[Retsof]

First, would it be possible to make a beam into a "cone" that does less damage the farther out it is?  I magine a capship "defocusing" its beam cannon and lobbing a wall of energy at those pesky bombers.
Second is purely graphical.  Would it be possible to make a model for beams so they are actually cylinders instead of flat surfaces, and would it look good?

[Flaming_Sword]

The damage part is possible (implemented in my mod). I'm not sure that the cone is possible, but I've been able to increase the transparency at the end, so a target at long range takes less damage, and they get hit with a beam that looks mostly transparent at the point of impact.

I'm guessing having cylinder models for beams would be a PITA to implement, so probably not.

[haloboy100]

the beams always looked 3D to me anyway. Except for when I get nicked in the face with an AAA cannon.

[Getter Robo G]

Um if you copy the particle effect rigns and extend them they become cylinders, so I would say 99% certainty it is possible to made a beam version of that (it's just a graphic and doesn't affect gameplay).

[Droid803]

Worse comes to worse, you do it SSL style.

[Snail]

Worse comes to worse, you do it SSL style.

Uhh, that's not 3d either.

[Getter Robo G]

That's the effect I was thiking of, alter that and then make it for cap ships...



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[Snail]

Uhh, particle spews aren't 3d either, they're just textures.

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, you can make the beam a triangle in the texture and use it once per beam, but the problem is that when the beam doesn't hit the target, the cone will stretch to the beam's whole length, and it might look stupid when it switches the "focusing distance", especially in case of slash beams.

I would rather see a beam effect that widens and starts to dissipates as distance increases... Would make more sense to me.

[Wanderer]

HT.. That depends of the chosen rendering method

[Herra Tohtori]

Yeah, there's two types of tiling - one to set a static number of tiles per the length of the beam, in which case you could use one, and the other uses static length per tile, which is obviously the better solution for beams that are supposed to have some detail in them to avoid stretchign and compressing of the texture length-wise...

Never tried what the game uses if $Tiling factor is not specified, does it just use the texture per beam once (no tiling)?

[Wanderer]

One texture 'tiled' over the whole length of the beam