Hard Light Productions Forums
FreeSpace Releases => Asset Releases => Topic started by: Axem on September 08, 2018, 08:25:28 pm
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Here's a Sathanas with moving arms, just like the FreeSpace 2 ending cutscene. You can control the arms with the trigger-subobject-animation, using the scripted type. I added a new turret, turret54, that is placed where the 4 arms will meet in the middle. The arms are also set to trigger when "turret54" fires, but the arms reset far too soon to make it look good. Maybe a kind hearted coder can make that work properly. :)
Also included are some additional things to help you recreate that subspace effect the Sath makes from the ending cutscene. There is a scripted sexp that automatically change the 4 arm turrets to a "subspace effect" beam, that fires the beams for a point right in front, and a scripted sexp that causes a subspace effect (made by mjn) to appear for a set duration. These sexps only work with the Sathanas, there are hard coded values in the script.
There's also a sample mission to see how it works. Pressing 1 will make the arms animate, pressing 2 will cause the beams to fire. I'd suggest that maybe just one or the other be used, since the beams look kinda wonky when they are up close, but maybe you don't mind it that way.
How everything is sequenced is up to you. In my tests and sample mission, a delay of about 6-7 seconds after the arms are triggered or the beam firing is triggered seems like the right time to start the real effect.
Have fun!
Here's some old videos of this in action. This was an earlier rev, but the basics are the same. The arm animation is more smoothed out better now.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=154owMgeeqgTKhwTX1dRkOgcfZ5aeSGqG
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You made my dream come true! :eek:
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That is very cool, indeed. :yes:
That's why HLP had HTTPS issues... HTTPS were subspaceweaponed.
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That is very cool, indeed. :yes:
That's why HLP had HTTPS issues... HTTPS were subspaceweaponed.
No it was overloaded with awesomeness.
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This is nice. :yes:
Praise be to Axem.
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I've re-downloaded this file 4 times, but I always got a "Error in that File" message. Opening other rars works fine for me.
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Weird, try that link now.
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Bizarre. Still doesn't work for me. The JournalSystemViewer file (and every other rar file I have) opens without problems. Anybody else having problems opening the file?
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I just made Winrar archive as a zip that time. Hopefully that'll do it then...
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Works fine for me now, thanks! :)
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It always seemed to me in the cutscene that the center of the effect was like a distorted hole in space, with rippling around its edges. Could perhaps the frame-buffer effect used on shockwaves and engines be used here to give it more of a shimmering effect?
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It always seemed to me in the cutscene that the center of the effect was like a distorted hole in space, with rippling around its edges. Could perhaps the frame-buffer effect used on shockwaves and engines be used here to give it more of a shimmering effect?
As shockwaves, maybe - they could be overlapping and/or slowly moving. Thrusters - depends on the arrangement, and you probably would need to have another ship (of course you can add them to the Sath too and disable them). But I generally dislike framebuffer shockwaves, they look aweful IMO, and there's no way to add something like that to a single effect. It'd be cool to have some table/script to have something like pre-defined special effects, but it's rather dreaming.
Took a look at the files. Awesome job! :) Just my usual complains now... ;)
-The "replace-turrets-and-fire-in-the-middle" only seems to work on the fire-beam part, if I remove the pre-replaced turret loadouts from the mission it is firing BFReds again.
-The new "arms" subsystems need some flags, they're targetable and can be blown up (not entirely unrealistic, but still).
-The bounding box of the Sath need to be fixed, the arms aren't included. It's an issue that already comes from the MVPs.
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Well, this Sath is mainly meant to be a "special effects" Sathanas, not a replacement for the Sathanas in a typical combat role.
I don't quite understand what your first point is. The "lua-sath-subspace-beams" sexp just changes and fires some beams at a special point, nothing else. If you're editing something, then that's on you. :p
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Heh, I was just so hyped about this that I simply didn't wanted to think about the normal Sathanas ever again. :p
What I said about lua-sath-subspace-beams is that the OP implies that it also replaces the BFRed automatically, what it doesn't.
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Awesome!
Now we can have Special Ops missions out by the Capella Star and have proper effects. (mission: enter subspace generated by Sath?)
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Awesome!
Now we can have Special Ops missions out by the Capella Star and have proper effects. (mission: enter subspace generated by Sath?)
I think there's already such a mission, made by Sesq'; can be found in Scroll and on the SA website.
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Yup, it's called The 4th Vial.
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Oh I see the problem now... What I was checking to see if it worked, the turret was already changed to the subspace weapon in the mission file...
The turrets should be switching, but they're not. I'll look into that tomorrow and hopefully have a fix.
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I'm working on an animated version of the subspace effect. But I'm also working on the cutscenes, the HD interface, and BtA2... ETA is Soon.
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Do you mean an animated version of the effect included here or a subspace that could be used as beamglow? I'm asking because there's already an animated one in the new INF release.
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@Axem (or anybody else): Do you plan to develop this thing further? I've got a near-perfect version now, all I need would be a way (may I say script?) to make the the power down-power up effect work (currently only turning the glowmaps on/off works).
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I've got an idea to make that work. :)
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Needs lighting running down the arms during warm up.
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Needs lighting running down the arms during warm up.
Yeah, but how? With glowpoints you could only cover the point at the arms but not the bow in between them. I don't see how this could be done in FSO; atleast not in a way it wouldn't be perspective locked.
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FSO has the ability to create sparks on damaged ships. Is that functionality accessible via scripting?
I know the fireball system can be scripted; I used that to place the hull breach flames in Deneb III.
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Damage lightning can be influenced via tables IIRC, but I've never tried it. Unless you depart slightly from the original cutscene (like constant damage lighting in combination with glowpoints) I don't see how it could be done.
As for the different times for closing and opening the arms, I think the easiest way would be to add invisible box subsystems as proxy in case no coder can be found.
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Ship electrical arcs are rendered in model_render_add_lightning. It looks like this is called each frame. Electrical arcs are normally generated when the ship is damaged, but it looks like it would be possible to jump over that and just add arcs to be rendered separately.
It would be necessary for someone to create a scripting API that could add arbitrary arcs to be rendered using world coordinates. Then someone could write a scripting function to calculate points along the arms and generate arcs between those points.
I've pinged m!m on Discord.
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Release — Loving Axem Modders
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Ship electrical arcs are rendered in model_render_add_lightning. It looks like this is called each frame. Electrical arcs are normally generated when the ship is damaged, but it looks like it would be possible to jump over that and just add arcs to be rendered separately.
It would be necessary for someone to create a scripting API that could add arbitrary arcs to be rendered using world coordinates. Then someone could write a scripting function to calculate points along the arms and generate arcs between those points.
I've pinged m!m on Discord.
It should be relatively easy to do this since the Arc rendering system is already pretty straight forward.
You'll need to add a central arc manager which keeps a list of the "persistent" arcs since the existing arcs are only generated for a short time on the hull of a ship. A Lua script could then add arcs to that system with a simple function call. You'll probably also want some kind of handle to a single arc to be returned so that a Lua script could update the position of that arc.
In obj_render_queue_all the arc manager could be called with the model_draw_list instance which could then add all the active persistent arcs to the draw list. That should be all that is required for this.
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Geeetttiiiing there.
Just can't loop animated particles. :(
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Just can't loop animated particles. :(
Yeah I had that problem too, so I switched to the beam version of Scroll, which has some advantages and some deficits compared to the scripted version (which is actually particular user-unfriendly if you have no clue about scripting like me).
So here are my results so far. I made 2 versions of the effect - a normal one for the Saths that depart, and a failed one for those who used their subspace weapon longer for some reason and fell/stayed behind. I also added some high-powered glow maps. I'm still working on the subspace beams as I'm not happy with their look yet, but I managed to change their warmup time in a way that they are not that much overlapping anymore, and the range is now matching the "ring" of the subspace rift.
[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]