[TrashMan]

Say, how about adding a $shockwaveAni: field in the tables?

Each weapon can have it's own specific shockwave it will produce.
To keep backwards compability, if none is specified, it uses the default one.


Oh..and hte ability to ORDER ships via events in FRED to PUT POWER IN THEIR ENGINES. Would be usefull to give capships a small speed max increase...

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Say, how about adding a $shockwaveAni: field in the tables?

Each weapon can have it's own specific shockwave it will produce.
To keep backwards compability, if none is specified, it uses the default one.


Oh..and hte ability to ORDER ships via events in FRED to PUT POWER IN THEIR ENGINES. Would be usefull to give capships a small speed max increase...

*BUMP*
*tries to get the attention of hte code wizzards, since one shockwave is really starting to piss him off*

[karajorma]

I think they're ignoring you until you realise that this wasn't a request thread

[Goober5000]

This most certainly is not a request thread.  And I think that was rather disrespectful.

And coming on the tail of all the other things...
*bans TrashMan from posting in the SCP forum*

[vyper]

Either you're taking the piss again, or the power is seriously starting to go to your head Goob.

edit: corrected Heard to head. It appears I thought Goober was creating an over zealous mass of farm-yard animals.

[Goober5000]

It's not just this one incident... he's had a history of this sort of thing.  We've been talking about implementing such a policy anyway.  I'll see how it works out.

[-Norbert-]

Just sad, that is had to happen on such a thread like this (even though it's justified).

[Goober5000]

Good point.  Thread split.

[TrashMan]

ERm...any of you code wizzards care to comment on this?

Too stupid? Not worth it? No time?


Hell, I would do it myself, but I got only basic programming skillz (Basic, Pascal, Prolog, LIST..oh and C++ and Java too)

I do have a friend who is a master programmer (worked on several games, made dozens of programs for some firms and stuff), and I tried to get him to help wihth the SCP, and alltough he is interested, he sez he regretfully doesn't have the time.

But from what I know (and what he told me), adding that shockwave feature would be a simple thing to do...

[taylor]

Add the tbl entry is uber simple.  Making it support more than one shockwave type takes a little more work but is certainly doable with a few hours work.  There is only one major problem, memory.  Having it load multiple shockwave animations is going to suck up RAM by the basket full.  We would have to restrict it to 2 or 3 types at most, including the default, in order to keep memory usage down.  It can be done but the end result might be more trouble than it's worth for the end user.

[TrashMan]

How much memory can 3 shockwave ani's take?

And who needs uber-shockvawe ani's? The stock FS2 ani still looks better to me than any I?ve seen so far.

[WMCoolmon]

A helluva lot. Everything is stored in pcx format, unless you use PCX2DDS, so that's 60 frames of data sitting in memory for just a 4-second 15-fps anim. Next you have all the ships' textures, and their models, as well as any background inages (Which exist in memory as their full size)

It very quickly adds up, and moving data between the normal RAM and the RAM on the video card means slowdowns.

[TrashMan]

Hmm...
Well..I would be just as happy if someone just did a slightly better version of the normal FS2 blue shockvawe....

Can't have them all I guess...

[WMCoolmon]

There's the yellow and orange shockwave in the mediaVP. I'm not sure if you'd term it better, though.

[StratComm]

I've always been more partial to the spherical shockwave myself, meaning it's a circle instead of the planar ring thing we keep bringing back.  I think Inf. release 1 had a good spherical shockwave, though I can't remember exactly if that was indeed where I saw it.

[taylor]

Originally posted by TrashMan
How much memory can 3 shockwave ani's take?

A 60 frame, hi-quality version of the original in TGA format is (512x512x4x60) == 60meg.  And that's just for one.  DDS can save a good bit of memory but the quality is less so you'd probably have to use a larger image so (1024x1024x60) == 60meg.  Not saving anything there.  You can cut down the number of frames but it still adds up.  Most video cards are only going to have 128meg of RAM onboard so with two of those animations loaded you've used all available memory.  We've still got to load all model data into video memory for rendering and textures for background nebula, planets, base maps, glow maps, specmaps, weapon effects, missiles, all explosion anis, warp maps, etc.  Basically, it's a whole lot.

I personally think this is a good idea and would look cool in-game but the price is pretty high to get it.

[phatosealpha]

Could you achieve a slight increase in variety at a low cost in memory just by varying the palettes or or by having the base shockwave animation be white and then using lighting effects to reach a desired color?  Or maybe it would be possible to have the actual shockwave ani only be for a quarter of the explosion graphic and have it duplicated to the other 3 quarters?

Apoligies if this is crazy or useless.

[SadisticSid]

Originally posted by phatosealpha
Could you achieve a slight increase in variety at a low cost in memory just by varying the palettes or or by having the base shockwave animation be white and then using lighting effects to reach a desired color?

That's really good thinking actually. Being able to define the shockwave colour would certainly meet my needs (e.g. a reddy-orange shockwave for Shivan ships exploding, a blue one for Terrans, etc.).

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by taylor

A 60 frame, hi-quality version of the original in TGA format is (512x512x4x60) == 60meg.  And that's just for one.  DDS can save a good bit of memory but the quality is less so you'd probably have to use a larger image so (1024x1024x60) == 60meg.  Not saving anything there.  You can cut down the number of frames but it still adds up.  Most video cards are only going to have 128meg of RAM onboard so with two of those animations loaded you've used all available memory.  We've still got to load all model data into video memory for rendering and textures for background nebula, planets, base maps, glow maps, specmaps, weapon effects, missiles, all explosion anis, warp maps, etc.  Basically, it's a whole lot.

I personally think this is a good idea and would look cool in-game but the price is pretty high to get it.

WTF??? 60MB????

since when does 1 512x512 tga take up 1 mb.
Last time I checked it was around 200-300kb...

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by phatosealpha
Could you achieve a slight increase in variety at a low cost in memory just by varying the palettes or or by having the base shockwave animation be white and then using lighting effects to reach a desired color?  Or maybe it would be possible to have the actual shockwave ani only be for a quarter of the explosion graphic and have it duplicated to the other 3 quarters?

Apoligies if this is crazy or useless.

PURE GENIUS!!!!:D