An undocumented use

I was just playing around with a plugin, and i stumbled across an interesting thing. I had a weapon which faded to near black as soon as I fired it. After a few tests, I discovered that it was the fault of the Falloff field (the weapon had previously been a beam).

When used for a non-beam weapon, the Falloff field defines the how fast a weapon will fade out during approximately its last second of life. Lower numbers give slower fades (Railguns and Fusion Pulse Cannons use 2). Negative numbers seem to have no effect.

Also, the BeamLength field, if set to a positive number for a non-beam weapon, will make said weapon fade out instantly approximately one second from the end of its life. This is overridden by the Falloff field.

If this had this been mentioned before, I'm sorry.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 28 December 2004 - 09:19 PM

That's interesting, I always assumed it was the decay field that caused that effect.
When the shot fades out 1 second early can it still hit things?

Guy, on Dec 30 2004, 03:27 AM, said:

That's interesting, I always assumed it was the decay field that caused that effect.
When the shot fades out 1 second early can it still hit things?
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You didn't know this? I saw it a few weeks ago, but thought it had been discovered, and didn't even bother to play around with it, for brevity of time.

Yeah probably, but I either missed it or forgot. This stuff should be in Zacha's guides.

Edwards, on Dec 27 2004, 06:27 PM, said:

Negative numbers seem to have no effect.
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I was just reading a recent topic on EV Nova.net which was saying that a negative falloff causes the shot to fade in when it's fired rather than fade out when it dies.

Why yes, that does seem to be the case. I don't know why I didn't notice it earlier- perhaps there were some other fields, resources, or other conditions hiding the effect when I tested it. This could be useful, so thank you for pointing it out over here.

Oh, and I must say that I never expected to see this thread resurface.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 25 January 2006 - 10:27 PM

I'll have to play around with this...

(Posting so I don't forget)

Weepul 884, on Jan 26 2006, 01:11 AM, said:

I'll have to play around with this...

(Posting so I don't forget)
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Please do, I can think of one of us who'd like to fade in some weapons

...you're right! I'd forgotten, probably because it's also* possible (though more complex and less graphically smooth, yet more versatile) to do with submunitions.

...unless you're not talking about what I think you are.

*assumes this method works, of course.

This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 26 January 2006 - 10:40 AM

If only you could have both a positive and negative falloff. You could make a really cool recursive weapon.

Just fade in, submunition, and fade out, right?

Shot 1: negative FallOff, submunitions to
Shot 2: positive FallOff.

That would look cool.