[J.P.]

Can I make an eff for something that's not supposed to animated? Like the thruster textures?

-J.P.

[taylor]

Why would you want to?

An EFF is considered an animation so it will be used like one and the game doesn't (currently) know the difference.  There is a plan (sort of) to eventually allow an EFF to be a non-animated effect, where you basically specify a set of textures that would be blended together to make a single, static, effect.  That's more for Bobboau's material system's use though and the code changes to allow that probably won't happen until the material system in ready.  But even then an EFF would still be considered a single effect, just like an animation is a single effect.

[Turambar]

so if someone were to make a thruster plume that was animated, and incorporated multiple frames, would an animation be displayed, or would it only use one frame.

[WMCoolmon]

If you mean 'thruster' as in maneuvering thruster, animation support is in, so it should play the animation out.

Generally, though, I think that the code will just ignore the EFF and act as if it doesn't exist if support isn't in.

[taylor]

The code has to be there to make it load and work as an animation.  If it's not set to load an animation then it can't use an EFF anyway.  The primary thruster is the only one that is actually animated.  All of the glows (primary, secondary, teriary) are static so an EFF won't be used there.

[Turambar]

allrighty, thanks taylor

of course the option to make those animated could result in some pretty big visual improvements, but i won't beg or anything

[Turambar]

also:  TEACH ME HOW TO USE RENDER TO TEXTURE STUFF PLZ  it'll be super helpful and i need to get it implemented in viper cockpits sooner than later (sorry for caps, its not shouting, think of it more like me waving my hands around)

[J.P.]

Well darn, I made an animation and now I can't use it.

Here's one of the animations I was going to put in: http://www.filelodge.com/files/room19/512545/TerranThruster.mov

Will you guys ever implement particles for the engines instead of three textures?

There is a plan (sort of) to eventually allow an EFF to be a non-animated effect, where you basically specify a set of textures that would be blended together to make a single, static, effect.

I like that idea. I was thinking one day on how I could do the subspace corridor, doing something like that.

-J.P.



-J.P.

[taylor]

Will you guys ever implement particles for the engines instead of three textures?

Depends on what Bob's material system actually does.  I don't think that anyone is really going to work towards this until he gets that code in and we figure out if it can be done better through the material system or not.  It would be crazy to come up with something functional now only to have it be made obsolete soon.

[J.P.]

Well, since I couldn't do the engine I thought I'd go ahead and do the explosions. I got it one of them done, but for some reason there's an error.

Error: Could not load exp04 anim file

File:C:\temp\fs2_open_3_6_9.rc3\code\Fireball\FireBalls.cpp
Line: 693
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    fs2_open_r.exe 004593aa()
    fs2_open_r.exe 00401bba()
    fs2_open_r.exe 0040222b()
    fs2_open_r.exe 00408c62()
    fs2_open_r.exe 004fea86()
    fs2_open_r.exe 00407be5()
    fs2_open_r.exe 004fed79()
    fs2_open_r.exe 0040a385()
    fs2_open_r.exe 0040a4c0()
    fs2_open_r.exe 0070d0d9()
    kernel32.dll 7c816d4f()
------------------------------------------------------------------


I would appreciate some help on this.

Here's the explosion I semi-made btw.

http://www.filelodge.com/files/room19/512545/exp04.avi

I got it off some site called fotosearch. It had a watermark, but I got rid of it. I added a glow, made it more red and fiery looking, etc.

I would really like to get this in game.

-J.P.

[StratComm]

In response to the original question, there's exactly one reason to use .eff for a static texture: to override an ani map with a static one.  Otherwise, it would do absolutely nothing.

[taylor]

I would appreciate some help on this.

Is it an ANI or EFF?  Can you post it so that I can take a look?  It's a bit hard to tell why it won't load otherwise, since there are quite a few possibilities for it it not loading.

[J.P.]

It's an .EFF

Here's the text in the file:

$Type: JPG
$Frames: 105
$FPS: 24

And the files are in JPG format.

-J.P.