[Nighteyes]

Hi guys, was just wandering what effects were left to upgrade, I'm currently struggling to make a new high rez shockwave, will update when I'll finish it...
I want to do some new muzzleflashs as well, but apart from those, anything else?

[Kolgena]

Debris maybe? (though that's more modeling, and less 2D art)

It's annoying when you shoot stuff up close and pretty sprites fill the screen, while bits of triangular hull with 16x16 textures fly out. Most apparent when you collide with something, actually.

[mjn.mixael]

Nebula... 

[Kolgena]

Lightspeed, or the gaseous laggy kind?

[sigtau]

I'm thinking gaseous lighting kind, because the gaseous lighting kind doesn't look a whole lot more than simply the tileable noise effect in GIMP with a film grain effect applied (followed by colorization).

[mjn.mixael]

I'm thinking gaseous lighting kind, because the gaseous lighting kind doesn't look a whole lot more than simply the tileable noise effect in GIMP with a film grain effect applied (followed by colorization).

That

[Shivan Hunter]

Nebula.

If we could get an effect that's even a tenth as awesome as that, the nebula would be greatly improved. (volumetrics.....)

[mjn.mixael]

Nebula.

If we could get an effect that's even a tenth as awesome as that, the nebula would be greatly improved. (volumetrics.....)

I.. don't like those at all....

[Pottuvoi]

Nebula.

If we could get an effect that's even a tenth as awesome as that, the nebula would be greatly improved. (volumetrics.....)

I.. don't like those at all....

The video does show very nice tech, but of course it could still be better.
In what way you didn't like it and which techniques would you use to create better nebula?

I have read and thought about volumetrics for fun, so I could help when the time comes and I can tell that it is not easy to make good looking nebula. (volume, huge amount of lights, single/multi scattering, GI, colour..)

[Fury]

I want to do some new muzzleflashs as well, but apart from those, anything else?

Zacam was planning a code overhaul to how muzzleflashes work. Essentially you'd have grayscale muzzleflashes like laser glows, and then you specify RGB colors in tables for the muzzles. That way you wouldn't have to do a muzzleflash for each color, but could instead create several different shaped ones in grayscale. So might be better to wait until Zacam or another coder gets around to do that.

[Turambar]

Nebula.

If we could get an effect that's even a tenth as awesome as that, the nebula would be greatly improved. (volumetrics.....)

I.. don't like those at all....

Why not?  Looks very nice to me.

[Reprobator]

The freelancer 2 one looks fantastic 

[Trivial Psychic]

I want to do some new muzzleflashs as well, but apart from those, anything else?

Zacam was planning a code overhaul to how muzzleflashes work. Essentially you'd have grayscale muzzleflashes like laser glows, and then you specify RGB colors in tables for the muzzles. That way you wouldn't have to do a muzzleflash for each color, but could instead create several different shaped ones in grayscale. So might be better to wait until Zacam or another coder gets around to do that.

Will they be based on an animation, or will it use something like a rapid version of the beam warmup thingy?
(Been out of a lot of the mainstream for a while, in case I'm asking another been-asked-a-million-times-before question.)

[Kolgena]

Hmm. If nebula are to be upgraded, they can't look like that youtube video. Remember, these are gigantic gas clouds lightyears across, and wouldn't have gaps in them like that. It's a solid soup, not a conglomeration of clouds.

Also, volumetrics eat framerates for breakfast.

[petar91]

new reactor glowing effects like this (screen from X2 the threat) ??

[Kolgena]

Anamorphic lens flares?

Would not mind it, but that seems more FSO territory, due to post-processing code that needs to be drawn up.

[Nighteyes]

well, its quite easy to do, just try using one of the MVPs suns, they have anamorphic lens flars, the only thing will be that you need to change the size of the thruster for it to look like in that screenshot...
I'll actually have a look at making something for the nebula pofs...

[Kolgena]

Oh, yeah. That could work.

Though glares for explosions or weapon effects might not work too nicely if we used a hack involving the suns.

[Aardwolf]

Oh, yeah. That could work.

Though glares for explosions or weapon effects might not work too nicely if we used a hack involving the suns.

No, silly!

He's not saying "put suns in place of engines", he's saying "it works just fine for suns, so it'll probably work just fine for engines"

[Pottuvoi]

Hmm. If nebula are to be upgraded, they can't look like that youtube video. Remember, these are gigantic gas clouds lightyears across, and wouldn't have gaps in them like that. It's a solid soup, not a conglomeration of clouds.

Also, volumetrics eat framerates for breakfast.

If we would want realistic gas cloud, it should be rendered only to a background image as the density is just too low to be seen in small distances.
That would also look very boring and wouldn't fit the game as we already had nice and chunky nebula with storms and all.

High/low density variation would be very nice addition as one cound fly trough formations during dogfights or reveal enemy capship coming trough a denser area.
Something like artist controlled density field would be sweet especially with proper lighting. (multi scattering from sun and single scattering for local lights and glowmaps.)