Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:00 am Post subject:
TS "Lightning" Laser
Apollo and I discussed this way back. But basically wondered if its doable to be able to reenable this tag in YR. In TS the Lightning from the Ion Storm was actually a distorted laser.
The suggestion is to basically allow this to be an optional effect for Lasers just like the Wide Beams. Since its a warped version of the normal laser I figured it might be also able to support the original LaserInnerColor,LaserOuterColor and LaserOuterSpread Tags.
I.E:
IsIonBolt=yes/no
IMO one of the easiest use for it would be to make more believable dissintegrator/death ray weapons or a more easy to understand... "Necron Gauss Weapons" _________________ ~ Excelsior ~ Last edited by Atomic_Noodles on Sun Mar 08, 2015 5:13 am; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
What is a lightning laser? I never heard of or seen this in TS.
Do you mean the ion storm bolt? If yes, this has no key and is only rendered by the engine during ion storms. There is no way to create an ion storm bolt via some ini key. Only via a map trigger Action on a certain waypoint.
The ion storm bolt is also only vertical, rendered from top down to ground. I doubt WW put any code into the bolt to make them work in any other direction than vertical downwards. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Ion Storm Bolt yes, its drawn by an laser if you look at it enough, you can tell.
I made blueprint of the suggestion awhile ago too to copy over the ion laser drawing code and frankly since it is drawn by laser process, it surely can fire other directions too than be limited to vertical. Existing normal laser and other processes can fire vertical similarly like even your soniczap test.
Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Location: LocationNotFoundException at RealLife.Location.find() at line: -1
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:44 am Post subject:
I think they already made a code for such once in RA2, but the comment says they removed it because of frame rates dropping.
Rulesmd.ini wrote:
;DrawBoltAsLaser=yes ; Not actually a laser, but draws electric parts as lasers (with blendy fancy stuff)
;The DrawBoltAsLaser flag has pretty serious frame rate problems right now.
; SJM: Um, worse than that, I've removed the code. Creating a LaserClass object for each of
; SJM: potentially hundreds of line segments will grind the game to a halt. Besides that,
; SJM: I've drastically modified the Laser code for the Prism effects and using it for the
; SJM: lightning would probably now have very strange, unanticipated effects. Sorry!
Wouldn't adding TS lightning style "lasers" cause this aswell? QUICK_EDIT
They don't cause any lag in TS. But on the other hand have the ion storm bolts much bigger segments/longer lines.
A tesla coil has much more tiny short lines.
@Apollo: to me that doesn't look like any usual laser drawing routine.
It has no usual inner line or outer glow and it doesn't seem to have any transparent parts.
If i would be a WW dev, i would have written a complete new and very small routine for them, for the sole purpose of creating and drawing the ion storm bolt.
It's a lot easier to set on each line segment endpoints
x=x+-Random(25) ;left/right
y=y+-Random(5)
Than using matrices and vectors to calculate a bolt that has random segments in a 3D world and thus works in all directions, while only 1 vertical direction is needed. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:06 pm Post subject:
It seems to be a laser code to me as well. What I see that the whole laser got whited out completely, the outer glow was turned to max so it merges with the laser effect itself (tho that does not tell why HouseLasers would break that logic, unless the HouseLaser renderer is practically this renderer without the breakpoints - I'd think of this with NPatch's LaserThickness being bugging out laser drawing code itself, NP LaserThickness=20 did have something similar by appearing as a housecolor line alone).
At some stages there is an inner line of grey (left laser 3rd break from top f.e) and it appears that bolt is even rendered in 3D completely, when even Tesla bolts use simply 2D (since Tesla is just being a noisy curve drawn between the two point) _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
I think they already made a code for such once in RA2, but the comment says they removed it because of frame rates dropping.
Rulesmd.ini wrote:
;DrawBoltAsLaser=yes ; Not actually a laser, but draws electric parts as lasers (with blendy fancy stuff)
;The DrawBoltAsLaser flag has pretty serious frame rate problems right now.
; SJM: Um, worse than that, I've removed the code. Creating a LaserClass object for each of
; SJM: potentially hundreds of line segments will grind the game to a halt. Besides that,
; SJM: I've drastically modified the Laser code for the Prism effects and using it for the
; SJM: lightning would probably now have very strange, unanticipated effects. Sorry!
Wouldn't adding TS lightning style "lasers" cause this aswell?
No, if you read the comment above (Plus the copied code would be separate anyways where fit), they tried use the laser to draw multiple small lines instead of single large one like TS Ion Storm bolt is so no wonder it did lag.
@LKO: You can see some of the ion storm bolt segment thru (vs the terrain) as partially transparent while majority is solid white, it isn't exact normal laser but applies very similar drawing concepts just with lots of turns and stuff. Besides Westwood devs were always lazy, they just adapted laser for the job with changes very seemingly. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Location: Moscow State University
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:46 pm Post subject:
Is that really needed? A nice animation will do.
Game wont display tiled animation if you move your view higher like a screen away, the same with very long anims.
This targeting laser is some 5000 pixels in length no lag at all. I bet rendering a super long lightning would behave well.
Joined: 09 Mar 2008 Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:06 pm Post subject:
A lot of things aren't *needed* as such... you can just use bolt-like shp animations in a weapon's firing anim to make tesla bolts (as Red Alert did it), so ElectricBolt is not *needed*, in a way. Same for lasers and flame weapons. Or sonic waves... etc etc
Everything has workarounds. But the good thing about Ares is that it adds more possibilities without having to rely on workarounds.
Sure, a detailed laser animation is nice, but I personally would love to see the IonBolt laser effect made available for weapons. Not to mention, each bolt draws differently, something that's not achievable by using a SHP animation. _________________
Mao Zedong wrote:
Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years.
Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Location: Moscow State University
Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:49 am Post subject:
engine draw is MORE limited. a random anim tag would be much more useful than any certain effect built in.
And I'd say some "more possibilities without workaround" is just limited to one use and just too stupid. If there is one good thing, it should be a feature that can be used on a lot of new stuff. _________________ Tired of grabbing my random SHP conversions? Why not learn to create SHPs for yourself? Last edited by kenosis on Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:00 am; edited 2 times in total QUICK_EDIT
you can just use bolt-like shp animations in a weapon's firing anim to make tesla bolts (as Red Alert did it), so ElectricBolt is not *needed*, in a way. Same for lasers and flame weapons. Or sonic waves... etc etc
Everything has workarounds.
Red Alert 1 also used a special hardcoded logic to draw the tesla bolts. It was not only a single big bolt SHP.
You can't use SHP anims for things like tesla bolts, lasers or sonic waves.
The varying range and 360° firing directions can not be compensated with only a fixed SHP anim on max 8 facings.
They want to use this as an effect from firer to target, not only as a vertical anim.
Instead of adding another special and limited logic, it would be better to enhance an existing logic like railguns.
If railgun particles would have a 32 facing firing information and could use the right SHP accordingly, many things could be simulated with the right railgun and particle settings.
With reduced particles and bigger facing specific SHP anims used instead, you also don't receive any lag, while the bigger SHP anims still make the whole railgun look like one connected stream.
Then you could use the random particle displacements to create a jagged laser beam. You just have to give each particle a 32 facing SHP of a laser line. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
@LKO: Yes facings for railgun shp would be more diverse thing, I tried develop a railgun shp laser (think horizontal ion cannon shp beam) but of course that not work well at all as railgun shp pixel has no facing logic to use for given art.
However as nice that would be, it might be asking more of AlexB to understand the railgun particle routine than old fashioned 'copy code and adapt' for ion bolt laser. QUICK_EDIT
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TS "Lightning" Laser
no lag at all. I bet rendering a super long lightning would behave well.
