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Home » news » forums » Space Empires V » Space Empires V General

Missile Smoke trail effect

Isopsyco's picture
Submitted by Isopsyco on Sun, 2007-03-18 17:40. Space Empires V General

I have a project that I would like to use a missile effect with a smoke trail that is left even after the missile hits (or misses) and detonates. The smoke trail would dissipate after time.
The experiments I've tried has it either following the ship (maintaining the bitmap draw points) or disappears after the missile fire event is over.
Anyone know how the weapon effects work with multiple events tied to a single weapon effect?
In my case I would like a smoke trail and missile movement. I noticed that the SEV stock game comes with smoke trails of its own but I have yet to track down what data file its used in (to see how its used).

‹ _texture_ship_bmp and _fleet.bmp not loading on custom sets quick question, why cant i create a dyson sphere? ›
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Rilo57's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Rilo57 on Sun, 2007-03-18 19:23.

this sounds like a very cool effect, keep up the work. My $.02 is that it should disappear after the hit. otherwise your going to have a whole bunch of stuff on the screen in a large battle.

Keep us updated on your graphic. I'd definately want to use it.

SEV, more than a feeling.

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AgentZero's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by AgentZero on Sun, 2007-03-18 19:55.

Why have em disapate at all? It'd look kinda cool to have all these missile trails all over the battlefield.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

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Rilo57's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Rilo57 on Sun, 2007-03-18 20:08.

If they're light and you could still see everything important.

SEV, more than a feeling.

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Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Nevyn on Sun, 2007-03-18 23:50.

Hey, even if it vanishes when the missile hits, that's neat if it leaves a visible trail, if you could get it to leave a trail that stayed, then it would be even neater.

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Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by evilginger on Mon, 2007-03-19 04:21.

Nice idea

Whist you are about it some variation on the animation of things like DU cannon and Meson Blasters as I cant tell the diference by looking at them in tactical combat. diferent coloured "smoke" for the diferent types of misile would also be nice.

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Isopsyco's picture
Mod Designer

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Isopsyco on Mon, 2007-03-19 20:19.

This is not going well at all, I can get the smoke trail to emit off a missile and stay behind and the beam effect substitution is too sloppy a work. Anyone have an idea on the smoke trail used in the ship damage effect? I couldn't track down any reference in the data files, I'm assuming its in the engine.

anyone have any idea how to make a smoke trail with existing bitmap effects, components and or ship/unit type combination?

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Rilo57's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Rilo57 on Tue, 2007-03-20 09:26.

I played around with this idea a little, can you explain how your getting a smoke trail for your missles. I tried making the missle graphic longer with a trail behind, it didn't look good and at a certain length it stopped showing the graphic all together. Is there a separate graphic for a smoke trail.

SEV, more than a feeling.

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Rilo57's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Rilo57 on Tue, 2007-03-20 09:28.

Oh and while I'm on the topic, why are there 4 graphics for a missle animation... the thing is SO SMALL DURING BATTLE that you can hardly see it!

SEV, more than a feeling.

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Isopsyco's picture
Mod Designer

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Isopsyco on Tue, 2007-03-20 18:46.

Rilo57 wrote:
I played around with this idea a little, can you explain how your getting a smoke trail for your missles. I tried making the missle graphic longer with a trail behind, it didn't look good and at a certain length it stopped showing the graphic all together. Is there a separate graphic for a smoke trail.

SEV, more than a feeling.


Well, basically I changed the weapon type to beam (I know, you have to change the entire damage and mechanics around, not easy) and set the graphic up as a 16 row, one column. The picture starts out from left to right in frame 1 and shows a missile moving through flight leaving a smoke trail all the way to frame 16 where its just the smoke trail.

In the components section I changed the damage stuff and the duration and speed accordingly (you'll have to play around with the settings to get your specific picture looking right).

As for the missile pic having four frames, I'm at a lose for that. There the same picture in each frame and your right, its way small in the combat viewer that if there were any small changes you would never see them.

I have a couple other ideas I'm going to try, there involved and will take some time. But essentially I'll create a vehicle type (missile obvioulsy) have it drop smoke icons as it flies, the smoke icons will equal its 'fuel', once depleted it detonates. The smoke icons will have a life span so they'll stay visible for awhile before 'self-destructing' without any glamour (fade away).
This will cause me to create 'missile fuel' and you will have to configure your missile systems just like a drone instead of getting a all-in-one missile component.

We'll see how this contraption works out, and all for a damn missile trail effect!!!

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Rilo57's picture

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Rilo57 on Wed, 2007-03-21 15:24.

I tried just making the "weapon display type" beam and then leaving everything else tied to missle type... the ships would close in on eachother and then just before they got in range they'd stop moving everytime.

my thoughts are that if you change missles to full beam weapons then you can't shoot them down with point defense.

Going back to my other idea of making the graphic longer to include a smoke trail... does anyone know exactly what the width of a graphic file SEV will accept?

SEV, more than a feeling.

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Isopsyco's picture
Mod Designer

Re: Missile Smoke trail effect

Submitted by Isopsyco on Thu, 2007-03-22 19:19.

Rilo57 wrote:
I tried just making the "weapon display type" beam and then leaving everything else tied to missle type... the ships would close in on eachother and then just before they got in range they'd stop moving everytime.

my thoughts are that if you change missles to full beam weapons then you can't shoot them down with point defense.

Going back to my other idea of making the graphic longer to include a smoke trail... does anyone know exactly what the width of a graphic file SEV will accept?

SEV, more than a feeling.

I've tinkered with the file sizes, the only rule I think you have to obey is the square pixel one, I've used a 512x512 bitmap for an effect it it worked, I assume you could go higher as long as you keep it square and in factors of 256.

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