[WMCoolmon]

My only complaint with the glows are that it's not necessary to have red on one side, and green on the other side of a ship. I can just imagine the tech comments:

"Boy, we'd love to have that Myrmidon squadron up and running to help defend against the Shivan bombers, but we're clean out of green bulbs. The last convoy carrying them got blown up in another Shivan attack. Should be in by Tuesday though."

Although I can see it being handy for certain pilots who have trouble telling left from right.

Intelligent placement seems to be the key. The ones on the Ursa look awesome, like little targeting lasers flashing on and off. But some of the others look like they're there for decoration's sake, and don't help immersiveness. Glowpoints on the Pegasus, for example, don't make much sense, even though it does sound like something Command would do.

"Alpha 1, we've sunk millions into developing this new stealth fighter. For this mission, you're going to fly deep into Shivan territory with four sets of 800-watt strobing red, green, blue, and pink lights. Your objective for this mission is to scan the Shivan fleet without being detected or seen. Dismissed."

[StratComm]

Which is precisely why the Pegasus, despite having the brightest glowmap of any Terran ship, has no glowpoints.  It's not left out accidentally.

As for the red-green blinkers, those are navigational lights.  They aren't something I'd ever want to see on a non-terran craft, but I think they add a bit of imersion since it's something that's in use on current air and sea vehicles.  I did go out of my way to avoid the christmas tree syndrome though, so I think everything but the Medusa has only one or two constant light colors.  I may go back and tweak some of them a little, but I tried to adhere to the glowmaps as closely as possible.

[quadrophoeniX]

"Alpha 1, we've sunk millions into developing this new stealth fighter. For this mission, you're going to fly deep into Shivan territory with four sets of 800-watt strobing red, green, blue, and pink lights. Your objective for this mission is to scan the Shivan fleet without being detected or seen. Dismissed."

Though I must admit that I like the glowpoints (I consider them to be immersive) they would make no sense in real  dogfights, but would for escort, flying in formation, docking or  landing and of course on installations (once those things may get implemented by you wizards) - so may be "dynamic glowpoints"? . On the other hand with long range radar a ship woud  easily be detected electronically before visually ... So unless a ship has stealth technology one would leave them on...

[karajorma]

Something appears to be wrong with the ulysses in this set. When ever I run FRED 3.6.5 debug it complains about not being able to find certain textures (namely the glowpoint ones). It doesn't complain about any other models though which is very odd.

[StratComm]

I thought I knew what it was, but that's actually not the case (it was done before I optimized the glowpoint sizes, but I went back and changed that).  Does the Arcadia still work?

EDIT: it may have something to do with the fact that the Ulysses has it's lower LOD data chunks before LOD0 inside the POF.  It's the only model that I've seen that's built like that, and since the submodel number was matched on the glowpoints in PCS, there's a decent chance that FRED is reading it abnormally and complaining.  Fred still doesn't load TGA's as far as I know, so it's balking when it can't open the TGA glows.  Does it actually stop you or just give a warning?  Because it works fine otherwise.

[karajorma]

It's only the debug version that does it (Which I've never gotten to load all the way anyway!). I only use the debug version for checking tables and while I was checking the MG tables I stumbled across this bug and thought I'd tell you.

I have two ships in the MG tables which use the Ulysses pof and I got 2 copies of each error (so 8 in all). I never got any warnings about the other models from the pack so you could be right about the cause.

[StratComm]

Try this.

Don't know if it will make any difference, but it's worth a shot.  FS2 still handles it properly, so if this works maybe FRED's model-load code really is just borked beyond reason.

[karajorma]

Nope. Still gives the error and now it also gives me this one repeatedly.

Assert: bm_bitmaps[bitmapnum].handle == handle
File: e:\languages\visual studio projects\visual c++\fs2_open\code\bmpman\bmpman.cpp
Line: 1585

I tried running using only the glowpointed one from the media VP files but FRED2_Open works fine with that one.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
My only complaint with the glows are that it's not necessary to have red on one side, and green on the other side of a ship. I can just imagine the tech comments:

"Boy, we'd love to have that Myrmidon squadron up and running to help defend against the Shivan bombers, but we're clean out of green bulbs. The last convoy carrying them got blown up in another Shivan attack. Should be in by Tuesday though."

Although I can see it being handy for certain pilots who have trouble telling left from right.

Intelligent placement seems to be the key. The ones on the Ursa look awesome, like little targeting lasers flashing on and off. But some of the others look like they're there for decoration's sake, and don't help immersiveness. Glowpoints on the Pegasus, for example, don't make much sense, even though it does sound like something Command would do.

"Alpha 1, we've sunk millions into developing this new stealth fighter. For this mission, you're going to fly deep into Shivan territory with four sets of 800-watt strobing red, green, blue, and pink lights. Your objective for this mission is to scan the Shivan fleet without being detected or seen. Dismissed."

Unless Shivans are epileptic.

Muwhaha

[StratComm]

Originally posted by karajorma
Nope. Still gives the error and now it also gives me this one repeatedly.

Assert: bm_bitmaps[bitmapnum].handle == handle
File: e:\languages\visual studio projects\visual c++\fs2_open\code\bmpman\bmpman.cpp
Line: 1585

I tried running using only the glowpointed one from the media VP files but FRED2_Open works fine with that one.

It works fine with that one because that particular one references effects for which a base pcx exists somewhere.  The simple alternative is to make a bunch of black .pcx files with the referenced names (I guess you actually could go all out and actually make the glows in PCX format too) so that the game finds something to load.  I'll look in to that tonight.

[karajorma]

Ah. If it's just that the PCX files are missing that should be okay. I wonder why it only complains about the Ulysses though.

[Turambar]

*knocks dirt off of shovel*

allright guys, i'm digging this up.  I deleted all the modded glowmaps when i formatted my HD, but i'm starting all this up again and i'm making glowmaps, much like Bobbau's Herc model, where the glow from the glowpoints shows on the fighter.  I'll post screenies

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by aldo_14


Unless Shivans are epileptic.

Muwhaha

Shivan 1: Screetch (TRANSLATION: Enemy fighter approaching)

Shivan 2: Screetch (TRASNSLATION: whare those light?)

Shivan 1: SCREETCH!! (TRASNLATION: Dizzy! Dizzy! AAAAA!)

[WMCoolmon]

"Oh my God! It's the Lucifer!"
*Alpha 1 flashes hi-beams*
*Lucifer explodes*
"Er...well, then..."

[Turambar]

still working

see? i did what Bobbau did with his herc for the other fighters (most visible on the perseus)

[Turambar]

i post screens and nothing!

well i just read back through the thread and found out that i stopped because i was grounded, thats not a problem anymore

im just doing more of these
anything with glowpoints that could benefit from it is getting new glowmaps

[Sigma957]

They look kinda cool.

[WMCoolmon]

The difference is subtle

[EtherShock]

I think that Zeus has too many red lights on the underside. I'm in the pro glowpoints camp here though.

Has anyone thought of referring to actual military aircraft lights for the location and colors of the glowpoints? Wouldn't they have lights that clearly designate them as military craft?

[NGTM-1R]

As long as the light on the other side of the Herc II is red, that's good.

Although the strip of lights along the back of the Zeus missle racks looks kinda funny, IMO.