[krisvek]

i was fairly certain the HL stood for heavy laser...

anyhow, lasers or not...what would their muzzle-flash look like?  maybe these things are shooting black-eye-peas that are irradiated and juiced out of a strainer at the speed of sound....it's gonna look different than a gun firing....ya have to take into account the vacuum of space too

a muzzle flash is flame and fire from the explosion of the powder in a bullet, propelling that bullet out of the chamber and barrel

provided a gun had the air to fire the bullet in the first place (you need oxygen for combustion), i'm not too sure if there would be enough air in the vacuum of space to have a muzzle-fllash at all

so...taking that into consideration for solid-projectile-type guns, i'm curious as to what psuedo-science has to say about what a muzzle flash would look like from a colored-light shooter

[karajorma]

The subach is a heavy laser according to the game but the fact is that a laser is a beam (hence the term laser beam ) and it travels at the speed of light. What we see fired from the Subach in game looks nothing like that.

In reality a laser shouldn't even have a muzzle flash AFAIK. It's a coherent beam of light. You won't see anything from the barrel unless we're doing that whole visible lasers in space thing (which we should doo cause it looks cool ).
I simply say screw science and go wild

[Cobra]

rock on, kara

[WMCoolmon]

You realize that the moment you engage or stop your engines in Freespace you break Newton's laws.

However if you want some technocrap to explain the laser flash, it's superheated that was inside the gun, but propelled outward by the intense heat of firing the laser. Or it's a minute amount of superheated plasma from coolant used to enable the high rate of fire. Plasma is always good, it sounds very sci-fi (unless you're a surgeon).

[krisvek]

if a laser is a BEAM, then how the heck do you explain the BLOBS?  heheh

[WMCoolmon]

Superheated plasma as well.

[krisvek]

aye...plasma does sound good for an explanation...

and youre only breaking newtons law if you assume that your ship isnt automatically engaging retro-thrusters to bring you to a halt (which, of course, i assume....i do love IWAR for it's physics though)

[FireCrack]

I'd say a lser beam bouncing around in a blal of plasma or other matter.

[Cobra]

what's a blal?

[Slasher]

We already have lasers and they already have "muzzle flashes."  They're called beams.  

I don't know and don't really care if plasma guns would have "muzzle flashes."  As far as I know we don't have plasma guns or turbolasers on our Orion-class destroyers today either and thus can't tell what they'd look like, so...oh, wait, we don't have the Orion-class destroyers anyways!  Holy cow.  



The point is no one really gives a damn if computerized muzzle flashes on fictional laser beam cannonades can be explained away or not.  The beams would look pretty silly if they didn't have a warm-up glow and impact effect, right?  Allowing for a muzzle flash on the "blob" guns would give modders the ability to add a similar graphical flair to those weapons.

[Col. Fishguts]

Yes...stop the technobabble.
Freespace always followed the if-it-looks-cool-it get's-implemented-rule.

We're no Trekkies, are we ?

[krisvek]

people play these games for different reasons, and with different things in mind :-P

[Slasher]

Back on topic, if this feature was implemented, would it be set up like a rapid beam warm-up/warm-down glow?  Like one of the beam glow bitmaps that just got big and then small really fast?  

Or would it be "animated" like the flak cannon muzzle flash?  (not sure if I'm correct about that one)

[FireCrack]

The lak cannon muzzle flash is a set of explosions placed with a bigger one closer to the gun and smaller ones further away.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Slasher
Back on topic, if this feature was implemented, would it be set up like a rapid beam warm-up/warm-down glow?  Like one of the beam glow bitmaps that just got big and then small really fast?  

Or would it be "animated" like the flak cannon muzzle flash?  (not sure if I'm correct about that one)

Probably the cannon muzzle flash.

...has anyone actually tried using the existing code with non-flak?

[FireCrack]

I've tried using the mflash table flag, didnt work.


Though i assume you mean the actual code.

[WMCoolmon]

I meant the table flag.

[Krackers87]

i actualy put out a pack of muzzle flashes a while ago. If theres anyintrest in using them i can dig through the forums for them.

[Jonathan_S47]

I experimented with Muzzle flashes for a while. I found that they only work on capital ship flak guns and fighter lasers (they get left behind as the ships moves). They will not appear for anything else.