Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Lynx on December 02, 2004, 10:59:02 am
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Would it be possible to make the engine choose randomly from different shockwave animations? I like planar (2d) shockwaves, but with the engine only displaying one animation, thus the shcokwaves are all at the same viewing angle. With more shockwave files it would add more to the variety and would feel simply better it f you wouldn't see the smae all the time(especially with explosions with multiple shockwaves)
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or better yet, having a shockwaves table, much like the sounds table, with the ability to set more then one shockwave in one slot for a random effect.
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As much as I hate to say it, if your shockwave is viewing-angle dependent it's less real. The "praxis" wave that has become so popular in Sci-fi (the planar shockwave popularized by Star Trek but recently added to Star Wars in most of the big explosions, etc) is inherently unrealistic, while the round blob native to FS is pretty consistant with what an expanding wave in a medium should be visualized. Still not realistic in space, but hey. Having a shockwave table would be nice though, if only so that shockwaves could have different colors or densities.
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Realistic? You're talking about Freespace here.
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So what? A long time ago I ported a Spherical explosion (meaning it looked like a 3d bubble, not just a ring) and by itself it was good. BUT the colors were all wrong. Maybe someone should take a look at it again (though I don't have that ani. anymore I do have the original bmp and pcx files it came from) They alternated and it was a pain to comvert them all to 8bit pcx's but one day I figured I'd come back to it when I learned more and figure out how to make it work.
If it does work somehow, then maybe later table chagnes could let you choose blue for terran engnes, gren for Vasudan and Red for Shivans. Explosions represented by the racial power sources, or custom ones.
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Perhaps "realistic" should be replaced with "consistant" then. Since shockwaves are accompanied by damage/disruption to ships in their radius, they should be treated as spherical rather than planar within the context of freespace. Of course, the effect and the graphic are already pretty disjoined, but making the shockwave non-round makes that worse.
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id like more control over 3d waves, what percentage of their original size they grow, and how fast they grow for starters. also it would be nice if their angle would be more randomized. also if you add glowpoints to a shockwave model, would they grow with the wave?
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woukld be nice to have somthing like
+shockalign
where you could chose to have the shockwave aligned to the players view, randomly, along the axis of whatever created it, or to the normal of the surface it hit.
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that would be nice too
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I want a balance between the two -- 2D planar shockwave AS NORMAL, overlayed over a 3D spherical bubble one. Both expanding at the exact same speed (SCP support for synch frames of 2D animation with 3D?), or different speeds if we so desire.
THAT would be the best compromise between the two, IMHO. Just combine the best of both! If it aint possible...well, SCPers you know what to do...add support ^_^
heck itd be great if we could even have the ability to make shockwaves with not only a spherical 3D one, but also the traditional circle shockwave in 2D *AND* a 2D planar one all in the same explosion ^_^ Maximum customizability would rule...
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waht the explosions REALLY need in FS2 is light beams.
if you dont know what im talking about, think O-R-B (a semi-recent RTS space game). when a ship blows up, a bunch of these long shafts of light shoot out some distance, and theyre bright blue-white. its really cool. they look like just total energy is consuming the ship...
we COULD just put them in the shockwave, but adding a seperate one would be cooler.
BTW, if we do anything, i think there should be support for multiple animations at the same time. :) so, you could have the shockwave, 'smoke' or something, and the 'light shafts'. that would be cool. :D
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Originally posted by Gregster2k
I want a balance between the two -- 2D planar shockwave AS NORMAL, overlayed over a 3D spherical bubble one. Both expanding at the exact same speed (SCP support for synch frames of 2D animation with 3D?), or different speeds if we so desire.
THAT would be the best compromise between the two, IMHO. Just combine the best of both! If it aint possible...well, SCPers you know what to do...add support ^_^
heck itd be great if we could even have the ability to make shockwaves with not only a spherical 3D one, but also the traditional circle shockwave in 2D *AND* a 2D planar one all in the same explosion ^_^ Maximum customizability would rule...
3D Explosion models are already implemented.
So all of your requests are possible to mod.
To make a 2D explosion simply make a disc model that way it can be rendered at different planes.
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hey, how do you do 3D explosions? thats awesome///
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Yeah I can at least try to work on this. It's freaking impossible.
Well, I canthink up a few ways, but don't expect them to look better than the 2d shockwaves.
They could perform better if I use tile maps. But a tileable shockwave part.... Looks like some hard work.