[Enioch]

Hey, everybody.

I was wondering: how do the 3d shockwaves work, exactly? And are they moddable? I mean, it figure it's pretty easy to change the POF texture, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how the POF works. Is it getting scaled up, while time passes? The texture isn't animated, so the 'growing shockwave' part isn't texture based.

What I really wanna know, is this: can I change the shockwave.pof and still have shockwaves working? What must I pay attention to? I could just dive in and figure this out, I guess, but some good advice would save me some precious hours of tedious converting and mucking about.

Thanks in advance.

[Aardwolf]

The texture is animated, I'm pretty sure.

[Enioch]

There's an .eff, true, but only in Advanced Effects. The one in standard Effects (where the actual shockwave.pof is) is just a static .dds

[Nighteyes]

I'm actually also interested in this, I'm pretty sure the pof is growing over time, and that the texture is animated, what I can't get is the texture...
its a 1/4 of a circle, 512x512, I assume its tiled in a way so the final model created a full higher rez circle...
any pointers on how to make the 1/4 circle texture tile?

[Aardwolf]

Educated guess:

Maybe it's divided into quadrants? Each quadrant would be the mirror image (across the appropriate axis) of the two next to it.

[Enioch]

Maybe it's divided into quadrants? Each quadrant would be the mirror image (across the appropriate axis) of the two next to it.

That's exactly it.

What I really want to know is: Does the .pof get scaled or not? Does it get transformed in any way? What exactly is the process?

Is it something like "Get the center of the killed ship, spawn a couple of shockwave pofs at random orientations and play the animated texture?" Or is it like "Get the center, spawn a couple of shocks and then scale them up, while playing the texture?" What makes the shockwave of the meson bomb that big? Is it something like the subspace effect, that gets as big as the ship it's tied to?

Who wrote the code for this, anyway? I think it was DaBrain, but I'm not sure... Can we get the proud father to explain exactly how his offspring works?

[chief1983]

Well, 3d shockwaves do grow out of the explosion, so I'm not sure how there's any confusion there.  They don't just sit in place and spin and dance or anything.

[Col. Fishguts]

IIRC, the shockwave POF simply is scaled up from its center (0,0,0). I don't know if the upper limit is dependant on POF size or some hard-coded value.

The texture can be animated or not, the current one in the MVP is only a quarter of the circle because DaB mapped the shockwave POF so that it uses the quarter 4 times.

[Aardwolf]

As for this:

What makes the shockwave of the meson bomb that big? Is it something like the subspace effect, that gets as big as the ship it's tied to?

I'm pretty certain that's done using "special explosion" in FRED.

[Enioch]

As for this:

What makes the shockwave of the meson bomb that big? Is it something like the subspace effect, that gets as big as the ship it's tied to?

I'm pretty certain that's done using "special explosion" in FRED.

I knew that  What I meant is not "What makes the meson bomb have a big shockwave?" What I meant was "How come there are shockwaves of different radii?" The shockwave of a Fenris doesn't have the same radius as the one of an Orion, does it? How come?

Obviously, Bigger ship = bigger explosion. But how does Freespace handle that equation?

Let's say a Fenris is exploding. Say the shockwave should fade out at a radius of 1 km (I have no idea if it actually does, I'm just laying a number on the table). Does FreeSpace create a shockwave.pof with a radius of 1 km and play the animation? Or does it create a shockwave with a radius of say 20 meters and scale it up while playing the animated texture?

[chief1983]

Blast radius in the table?  I'm pretty sure that's it.  You also  define the propagation speed of the blast there.

[Enioch]

AAAAAAArrrgghhhh.....

Yes, I know how to make a shockwave bigger/smaller and faster/slower! 

*calming breath*

But, when the shockwave appears, does the pof get scaled up while the animation is playing?

What I want to do is mod the shockwave.pof, from a disk to a torus-like thing. Will the torus' radius increase while the shockwave expands? Or am I going to have a torus sitting there, with a shockwave texture running across its surface?

Sorry if I flipped for a moment there. I know you're trying to help; thank you. I'm just feeling I'm not getting through...

[chief1983]

You asked why there are shockwaves of different radii.  I just told you.  They have different radii defined in the tables.  They start from very small, probably the middle of the model, and expand outward to the max blast radius at the propagation speed defined.  I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.  There isn't even necessarily an animation playing.  If you don't have an animated texture, you won't have an animated shockwave, per se.  It will still grow out though.

[Enioch]

Ahhhh. Good.

Now I got it. Thanks very much, chief.