[Nemesis6]

I can only imagine how many times this has been brought up in the past, but I figured for the sake of debate, I'd bring it up again.

It would be awesome if there was a way to simulate dead humans in space after capital ship explosions. I was thinking, instead of doing it in 3D with actual models and such, how about a sprite-based solution? Have a big sprite like those in the nebulae missions, consisting of a mixture of debris and human bodies, and only make it visible once you get close to it to avoid the obvious issues like shimmering and other general weirdness?

[Rodo]

Depends on how that would look.... I'm guessing baaaaaad right now.

[Galemp]

Glowpoints in open space on the debris mesh with a corpse texture.

[General Battuta]

The BP2 Kentauroi has a pilot model in the debris. Unfortunately, it is handled like any other debris object by both the engine and the flaming debris script, meaning that when a Kent gets shot down a flaming pilot hurtles free of the debris and then explodes.

For this reason planned corpse bundles were cut from larger ship debris.

[Herra Tohtori]

The BP2 Kentauroi has a pilot model in the debris. Unfortunately, it is handled like any other debris object by both the engine and the flaming debris script, meaning that when a Kent gets shot down a flaming pilot hurtles free of the debris and then explodes.

For this reason planned corpse bundles were cut from larger ship debris.

The mental image makes me giggle every time someone mentions it.

Does this make me a bad person

[Rodo]

LOL, pilot with flames coming out of the arse.

[Angelus]

you could have something that resembles a human body. Doesn't have to be high poly-ish( me thinks ~400tris would suffice), as i doubt that a body that was near a explosion, exposed to decompression, shrapnel, beams,... would be immediately recognizeable as such.

[General Battuta]

you could have something that resembles a human body. Doesn't have to be high poly-ish( me thinks ~400tris would suffice), as i doubt that a body that was near a explosion, exposed to decompression, shrapnel, beams,... would be immediately recognizeable as such.

But it would still trail fire and then explode.

[Angelus]

if we only had the ability to specify which debris blows up and which not...

[Dragon]

In fact, bodies in capship explosions wouldn't be realistic, because any organic tissue would be instantly vaporized in the explosion.

[Thaeris]

Not sure about that entirely, Dragon.

Quanto, Andrew, and myself have talked about doing this for a while. And indeed, our proposed solution was to be sprites. The thing is that we'd want bodies to float around only when specific sections of a ship were destroyed, such as the bridge or an environment dome, etc. Having some sort of motion debris field (which are sprites, of course) expand and move in the same forward velocity of the ship would be ideal, really.

[Dragon]

That would work, but the "main" explosion seems to be warm enough to incerinate anybeody caught into it (even shielded fighters take damage from explosions, what chance a human has?).

[Thaeris]

Keep in mind that heat can be interpreted as the amount of energy posessed by a given quantity of matter. When you are within a vacuum, there is little to no matter to directly transfer heat, though you can also radiate heat (thus why hiding a ship from IR is a bit silly in concept). I think that due to internal explosions, however, it would be good to have the option of creating a body/debris field specific to when a subsystem is destroyed, etc. In other words, this might be a good application of a SEXP-applied event rather than a default condition that always happens when a ship blows up.

[Dragon]

You could set bodies up as subsystem debris, which shouldn't be affected by the script (unless they are, I don't know).
It could represent crew sucked out of hull breaches, where the explosion isn't big enough to fry them.
I don't know if subsystem debris are created upon miain explosion, but they may be, further complicating things.

[Nighteyes]

I don't know if everyone here saw this, but I requested a script exactly for that...
using this script you can have sprite and mesh debris, if you want 2D debris you can use a model with a glow point and a debris texture on it, or just have 3D objects as debris, or even combine the 2 methods.

this way the burning debris script will not activate and you can have LOADS of dead floating bodies, and loads of smaller metal chunks, so you can fly through it and have a "rain" effect of metal hitting the cockpit

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72738.0

[Thaeris]

May we abduct you for our purposes, Nighteyes?

 

[NGTM-1R]

Keep in mind that pilots are also really tiny. Early versions of ST:R had the invisible flying Shivans which attack you actually be visible, but you never saw them them anyways because your fighter and the things you engage are house-sized at minimum.

[Rodo]

I would be happier if you instead make it possible to leave a cloud of dust and tiny debris there where any ship explodes, not too big... just enough to remember there was something there and maybe make your fighter shake like hell (probably something like going right behind an engine exhaust) when passing through.