[Akalabeth Angel]

Can ship and/or fighter beams be something other than straight lines?

I'm thinking arcs of lighting ala Battletech PPCs. The beams would have a very short duration. Maybe a person could even do a few frames of different shapes for animation??

[Dragon]

I think it may be possible with a bitmap representing the arc, which would have been streched over entire lenght of the beam.
I see no other way to do this, assuming you don't want to mess with either scripting or code.

[Stormkeeper]

How do the beams' FX look like in the VPs?

[Enigmatic Entity]

Wasn't there some animated effects for the "lasers" at some stage? If there was, you could create a really long laser (which would look weird, since the back end would protrude behind the ship at t=0), or alternatively, one with a long, 100% bright trail that ends suddenly (if lasers can have trails. Maybe it will have to be a missile).

[Stormkeeper]

He wants to make a PPC effect. Not sure if you've played MechWarrior, but a PPC has always been described in the novels as a 'white-blue blast of lightning', and the later games portray it as such.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

TBP has the Vorlon Lightning cannon so it should be at least partially possible.

[Spoon]

In theory I think it might very well be possible

Code: [Select]

$Section: ;; one section of the beam (you can have up to 5
+Width: 10 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-red ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 255 255 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 150 150 150 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.0 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 4.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 15 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-green2 ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 160 160 0 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 60 60 0 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.45 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 3.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam (you can have up to 5)
+Width: 25.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-green ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 255 255 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 150 150 150 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.4 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 2.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 30.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-green3 ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 0 0 255 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 60 0 0 10 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.5 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 0.0 ;; hehe
If you have several sections with different textures of different sizes you could create something that might look somewhat lighting like. Just have to create lighting shaped beam textures. Might not be that easy to get it to actually look right though

[Stormkeeper]

The things is that unlike beam textures, when making a lightning texture you'll probably have to keep in mind how it might look when fully stretched out. So if you're making a lightning texture you'd probably do it full-length and just shrink it length wise until its the right texture size.

[Scooby_Doo]

Can't you also have the beam texture repeat, so it doesn't look as stretched out?

[Aardwolf]

You could probably do that better with a missile + trail (a kind of spruced-up Shivan Super Laser effect)

[Stormkeeper]

Can't you also have the beam texture repeat, so it doesn't look as stretched out?

How do you do that? I've messed around with the beams before with Shadow Gorrath's help and succesfully created a black beam before, but that didn't use repeating textures.

You could probably do that better with a missile + trail (a kind of spruced-up Shivan Super Laser effect)

Yea, but I somehow feel that that'd be a last resort.

[Nuke]

what would look awesome is to take the nebula lighting effect, and make it a weapon.

[Akalabeth Angel]

TBP has the Vorlon Lightning cannon so it should be at least partially possible.

Oh it does? I'll have to look into that. Though hopefully it's not just on the DN since I've heard from an "interesting debate" that the ship has issues.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Not any more it doesn't.  Anyway it's on the VE Fighter. 

[Stormkeeper]

Can we use the lightning cannon as a reference if the need arises?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea.  You just can't use the actual stuff in any release unless it's for TBP.  Don't have the rights to give that out. 

[Stormkeeper]

Kay. That'll be all I need. Thanks.

Can you PM it to me? My TBP VPs aren't on hand atm.

[Wanderer]

Texture repeats on beam sections, see tile factor in beaminfo section of weapons.tbl

[Stormkeeper]

Tile Factor:

    * Defines the beam texture tileing factor. Second number defines the tileing type. Type 0 tiles the graphic in the beam as many times as defined by the 1st number. Type 1 uses the 1st value as the lenght of the tile.
    * Syntax: Float, Integer

What does it mean by 'Type 1 uses the 1st value as the length of the tile'?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

You can grab it here:  Lightning Cannon

That's the weapons table and the effects.