[Bobboau]

...is what we have now...

and I don't think anyone noticed the post were I posted new stuff with like shivan beams in it.

[neoterran]

well, everytime you post your tbms, they don't work with the +length error....

[Bobboau]

which is why I also posted a build.

[neoterran]

but what if i have another build i prefer to use ?

[Bobboau]

well then you'll have to modify the tables.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Bobboau, take a look at your posted BVas beam in-game. In particular the translation speed of the section layers.
Now in the tables, the speeds go -4, -3, -2 from the core layer of the beam to the haze. However in game it doesn't do that. The effect you see in game is more like -2, -8, -15, meaning the outer haze of the beam moves along very fast while the core slowly drifts along.

This is the problem I referred to earlier in this thread about the section translation speed bug. Should I mantis it?

====

Anyways, for those too lazy/unable to get Bobs beams in-game:






The Shivan beam especially needs to be seen in motion to be fully appreciated. That lightning effect is animated and quite cool, though I reckon the beam itself needs to better match the warm-up glow in both colour and texture.

[Bobboau]

that's not my warmup glow, don't know why it wouldn't show up, but there should be a SbeamAglow.eff,  and 25 frames for it.


and the beams are acting like I wanted, I did it with a fast core and a slow outer layer, I think it looks better the other way around. feel free to modify to your taste though.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Errm, you're right - I have your glow in the effects folder, the tbm properly references it, yet it doesn't get used. :\
I'll have to look into that.

About the beams though, are you saying you intended the beams to have a slow moving white inner section with a much faster moving coloured glow outter section around it? Cos that's what's happening, despite your table values for speed saying the opposite should be happening.

[Bobboau]

that's what I wanted and that's what my tables say. look at the width of those sections the slowes ones are the smallest ones, I tried it with the inner ones faster but it looked better with the outer ones moving faster, IMHO. well actualy the core is the second fastest, the middle layer is slowest, and the outer layer is fastest, but I think the middle layer is only hot in the center, so same as if it were the core.

you probably need to turn off the media VPs.

[jr2]

you probably need to turn off the media VPs.

Couldn't you just stick the stuff in \mediavps\data\effects ?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Ah, ok then. My bad. I assumed the sections would go from thinnest to thickest.

However, I still think there's a translation speed error relating to beam width in there somewhere. I'll see if I can provide a more solid example of it.

As for the beamglows, it was a tbm I had from testing out the upcoming media VPs. Weird thing was that even though the same TBM defines warmup glows for all the beams in your pack, only the shivan one got changed.

[Bobboau]

well translation is in tile per second, so if you have a section that has twice as much tileage it'll seem to move slower, or faster, my head realy hurts and I don't want to think about it too much, but it has to do with the coordanants gtting moved them multiplyed, I'm thinking more tiles will seem to move faster, cause you'd have more tiles pass through at the same time

[Vasudan Admiral]

That's probably it then.
I'll stick that tidbit into the wiki actually, cos it's kinda important if you're trying to fine tune stuff.

[S-99]

I'm in the works of trying to show an example of what is needed for the end of the beam. AND I DON't MEAN SHADERS.

[Bobboau]

well if the end of the beam gets brighter in any way it'll just make the end of it MORE apparent, not that having it get brighter closer to the end is a bad idea (the vasudan beams actually do this,or they're suposed to anyway, it is subtle though) I just don't think it's going to do what you want it to do.

[S-99]

Ok, well thanks to that scraping explosionless beam picture that Davin has provided.
Here's the normal.

Here's with an imaginary beam hit affect i was thinking about. I did my best to make the colors conform to the new beam. And i took bobbaus beam glow affect and made it the impact affect with a lot of tweaking to it. Modified beam glows would work great for beam impact affects, i actually wanted to use the beam glow in that screenshot to make a beam hit affect, but i couldn't find a copy of it around, so i used bobbaus.

I did my best to incorporate a beam affect with like some crude lighting around it. So it hits, looks cool, and it glows. I of course used gimp to do this imaginary affect, changed the perspective of the beam impact affect to better conform to the side of the hull of the sathanas (i did that pretty horribly). Preserving the roundness wasn't too easy, so it's slightly oval shaped, but it's good enough. After that i think i did a pretty good job at making the beam hit affect colors from bobbaus beam glow affect to conform to his new terran beam in this shot.

But anyway, this is a beam affect the beams really need. It shows the beam beating with intensity against the hull of a sathanas while you get to watch the beam hit the hull and sort of spread out a little bit, sort of like what the flame of the blowtorch i posted does when it hits a surface. Shoot me for this, but i didn't mean to stir people up about shaders and the beam turning the hull of a ship red or orange wherever the beam got done hitting. This sort of makes the beams look more menacing, but anyways, imagine this along with the scraping explosions affect.

EDIT: I may have made the beam hit thingy too big for this rather small and  non-uber beam blasting the sathanas.

[Bobboau]

so you made a different beam hit explosion effect?

[Raven2001]

it looks very cool atm, although if you want to improve it, now you just have to add a real explosion to it (kinda the over-heated particles making the various reactions after the meltdown)

[S-99]

Well, that's where the hull scraping explosions come in to beef it up, there actually sort of particly already. Anyway that screenshot didn't have any of those explosions and it looks really crappy where the beam hits and has no end to it. It did that because it was an area of the sathanas i guess had wierd angles so the scraping explosions couldn't really do their thing. But anyway imagine this affect with them, and you'd have great beams.

But anyways i didn't make a beam hit explosion effect. I just gave the beam and understandably justifiable "end" when it hits a target(it's what i think a beam hitting it's target would look like + explosions). Hull scraping explosions along with it would make it superb. Anyway, making the imaginary effect, the beam glow from the new set of beam glows in this thread was perfect. Rather any beam glow for an impact effect would do, you just don't want to have something ****ty where the beam glow is the same as the impact affect, though this is pretty easily solved by grabbing some beam glows from other sets. The fact that it's a beam glow being the impact effect along with explosions, means that the impact effect would have a cool eff effect as well...at least from the beam glows that have are effs such dabs and bobbaus.
I got back into photoimaging tonight for the purpose of showing this example, it wasn't too hard, just a little difficulty navigating gimp was the tiniest of frustration (i forgot what several icons looked like for what i was trying to do).
TbeamAglow_0016.dds seemed like a good one to use.
Idk thx for the congrats, i did a pretty crude job, but my aim was for cool looking, i'm glad people like the idea of this.

[Bobboau]

you know I think just making the explosion bigger would do the trick...