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[WxTech]

I finally got around to looking at Rocket.class. Sure enough, the code dealing with those two smokes, for motor start and the long-duration tile (2D trail type), was removed. I just grabbed the necessary lines from the 4.12 class and inserted them into the BAT version. Just tested, and all are present now.

The Start smoke, in my estimation, is very worthy to retain. Because one can have a denser smoke cloud during the initial acceleration, before the rocket gets up to a high velocity.

The tile smoke, as currently implemented, seems to be generated for as long the rocket is in flight. If this cannot be altered, it would in some or many cases certainly be unrealistic. The simple workaround is to disable this smoke for those individual rockets, in their classfiles, by setting the tile smoke effect to "null". But then, of course, the filling factor provided by this tile smoke is lost.

In order to not require a very large number of particles for 3D smoke trails, I like the filling factor of the low-resource-consumption 2D smoke buried within. It much reduces the otherwise obvious space between 3D smoke particles. I do this for my plane damage smokes, which also permits a long smoke trail at low cost and which also can fade out rather more gradually.

So, the choices are:

Do I keep the tile smoke for all rockets?
Do I drop the tile smoke altogether?
Do I alter those rocket classes which do not have a long-duration smoke exhaust?
Do I look into changing the .eff assigned to the tile smoke to use particles instead of tiles, and to see if the duration can be made the same as for the existing 3D smoke effect? (This would permit to fill in gaps by use of a different rate of particle emission.)

Any input would be appreciated. Indeed, a list of WW2 rockets which emit smoke for many seconds, or for the duration of their flight, would be most handy.

Cheers,!

Glenn

[WxTech]

Just did some digging and experimenting.

The Rocket.class Java, (this class is the parent to individual rockets), specifies both the 3D and 2D smokes to be emitted continuously. In this arrangement, the 2D trail will be created as long as the rocket is in flight., The 3D smoke duration is up to the effect designer. To most directly control smoke creation duration, the ratio between the rate of particle creation and the total number of particles to create is determined. For instance, if particles are venerated at the rate of 150 per second, and the total number is set to 300, the particles are made for the first 2 seconds after motor ignition.

In the stock 4.12 effect for this smoke, it was made to have smoke created as long as the rocket was in flight. In BAT it seems to have been made to have smoke be created for a bit less than 1 second.

Now, not all rockets will generate smoke for the same length of time. If this effect is to have smoke creation terminate after some period following motor ignition, what would be a good, or characteristic average?


I did make the 2D trail type smoke into a particle based effect, to get the same 3D aspect as for the 'main' smoke. I made the particles 50% larger, with more directional dispersion upon emission, and a a generation rate of an odd multiple of that for the 'main smoke. That is, I made it to be a larger envelope that helped to fill gaps. Moreover, I made the 'main smoke (the smaller core) a bit yellowish, and the new smoke a bit bluish. The color contrast is very subtle, but adds variety. It works pretty well.

[SAS~Storebror]

Glenn please if you touch the "Rocket" class, start with the source file we have on our Assembla SVN repository.
Rocket.java is part of EngineMod, and EngineMod is just being revamped to a completely overhauled BAT specific version.
If you decompile the existing Rocket.java and start working on it, you'll most likely see your changes vanish into void later on as "we" (the BAT devs) are working on a completely different, solid source base.


Mike

[WxTech]

Mike,
Thanks for the heads up! Where do I locate this repository? I've not seen it mentioned or otherwise stumbled upon it.

Given that the numerous rocket classes themselves set the use of these two BAT-disabled smokes, would the team consider re-activating them in the updated Rocket.class? (The 4.12 code would serve to remind how it used be.)

Glenn