[Nuke]

everyone should know this cause i say it , but quake 2 gets brownie points for the best railgun effect, and thats the one i attempted to emulate. unreal2 also gets brownie points for a cool rail effect (though the weapon was mysteriously called a laser).

everyone should know that the first railgun that had a spiral trail was the one from eraser, and thats the gun that all fps games copied, even though a railgun is a huge weapon. its evvect seemed to have a distortion to it, i could add such a distortion so the trail doesnt look perfect every time. of course the extra vector multiply is another slowdown.

im not sure if its caused by the xform math or the particle renderer or the fact that im doing this from script. im thinking about making the effect in c for speed. id possibly add a type field to the existing pspew and a few extra vars (some of the existing ones i can use).  the parameters for the effect is as follows:

-particle_life
 same as +Life: pspew parameter

-particle_size
 same as +Radius: pspew parameter

-deg_per_particle
think of this as the density of the effect, essentially the number of degrees between particles. i think i used 8, which is 45 particles per rotation. i could probably use "+Count:" instead to represent the total number of particles per rotation. 360 / +Count: (or rather 2pi / +Count: since the formula requires radians and not degrees).

-rot_per_sec
how many spins of the effect per second. i could probibly use +Time: for thisas time per rotation

-z_vel_factor
same as +Vel: pspew parameter

-r_vel_factor
the radial velocity of the particle. all particles start in a row behind the shell, so this is their velocity perpendicular to the weapon's z axis. make it higher to get a trail that disperses outward faster. could possible use the +Scale: parameter for this (pretty much means the same thing, just the effect is helical instead of random).

if you tweak those parameters in the script, you could get a wide range of effects (even the smooth unreal 2 style trail).

so breaking it down all i would only need to add to to the existing pspew parameters is a type field. it would default as the normal effect, or helical if that type is specified (and possibly other spew types could be defined as well, like a ringed trail). it shouldn't break anything, but i dont think it would be possible to mix effects. i may also add a +distortion: parameter to get the eraser style railgun effect. another param i wish it would have is something like +fade time:, which would allow particles to fade out once their life is up.

[blowfish]

I'd be happy getting my hands on those Valhalla class cruisers....mmmm

1) They are corvettes

2) They are in nukemod

[Nuke]

yea but the old version they still shoot nukes, i didnt think that apropriate so i decided to use railguns instead.

[Akalabeth Angel]

     Isn't the point of Eraser that the swirl effect is the atmosphere reacting to the movement of the round? And in space . . . well.

     Not that I don't mind your effect, it looks pretty damn cool. And your backgrounds look gorgeous, not sure if you made those or someone else.

[Nuke]

heres where i point at the engines physics

[Titan]

i honestly don't quite understand the valhalla's and the Ragnarok's design.  It's... (no offense) WIERD.

[Nuke]

ITS AWESOME MAN!

[blowfish]

[Jake2447]

ITS AWESOME MAN!

i like them
they look expensive and badass

[Raptor]

So... any chance of this stuff being released?

I looked for a Nukemod release, but the only thing I found was back from 06, and the file was not there...

[Nuke]

the 06 version has all the ships shown, and the railgun script was made available on the scripting board. the only thing which wasnt available was the railgun weapon itself, which is still a wip. i need to make new graphics for the trail core and glow effects for the shot. i just used effects from other weapons and used a modified maxim gun (with more damage and a slower fire rate). also i was working on a c implementation of the effect but i never got around to finishing it.

[terran_emperor]

Rail guns are ballistic weapons and thus require ammo...Thus there should be a limit on it, like there was on one version of the Maxim

[Nuke]

the fighter version yea, the capships really dont need limits since its a pretty big ship and railgun projectiles need not be relatively large to do of damage. so id rather that weapon just fire without any limits, then if a mission calls for a ship to run out of ammo it can be fredded by locking the turrets.

the player's railgun is not really a railgun, it just uses the same quake 2 style helical effect (and i didnt want to change the 4 or so files neccisary to add a new weapon, so i just applied the effect to the hypacs). the player will get a railgun which falls under the hybrid weapon category, requiring both energy and ammo. the video was just a demo, don't think that i haven't thought this stuff months in advance