[Prophet]

I was playing the game (not really a suprise now is it?) and it got me thinking. Isn't that hit damage fire spew effect waaay too big? It looks fine on bigger ships, and the effect itself is good.
But its not very B5ish if a fighter is spewing out a continious burst of flame thats twice the size of the fighter. And it makes it difficult to hit when the fighter is hiding in that particular cloud of I don't know what.

I would like a little more subtle indication that a ship is damaged... Or what do you think?

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I completely agree with you.

I've tried to create a new, much more subtle version but it pretty much sucked. I'm hoping I can give it another go at some point, if I find the time for it.

[Prophet]

Im thinking somekind of dark grey/near black effect. Like smoke.
Waste produced by low oxygen burning, in the engines or electrical fire somewhere else.

[Fury]

In my opinion the effect is perfectly fine...
But if you want a more subtle impact explosion effect for fighter weapons, be my guest.

[NGTM-1R]

No no, not impact, the damage trail thingie.

[Fury]

Particle spew? Well as far as I know, there is no way to define what spew is used with which impact effects. So scaling the spew is up to the game engine...

[Prophet]

Really? Then why is the spew different from the retail version?

[Fury]

Because TBP does not use the particle spew effect from retail FS2.

[Prophet]

So the effect can be changed, but it will allways be that big?

Originally posted by Prophet
Im thinking somekind of dark grey/near black effect. Like smoke.
Waste produced by low oxygen burning, in the engines or electrical fire somewhere else.

So how would something like this look like? Near black effect would not look so ridiculous in dark space....

[Fury]

Of course the effect can be changed, but the problem is to make an effect that fits perfectly to all types of damage impacts. As far as I know, SCP has not yet added a feature which we can use to define particle spew effect on weapon basis.

Current particle spew looks quite fine when it comes out of capital ship weapon impacts. It has never really bothered me that the particle spew is quite big for a fighter weapon impact.

If DaBrain, Carl or anyone else comes up with an effect that looks good on all types of damage, we'll use it.

[IPAndrews]

The Shadow Ships should spew black blood when they are shot for instance. How wonderful that would be. Bleeding Battlecrabs. Marvelous.

[NGTM-1R]

That depends on whether they'd get blood on my shiney Whitestar...it's expensive to clean.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Of course the effect can be changed, but the problem is to make an effect that fits perfectly to all types of damage impacts. As far as I know, SCP has not yet added a feature which we can use to define particle spew effect on weapon basis.

Current particle spew looks quite fine when it comes out of capital ship weapon impacts. It has never really bothered me that the particle spew is quite big for a fighter weapon impact.

If DaBrain, Carl or anyone else comes up with an effect that looks good on all types of damage, we'll use it.

Well, that's the point. The effect has to look good for all ships, stations and other objects.

And dark smoke is not possible with the eninge. You would hardly see it in the dark space anyway.

The system works like this:

White = 100% visible
Black = tranparent
Dark grey = almost transparent

I think it's fine that way. I don't have to use alpha channels for everything, but it's not very suitable for missions on planet suerfaces and missions with very bright backgrounds.

If the particle spew values were editable, I could create a better effect.

Now everything has to be 'round'. (I can't explain it in any other way. )

[Prophet]

Originally posted by DaBrain
You would hardly see it in the dark space anyway.

Exactly! Then it would not matter if the spew would be that big.

Look. As I understand no one has really disliked the effect itself. I think it looks cool. But the thing I don't like is the size of the effect. In fighters that is.

In real life: If a plane thats 10 m long spews three or four 20-25 m long trails of flame, it would not be flyable and would probably hit ground in flock of small pieces.
(That was a quick example, in FS a fighter is regulary seen flying with 3 particle spews that are often twice as long as the fighter)

If the engine would scale the effect according to the size of the model, then I would not be complaining.
If the effect were darker, you would not see the ridiculous tail of fire, you would see propably something wenting from the craft but nothing specific.

I do not know. If I had the skills and tools I would try to make it myself. But as it happens to be, I am just a FREDder (prophet) with a vision.