Hello, everyone! My name is Steppenwolf and I'd like to present to you my LowerParticleEffects mod. I'm calling it LowerParticleEffects because my intention was to design an effects mod using the minimum number of particles while still trying to maintain an immersive and unique look.
LowerParticleEffects is based mostly upon the textures and code of the seminal Plutonium mod. Additional textures were borrowed from CinemaFX, Battle-Sights, and Effects of circles mods. Battle-Sights also provided the code for the extended rocket trails.
This mod was tested on, and intended for, a 4.09m/UP2.01 install only with effects=0. Effects=1 will still work fine, but your effects will have ground shadows. Generating ground shadows will be a little bit more demanding on your system that's all. Try an fps test to see which setting in your conf(effects=0/effects=1) works better on your computer.
***CONFLICTS***
Any mod(or mod pack) that has the class file 8CFCD632574D5B72(Extended rocket smoke trail for LowerParticleEffects). So any mod that has missiles or side winders that use 8CFCD632574D5B72 class file will most likely crash your game when used along side LowerParticleEffects mod.
What this mod changes:
Aircraft damage smoke(3d)
Aircraft full throttle exhaust(3d)
Aircraft high altitude contrails(2d)
Wingtip stall smoke trails(2d)
Aircraft/ground ballistic impacts and shrapnel
Ground/water explosions
Destroyed vehicle/structure smokes and fires
Full Mission Builder smokes and fires
Ships smoke, gunfire, and damage smoke
Flaks
Rocket/guided rocket smoke
V-1 and V-2 rocket effects
Napalm
Tank dust***tanks no longer create dust while other vehicles don't***
Train smoke ***Disabled train smoke entirely!*** Train smoke is partially rendered/visible when either a fuel truck or static aircraft is destroyed, so it was disabled to save resources. If you want train smoke back just overwrite "SmokeBlack_Locomotive" with whatever substitute you have. File path is Effects/Smokes. With that said, I should probably clarify that ANY file swapping could impair the performance of this mod!
To install:
Just drop the extracted LowerParticleEffects folder into your 'MODS' folder and rename it to whatever will give it loading priority over other, possibly conflicting, effects mods.
Example: _00_LowerParticleEffects
See also: "Using Mods Tutorials" at this site(sas1946).
A very special thank you to:
1C
Carmaster
HolyGrail
Potenz
Sani
SAS
SAS~CirX
Slikk
Socorrista22198
and Wolfighter
Please inform me of any bugs that you might experience with this mod and I'll do my best to fix them.
Best wishes,
Steppenwolf
Here's a preview video of LowerParticleEffects:
Download it here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?ggp7blkv8vc9l51VERSION 2Preview video of LowerParticleEffectsV2:
Download LowerParticleEffectsV2 here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?h0n63zfjdvuxou1VERSION 2.1This version adds a faster shock wave to the explosions, also a reduced water ring effect(I saw a nice FPS increase here.), and a slightly larger flash effect on aircraft to help with sighting shots at medium to long distances. I also tweaked a few colors on things, but other than that the bulk of this is identical to V2. Most of the changes are very minor, but I thought I'd share it anyway.
Short preview video of the additions in LowerParticleEffectsV2.1:
Download LowerParticleEffectsV2.1 here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?eh37c1ywz46crc5VERSION 3In this version I tried to compensate for the low particles in contrails by slightly increasing the overall effect sizes. I think this has helped to somewhat minimize the 'beads on a string' look to damage smokes. Also new to this version is:
darker ejected shells and animations
muzzle flashes/smokes for planes and vehicles
disables tracer smoke trails for AA(unfortunately this includes some 20mm equiped aircraft)
disables armor main gun smoke trail
and tweaking of other effects
I have also included HG & P's ricochet/2D smoke trail code for .50s, with the smoke parts tweaked by me. Aircraft tracer smoke is now very faint. This is my remedy for the squaring off of the effect by the windscreen. This mod is still only intended for and tested on a 4.09m/UP2.01 install. This mod does NOT change tracers.
Here is a short preview video.
Download here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?v4ii75dozvlkkhm