[Turnsky]

you know how the capships, etc in freelancer spew smoke whenever they're damaged?.. why not do something of the like for Freespace?

Just a Random thought.

[Solatar]

Excellent idea.  Fs2 spews particles, but the length they appear for and their size aren't very convincing...

[Starks]

How can there be smoke if there is no fire?

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by LLivingLarge
How can there be smoke if there is no fire?

internal deck fires.. spewing out of damaged hull plating  

[Shiva Archon]

Originally posted by LLivingLarge
How can there be smoke if there is no fire?

Who cares?  It would look awesome!

[Solatar]

ditto

[Hippo]

what about the flames that come out whenever lasers impact the hull of capships?

[Solatar]

They aren't very good looking IMO...they don't last long enough, and are too small.

[IceFire]

Agreed...we need some kind of temporary hull hit effects that last longer and in greater numbers than what we have right now.  The current hits are small and innumerous.

We should see jets of blue and orange flame shooting out of the vessels as they are hit...lasting several seconds and then dissipating.

[Turnsky]

wow.. this sure generated a lot of attention..

[Nico]

Originally posted by IceFire
Agreed...we need some kind of temporary hull hit effects that last longer and in greater numbers than what we have right now.  The current hits are small and innumerous.

We should see jets of blue and orange flame shooting out of the vessels as they are hit...lasting several seconds and then dissipating.

actually, doesn't need to be temporary:
when a ship goes below 50% HP, makes it spew 3 or 4 of those smoke trails at random places on the hull, and make it keep them till it dies. there will be no more generated fires for this ship ( disable the small, useless ones from the lasers ), so it'll be ok resource wise. they need to fade out better tho, iirc, transition is quite fast.

[Fineus]

Sounds kinda like the lightsaber glow effect in Jedi Academy - you hit someone with a saber and the cut across them glows for a while and finally cools down.

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Venom


actually, doesn't need to be temporary:
when a ship goes below 50% HP, makes it spew 3 or 4 of those smoke trails at random places on the hull, and make it keep them till it dies. there will be no more generated fires for this ship ( disable the small, useless ones from the lasers ), so it'll be ok resource wise. they need to fade out better tho, iirc, transition is quite fast.

hell, if it reaches 10% or less, make it spew a helluva lot of smoke from random spots on the ship (6-7)

[Fineus]

Also, given as we now have texture replacement, have two sets of lights textures - one on - one off. Maintain them on but swap them over from time to time as if the power on board the ship was failing.

This might also be good for when a bomb (helios / cylcops) hits anything smaller than a Jugganaut.

[Nico]

yeah, and we should have a set of damaged maps for the same case, too, when a ship drops under 50%, it switches to damaged maps. would be cool, and would let us get away with the nice, but too resource heavy impact edcals that nobody uses for that exact reason.

[Lightspeed]

probably the most complex thing to code, but we could have fires / smoke start right where you hit the ship, but proportional to damage so a laser won't start anything, but if you hit an Aeolus with a Helios, the point where the bomb hit will spew a fire and smoke
However, you'd need to have something like (Damage done by shot / Hull capacity of the ship) so if you hit a Sathanas with the same Helios it probably won't even smoke slightly

[Fineus]

I'm not so sure - I think it might. Remember that hull strength is relative to the overall size of the hull, not the armor used in making it (or else you could use the same armor on a Cain class and it'd be as tough as a Sathanas... scary!)

At least that'd my take on it... so you could indeed have a system where damage done per shot creates an effect depending on its power... light lasers do very little (perhaps smoke a little) up through heavy lasers (a bit more smoke) and missiles (impact weapon so smokes and fire). As the hull of the ship drops below say... 30%... then random fires that maintain untill the death of the ship are started (so you could effectively have a very knackered ship at the start of a mission - simulating the whole limping home thing).

[##UnknownPlayer##]

I'd like to see the 'driller' type beams on ships causing a ship to violently spew smoke and flame from where it got hit, while the 'slasher' beams to maybe just scar the hull with decals. I think that would look awesome.

[Flaser]

If the so much sought per/face or per/section damage management was finally implemented (along with a horrifically complex damage management - think of Mechwarrior Mark 12) there could be even more effects.

I also think that _agvr's damage model should be also taken into account.

[Fineus]

Out of interest - how far are we planning to take this? I mean geo-modding is widely accepted as out - but is any kind of deformable damage possible? Or shall we just settle for decals, particle fire/smoke given off and so on?