[Black Wolf]

When a ship dies, the glowmaps remain active on the debris. Could someone tweak them a little so that they go off automatically? Make it look like the ship has gone and died as opposed to just broken up into little pieces

I think this would be easy, but if not, it can be worked around with the glowmap off sexp - that's just tedious, and would become the new Beam Free All after awhile.

[Flaser]

I think that one should come with a glowmap-flicker.
It would be nice for the already proposed derelict ships.
...or ships in big trouble.
It could even be a new effect - each time a huge bomb hits a ships it lights would flicker 'cause the EMP interference.
Ship-derelict -no explosion when it dies, it just floats there- sexp was already asked for.

[KARMA]

randomly flashing glowmaps!;7
btw.... just use different textures on debris....or no?

[mikhael]

Originally posted by KARMA
randomly flashing glowmaps!;7
btw.... just use different textures on debris....or no?

Probably the best course of action. Randomly flickering glowmaps might look good too, but removing the glowmap on the debris all together is definately easier.

[LtNarol]

Im in favor of keeping glow maps for debris, why you ask? Because damaged areas can benefit from a hot glowing melting metal look.  The damage maps can be modified such that lights don't glow and damaged areas do.

[Flaser]

Narol has a very good point.
How about:
ship-lights-on
ship-lights-off
sexps - you would have to make another glowmap with the lights tag on the end, so you could have a different layer with shiplights alone.
Anything else glowing could be also controlled.

This could be dumb of course, since I don't know how the glowmapping controls the multitexturing - as far as I know it's no true multitexturing - so the whole thing could run into problems.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Flaser
How about:
ship-lights-on
ship-lights-off
sexps - you would have to make another glowmap with the lights tag on the end, so you could have a different layer with shiplights alone.
Anything else glowing could be also controlled.

Already done I seem to be pointing out a few SEXP things to you today Flaser

 

From the SEXP thread
[done!] activate-glow-maps
[done!] deactivate-glow-maps
[done!] activate-glow-points
[done!] deactivate-glow-points
[done!] activate-glow-point-bank
[done!] deactivate-glow-point-bank

[Flaser]

...and I'm truly glad for you doing so, since I don't know the depth of the code the sexp have gone into.

This time however, I already knew about them.
That's why I used the term - lights.
Therefore LtNarol could have his glowing debris, and we could have seperate parts of the ships that would be switch-able.
Having a activate-glow-map-(texture name) would be better, since it would allow for individual textures to be turned on/off-

Though this could also be already implemented, - I hadn't tried them out ... - but if not I guess it would make sense.

I don't even want to think about the flame I would get if I asked for grouping those textures....

[KARMA]

i was thinking about more possibilities of randomly flashing glowmaps:
for example, in disabled or damaged ships, it could be very useful for simulating problems with the power core.
the effect could be cool also as said on debris.
could be nice (but hard to realize at a good level) for some asteroids (to simulate the magma on the surface holes)
maybe having this effect with a specific sexp could be useful sometimes

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Flaser
Having a activate-glow-map-(texture name) would be better, since it would allow for individual textures to be turned on/off

Now this idea I like I would love to see a mission where as a disabled ship gets repaired more and more of the glowmaps activate. It would look very cool.

To be honest I don't think the problem of glowmaps not turning off is as big a deal as everyone is making out. When the ship blows up individual parts of the ships would switch to emergency power anyway and that would probably last as long as the debris does anyway.

Secondly we don't really need to worry about the glow textures on new ships since the modder can simply put a copy of the original textures on the debris with a different. That way lights etc would wink out while damaged parts glow.

That means that the only problem is with ships that are already complete.

[LtNarol]

How hard would it be to flicker the glowmaps everytime you have an electricity arc?  This could prove to look quite good

[Bobboau]

I don't think it would be that hard, I did something like that for glow points already, as for the glow mapping of debris, I intenionaly did it that way to give the modeler more control, anytexture on any model any were will havea glow map loaded for it and rendered if one is found, the course of action for modders to make debris should beto use waht ever texture they want on a moddel for what eve effect, if you don't want a texture glow mapped on the debris then don't glow map it, the only place this is a problem is the origonal V models and ships that have been bult

(BTW I can't see as I'm typeing becase I am stupidly useing TV out as a primary disply so please ignor my worse than usual spelling for the next few months as I save up for a real monitor)

[Vasudan Admiral]

one problem with having copies of the textures with no glowmaps for debris is that on models with lotsa textures, you effectively double the texture count. this would make loading times lengthen also (not sure by how much, probably not a lot) and if you were using a special model with over 32 textures, you would break the current texture limit (again easily fixed with a limit bump i guess , but some of my current models take long enough to load and reload the textures in modview [gets very irritating very quickly:( ] )

and while the damage texture glowing on the debris does look good, lights that stay on right through the explosion and remain on, even visable over a huge distance as the debris drifts away don't. even accounting for backup generators etc (they couldn't produce that kind of power anyway, and if they could, why not divert it to powering any remaining turrets on that chunk? )

 to fix it would take a reconversion of all models that have their debris use textures with glowmaps. like the deimos, sathanas, colossus, ravana, etc....
yes they could be modifyed so that lights don't glow after death, but that would take a ton of work, patience and time for something that could be done easily (and if flickering is implimented, much better looking and effective) through a quick code addition
besides, couldn't it just turn off everything except the damage texture? and if the ship uses a custom damage texture, have it defined in the table with a "$textures_lit_after_death: 'lights.pcx' " line or somin?

i'd REALLY like a feature like this because it would look super cool with flickering lights as the ship blows and such, and save me from having to reconvert pretty much every ship i've made so far and importing pof data just so their debris don't look like a drifting las vegas.

[Flaser]

I guess this could make me hanged, but I can't resist to mention it (pls. make it fast:sigh: ) :

-Fading glowmaps

As long as I know glowmaps are rendered, by redrawing the glowmap textures with a certain constant brightness.
I remember that Bobbau said somewhere that he fixed that ammount.
Know if that ammount was introduced into FRED...
-Dim-glowmap-texture_name
-Brighten-glowmap-texture_name

This could be an auto effect for debris and damage on ships.
So the damage would slowly fade out, until everything is black.
This could be good, since then even in light, these parts would look black as if they were schorched by fire.

Now I have an even more hard to implement idea:
Glowmapped hit effects.
I know somekind of texture is already plastered on the warships when they're hit.
I was wondering if that texture could be diming glow mapped like that.