[qazwsx]

I'm just wondering what happened to the decals, why were they removed?

[Galemp]

They were found to cause too many bugs and glitches, and so have been deactivated for stability's sake.

[haloboy100]

Any chance they will ever return at all? Or maybe just be included as a beta feature?

[blowfish]

Any chance they will ever return at all? Or maybe just be included as a beta feature?

There is a flag to enable them currently ( "-decals", its a custom flag, use at you own risk), and they are intended to come back in 3.7.

[Goober5000]

That flag does nothing but display a message box saying that the feature no longer exists.  Decals have been completely removed from the code, for the very reasons mentioned by Galemp.

Just like the stencil shadow feature, the only way for decals to return to FSO is if someone were to code a new implementation from scratch.  And right now there are too many things that need fixing in the codebase to justify spending effort on that.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

[n00b]What exactly are decals?[/n00b]

[nubbles526]

[n00b]What exactly are decals?[/n00b]

Like damage, you know. For example, if your fighter crashed into a cruiser, it would have a dent (supposidly). And the usage of -decal was to add that graphic.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Blowing the arms off a Sathanas...

* FSF dreams away

Yes, sounds pretty much 3.7, just like the shadows...
Will it ever be released?

[Snail]

Decals aren't geomodding, decals were textures applied over the ship's main texture when you shot them with lasers or missiles. Like  the ricochets in the walls in FPS games.

[ShadowGorrath]

Does anyone have a screenie of them?

[nubbles526]

Does anyone have a screenie of them?

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,23754.20.html

[Turambar]

decals in conjunction with normal maps could look nice.

also, stencil shadows with the normal maps.  Then this game would be almost modern.

[colecampbell666]

What is the status of Geomod?

[Goober5000]

It'll be released before Q1 2009.

[colecampbell666]

Dekker let it slip that he was beta testing it a while ago, so I assume soon. And I notice that you've stopped using DNF as a meaning for "Never".

[pecenipicek]

...Just like the stencil shadow feature,..

as in... generally sort of like doom 3 shadows?

when did that even get tried?

[karajorma]

Dekker let it slip that he was beta testing it a while ago, so I assume soon.

Damn you and your use of logic! The coders are obviously powerless to keep it a secret in the face of that!