Missile trails anyone? |
Wouldn't it be nice if Malfador implemented missile trails for missile weapons in the next patch? Right now there's no distinction if a weapon being fired is a missile or direct fire weapon, they behave pretty much the same except that the missile tracks its target and are fired on by point defense.
Nothing fancy, just a bitmap or something that shows the smoke coming out of the missile and slowly dissipating like the animations used in the game right now, and maybe even a simple "whoosh" sound? It'll help a lot in the game's immersion don't you think?
Anyway.... just something the developers might want to consider once they've ironed out the essential stuff. 
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Missile trails would look nice *if* the missiles didn't all follow, essentially, the exact same course as all other missiles fired in a single salvo.
Just a trail on the missile effect wouldn't cut it. The missiles would have to be launched and travel in a decent looking pattern to make the trails more interesting than a single bee line.
On top of that, if you did have a buncha missile trails rendered on top of one another, you'd eventually just have a solid line of "smoke", even if a single missiles smoke trail looked decent. It'd look terrible without giving the missiles some sort of firing and homing pattern.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Just a trail on the missile effect wouldn't cut it. The missiles would have to be launched and travel in a decent looking pattern to make the trails more interesting than a single bee line.
On top of that, if you did have a buncha missile trails rendered on top of one another, you'd eventually just have a solid line of "smoke", even if a single missiles smoke trail looked decent. It'd look terrible without giving the missiles some sort of firing and homing pattern.
I guess you're right. but that can be corrected. If ever Malfador considers adding missile trails, I'm sure he'd be able to implement it decently. Plus the "whoosh!" sound! We wan't the "whoosh"! sound! Realism arguments aside, it'll help make combat more energetic and violent.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
You can easily mod in missile smoke trails and "whoosh" sounds yourself; there is no need to wait for Malfador to do it. Start with the smoke trail effect for damaged ships, and go from there.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Fyron: That sounds great! Alas, I don't know where to begin 
. I don't know which files to alter and if the same smoke trail effect for damaged ships can be applied to missiles.
Anyway I'll check it out. Thanks!
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Re: Missile trails anyone?
BitmapEffects_SpaceCombat.txt contains missile effects (5817). It also contains the aforementioned smoke effects (line 1402). Each weapon in Components.txt references a combat effect (two actually, one for space and one for ground):
Weapon Space Display Effect Name := Missile 9
There doesn't seem to be any clear way to refer to two separate bitmap effects from a weapon, or to have a particular bitmap effect read two different bitmap files. As such, you might have to create a new bitmap effect file, with combined frames for the missile and the smoke.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
I've played around with smoke trails a while ago, basically it was just a bee line. I persued it for a while, I think fayrons right, I could be perfected by modding. I seem to remember there being something about the timming. Like the missle image reappered at the start or something like that.
SEV, more than a feeling.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
The bitmap file for Missile 9 for capital ship missiles is Missiles_03.bmp.
I tried editing the bmp file by adding smoke at the end of the missile, but whenever I try to run the simulator... I get a data stream error or something.
I'm sure it is the bmp file because when I put back the original file, the simulator starts up normally. Oh I'm trying to do this in BM 1.09 and I edited the stock bmp in Picture/effects. Moving around the files doesn't remove the error. Any ideas?
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Did you save it in Photoshop? If so, make sure to select the OS/2 file format, rather than Windows. SE5's graphics library doesn't care for whatever extraneous bits PS bloats the files with.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Fyron: Aha! That worked . Here's the initial result.
I labeled the three pics "instance 1,2 and 3". They all represent a different frame (there are 4 by default) of the animation. The animation I get is sufficiently convincing of a smoke trail, albeit a small one since I used the same width occupied by the original bitmap. With extensive editing of the bmp files and the BitmapEffects_SpaceCombat.txt file, we can have glowing-looking missiles, or missiles with really long trails.
Unfortunately, all that is possible is a straight animation using this method .
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Oh wow that's cool! Can someone upload this as a mod file? Nice work gentlemen! I love it. That's really really slick!
Edit: So before there wasnt any trail at all, huh? Nothing?
Re: Missile trails anyone?
The other thing that I remember when I messed around with this is that the missle smoke graphic behaved like a beam. In that It's source (the firing port from the attacking ship) moved along with the ship. What it should do is that the smoke trail should be left behind the missle and stay there until is disapates. and the firing ship should move away from the spot where it fired the shot. So as of right now the smoke trail looks like a visually complex beam weapon.
SEV, more than a feeling.
Re: Missile trails anyone?
You could always make the animation frames wider, to get a bigger smoke trail..
Re: Missile trails anyone?
Ideally, you're right. The smoke should stay in place where the missile passed until it dissipates. However, I don't see how I can "attach" a smoke animation with the missiles . There's no line for it in the components txt file.
I, for one, will be satisfied if the missiles at least looked like missiles (with the burn of the propulsion system raging behind, maybe some smoke), even if there wasn't a persistent trail. This is doable by editing the bitmaps. In stock, the missiles didn't have an animation! Other than that, I don't yet see how a persistent smoke trail can be implemented. Well... something is better than nothing, no?
Re: Missile trails anyone?
I've had that exact same thought before. Missile trails would look quite nice in combat (and don't tell me what smoke *ought* to look like in space - I don't want to know).