[Angelus]

I'd like to request an second missile trail.

The current system uses one trail, which is repeated to fit the in the table specified length.
This limit the awesomeness missiles can have.

The 2-trail system would work like this:

the first trail set, is not going to be repeated, but can have it's size and Alpha changed ( like the default one)
the second trail is the standard trail, no changes ( apart the one that tells it that it starts on the end of the first trail, maybe via flag or something).


Thanks!

[Iss Mneur]

To be clear, you are looking to have the missile have a trail that changes after so long (because, for example, the propellant is still combusting? or the missile has a flame coming out of the nozzle of the missile, which then changes to smoke?)  If so, isn't this what the particle system is designed to do?

[Fury]

Yes and no. Particle system is more flexible for something like that, but there's a few caveats. For one, you can only have one pspew, which is annoying but since you can't assign pspews to any subobjects, it doesn't really matter anyway. Secondly, particle spew looks bad on fast moving objects like missiles. Each frame of a particle animation ends up far from each other, the end result looks really bad. Pspew still works well on bombs because they travel slowly, but missiles like Harpoon? No, not really.

[Nuke]

Yes and no. Particle system is more flexible for something like that, but there's a few caveats. For one, you can only have one pspew, which is annoying but since you can't assign pspews to any subobjects, it doesn't really matter anyway. Secondly, particle spew looks bad on fast moving objects like missiles. Each frame of a particle animation ends up far from each other, the end result looks really bad. Pspew still works well on bombs because they travel slowly, but missiles like Harpoon? No, not really.

my particle code lets you have up to four and gives you more spawn patterns. only real problem with it is that it makes it very easy to overload the game with particles resulting in rapidly diminishing framerates.

[Fury]

Your particle code?

[Nuke]

look for particle demo in the test builds forum.

[Angelus]

Ok, here's screenshot of what i'd like to request.

Maybe it's even possible to "animate" the first trail via EFF, it wouldn't hurt the performance that much, considering the small size of the bitmaps and if only 3 or 4 frames are used.

But atm, i'd totally be happy with an additional Trail.

EDIT: while i do think particles are cool, i doubt that they would work on fast missiles with the current code.
        



So please, dear Diff-takers and Code-bug breakers, give us this wonderful new feature. PLEASE!

[Nuke]

so you want missiles to have a fixed link, non tillable trail effect, overlapping a regular repeated trail. sounds like this could be done with a glow point or a thruster flame.

[Angelus]

so you want missiles to have a fixed link, non tillable trail effect, overlapping a regular repeated trail. sounds like this could be done with a glow point or a thruster flame.

Using that already, but it's not the same.

[Angelus]

So i did some testing, for Nukes suggestion to use thrusters and glowpoints.
It looks nice, from the distance, using lots of thrusters and custom made thuster effect. Close up, when fighting other ships, it looks fugly, and it's a performance killer, with 32 thrusters.
To make it look pretty, one has to increase the number of thrusters on a missile to ~80-90, which would hurt the performance even more.

So, pretty please, can we has the second trail?


Here are some screenies.

[Thaeris]

Angelus, how precisely do you have all the unreleased BtRL models?

[Angelus]

Those aren't BtRL models.
I found these ships in the interwebs and converted them for personal use.
I wish those were BtrL models, i'd kill for Omnis Galactica.
So, if soemone has the mesh, send it to meeeeeeeeeeeee.[/captain hero]