[Obsolete] SS2 Vurt's Mods

[67b5080f26139ZylonBane]

Regarding lighting glows, it's probably impossible to get a consistently good-looking glow on the overhead omni lights due to their irregular shape and low luminance. However, I think the fluorescent tube lights would take glows really well. They're already pure white-- they look like they should be glowing.

On the other hand, the fake-HDR bloom that DDFix supports does a pretty good job of making them glow already.

[67b5080f26525vurt]

Yeah i don't know about the lightning, its problematic, i have it on hold for now.

Been doing explosions today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZMesxOb8UI

[67b5080f266d6Kolya]

BAM!

[67b5080f267e0ZylonBane]

Indeed. With an explosion animation like that it doesn't even need the expanding rings.

[67b5080f2690cvurt]

I disagree, the rings needs to be a lot bigger (to fit those massive explosions)

[67b5080f26a57ZylonBane]

Well, if you're wanting serious feedback at this point, I'd say the current explosion is wayyyy too big. But I think you know that.

Also, expanding spheres would look more realistic than rings. Heck, with tinking around in the gamesys, most of SS2's effects could be brought near to modern standards. Dark's particle system support is really quite impressive.

[67b5080f26bc6vurt]

yeah they're far too big, but it was also the only way to get the seal of approval from Michael Bay

i believe the particles could look a lot better if they used textures instead, only some seems to use textures - and when they do it looks stupid, like the fire. The blood and smoke for example uses just a one colored particle, doesnt look that hot... no idea how to make them use textures though.

[67b5080f26f6eRocketMan]

Excellent work.  Lots of potential here.  To really capture the effects of a blast and the subsequent fireball I highly recommend 1) making the rings into a sphere as zb said, 2) making the "blast" sphere animate/expand much faster, have a larger radius and carry almost no opacity (almost invisible) because pressure waves are simply distortions of air and should appear ghostly and 3) speed up the fireball animation a bit and reduce its radius but otherwise it's good.

[67b5080f27084ZylonBane]

A slow-dispersing dust cloud after explosions might be a nice touch too. Back in 1999 they were really chintzy with the particles, but today we can spew them all over the place without bogging things down.

[67b5080f2717evurt]

there's already a smoke particle effect, if it could be delayed it would look more realistic.

[67b5080f272c1ZylonBane]

I'm thinking a big choking cloud of dust like in a modern FPS. You'd need to change the smoke particle from a single-colored disc to a nice smoke texture, then make them bigger and a lot more of them, and have them fade out over 2 or 3 seconds.

I'll have to play some Half-Life 2 tonight. Brush up on my boom-ology.

[67b5080f27406Kolya]

Vurt, I see that you haven't added the space mods because they are too big. Actually they are not too big, the limit is 30 MB, but the same 30 MB limit applies to all attachments in one post counted together. (I know the forum message isn't exactly clear on that.) After recompression on 7zip's ultra setting these two mods only take up 20.5 MB together.

[67b5080f2753evurt]

Ah ok, good to know. So 7zip is better than RAR, didnt know that.

ZB: Sounds like it would be a nice effect, haven't got any experience with particle effects though. How would i change the particle effect into a texture?

[67b5080f27699hemebond]

Earth loses its dystopian feel with trees. Reminds me of Deus Ex. Maybe dead trees would look better?

Some great work there vurt.

Kolya! WTF is with that title under my name?!

[67b5080f27791Kolya]

Hello Hemebond!
It's a line you can edit yourself in your Forum Profile (under "Personal Text"). If you didn't put it there, one of the mods must have played a trick on you. Wasn't me.

[67b5080f27a6dZylonBane]

What's dystopian about Happy Noodle?

Trees above ground are fine. It's down in a subway station that they look out of place.

ZB: Sounds like it would be a nice effect, haven't got any experience with particle effects though. How would i change the particle effect into a texture?

That requires modifying the gamesys to set the particle type to "scaled  bitmap". I haven't actually messed around with particle systems in Dark much beyond modifying existing setups. Implementing the sort of thing I've been describing would require adding new particle spawns.

[67b5080f27b75vurt]

I think i'll start off by remaking the textures for the explosions, then later on i might do something more to it.

[67b5080f27d10voodoo47]

ran through the earth training today, and noticed that the earth space could use a new texture as well:

Image: http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7820/earthtraining.jpg

pretty please?

[67b5080f27ddeZylonBane]

That IS a new texture.

[67b5080f27ec7voodoo47]

oops. sorry.


aanyway, I still would not mind a 2048*2048 png that would match with vurt's hires space..

[67b5080f27fa2povuholo]

Vurt! So nice to see you here! Looking forward to playing SS2 with some of your stuff.

[67b5080f280b1vurt]

Hey povuholo

voodoo: i'll make a new one if you find me the name of the texture, deal? 

[67b5080f281efvoodoo47]

it's statione.pcx-actually, I have made a lame hackjob version myself, using your hires space (skye.tga) as a base and pasting in a random image of earth I googled up:

Image: http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/2849/lamesky.jpg

[67b5080f282fbvurt]

looks decent, could use some blue hue coming off (atmosphere). what are those stars, looks like it uses a particle effect, they're on the window too, looks odd.

edit: statione.pcx?? where did you find that one, i have shtup and most of the original .crf's unpacked into a folder so i can search for textures easily.. it doesnt find a texture called that.