[.::Tin Can::.]

I think and upgraded anti-fighter beam weapon with *****en visuals would really make my day, and I would be more then willing to fly into a group of beam cannons. But how can you upgrade a beam, which is just a straight line with a blue effect? I find it kind of difficult. But its obvious Volition wanted to play HEAVILY on the Beam CANNON effects, because those dont really need to be upgraded, except that we need to make them non-2D. Are they 2D? Because, I could never tell if they were 3D...

[Bobboau]

there 2.5D,
I have very very old code that allows beam textures to be tiled and also to move along the beam, it takes quite a bit of tweakage, but you can get very high resolution beam textures, rather than that liniar blur.

[Lightspeed]

making everything 3D is just the wrong thing to do, when will people understand that?

There's tons of stuff that looks far better in 2D, drains much less performance and has lots more detail. Oh, and it's easier to be made

@Bob: I'll have a look at beams once I've done the primaries - time is limited at the moment though.

[ChronoReverse]

When you're done with all these new effects Lightspeed, we really need to make a new VP called LightspeedFX.vp

[Unknown Target]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.
Are they 2D? Because, I could never tell if they were 3D...

So if they LOOK like 3D, but are really 2D, why would they NEED to be 3D?

[ChronoReverse]

So that people can claim "Hey look!  We have 3D beams"

Seriously though, before anyone even starts to say we need 3D beams, they should play around with Bobboau's tiling code first.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Sure. But we can have 3D beams, not only for it to look better, but so that when it impacts an enemy ship it doesnt look like its getting its ass beat by a LINE!!!!

[Solatar]

It'll look much better to have it beaten by a stick that looks different from a 2d beam only because it is lo-poly, mediocre textures, and it doesn't blend in with the background.

That's much better...

[.::Tin Can::.]

Which means...

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.
Sure. But we can have 3D beams, not only for it to look better, but so that when it impacts an enemy ship it doesnt look like its getting its ass beat by a LINE!!!!

you know that 3Dbeams a) look lots worse and b) have the same hit?

[Taristin]

I think he likes to argue... He keeps taking sides everyone's decided against already...

3d beams are too much of a performance drain. They're ugly. You can do wonders with the standard beams. And if Bob had a way to animate them implemented, they'd be even nicer.

[Solatar]

Why do we need 3d beams? What great improvements will this give us?

[Taristin]

LOWER FrAMERATES!!!11!1!oneoneone

[ChronoReverse]

*playing devil's advocate*

Hmm, can the current beams be made to hit a cylinder of 500 metres in radius?  If not, then there _is_ one thing a 3D beam can conceivably do that a 2D one can't.

[Bobboau]

uh, yeah, they can...

the drain from 3d beams would be neglegable, but it would be pointless and look not as good

[ChronoReverse]

In that case, there really isn't any reason for a 3D beam XD

[.::Tin Can::.]

*sigh* Fine then, I'm a jackass

Anyway, can we come up with an idea so that when a ship gets hit the impact looks like a circle, instead of a line? Thanks.

[Grug]

lol

ok how about multi layered beams? ie a few beams so when it hits there is a gradual degredation...
either that or a type of fog around point of impact?

hmm...

-Grug

[Bobboau]

there is a method for makeing sure it doesn't look like it's getting hit by a line, an impact explosion, big enough to engulf the end of the beam

[Lightspeed]

That, and some other impressive stuff you will see when I work on beams

If I only had more time. I've already tested a few cool things with beams