[Lightspeed]

Thread summary:

Shinemap Progress:


- GTA Charybdis
- GVA Setekh
- NTF Boadicea
- NTF Iceni
- GTSG Mjolnir
- Fighters
- Bombers
- SD Ravana
- GTD Hecate
- GVD Hatshepsut
- Shivan Comm Node
- SCv Moloch
- GTCv Deimos
- GVCv Sobek
- GVC Mentu
- GTC Aeolus
- GTFr Triton
- GVFr Bes
- GVG Anuket
- GTG Zephyrus
- SSG Rahu
- SC Rakshasa
- SJ Sathanas
- GTS Hygeia
- GVS Nephtys
- GTM Hippocrates
- GTVA Colossus
- GTT Argo
- GTI Ganymede
- new cargo containers
- GTNB Pharos
- Knossos
- SFr Dis
- SSG Belial
- Space Hunk

DONE!


New Afterburner Effects
A set of new textures for the new engine effects. Available in 8 & 32 Bit versions. Gets rid of the white flickery line and looks a lot smoother than the previous ones. Includes a special 'advanced afterburner'
Note that you can only get the 32-bit version from the media VP, since i no longer have it hosted.
It can be found here :Page 1
Get the 8-bit Effects from here

32-bit Effects
A set of all the effects converted to 32-bit for those using the most up-to-date builds. Improvements include: improved beam effects ; smooth beam glows (when they warm up to fire) ; improved version of every background nebula (which will look good even scaled very big) ; smooth laser glows ; improved missile trails ; improved full-nebula backgrounds ; improved ; smooth sun effects ; smooth sun glows ; improved engine glows (that go along pretty well with my 32-bit new thruster glow textures) ; improved warp glows
It can be found here :Page 1

Glowmaps: GTF Pegasus, animated
Animated glow maps! Cool stuff
It can be found here : Page 11
Download here

Freespace 2 Shinemaps

Download here

be sure to post on this thread

[Setekh]

Duuuude... way pretty. Which tag enables the new engine effects? I forget.

[Lightspeed]

some new textures





As you can see the main things are:

- smoother trails thanks to bigger textures (and high quality dithering)
- some minor variations in thruster effects
- removed the flickering white lines behind a trail
- smoother glow effects

It's still 8-bit textures so you can use them with any normal build featuring the new engine effects

Download the 8-bit textures here.

Taken down the 32-bit effects to free up server space, however, you can get my 32-bit thruster effects from the latest media VP

(simply unzip to data/maps/)

Any comments welcome

-edit- put in here since i need the first message hehe

[Bobboau]

by defalt it will asign all ships certan trails if it can find the textures (based on ship specise), there is a ship by ship overide avalable via table entries

and I use crappy graphics becase I'm generaly in a hurry to code and I want to encurage someone to make a decent looking graphic

[Silver_Scythe]

Did you get rid of the turning? Cause it looks kinda corny when you turn the ship and the trail doesn't bend but merely turns.

[Fineus]

Wow, I love it - particularly because it gets rid of the white line at the back. It also looks more powerful. Sweet!

[J3Vr6]

What happens when the ship is completely stopped?  Does it still have the tail of the thrust out?

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
What happens when the ship is completely stopped?  Does it still have the tail of the thrust out?

yes, because that's what the current engine effect is like. Unfortunately, new textures and glows do not affect this.

Although something really should be done about that... a ship at speed "0" just looks wrong with those long trails

[Setekh]

Congrats Lightspeed, you made the news - right at the bottom.

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/hlp/

[Lightspeed]

If you like the maps, here's something you'll like even more...

32-bit texture version!

note that these will only work with the new 32bit build with "-t32" enabled. The visual quality increase however, is pretty good

EDIT: Zip updated. Fixed a bug with them i had missed to notice before.

[Galemp]

But if they don't scale according to the ship's speed, what's the point?

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Galemp
But if they don't scale according to the ship's speed, what's the point?

they do scale accordingly. The only problem is that the range where they scale isnt big enough. When flying at "0" the trail length should be 0 too, which isnt the situation at the moment. However, the more you accelerate the bigger your thruster thingy will get.

[Flaser]

Scaling is a good issue, since for some ships, you'd rather have a big flat cone of fire, imitating the huge, but none the less no too speedy thrust reired by a destroyer.

If modelers could scale the flames to fit their own ships, they couldcreate a wide variety of engines.

To do so routines would be needed to scale the flame among all 3 axises.

[mikhael]

I'm not sure you really want pure scaling there though, at least not linear scaling.

Scale the engine trails on a logarithmic curve, if you need it mathematical. Start with a soft glow for zero throttle and ramp up to a serious trail for anything higher across  natural_log(throttle_value).

Or ignore me.

[Lightspeed]

yes, that would really 0wn.

Oh, and i would love having the effect that at "0" speed the engines are completely black (glows at 0% opacity too). Well, they ARE turned off, aren't they?

It'd look really cool to see capships power up their engines in mid-battle

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Lightspeed


Oh, and i would love having the effect that at "0" speed the engines are completely black (glows at 0% opacity too). Well, they ARE turned off, aren't they?

Not necessarily. If they were off, how long would it take to bring them back online each time they wanted to move?

I'm thinking they'd have the soft glow like Mikhael said, because they are still engaged, but not producing enough thrust to move the vessel.

[Bobboau]

the engines arn't off there just not generateing thrust, there's still reactions going on so you'll still see exaust

[Lightspeed]

yes, but i doubt it would be released to space so you can see it. Imagine it like a valve. If you want to have thrust you open the thingy, if you don't you sinply close it and the engine will still run on a standby-level, but will not have any visible exhaust glow.

[Lightspeed]

As a nice addition to my 32-bit-thruster-maps I have made 32-bit versions of (almost) every effect you will find in your effects folder. Basically i started this because the engine glows (the normal ones, not the new engine effect ones) look rather crappy resized, and, with the new effect they look totally out of place. So, while i was on it, i also improved the other effects (which took some time O.o).

-edit- original screenshots lost when server randomly deleted files





Improvements include:

• improved beam effects
• smooth beam glows (when they warm up to fire)
• improved version of every background nebula (which will look good even scaled very big)
  
• smooth laser glows
• improved missile trails (although theres hardly any difference here, except for weapons that use large trails)
• improved full-nebula backgrounds (you could clearly see some ugly 8-bit stuff through the poofs)
• improved smooth sun effects
• smooth sun glows
• improved engine glows (that go along pretty well with my 32-bit new thruster glow textures)
• improved warp glows

[/b]

Well the best thing is to try it yourself ;)

Download taken down in order to free server space.
However, you can get all my effects from the latest media VP, too.

I've put them up here already due to the interest in my new engine effects but they're not 100% tested yet. If you encounter any bugs or problems with them (which i haven't till now) feel free to post them here, and I will sort them out. Also, any comments are welcome.

I would have posted better images, but the two packs (new engine glows, and the 32 bit effects) block up 90% of my linkable webspace so if you want more screenies, theres always [printscrn] and you can post them here too :)

Also, I will need to take the files down sometime soon because I need my webspace for other things too :rolleyes:

[Goober5000]

_argv implemented an engine scaling feature, but it got wiped when we cleaned up his buggy stuff.  He could add that back in, but I haven't seen him around recently.