[Backslash]

Remember the 'popcorn' explosion particle debris discussion?  Well I succeeded 



Here's a test build for those who wanted to try this 
http://www.qeyleb.net/files/fs2_open_r.exe
This is just a proof of concept, I likely overdid it so it still needs some tweaking.  But it's quite enjoyable.  The popcorn hangs around for a while, much like the regular debris does already.  You can really tell something big died, even if you happened to be looking the other way during the explosion.

Question to the devs:  What does the "Particles" slider in the Graphics options (in the game itself) do now?

[neoterran]

LOL ! That looks insane !!! 

Well i'm a glutton for punishment, i'll try it out 

*edit* I really like it! It certainly gives the impression that something huge blew up,  that there was more "substance" to the very large ships.

I don't think you overdid the amount of particles at all.

The only thing i can suggest improving is the way the particles animate out. It looks too forced with their "chop-chop-chop" slow fade animation.
Try to somehow make this quicker or smoother or more random, if's it's possible. But I do like how long they hang around that's cool because it's nice to fly through hot flaming popcorn debris, just not so nice to see the unnatural looking animation. But, hey, i guess beggars cant be choosers 

And another thing, this is a neat effect, its too bad we have to run a special (non-optimized ?) build to get it. Maybe as another launch option ?

[Backslash]

Thanks for the comments.   What do you think about fighter explosions?  Do they have enough?

Agreed about the animation problem.  It's a side-effect of using the improved ParticleSmoke02 animation; I suspect the old one (or a new one designed to be more gradual) would look better since it just fades out instead of change shape.

Good idea, a launch option, I'll see if I can figure that out.  I hope to ask the devs about this, maybe even help make an 'effects table' someday.  I made some changes in the section noted in this Debris Particle Effect post.  I did have to tweak a few other very small things, but only in two files... code available on request.  (And I'm not an ubercoder... this was pretty easy)

I also increased the max number of particles, but I think that should be changed anyway.  So I'm curious what the "Particles" slider does (if anything)... perhaps it could be used to adjust this maximum.

[neoterran]

I think the fighter effects look good the way they are, which is minimal, but that's good, we don't want a bunch of effects on the fighter explosions (actually, they already look crazy with the orange shockwave on my install)

I am a huge fan of your popcorn explosions tho, they look better in game than they do in the screenshot, I hope others feel the same way and we can find a way for this effect to get in the "canon" SCP.

[WMCoolmon]

Something in ships.tbl would prolly be the most satisfactory for all mods.

[neoterran]

A problem with this build is that it stopes the voice playback (microsoft sam  ) from working.

[Starman01]

Yay, this was what I'm waiting for since the freespace demo I think that popcorn really gives the imagination of small burning debris and makes the explosion of capships taking longer (But like you said, certainly not useable in that amount )

But is a codechange necessary for that ? After putting "particle_smoke.ani" back in my effects folder, I already have the popcorn back. Only not in the amount I want and they vanish a little to fast, but maybe that's a matter of the ani-file.

[Backslash]

Yeah, the code change only affects the length of time that the popcorn stays visible.  Apparently it already auto-compensates for the length of the ani file (ignoring the fps), so changing the length of the ani doesn't help.  I in fact did not change the amount of popcorn, it naturally makes that much (but in regular FS2, it lasts less than a second).

A problem with this build is that it stopes the voice playback (microsoft sam  ) from working.

Yeah I couldn't get that to compile right.  Sorry.  I'll keep banging on it 

Something in ships.tbl would prolly be the most satisfactory for all mods.

Probably, but considering the code I'm changing is not ship-specific, that would be a whole lot of code changes unless I'm missing something. 

I did get a command-line option to work.  I've updated the linked file.  -popcorn 6 is the default amount, and pretty close to the original.   try -popcorn 12 for a good amount.  The demo was using the equilavent of -popcorn 50 !  (The number is roughly seconds, but gets multiplied by a certain amount relative to the size of the ship.)

I'll post a summary of the code I changed in a bit.