[Colonol Dekker]

Imagine if you will. A Deimos takes a cyclops or two to it's engine but the system holds.
 
Would particles or an effect similar to the recent beam debris one from BP allow visible engine trouble like a clapped out banger?
 
Maybe an engine glow flicker too?

[TrashMan]

 

I approve. I also approve of a flickering glowmap (somewhat randomly) when hull integrity is low enough.

[Colonol Dekker]

Flickering glowmaps is a great idea!
 
Doable with sexps already as we all know. But as a launches toggle to tie in with damage lightning would be a great addition.

[TrashMan]

Doable with SEXP's but not really looking that good. Hard to get the random flicker feel right.

besides, why use scripting for something that should be default behavior?

[Colonol Dekker]

You misread my last post. I was agreeing with you.

[Bob-san]

Would it be possible to have engines "failing" before they hit 0%? Could be interesting to get speed reductions or total outages from damage (at least for 3rd party campaigns), and would play in with this idea of the flickering glowmaps to show damage. In addition, maybe add the effect to the Colossus for High Noon, when it overloads the beam cannons. It'd be interesting to have the same effect when a reactor is destroyed; wouldn't be seen much but it'd sort of be the finishing touches.

[Kolgena]

You'd need glow maps to flicker with some sort of sine pattern falloff. Otherwise, an on-off switch effect will just look gimpy and bad. There needs to be some level of fading between the two (even if it's just 2-3 extra frames of animation), but that requires animation.

[butter_pat_head]

You'd need glow maps to flicker with some sort of sine pattern falloff. Otherwise, an on-off switch effect will just look gimpy and bad.

Not if done in the style of a dodgy fluorescent strip light something like these.  (warning to those with photo-sensitive epilepsy)

What would look good is if different sections of the glowmap could be turned on and off from each other rather having all the lights go out and then come back on at the same time.

[Colonol Dekker]

We could just make an animated one and swap with a new sexp. But what about my engine smoke?

[lostllama]

I like these ideas. I remember that Sync used a random-ish flickering glow map effect on a Deimos in one mission, but that was likely just done via SEXPs.

I had an idea for perhaps adding smoke effects to beam cannons after they've fired, but as that's not something you see in cutscenes, it's probably not a good idea to implement it. I was wondering if venting hot gases/plasma (or water vapour - I don't know about if that would be realistic though) to represent a sort of cooling system could be represented that way.

[Colonol Dekker]

Likely, even if it's not in cutscenes there's no reason why we couldn't add it for use in other mods TAP could use it definitely for ion our frigates as a minimum. They're a bit less Homeworld without them. But i've said too much already.

[Bobboau]

Would it be possible to have engines "failing" before they hit 0%? Could be interesting to get speed reductions or total outages from damage (at least for 3rd party campaigns)

I could have sworn this was implemented at one time and then a huge fit was thrown.

[karajorma]

I think it was and it cocked up retail something chronic.

Of course it should have been implemented as an optional setting requiring something in the tables to set up.

[TrashMan]

Why not an AI profile? Don't we already have a "destroyed navigation prevents warpout"? And that one definatly would screw up with many campaigns. If we can have that, then I don't see why we cna't have this.

[karajorma]

Because AI_Profiles didn't exist last time this was implemented.

[Aardwolf]

Because AI_Profiles didn't exist last time this was implemented.

Barely-on-topic question: why is it called "AI_Profiles" ?

[The E]

Because that's how it got started, I imagine.

[chief1983]

Yeah it originally had to do with fixing issues with stupid AI behavior.  Like smarter use of countermeasures, secondaries, etc.  But it's been expanded to 'fix' bugs elsewhere in the game too, that would break retail if left fixed but that many other mods would like to have changed.

[Bob-san]

Yeah it originally had to do with fixing issues with stupid AI behavior.  Like smarter use of countermeasures, secondaries, etc.  But it's been expanded to 'fix' bugs elsewhere in the game too, that would break retail if left fixed but that many other mods would like to have changed.

For example, the rapid use of Tempest missiles?

[chief1983]

Yeah that should only happen with AI_Profiles settings enabled, but it makes the AI way more effective with them.  They actually break missions it seems.