[JGZinv]

Well I had someone submit a ship design to me, and part of the theme
is onboard fog generators which help conceal the ship from various things.

Been wracking my brain for a bit, and I can't really think of anything that'd work
outside of something with lua perhaps. Best I could come up with was a engine
without any thrust, but a huge particle trail or glow point.

Any other better informed ideas?

[The E]

Welll....I don't think it's really possible to pull something like that off in the engine and make it look good.

[JGZinv]

It probably hasn't been tried extensively either.

Ok how about we work at it backwards, is there a way to make a nebula move
in relation to another object? Size manipulation, expanding one way and decreasing another,
might also be sufficient.

[The E]

No, nebulae are environments thatencompass the entire mission space. There is no way currently to dip in and out of nebulae. And the problem with the particle code is that it is optimized for debris spew effects and weapon effects; It's not set up to handle a permanent "shroud" effect.

It might be possible to fake this effect in scripting, but I don't think it'll be very efficient.

[JGZinv]

Yeah between my experiences with the particle spew via lua and the fact my main coder just
quit our project for school issues, sort of puts a fork in that idea.

Tachyon had a weird nebula system, which I'm not entirely sure how it worked.
It took several identical pcx images of varying colors and when in game, it appeared
as though they were all offset from each other. So you flew through essentially a kaleidoscope
of one color fog. It also encompassed the entire sector you were in.

Example @ 1:12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoCDAjsqJjs&feature=related

I'm thinking perhaps a similar effect could be reached with rather massive glow points perhaps?

[sigtau]

Take a smoke-screen effect from a game such as CoD4 or Counter-Strike: Source, it's essentially the same sprite, recoloured randomly at different shades of gray, and a slight randomized rotational effect applied to them.

Oh, and the AI would need to be affected by this too--if you can't see through the smoke, they shouldn't be able to either.

[Nuke]

this is one of those situations where you need a badass super efficient particle system, but this is freespace.

[Galemp]

That sounds really weird.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Drunk idea here but what about dropping in a "ship" with a hull that is a smokescreen .eff texture that encompasses the smaller ship.  No collide on the smokescreen ship of course.  Little trickery with primitive sensors etc and it might just work.  What it would look like is another question.

[General Battuta]

Take a smoke-screen effect from a game such as CoD4 or Counter-Strike: Source, it's essentially the same sprite, recoloured randomly at different shades of gray, and a slight randomized rotational effect applied to them.

Oh, and the AI would need to be affected by this too--if you can't see through the smoke, they shouldn't be able to either.

Would not work, at all.

[JGZinv]

I shall share the ship concept art since maybe it'll help discussion.

The art of Timmon:



As I said elseware, the hard part isn't the vent glows, but the fog cloud to be along and
shroud the ship.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea I always figured you had some kind of ship venting effect.  A second ship around it with an eff textured hull might work.  Then again it might look terrible.  Think the bio-armored hull on the TBP shadow ships but with some transparency and maybe more then one layer.  Again trickery with sexps would be key. 

[General Battuta]

It's a gorgeous ship even without the fog.  Hardly a showstopper if you can't make it work.

[JGZinv]

Perhaps, I'm just not one to have a boundary stop an artists work from coming
to life it at all possible. The "feature" might have other unforseen uses as well.

[headdie]

Perhaps, I'm just not one to have a boundary stop an artists work from coming
to life it at all possible. The "feature" might have other unforseen uses as well.

ironically would this "fog generator" be useful in nebula/cloud visual realism?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea I was just thinking what good it a fog generator in space unless it is several times as big as the ship?  You just point your nukes at the middle of the cloud your bound to hit something.

[JGZinv]

Well I didn't have anything in mind in particular, although a few things have come up
since I remembered some old stuff.

In the case of this Demon Pirate Destroyer class ship, the fog ties into their creation
and mythos. Demons were explorers or fighters that got stranded, captured, and experimented
on in the mind altering twilight fog by Randall Cassitor.

The fog generator was destroyed in one of the Tachyon missions, so aid efforts were launched
to help the victims. Nothing says everyone wanted help though. That generator was 8th of a freighter sized ship
or so if I remember right... bit larger than a fighter sandwich. It produced a whole sector worth of fog.

So it's reasonable to assume you could mount some to a ship as a cloaking device, or simply a way to
scare people away, or perhaps it strengthens the aggressiveness of the pilots.... ie being high on fog.
Perhaps it scrambles radar and other instrumentation except on Demon ships.. etc etc... need I go on?

Without the right ship cards, some fog in tach ate your ship. Reducing the shields and hull until you left or blew up.

[sigtau]

Would not work, at all.

Never said it would work, just throwing a concept out there that hopefully a handful of people can relate to.

[swashmebuckle]

I always thought it would be cool if you could simulate flying through clouds/fog/whatever by doing a staggered transparency crossfade between the object's sprite/s and the full screen nebula textures.  Of course, even if you could get it to look good, making it function in terms of obscuring other objects etc. would be a whole other can of worms, but still.  The engine seems a bit spare on scenery that actually affects the gameplay (pretty much just asteroids?), so support for something like this could be pretty groovy--layers of cloud in a gas giant, flying through comet tails, etc.

[x3110]

Maybe this can help you if you can convert the MODEL.( i certainly can't)
IT's a max 3 model and i haven't opened it yet as it does not open up in 3d EXPLORER
but if you convert it in pof,retexture for some transparency and add it to your ship as a fog generator submodel\subsystem via PCS2 maybe it would work.
On second thought you should create anothe model of the max file and add it as another ship and control it via sexps as it will then be flythrough.
And I AM GIVING JUST AN IDEA.
Download Here.