I know EVN has particle effects for weapons trails, but it occured to me----is there any easy way to make a ship's engine leave a similar particle trail?
I haven't seen any setting to that effect, but there are a few "unused" fields which may be undocumented features. I figured it was worth asking.
You could hack it with an engine glow that looks like particles, but it wouldn't be pretty. Actually, it might be very pretty. Just crude and perhaps slow if large graphics are used. If a "weapon" based engine is used (negative recoil for forward, positive for backward, and x=+/-1 firing locations with -90 inaccuracy and a quick fuse and impact for side-to-side strafing if desired) then a straight-up particle trail/hit particle system could be used, but the AI wouldn't know what to do. It would work for the player's ship though, with a modest learning curve to figure out that the up-arrow does nothing and the "engine" weapon has to be fired to accelerate. Otherwise, I don't believe this functionality is supported by the game. Of course, I could be wrong.
It would also be possible to create a PD weapon that has no speed (and a long-range invisible sub-munition) and produces particles. You'd need to make sure that there is always a ship in the system that is an enemy to everyone and is vulnerable to point defense, but it would work. Unfortunately, this would also have some side-effects on the behaviour of the AI (possibly as bad as every ship in the system attacking the "target" ship), so it might not be a good idea.
And "Unused" fields are just that, unused. In most cases they are simply spacers at the end of the resource to round it out to an even size, but in some cases (most notably in weapon guidance options) they are actual features that have been removed from the game since earlier versions. In neither case does putting a number in them have any effect.
Edwards
@edwards, on May 25 2006, 05:00 PM, said in Engine trail?:
It would also be possible to create a PD weapon that has no speed (and a long-range invisible sub-munition) and produces particles. You'd need to make sure that there is always a ship in the system that is an enemy to everyone and is vulnerable to point defense, but it would work. Unfortunately, this would also have some side-effects on the behaviour of the AI (possibly as bad as every ship in the system attacking the "target" ship), so it might not be a good idea.
Actually, that might be perfect for my needs. I'm trying to simulate Reaver ships running without core containment. Everyone attacking them (or running from them) would be just about right.
@rmx256, on May 25 2006, 04:48 PM, said in Engine trail?:
For whatever reason, I can't get smoke trails from weaps to work at all. Hmmmm.
"Smoke trails" as in particles as in the stock EVN scenario, or "smoke trails" as in "SmokeSets," the big puffy cicn-based animations that show up in EVC and EVO (and their ports), but which aren't used in stock EVN?
@lindley, on May 25 2006, 12:13 PM, said in Engine trail?:
Actually, that might be perfect for my needs. I'm trying to simulate Reaver ships running without core containment. Everyone attacking them (or running from them) would be just about right.
What I'd meant by "target ship" was "the ship that triggers the point defense on the ship that has the sparking engines", but if you made the "ship with sparking engines" everyone's enemy, it should work quite well as long as any other ship in the system can be targeted by point defense weapons.
Edwards
@edwards, on May 25 2006, 01:00 PM, said in Engine trail?:
...but in some cases (most notably in weapon guidance options) they are actual features that have been removed from the game since earlier versions...
What kind of features?
I think that this could be achieved if you forced a player to "start engine" by firing a weapon (secondary, probably) that would be a (zero length, non-damaging, invisible) beam with a count of 32767, that constantly makes particles ( not hit particles, is that possible?). Then, it would stick around for a few thousand seconds, and make particles anywhere the player's ship went. Or make it primary, so at least the player (stupid AI that can choose which weapon to fire) will constantly have said particle trail going unless they don't fire anything for like 1000 seconds. You could try to make them have to use the thing to get them to start moving, so they are locked in place until they "start engine" (fire particle beam). This could be done with tractor beams, maybe. Again, more annoying düdes to work out.
Here's an idea: make a cloaked ship start on whatever planet the player is on, and tractor beam them (while cloaked), but give the "start engine" weapon enough power to kill the ship holding them there instantly (like 2 mass damage, skips shields, give the tractor ship 1 armor), but include a modified version of "longer battles" where all of the weapons do double mass damage and all of the ships have double armor, so there is no effect, but the tractor ship basically has nothing in terms of armor, so you can tone down (relitive to other stuff, which is the point) your tractor ship killer/particle maker so it is not helpful in battles.
This post has been edited by KedFiller : 25 May 2006 - 08:21 PM
Thats exactaly what I was thinking. I remember a thread about that. It was sopousto(I can't speel) damage the ship using the burner. As in it was boosting so hard that it was causing structural damage to the ships hull. I dont remember if it worked or not. One of the possible bugs with that method was that if your escorts were to close behind you and you decided you needed to burn, they would get crispy to say the least. But then again if the blast radius was small enough but had enough kick... hmmm... if they were going backwards and used the "burner" weap and the weapons speed wasen't high enough it would just propell you backwards even faster... I think I will look into this. Even tho I am still kinda a amature plug maker I might be able to make this work. But its late here and I have school in the morning so I will poke for a couple of minutes then again after school tomarow.
(Edit): Grrr. Evil spelling errors.
This post has been edited by WonderBoy : 25 May 2006 - 09:23 PM
Maybe I'm wrong, but won't PD weapons not fire until the target is in range? And if so how will it ever trigger if it has 0 speed, also known has 0 range? I wonder if it considers submunitions when firing as the AI doesn't when using weapons with submunitions that affect the range, they shoot only if the first weapon can hit even if the sub is in range. And if it's a beam won't it be totally ugly? I mean unless there's a way to make an invisible beam even a pure black beam will give hints of its presence at times.
@mumbling-psycho, on May 25 2006, 08:24 PM, said in Engine trail?:
I wonder if it considers submunitions when firing...
Yes, it does. That is why I specified that the particle weapon have a long-range submunition.
@mumbling-psycho, on May 25 2006, 08:24 PM, said in Engine trail?:
...as the AI doesn't when using weapons with submunitions that affect the range, they shoot only if the first weapon can hit even if the sub is in range.
That has never been my experience, except when one of the weapons has a different type (planet/not-planet). If it is the case in your copy of Nova, do Ravens ever use their Multi-torpedoes?
Edwards
The odd thing is that I was just wondering the same thing today and logged in and saw this thread. Wierd.
They do but they hardly use my plug's torpedoes. In case you were wondering, yes, I set their weapons so they should fire them, including ammos.
This post has been edited by Mumbling Psycho : 27 May 2006 - 08:50 AM
