Spring RTS Engine

The complosion would have to be something impressive, I'm thinking a giant explosion with a ring and bits flying here and there .

Anyhow, I don't know in what way I'm going to do plasma cannon explosions (thud/goliath/repaer/bulldog/guardian/punisher etc etc etc) or missiles/rockets (janus/merl/diplomat/dominator/etc/etc/etc).

This is what I have right now :

FX for small rockets (Karganeth/Rockoi/Storm use this) :



Just a small hue and ring on the ground, nothing uber.

Edit : Colour changed to something inbetween light red and salmon, flash size reduced by half.

Karganeth still uses the above explosion though.

In-Action :




Light arms (EMG : Flash/PW/Zipper, Light cannons : Stumpy/raider shots and thud/hammer shots) :



In-Action :



Again, nothing uber - a very simplistic effect.

StarFire rockets ( V-launch rockets basically, krog's/dominator's/merl's/diplomat's/shiva's - anything vLaunch) :



Janus Rockets :





Banisher Rocket :






What do you people think?


Oh and smoth :

Bizarre effect on the pyro :



I've tried down-sizing the TGA to 32x32 except it didn't make a difference at all (it's using burn.tga), this would be an incredibly neat effect if I could tone down "ball" :).

Oh and I'd appreciate textures that are for use with flamers.

If it is a particle emitted by script then there's probably a multiplicator which affects the size in the parameters to it to resize it. If it's not you should consider switching to particles instead of show/hide flare. You have more control over it then.

Hunter made a good point about the smoke, how it appears in front of the explosion graphic. It DOES take away from the effect/realism IMO (dont quote me about how TA isnt realistic anyway) - particularly in that janus screenshot you can see how it kinda messes things up...

Why do we need smoke anyway?

The smoke goes faster then you can see it in-game.

Screenshots don't do the FX justice really.

Oh and noize wants smoke on teh-bombers >____<.

Go convince him not to .

That smoke can be removed in under a minute anyway so it's no big deal. I quite like them how they are.

The Banisher effect is very nice. The Janus also.

However, unless I'm just mentally scaling it wrong, it seems to imply that the Banisher has a more powerful, but lower AoE effect? If this is not true, perhaps the amount of white-out for the Janus should be lowered?

The smoke, I would say, can go. Of course, I'll have to see the effects ingame, but I personally don't feel that smoke adds a lot, and it may take away from the overall visual effect.

Good job so far though.

That's like... FIRE WITHOUT SMOKE!

Forboding Angel wrote:

You have a bad habit of getting in the middle of discussions you know nothing about, sticking your foot in your mouth repeatedly, and then going off.

there is more irony contained in this quote than in anything else i've ever read.

Hunter at least contribute if you post something.

I have something for plasma..


Fox, is this something like you wanted for plasma?

Seems like it could be used for the heavier units.

Sure, if you can get a yellow one instead of green :).

I am about to head out for class but I can upload the thing later on. If that is what you want, then no problem.

Hmmm hunter DID make a good point about the smoke, they do look a little weird.
I like the new effects for the banisher, and the rockos too.
Personally Id like to see new effects but fairly low key, nothing too elaborate apart from the comm explosion.
I just watched a video of c&c 3, the effects were lovely but they were huge, and sooo bright, there was a big battle going on and it just looked like a total shit show, I could barely see the units ><

The thing is steve, depending on what angle you see the explosion from will determine whether or not the smoke shows up. The same explosion from different angles can show the smoke differently.

It is very agrivating.

It isn't like there is a lot to see in the units in Balanced Annihilation or other TA-derivative mods. The units are low-poly, limited in texture, often unoptimized, and have the same graphical characteristics that they had in the last decade when they were run on the TA engine. That said, I can see Steve's point about effects, because you still need to see you units to use them effectively. Remodelling BA is a discussion for another day, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Secondly, all of this discussion on the subject of effects and explosions is colored by manipulation of the cameras in Spring. There aren't a lot of RTS games which give you this level of control, so the explosions in Spring are subject to more possible interpretations by the camera and thus the eye than most RTS, while not as flexible as those in FPS games. So, the points about clipping are simple facts of the engine - you can't optimize the effects for all possible angles, they will clip or have artifacts from some view or other.

Smoke, as generated by the engine, is in my opinion a spice to be used very sparingly... it isn't particularly pretty and it eats up particle count. In reality, it does appear as you stated recently, hunterw, after the energy of the explosion is somewhat dispersed. However, Spring does not give us the flexibility to easily call a smoke effect at a precise time in the manner that would succeed a real explosion. I can accept that, because no other game engine does either.

Lastly, I am going to request that discussion is confined to graphical and balance issues from now on. Hunterw, Smoth, Forboding... I would prefer it if you did not wrestle for dominance over what is a discussion between approximate equals.

hmm, that sounds annoying, would it be best to remove the smoke then?
or maybe make it so there's a bit less?

BigSteve wrote:hmm, that sounds annoying, would it be best to remove the smoke then?
or maybe make it so there's a bit less?

I believe that there is a way to add a delay to the smoke, I can look into it but not tonight, I have a pile of homework to do. :\.

hunterw wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:

You have a bad habit of getting in the middle of discussions you know nothing about, sticking your foot in your mouth repeatedly, and then going off.

there is more irony contained in this quote than in anything else i've ever read.

This coming from the guy who tried to Copyright SMD...

let's not make this thread about hunter, it is about BA.

I think you could delay the smoke, ideally you could have it move upwards rapidly.. or remove it, lack of smoke works better in more futuristic games, although (I know people are all over the whole OHNOES RALISM!) real explosions do put out alot of smoke, and including some can add to the effects, you really need to tweak the effects, It does help to make darker explosion graphics and more of a red, because then the smoke will not obscure them as much and will also blur them slightly allowing a lightning effect..