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[asheshouse]

In most of the recent ship imports I have done I have not given much thought to ships turning radius, so there is no relationship of turning radius to ships size.
If necessary these could be amended. I presume the ship turning radius is defined by SliderDistance in the ships.ini file. So all ships can be amended by editing just the ships.ini file.

But surely the Bow wake is related to ship speed as much as anything else. After all, the wake separates from the ship as it leaves the bow so the length must be irrelevant.

[WxTech]

Stanislao,
The BigShipGeneric class folder can be disabled or deleted. As I stated, the only changes I made to this class were this bow wave alteration and the increase in duration for the fire/smoke for destroyed guns. Killing this class folder will restore the original bow wave and the length of time destroyed ships' guns burn and smoke.

Asheshouse,
Yes, it was the slider distance I took as a surrogate for size/turning radius. I know it's not ideal, but in the main there is a general correspondence between the ship width/size and the effe t selected from among the four different sized ones I created for the purpose.

If something more elegant can be done with little difficulty, that would be great.

But a better effect would have to be contrived. And that would involve something like a 2-part effect, where the first creates a curved initial splash pattern that dynamically widens, followed by the longer duration trail of constant-width.

I should have not bothered foisting this crude attempt upon others,  leaving ony the longer fire/smoke duration for destroyed guns.

I will be making available such shortly...

[vegetarian]

G'day WxTech,
I deleted the The BigShipGeneric class folder and the square bow wave still persisted, although not as pronounced. It appears that it may be due to one of the other mods outside this folder. I have found the only way to resolve the issue is to not install the effects pack - talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I think I will live with the square bow wave and not look too closely at it for all the other benefits of the mod, pending further investigation. This is in BAT4.1.2 and 4.1.3.
Cheers

Edit: The smaller square bow wave appears to be generated by one of the mods in the folder !0_WxTech_Effects_v1.2 [MAIN EFFECTS MOD] - I have no idea which one!

[WxTech]

veg (and all),
It turns out that the basic SideWave.eff file was edited as my first attempt at getting a nearer to fixed-width pattern, which is why you see the much smaller squared-off commencement. Until I re-issue the whole pack anew (I've been continuing to make further tweaks here and there), here's what you can do to get back to the original.

Right now in ..\3do\Effects\Tracers\SideWave.eff we have the following, where the old values are still present but 'commented out':

Code: [Select]

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TSmokeTrailParams
[General]
  LandComPlanar 1
  MatName SideWaveB.mat  //SideWave.mat
  Color0 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.5
  Color1 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.0
  nParticles 32
  FinishTime -1.0
;  LiveTime 5  //for original
  LiveTime 60
  TranspTransitionTime 0.0

;  SegmentLen 6  //for original
  SegmentLen 45
  MaxObjectVelocity 20

  Wind 0.0
;  Size 1 20  //1.0 60.0  //from 12X to 4X live time - for original
  Size 15 75
  Rnd 0.0

Alter it to get this:

Code: [Select]

[ClassInfo]
  ClassName TSmokeTrailParams
[General]
  LandComPlanar 1
  MatName SideWave.mat
  Color0 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.5
  Color1 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.0
  nParticles 32
  FinishTime -1.0
  LiveTime 5  //for original
  TranspTransitionTime 0.0

  SegmentLen 6  //for original
  MaxObjectVelocity 20

  Wind 0.0
  Size 1 20  //1.0 60.0  //from 12X to 4X live time - for original
  Rnd 0.0

About the size... This will control how wide is the V-shape. The values of "1 20" (texture starting at 1m across and finishing at 20m across) will make for a more gradual taper. If you increase the second number, the V-shape will spread more widely in a given interval of time. You can fiddle with other parameters as you see fit, to get the appearance you like. For instance, LiveTime plays a role in how far downstream the wave extends before fading away. And SegmentLen--the length in meters along the ship's axis--controls how compact or stretched out the texture.

That's the beauty of having all this stuff now at your fingertips. You don't have to rely on me anymore. Go nuts and release your inner artist! This is how I got started in modding--tweaking existing mods.

[Forager]

   WxTech,
    Thank you for all the time and effort you put in and thank you for giving it to us.
    Sometimes I think we, as users of material we have no idea how to produce, get a bit
    demanding and picky, so apologies.

    This: \3do\Effects\Tracers\ShipTrail\SideWave.eff got me to the section to remove the 3 ; comments.

Thanks again for your mods.

[cbradbury]

Thank you for this, Glenn - transforms the game. Although I also chose to remove the square bow wave...

[pied]

Glenn, a question about this amazing piece of work, I've been using DESPEREAUX's big ship fire and damage mods. Have those effects been incorporated into this package? If not do you know if they play nicely together....

Thanks for all of the impressive effects and modifications that you turn out! Who would have believed that an almost 20 year old sim would still have so much life!

Thanks, Pied

[WxTech]

Glenn, a question about this amazing piece of work, I've been using DESPEREAUX's big ship fire and damage mods. Have those effects been incorporated into this package? If not do you know if they play nicely together....

Thanks for all of the impressive effects and modifications that you turn out! Who would have believed that an almost 20 year old sim would still have so much life!

Thanks, Pied

Despereaux's ships' gun muzzle fire and smoke will not conflict with mine, because the very same effect file names are retained (as they're set in a class, which I've not altered in this respect.)

To use his effects, simply place his mod folder above mine. Then his stuff will take precedence.

In this instance things are simple, mainly because Despereaux did no work on class files. And the .mat and .tga files used are unique to those particular effects.

But for future reference, there is one potential point of bad consequences to consider whenever adding mods. And that is if between the different mods effects are sharing the same .mat and/or .tga files. This can lead to textures being inadvertently substituted.

For instance...

You already have Mod A, and a particular effect of which which calls a .mat file called FireBall.mat, which in turn points to a very yellow texture called FireBall.tga. You like its appearance, and wouldn't want that to change.

Now you're adding Mod B to your install, which has a different effect entirely pointing to the same FireBall.mat, that in turn points to a very dark red FireBall.tga. For that effect all is fine. But now the other different effect in Mod A, because it uses the same texture, is now buggered up in appearance. It used to be yellow, but now it's dark red.

To fix that, you could rename in Mod B the new FireBall.tga to. say, FireBall_1.tga, and FireBall.mat to FireBall_1.mat. Then inside the effect file calling FireBall.mat, change that name to FireBall_1.mat.


Those who use mods extensively should be very conversant and comfortable with handling files within Windows. This is sometimes needed in order to rectify conflicts. And it's necessary if you want to integrate mods, so as to reduce extraneous folders.


If you look in my Effects\BigShip\Gunfire150mm, GunFire250mm, and GunFire350mm folders, and open the Burst.eff and Fire.eff files with Notepad, you'll see that I based mine upon Despereaux's effects, albeit the first version of his, if memory serves.

If you like his latest work, you could simply replace .eff my files with his. And of course put his .mat and .tga files into Effects\Materials (unless they reside elsewhere), overwriting mine if named the same.


Again, understanding how files are structured within the game and where and to what they point, and how mod folders are implemented, will stand you in very good stead.

[pied]

Aloha Glenn,

Thanks for the very complete reply! I don't, as a rule use that many mods, however, effects are the heart and soul of why I still enjoy this sim. I'll put the old brain to work looking at the structure and internal workings of these mods and see if I can make some sense of what you all are doing!

Thanks again!

Ed

[WxTech]

Oct 11, 2021. I just made available the updated BigShipGeneric.class for B.A.T. 4.1.3. Should be OK for B.A.T 4.1.2 and the new B.A.T. 4.2. Download link at the top of the first post.

In a nutshell:

- Damaged/destroyed ships' guns produce fire/smoke for even a bit longer than previously.
- Ship hull fire/smoke now comes from the correct place (instead of always from amidships, due to my former crude means of aligning the smoke emission vector to vertical.)
- The experimental bow wave implementation has been removed; now back to stock.


Added in edit: I've included also a link to the same classfiles for B.A.T. up to 4.1.1 (before triggers were introduced.)

[WxTech]

NOTE: Oct 18, 2021. Apparently, 4.12 and VP Modpack games which have the Engine Mod incorporated should be able to use this BAT version. If you are seeing this log.lst error:
  java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/maddox/sas1946/il2/util/TrueRandom
hopefully this will fix that.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/xthr0r09obdpp9o/%2521_0_TrueRandom_classfile.7z/file

[Schwal262]

Hello I was about install your mod but antivirus software says there is a virus in your Wxtech Effects v1.2 for BAT.7z file. My software says it's some W32/Fujacks.o.remnants virus. So I'm just curious if this W32/Fujacks virus is detrimental to my computer or not.