code upgrade that will mark the transition to 3.7 versions of FS2_Open from 3.6.x versions.

Hence the first sentence of my last message and it's last word "immediately"...

But I shall not pursue on this path of crappy meta-discussion longer. I'm just waiting for the new MEdiaVP's... enthusiastically. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: takashi on April 25, 2007, 01:09:14 pm
arent we all. i vote the HTL lucy, zeus, and loki into the .vps to keep with the spirit of the thread title.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: taylor on April 25, 2007, 06:04:37 pm
To my best knowledge - not at the moment, no. That's the point. At least as far as I know, the multiplayer table validification is on SCP list of "to-improve" but if I've understood correctly, it will be partially or entirely connected to the long-hyped pilot code upgrade that will mark the transition to 3.7 versions of FS2_Open from 3.6.x versions.
The new table (and mission) validation stuff is part of the new FS2NetD code, which is supposed to be part of 3.6.10.  We deffinitely aren't going to wait for 3.7 for that, especially since it has nothing to do with the new pilot file code. :)

The new FS2NetD code was about 98% complete in time for 3.6.9, but I couldn't get any help to finish that last 2% of the code and so we never could get it tested properly.  Because of that we just held off for 3.6.10, since that gives me enough time to finish all of the code and get it fully tested.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Herra Tohtori on April 26, 2007, 02:00:00 am
Ah, even better. Thanks for correction. :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Topgun on May 19, 2007, 07:54:49 pm
how about somthing like this for colie beams?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Commander Zane on May 20, 2007, 10:36:52 am
Purty... :nod:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Mobius on May 20, 2007, 12:22:44 pm
how about somthing like this for colie beams?

Where did you get them? Fantastic! :yes:

But I would like to see a nice HTL Colossus, however... :nod:
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Topgun on May 20, 2007, 08:14:53 pm
I didnt get them. there just for concept. if someone can make something like that then, great ;).
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CKid on July 18, 2007, 08:34:46 pm
Sorry about bringing up this dead thread, but I was just wondering if anyone had a download link to Vasudan Admiral's Beams on page 10. I had a bug on my computer and I had to wipe my hard drive, so now I am trying to get all the stuff I had for freespace before the wipe. thanks.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 19, 2007, 09:14:58 pm
This one on page 11 should still work: http://webzoom.freewebs.com/twisted-infinities-va/PurdyBeamSet%5FV1.1.zip
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CKid on July 19, 2007, 09:34:05 pm
Oh crap, I guess I didn't see that link.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 19, 2007, 09:37:34 pm
lol - no worries, I made that link but I still had to go hunting for a couple of mins to find it. ;)
Threads with double digit page counts are fun. :D
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CKid on July 19, 2007, 09:46:11 pm
Oh, just remembered, do you have a link to the terran thruster glows on page 2? I had been using those as well before the wipe.
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 19, 2007, 11:09:43 pm
http://sectorgame.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/TerranThrusterGlows.zip (same link, but you'll have to copy & paste the address now)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: CKid on July 20, 2007, 06:48:41 pm
Alright! Thanks Vasudan Admiral! :)
Title: Re: Effects for the MV_(adv)effect VP- The vote
Post by: Harbinger of DOOM on July 24, 2007, 09:37:48 pm
Sweet, those are much better than the MediaVP thrusters!