Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2015 6:43 pm Post subject:
V3 Missile and Bright Lights
Subject description: RA2 had, Ares doesn't
Originally, V3 missiles (both unupgraded and upgraded), and their variants (DRED missiles and Cruise missiles from the Boomer) create a white flash of light on impact.
The color of this flash could also originally be manipulated disabling one or more of the composited colors (Green, Red and Blue)
But with Ares, this is not the case.
Why? I havce actually looked into it.
In standard Red Alert, the "Bright=" tag works on the Warhead.
In Ares it has inexplicably moved to the weapons. I see no practical advantage in having done so...
(Since the brightness controls such as spotlight size and colors are STILL on the warhead)
But on the engine, there is a great disadvantage
As V3 doesn't use weapons when exploding, but merely deals "damage" with a "warhead", which extremely limits it
(see http://www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=36820 and here: www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=36815 for request of fixing this, as they cannot have attacheffects, radiation, etc.)
, the new system of "the bright setting is on the weapon" completely loses the capability of making a bright explosion on the V3 missile types.
This also affects other aspects of the game, for example superweapons
And also, it affects the Tesla charge animation (this, too, was bright "spark" light when charging a tesla coil in the original RA2; with Ares, it is no longer possible)
If you don't remember or don't believe what I am saying, I have taken care to do some screenshots and show how important this "bright" on animation is.
As I said, this also affects far more mechanics than the V3 missile.
This also affects superweapons such as (for example) the Psychic Dominator type, and the Weather Storm type (for example, with Ra2 type "warhead bright" you could have bright lighting impacts... with Ares type bright, you cannot, since they use no [weapontype])
These are the proofs it originally works. If you want, you can check yourself how in Ares mods, it doesn't.
Consider these are default illumination maps with no light effects active. In darker maps, the difference would be even more crucial.
I consider this a graphical bug.
The obvious solution would be to move back the Bright= tag functionality to the Warhead section.
The question is: Will be implemented?
I hope it is.
Thank you for listening and your time, and to Ares developers. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
[AlphaLightPart]
MaxEC=2
BehavesLike=Fire
AlphaImage=ImpactFlash ;add your alphaimage here
This way you can also adjust much better the size and strength of the light via the alphaimage and the visible duration via the particles MaxEC setting. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Thank you for replying.
But
That won't do it. It has a number of problems:
- Alphaimages don't have color.
The original flash may be white, but it can be customized by color supression.
Besides white, you can make them:
- Red
- Blue
- Green
- Cyan
- Magenta
- Yellow
Alphaimages don't have such color supression and are therefore invariable. IF I want a red glow for a Iron Curtain warhead, or a Magenta glow for a Mind Control one, it just can't be done with them.
It easily can with the original method.
- Alphaimages are a single frame.
The light impact in contrast evolves dynamically. It has potentially hundreds of stages, it grows on impact and then diminishes back in size. This is quite beautiful to my eyes too; at least as far as the limited RA2 visual effects go, it's the most advanced.
- Alphaimages tend to lag the game, specially if you continually spawn them with lots of weapons (they are designed to be static, and are large files in area)
The resource consumption of light flashes, while above average, is quite smaller per flash effect, and as mentioned, each flash is much more elaborate.
I really thing the Bright=yes tag should be moved back to being read at the warhead, which is where the light controls are still located anyways, and the original game had it there,
so having it at the weapon makes no sense because you still can't customize it from it's parameters anyways... plus it's limited in the ways I mentioned by being at the weapon. There might be a secret programming reason, but I find it doubtful. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea back then, but it actually wasn't. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2015 1:40 pm Post subject:
Re: V3 Missile and Bright Lights
NimoStar wrote:
In standard Red Alert, the "Bright=" tag works on the Warhead.
In Ares it has inexplicably moved to the weapons. I see no practical advantage in having done so...
(Since the brightness controls such as spotlight size and colors are STILL on the warhead)
I see no advantage in that either. But as this has never happened, everything is still alright... Bright= goes on the warhead, not on the weapon, as usual. Ares did not change this, and it should work as always.
NimoStar wrote:
But on the engine, there is a great disadvantage
As V3 doesn't use weapons when exploding, but merely deals "damage" with a "warhead", which extremely limits it
(see http://www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=36820 and here: www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=36815 for request of fixing this, as they cannot have attacheffects, radiation, etc.)
, the new system of "the bright setting is on the weapon" completely loses the capability of making a bright explosion on the V3 missile types.
That's more a feature request than a bugfix. The logic works as intended; it just could do better.
NimoStar wrote:
The obvious solution would be to move back the Bright= tag functionality to the Warhead section.
Consider it done.
NimoStar wrote:
The question is: Will be implemented?
I hope it is.
Thank you for listening and your time, and to Ares developers.
Thanks! I'll see what I can do. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
V3 Missile and Bright Lights
