[Starman01]

Hello,

I'm looking for a special effect. Anyone familiar with playing WingCommander 1-4 and also Starlancer might remember that pretty white flash when a capitalship explodes. I would really like to have that feature too.

There is something in the original code from  , but it's not working properly (to slow, and not bright enough). Goober mentioned, that there might be a similar effect already in the MediaVP's

Can anyone confirm that, or point me towards the proper files for that ?

Thanks

Starman

[Prophet]

That flash... Yes, well. It's a cool effect. But now that you made me think about it. What the hell is it supposed to be? I found it annoying in Starlancer because it didn't fit in the way the ships were pwned. In FS it wouldn't be so bad because all ships are vaporized. But do we really need it when we have shockwaves? Would it fit together with them?

[Pnakotus]

It'd be neat if it was synchronised with the breakup of the ship.  So a capship would be a 0 health wracked with explosions, then *flash* it breaks up and the shockwaves blast outward.  It'd let you tell if the ship popped when you're flying directly away from it after a torpedo run, seeing the glare off everything else ingame.

PS it'd be nice if the debris-bit had their course changed by the shockwave, so you don't get as many clumps o' wreckage or bits breaking off the front then travelling backwards through the other debris and the explosion.

[Starman01]

That flash should appear in the moment the ship brakes apart the first time, and the flash will be just like by a realistic nuclear explosion
the moment the nuclear stuff reacts. Everything after that is just the result of this explosion.

I always liked that flash, it makes the explosion even more powerful (of course only if it is times correctly).

[Taristin]

Perhaps make the flash eminate from the engine or engineering subsystems, then? >..>

[Starman01]

I doubt that will be possible. The current code brings it at the "brake apart" time. Most probably that wouldn't be possible to be bound to the engine-subsystem, also this is mostly destroyed last, so it wouldn't fit there

[Flipside]

Could you do a sort of cheat and just crank ambient light up to max for a quarter of a second when a capship explodes or the like?

[Starman01]

Hm, interesting idea. But this will most likely need a lot of a hack. Question : Is it possible to

a) change ambient level over sexp while playing?
b) select the change time in milliseconds ?
c) change it to such a high level that the player will be blended
d) time it to the same moment the capships brakes up (I suppose that's the moment "is destroyed delay" catching, right ?)

(Sounds much to complicated for my taste ). I suppose there is nothing in the current media VP (according to my original question). Most probably we will have to wait until someone will improve the existing code

[Flipside]

Yeah, thinking about it, it would probably have to be hard-coded anyway, because of item d, I think even if you tried Sexp's you'd have a really hard job tweaking it to be at precisely the same instant as break-up

[neoterran]

maybe this can be done via a shader program when the shader support hits CVS....

[S-99]

As long as you don't have the low end shockwaves, medium version on up has a great flare up affect.

[Darius]

I had quite a nice effect using Fade out sexp's that triggered when an object exploded. I found it was only really good for cutscenes, since it wouldn't make sense for a flash while you're looking away from the explosion.

And nowadays I can't seem to get it working anymore, even within the same build.