Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[WxTech]

Stock handling of exploding tanks, artillery and cars/trucks is all the same; a common set of effects are shared by all. In Explosions.class I now give the "cars" (which includes non fuel carrying trucks)  their own dedicated effects (located in their own new folder.) So now these vehicles don't generate as prominent, or large a set of fire/smoke/dust upon destruction. (Cars/trucks already have separate long-lasting fire and smoke from those assigned to tanks/artillery.)

For fuel tanks, I've assigned new effects for those designated as "FuelSmall". Formerly, small and large fuel tanks shared the same effects, with the stock Explosions.class code sorta kinda accounting for size by using a weird bounding box algorithm based on object collision box size that causes an undesirable alteration to particle size for one of the effects (Boiling.eff.) I've jettisoned that bounding box routine altogether; its results are just too odd.

As for fuel tanks, which are 'House' type objects, the other 'House' objects named "Wood" and "Rock" were likewise formerly treated with this bounding box discriminator as a way to automatically scale at least one of the effects. But again, having got rid of the bounding box routine, for both Wood and Rock objects (which encompass all kinds of things like huts, buildings, trees, hangars, etc., etc.,) I've discriminated into two effects size classes (where in the stock implementation each type had just one effect group assigned.) This means that where the stock game had one folder of effects each for Fuel, Wood and Rock type objects,  now all three types have two folders of effects. This means more variety in the effects.

[WxTech]

I just added another element to the ammo explosion effect, that being a number of thin smoke trails from smoking debris blasted out at high velocity. Adds a nice bit of dynamicism.

I also added a small chance of this ammo explosion occurring for tanks, artillery and cars.

A question: What might be good percentages of the effect occurring for each of these three object types?

I provisionally lean toward 15% for tanks, 10% for artillery, and 5% for cars. Your thoughts?

Maybe I might look into adding some chance of this ammo explosion occurring with other objects (but not fuel type objects.) However, it could get tough to discriminate, for many objects of a wide range can share a common type, and for many it could be inappropriate to have them violently explode.

[WxTech]

After trying out the occasional explosions generated by destroyed tanks, artillery and cars, I quickly realized that an effect appropriate for a train wagon looks bad for these vehicles. And so I created a new set of effects, scaled down considerably in size. And the explosion power and range, which affects other nearby objects, was scaled down as well.

On top of that, I added a delay for the explosion to occur after vehicle destruction, ranging up to 5 seconds. As mentioned previously, the probability of such an explosion varies by vehicle type.

I now include stationary planes in this treatment as well.

It's neat to very occasionally have a vehicle go up in a bigger bang shortly after having got it burning. 

[SAS~tsisqua]

It's neat to very occasionally have a vehicle go up in a bigger bang shortly after having got it burning. 

I read that and got a little giddy. I totally agree.

[WxTech]

From the Black Death track, to illustrate the current state of development of the new vehicle explosion effect...

On the left are a group of trucks already burning from an earlier run by another plane.

On the right are a group of vehicles having just got pasted. One is a fuel truck whose initial fireball is present, and to its right is another vehicle that has just exploded after a couple or few seconds' delay. The explosion has released three high velocity particles leaving thin smoke trails.

[baggo]

Glen, would it also be possible to have odd random vehicles with larger fires to avoid a uniform same size blaze along the line of straffed vehicles,don’t know if this is possible, just a thought I had to pass on to you, marvellous work by the way, well impressed with it, many thanks .Kev.

[WxTech]

Baggo,
Good question. I already have variety implemented for furl truck effects, there being differing fireballs and long-lastng fire/smoke. One could introduce all manner of complexity and variety, but I'm not sure how far it's safe to go and still have no deleterious impact on performance for this old game engine. There must be a reason a lot of simplification and sharing of effects has been the norm.

But as to the sameness of fire/smoke for lines of the same type of vehicle, there is an easy solution.

Currently there exist these effects in two versions, one for 'cars' and the other for 'tanks'. It's simple to add a random chance of the other effect being used. For instance, one could have, say, 30%  or 50% of fire/smoke for 'tanks' assigned to cars, and the same thing done for 'car' effects given to tanks.

I'll do it!

[baggo]

Wonderful stuff Glen, many many thanks, Kev.

[WxTech]

Here's a screenie, from the BlackDeath track, after I added code to randomly select between two different fires and smokes. The larger fire is accompanied by a denser, longer-duration smoke.

[baggo]

looking very good that, definite improvement, many many thanks kev.

[WxTech]

I've just added illumination for fuel fires from 'house' type static objects, which glow as long as the fire is burning. Such as storage tanks and fuel drums. I've not invoked the flickering effect like we see for the campfire. Instead a steady light is seen. But for such large fires as these, any flicker is of a lesser quality than for small fires. And I figure the resource allocation is impacted less when the light is left steady.

I've not gone so far as to contemplate such illumination for other fires from buildings and such. That could get a bit crazy in computation.    I figure doing this for just the larger fuel type fires should be enough.

Here we have large fuel tanks burning in the background, with larger fire, smoke and illumination. In the foreground are smaller fuel drums, with smaller fire, smoke and illumination.

Thus far, such illumination is generated only in the time between shortly before sunset and shortly after sunrise. In daytime the illumination is subtle, and is well enough to ignore to save on whatever frame rate hit might result.

[WxTech]

A bit of minor tweaking to the cumulus clouds. As you can see, I don't tend to like too much of the extensive, largely translucent, raggedy bits all over the place.    It's tough to keep that in balance while trying to not have too much of the dense ball kind of smaller cloud.