NOTE: Sep 24, 2021: This has been superseded by v1.2, available here, in this thread:https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,67409.0.htmlNote: Based on the fairly numerous queries for clarification over in the thread for the BAT version of this mod, I decided to make life a bit easier for everyone. I'm now offering this mod as two discrete versions. Here's the one for non-BAT games of version 4.12 (and hopefully later.)
If you've already installed the BAT version, and adapted it for your non-BAT game as instructed, you may wish to delete it and install this version instead. I've now added the BigShipGeneric classes for 4.12, which ensure that you'll have a proper execution of those effects changes and additions I've made for ships.
And I've tailored the folder/file structure so that you don't need to do any of your own moving of classfiles. (You will still need to delete or disable certain files/folders, as before, if you don't like my tracers and/or clouds.)
And the instructions/notes, repeated below, have been appropriately tailored.
Get it here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/tkexaucl4y1zozd/WxTech_Effects_v1.1_for_4.12.7z/fileFrom the included readme file:
WxTech's effects pack for 4.12.2 (and perhaps later versions), v1.1.
V1.0 was released Apr 25, 2021.
This is an ongoing work in progress, but it is very comprehensive in its being in a largely satisfactory state by my measure. Effects have a profound impact on the dynamicism and immersion for a combat sim. This project is really a years-long effort that has undergone almost continual evolution. I've striven to keep particle counts reasonable, so as to not badly impact frame rates and to allow lots of effects to be drawn. I highly recommend to use Effects=1 instead of Effects=2 in conf.ini. My smoke textures for the most part have some amount of tonal and color variety in the texture, which gives them a hint of lighting difference that can obviate the resource-stealing calculation of lighting/shadowing upon all those particles as imposed by Effects=2. And this will hugely reduce any instances of particles flickering to boot.
While most everything in the 3do/Effects and Effects folders have been worked over by at least a fair degree, some elements have only had a cursory or no treatment thus far. The emphasis could be said to be focused more to WW2 scenarios, as I fly exclusively WW2 scenarios. Being an adaption from my B.A.T. Effects project, there may be some effects and classfiles present that will be ignored by your game if not invoked by any classes. The few effects dealing exclusively with the more modern jets has not been altered by me, as I can't test them.
My prior mods that are now incorporated here, and thus superseded:
- Effects mod v1.0 (obviously)
- Lightning
- Tracers and tracer smokes (based upon PAL's work)
I've included all effects and files that I could extract. If not complete, it must be 98.5% there. In this way other folk who would like to apply some of their own changes have available at least the very great majority of the material to work with.
In a nutshell, the game aspects more prominently affected by this comprehensive effects mod are:
- Damage fire and smokes, and explosions in air or on land or water for planes.
- Plane damage smoke consistency of behavior, and quicker slowing down in the slipstream.
- Smoke behavior for all ground- and water-based objects and vehicles that suggests a wind carrying them along.
- Fuel-carrying vehicles and tanks have better fireballs.
- Explosions, bullet hits and plane crashes against water have longer-lasting disturbed patches.
- Bomb hits on ships must now explode much nearer to the water in order to make a water geyser (silly to have a bomb explode against a CV flight deck and make a water geyser!).
- Larger bomb/rocket hits against ships and bridges produce a pattern of shrapnel splashes.
- Aircraft gun tracer smokes have 3 intensities randomly selected from, for variety, and are made less obvious at night.
- Gun muzzle flashes are much more realistic and dynamic.
- Lightning flashes and illumination in "Thunder" weather are greatly improved.
- The illumination of surroundings by explosions is notably toned down, and generally made of shorter duration.
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To install, I recommend a manual drag/drop, or copy/paste.
(1) Inside the #SAS folder are 6 other folders. Place them all into your game's #SAS folder (or wherever your mods go).
(2) If you've not done so yet, install into your game the New Train Mod, available here:
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,40779.0.htmlIt's *highly* recommended--indeed, necessary to enjoy the better train smokes and behavior!
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Make sure all these folders appear above any effects mods, weapons mods, and the NEW Train Mod (you just installed
). If you have to, rename folders accordingly in order to achieve this. Mods listed above others are the ones read first and used.
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If after a while you've decided on which of the content contained in the additional 5 folders you wish to keep, you can simply move all the files contained in all those folders into the one main folder:
!0_WxTech_Effects_v1.1
Then the now superfluous folders can be jettisoned, tidying things up and obviating having to keep track of multiple folders. I separated this stuff out so as to make it easier to identify and handle that stuff you may or may not want in the long (or short) term.
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I've made a large number of changes and additions, as well as a few trimmings, to Explosions.class. Its classfiles are located in this folder, which hereafter I will call the [MAIN EFFECTS MOD] folder (which contains a TON of files!):
!0_WxTech_Effects_v1.1
These are the 9 class files for Explosions.class (there used to be 15 files, but I discarded the MyDataForSmoke method):
15E1127AE68FA29C
32E5D3D88A48E082
72DCDDF4D2AD25E8
925C70BA4FFD5BB8
A7E6F57A31D0D0A4
B13925F2D613408C
DF2E6CCEA14288D6
DF60469CAA814682
EE4B63FC7A3AE93E
Explosions.java is included, so that all my notations are preserved. I've put in methods appearing in Gurner's FX 4.3, but not currently active, hopefully to be incorporated in future.
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New for v1.1: AircraftState.class controls numerous aspects specific to aircraft operation, and its classfiles are located in the [MAIN EFFECTS MOD] folder. For example, the state of damage, and the related effects for fire and smoke, for engines and fuel tanks is set here. As well as the color and intensity of the illumination for nav and landing lights. Plus a LOT of other stuff!
AircraftState.class comprises these two files (compiled 2021-04-30 1:30 AM):
562CFC148AD509E2
B27261D242F3990A
They are located with the Explosions.class files. The AircraftState.java file is included.
The changes to this class:
- Addition of a height check, so that engine and tank damage effects for the slow speed threshold of 10 m/s (where normally the crate would be on the ground), are not invoked unless the plane is within 15m of the surface. (Formerly these GND effects could be invoked at any altitude, such as during a zoom climb stall, which looked odd because of the very different appearance and behavior.)
- Added new effects for the engine explosion method, which formerly were the same ones used for the tank explode effects.
- Toned down the illumination of the nav and landing lights, so that the plane is not so brightly lit up by them (particularly the nav lights!), and tweaked the colors a bit.
- Added a new effect; 3do\Effects\Aircraft\EngineBlackHeavySPD.eff (to be used instead of the 'recycled' BlackHeavySPD, which is for tank damage).
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New for v1.1: I've included my lightning mod, with its classfiles located in the [MAIN EFFECTS MOD] folder. It makes a longer bolt that extends some distance up into the clouds. The ground and cloud illumination is handled in a scaled manner based on time of day. If you've already installed this mod as released separately, you may delete that old version; this is the very same. The Zip.java file is included.
The 6 Zip.class files (compiled 2020-09-03 3:00 AM)are:
4C8081F057BF1BDA
8E8F3AF2A3EBEB62
91B71E38629A7D70
9174A3BAA9F8138E
801820A8BAF8822C
854903640794C270
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New for v1.1: I include my tweaks to PAL's tracer and tracer smoke mod, in its own folder named:
!0_WxTech_tweak_PAL_SmokeTrails
The readme file in that folder explains what it does, and what additions to make in tour conf.ini [Mods] section. If you installed this when released separately, you may delete that older one; this is identical, and all the related .eff, .mat and .tga files are present in the [MAIN EFFECTS MOD] folder. If you don't like it, delete this folder or rename it with a preceding "-" character.
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New for v1.1: I include the BigShipGeneric.class files, in its own folder given an obvious name. In that folder's readme are some potential warnings. If ship related issues crop up, delete or rename this folder with a preceding "-" character.
The changes to this class:
- Increased the duration of fire and smoke effects for destroyed ship guns.
- Altered the bow wave from an expanding 'V' to a constant-width side slpash, in 4 sizes based essentially on the ship turn radius.
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New for v1.1: I include some of the classfiles for the New Train Mod (which you are highly encouraged to install). The changes to these classes:
- Where formerly certain wagons would destroy themselves like a chain of firecrackers just because one of their neighbor got destroyed, now they cannot blow themselves up in this silly manner.
- Where fire and smoke from destroyed wagons would often issue forth from the couplers (!?), now these effects are more sensibly located mid-car. And the smokes are directed upward instead of horizontally.
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The various effects tweaks are too numerous to mention in their entirety. Worth pointing out are the main new effects and more important changes which have been added:
- Separated out the bullet hits on aircraft for MG and HMG rounds (formerly bundled together). (Note that hit effects are based on the Power value in the weapon class, and for a given weapon the Power can differ between rounds on the belt.)
- Plane crashes on land don't come off like a 250kg bomb explosion any more, but instead make a less violent firefall.
- Plane crashes into water will randomly result in smoky fireballs, and sometimes flames on the water with smoke columns for a short while. But no more high water columns shared with Bomb250 explosions.
- Bomb250 and larger explosions against watercraft and bridges will result in a pattern of water splashes to simulate shrapnel.
- Where until now bomb hits against watercraft too often still made water geysers, now the bombs must detonate much nearer to the water in order to do so. No more hits on CV flight decks creating a tall water geyser.
- Ordnance bursts in water will result in longer-lasting disturbed patches (as will plane crashes, and bullet/cannon hits.)
- Added additional methods so as to be able to specify bomb explosion effects against objects by bomb size (from 10kg class to 1000kg class).
- Includes Mike Storbror's flak illumination mod (because it involves Explosions.class), but notably toned down so that clouds and ground don't light up like a thunderstorm.
- Explosions don't light up the surroundings so powerfully nor for so long, generally. (Crazy to have a 250kg bomb explosion light up one's cockpit from a kilometer or more away on a sunny day.)
Due to the relatively limited number of 'general purpose' smokes that can be placed on maps, you might find notable differences from older smokes in some missions. This an area in which tighter streamlining can be done.
In this iteration I've applied to essentially all ground/water-based object and vehicle smokes a Wind factor of 10 in the various .mat files, altered from the value of 15 in v1.0. And in the relevant class files I've oriented the particle emit vector to vertical. This has allowed to give the longer lasting smoke columns a behavior more resembling reality when a wind carries them along.
NEW for v1.1: Other general tweaks:
- Added a bit more variety to explosions of bombs and rockets against the ground.
- Added completely new textures for gun muzzle flashes.
- For MGun and Cannon classes having entries of zero Power values for some rounds in the belt, a new substitute value of 0.0011 has been inserted. This is the lowest Power value, the important fact being that it's no longer zero, which formerly had what I coinsider undesirable (silly, actually) consequences. Now all hits against water will leave disturbed patches. And there will be some probability of these formerly zero-Power rounds now creating hit flashes and smokes against planes.
- Reduced the Wind value for ground based smokes from 15 (meters/second) in my v1.0 release to 10. This is a better, more stately speed, which moreover suffers less from large changes in speed.
- Applied a wide ranging overhaul to the damage effect hooks for vehicles and objects, for the control of longer-lasting smokes, making them be emitted vertically instead of the all too common horizontally. This has permitted the application of a uniform scheme to get these smokes behaving more like they do in reality.
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Knowing that not all players share the same tastes, I realize that at least some of you will not like my simple treatment of tracers, probably preferring that good old favorite, the Guncam Tracers. If mine are too boring:
Ensure your preferred tracer mod lies above the [MAIN EFFECTS FOLDER]. If your preferred mod deals ONLY with the tracers, and NOT the tracer smokes, and moreover also contains the colored tracer textures to go with it, this should be fine, and you're done. Skip the alternate scenario below.
If your tracer mod deals also with TRACER SMOKES, and you would like to retain MY improved tracer smokes:
(1) Make sure your preferred tracer mod lies below my [MAIN EFFECTS FOLDER].
(2) Delete or rename with a preceding "-" character the 12 folders starting with "7mm" and 20mm" inside of:
!0_WxTech_Effects_v1.1/3do/Effects/Tracers/
(2) Rename with a preceding "-" character the Textures folder located here:
!0_WxTech_Effects_v1.1/3do/Effects/Tracers/Textures
Additionally, my new, preferred clouds may seem to be too simple as well. If so, delete or rename with a preceding "-" character the Clouds folder, found here:
!0_WxTech_Effects_v1.1/Effects/Clouds
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I must put here a potential warning. My decompiler sometimes makes strange interpretations that outputs bad Java code. The BigShipsGeneric.class in particular is very worrisome in this respect. My fixes are best assumed to be suspect! If a Java coder should see any errors, or the player suffer any console errors, please let me know. And any assistance on the Java end would be very much appreciated!
As always with my mods, this work is free to use by anyone for any purpose, without restriction
WxTech
Apr 25, 2021 (v1.0)
Aug 14, 2021 (v1.1)
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Topic: WxTech's Effects Pack v1.1 for 4.12 (Read 4897 times)
