Hello everyone!
I just figured how to do animated ships for Ares and was wondering if there was a way to do engine glows as well...

Any ideas for doing them?

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As far as I know, such a thing is not possible.

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Originally stated by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering:
Naturally the common people don't want war...but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along....All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Yes, it is impossible to create engine exhaust. There is no "Thrust Sequence" in Hera.

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A life without danger is no life at all. -Blood Eagle

I created missile thrust by making the missile create smoke/fire every tick on the active sequence. If you did the same with a ship, then it when it moved it would trail exhaust. The effect would not be very realistic however.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Without an alpha channel, you simply cannot get the same effect. However, it may be possible to create a thrust sprite via a couple of other objects - one which is periodically created dir/vel relative, and which has a weapon to fire at its parent ship if the parent ship moves further forward.

Note that most of my ideas are purely theoretical, and untested.

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

That would definately not work.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Well, thank you all anyway!
It may be possible as well to generate a direction relative but unmoving graphic under the ship: when the ship moves, the player would see the engine exhaust. I'll give that a try, too (FYI, I'm trying to do ship animations and engine glows in Ares because I'm porting the EVN ships to that wonderful strategy game in order to make a "Federation Vs Auroran Vs Polaris" plug where you are an admiral commanding a fleet).

On another subject: how does the "Set Destination" action work when it is set to reflexive?
This is becausse I want to create a ship with a "pointing beam" that guides it toward the closest ennemy. I figured that equipping the ship with an autotargeting beam that, whenever it hits an ennemy ship, sets it as the firing ship's destination may do the trick...

(Edit: fixed my creative, however uncorrect, grammar)
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(This message has been edited by AGDenton (edited 06-25-2002).)

Interesting idea, and also damned easy to do... don't bother with the engine glows. You're real problem will be finding a way to convert shields to armour and differentiate between the weapons damages in Nova and Ares. Ares, if you remember, doesn't have armour.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I have already found a way to differentiate shields and armor:
for each ship, there will be two versions: the "shields on" one, and the "shields down" one. When you kill the first, it is seamlessly replaced by the second. Each has different level keys: every weapon will have a Collide sequence which does different amount of damage to the target ship depending on its Level keys flags, so I will be able to specify the amount of damage done to the ship's shields and armor.

The shield-penetrating weapons are weapons that do HUGE shield damage- so they immediatly turn their target into the "shields down" variant- and a defined amount of armor damage.

I think that would work.

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Quote

Originally posted by AGDenton:
I have already found a way to differentiate shields and armor:
for each ship, there will be two versions: the "shields on" one, and the "shields down" one.

I don't think Reflexive SetDestinations will work here. I think you need an invisopulse that is only engaged by <ship with pointer's engage flags>, to be created whenever the beam collides.

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

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Originally posted by Joveia:
I tried that but it didn't work, I ended up concluding that an invisible ship doesn't transfer into another ship, and a normal ship just dies before it gets transferred. However, Mag Steelglass did this successfully with WITV, so you haven't mentioned how you do it, I think that you'll successfully do it if you use the other way (which I don't know..)

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Originally posted by Mag Steelglass:
**Eh, I did? I'll check on it and try to get back to you people sometime tomorrow.

**

Yes you did Mag. Don't deny it.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

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Originally posted by Joveia:
**I created missile thrust by making the missile create smoke/fire every tick on the active sequence. If you did the same with a ship, then it when it moved it would trail exhaust. The effect would not be very realistic however.

**

If you flew backward, the exaust would seem to be comming from the front of your ship also. Contrails for missiles are cool though...

~Belisarius

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