[Shivan Hunter]

So I need to stretch an afterburner trail, because the effect I just GIMPed and hacked into FS:



looks like crap.

(IGNORE the empty alpha channels and the fact that I haven't replaced one of the afterburner effects- I haven't corrected those yet).

Is there any way to stretch out the effect so it doesn't look like vertically-compressed crap?

I CAN'T do it via: ships.tbl, where the trail is specified, the image itself (resolution and aspect ratio)- 256x1024 is rendered the exact same way as 128x4096 (those resolutions are not final, don't worry), or apparently any other table.

Is there any way to change how long the effect is, and if not, how easy/impossible would that be to put into FSO?

[Dragon]

They look quite interesting to me, as does AB glow.

[Shivan Hunter]

No.

I was going for something more like this effect (the one on the left):



Loosely interpreted of course, but it would obviously look better stretched out.

Any way to do this?

[headdie]

No.

I was going for something more like this effect (the one on the left):



Loosely interpreted of course, but it would obviously look better stretched out.

Any way to do this?

that would look uber cool

[Spoon]

So if I understand correctly, you are asking if there is a thing like beam +Tile Factor, only for afterburners?

[The E]

Actually, that effect looks less like an AB trail and more like a nebula contrail to me....

[Shivan Hunter]

So if I understand correctly, you are asking if there is a thing like beam +Tile Factor, only for afterburners?

Basically, yes. (In fact, looking at the distortion on the screenie I posted- I can tell where the polygons on the trail are- it seems that the effect is applied once over each polygon. A simple multiplier would be useful here, and I don't think it would be too difficult to code. Then again I could be completely wrong, the FS engine has been known to have unforeseen difficulties before...)

[Solatar]

Have you tried stretching the actual image used?

[Shivan Hunter]

I CAN'T do it via: ships.tbl, where the trail is specified, the image itself (resolution and aspect ratio)- 256x1024 is rendered the exact same way as 128x4096 (those resolutions are not final, don't worry), or apparently any other table.

[Solatar]

Sorry, drive by post.  That's odd though.

[Shivan Hunter]

Not really odd- apparently just never implemented because they didn't think they'd need it. I'll put in a feature request in that big thread if the silence in this thread means it can't be done atm.

[Dragon]

Maybe edit bitmap to be more streched (not change it's format, but strech it).
It may look bad or give you what you want.

[Shivan Hunter]

Um. If you mean changing the size in any way- it's been said twice here that changing either the resolution or aspect ratio does nothing.

[Getter Robo G]

That effect could be a cool single turret weapon...

(lightning gun variant)

 

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Um. If you mean changing the size in any way- it's been said twice here that changing either the resolution or aspect ratio does nothing.

No, he means crop it, then stretch it back to original resolution, stretching what's in the image. Like going from this:



To this:



Yes, you will have to make it tileable again.

[Shivan Hunter]

I don't want to lose detail. That was pretty much the entire point of making an effect like that, rather than the bland generic contrail, to begin with.

[Dragon]

As I said, this may look bad, but it can also turn out to be a good idea.
Using only a part of effect and streching it could give you the result that you want.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I don't want to lose detail. That was pretty much the entire point of making an effect like that, rather than the bland generic contrail, to begin with.

In that case, try adding black bands to the top and bottom of the image.

[Shivan Hunter]

What would that accomplish?

Case 1, I widen the image with the black bands and don't edit the table: The image gets thinner, so it has a better proportion but it's tiny, which is not what I want.

Case 2, I widen the image with the black bands and edit the table to widen the polygons as well: Nothing changes.

Why are we still discussing this? I've pretty much confirmed there's no way to do what I want, which is not what Dragon seems to think I would settle for, so it's up to the SCP guys to see if it's worth implementing.

[Dragon]

Can you upload the bitmap?
I'd like to try playing around with streching, so detail loss would be minimal.