[Aardwolf]

Ok, so maybe you haven't noticed this, but the damage lightning is basically an opaque, untextured quad strip. This really is not acceptable considering how everything else in FSO is looking.

Suggestions: alpha/additive blended textured quad strip with a texture like the current nebula lightning texture or something similar.

[taylor]

This is already improved in the Xt code base, but those changes have yet to be merged into SVN.  The changes include a better looking and more efficient quad strip as well as support for using a texture.

[Aardwolf]

Hooray? Should I assume this won't make it into the official 3.6.10 ?

[taylor]

Technically it's a feature, and we are in a code freeze for bug fixes only, so it's up to the other devs whether it gets in or not.

[Zacam]

I'd say that while it is a feature, it is an improvement on an already introduced feature. The graphic for it (the current one) is part of the shader package, which is a VP asset for the MediaVP's, so if it can be made to come in time, that would be stupendous.

But, given that it is associated (for now at least) with the shader package, it can stay there and have an independent release after the 3.6.10's are released, so I don't see any point to holding up production in any case for it.

[taylor]

It's not associated with shaders at all really.  I just needed to distribute the arc textures for testing and it was easier to just put them in with the shaders, which also needed testing, for distribution.

The arc textures are optional either way, since just the plain arcs will look better than the old way too.  The issue is the changes to rendering that it makes use of in the OpenGL code.  Those changes haven't been committed and those are the changes which are more at issue.  So either those OpenGL changes need to be allowed to go in or the arc code needs to be changed to not require those changes and just use what is already there (which is possible, it would just need plenty of testing).

[chief1983]

If it doesn't make it into 3.6.10, hopefully we have so many bugs fixed by then that the next release won't be so far off.  However I do think we'll end up trying to limit the number of new feature commits as well, so the next code freeze doesn't take so long either.  I'd love to get 3 or 4 releases out within a year after 3.6.10.