I'm beavering away, ensuring that all classes for different versions are up to date. And there are some more classes involved now.
Here's the list of main changes of significance since v1.5. Many more of lesser import have been implemented..
- Made the aircraft crash initial fireball/smoke more voluminous; there are still the two variations, differing in the degree of volume, randomly selected between.
- Added NEW House Body type and effects, for "Vehicle"; changed a number of entries in Static.ini.
- Added NEW effect, WaterLight.sim in method SurfaceLight of Explosions.class, for explosion illumination in water during twilight/at night.
- Restored the inadvertent loss of flack burst lighting, due to oversight in a line of code to check on whether to invoke the effect. In the process, did the following as well...
- Added two new [Mods] section entries for conf.ini, to control if light flak (default: off = 0) and heavy flak (default: on = 1) illumination is to be invoked.
LightFlakIllumination=0
HeavyFlakIllumination=1
- Incorporated some randomness among effects for destroyed 'House' objects (as compiled in Static.ini). In about 1/3 of the cases an effect set will be selected from an 'adjacent' Body type. This adds more variety, keeping every similar object from always exhibiting the same effects.
- Also incorporated a bit of randomness in fire/smoke effects used for train wagons. And increased their duration by about 30% to 100%.
- Made a new set of tracer textures that now have an alpha channel. This assures that under certain conditions there will no longer be seen a faint sharp edge of the entire texture. The alpha channel cuts away the outer parts of the texture not intended to see, however faintly.
- Made most of the light sources that attend larger fires and some explosions variable in one or both of intensity and range, scaling as the degree of darkness during twilight/night. As it gets darker, the surroundings become more apparently lit up.
- For fires from ground objects (buildings, fuel tanks, cars, train wagons, etc.), as darkness progresses the fire effect particles are progressively made larger. This is to overcome the regrettable situation where blending of fires against a darker landscape results in the fires becoming darker as well. (It's an unavoidable aspect of the way blending works.) Bigger particles are by themselves more easily seen, but also when made larger the overlap with other particles increases, resulting in a boost in surface brightness.
- Included all damaged/destroyed ship fires for invocation of an illumination source. Scaled by ship size, and varies in prominence as twilight progresses.
- Further adjusted ground explosion effects for 250kg and 1000kg class bombs.
- Made numerous adjustments to Power in weapon "Cannon" weapon classes, which are of the largest calibres. In particular, values of zero or exceedingly low Power values were brought up to a more appropriate level.
- Added a probability of the smaller House Body type objects not invoking any fire/smoke effects when destroyed.
- Added a 20% probability of the largest House Body type objects to have illumination accompany the long-lasting fire when destroyed.
- Made tracer smokes expand to a smaller degree, keeping the trail thinner at disappearance by a factor of about 2/3 the former widths.
- Reduced the Wind value for all ground smokes from 10 to 5m/s, halved EmitTheta, halved EmitFreq, doubled PsiN and doubled LiveTime. Therefore nParticles remains the same and the smoke column retains about the same length. The result is a less horizontally oriented smoke column, but still clearly well angled to the horizon.
- Added new effect, "3DO/Effects/Fireworks/Napalm_Smoke.eff", to add a main body of smoke with the main napalm fire.
- Added NEW persistent fire and smoke for napalm bursts, lasting 45-120 seconds, with 50% probability.
- Reduced the Wind value for all ground fires having a starting size of <15m to [start size/3]. This is to keep these small fires from going too horizontal. For example, a 9m start size has a Wind value of 3, and a 3m fire has Wind 1.
- Made a new muzzle flash for 7mm class guns, so as to more obviously differentiate from the 12mm and 20mm muzzle flash in basic appearance (and not just size). The rate of texture cycling is also faster.
- When the larger/extra aircraft crash fireball is invoked, an additional smoke column is generated for a short time, so as to make the column overall heavier and wider. Also, a number of small firey bits are flung out.
- When the smaller aircraft crash on ground fireball alone is invoked, the long-lasting smoke column can be either lighter or darker.
- Increased the visibility range for bullet/cannon hit flashes, from the former too-short 500m to 2km or farther.
- Added an animated fireball effect to one folder (Land_2) for each of Bomb1000, Bomb250 and RS82 land explosions.
- Made nearly all fires a richer red color.
- In the Train_classes folder, added classfiles for locomotives (x3) and tenders ("trailors") (x2).
- For train vehicles, fixed a few "Damage" hook orientations, and added a few such hooks where missing. Improved damage code and effects.
- For steam locomotives, the damage effects for the burst boiler steam jet and other steam has been improved.
- Refined the dust effect for planes and tanks, created a dedicated tank dust effect for desert maps, and added cars as an emitter of dust on desert maps, with its own effect. This involves TankGeneric.class and CarGeneric.class.
- Created 3 sizes of effect for aircraft crashes on land; small for single-engined planes, medium for 2-3 engined planes, and large for 4+ engined planes, with a small probability of some overlap (to next larger effect.)
- Created 2 sized of effect for plane crashes into water; small for single-engined planes and large for 2+ engined planes.
- Created night effects for most aircraft fires in flight when the Sun is below -9 degrees. Made them last a bit longer, emit particles at a faster rate, and have a slightly less strongly red hue (because colors against a dark scene are both dimmer and more color saturated.)
- Added the random occurrance of a different and more prominent effect set to be invoked when a ship is destroyed.
- The previous use of three discrete tracer smokes for more variety has been rejected for the much simpler use of randomness in a single effect.
- Have gone back to the Guncam tracers, with their animated texels. The cycling rate of the texels is much faster and more dynamic.
- Previously tracers were limited in visibility to 4km in the day and 12km at night, the distance limit smoothly varying between these values during twilight. Now tracers are always visible out to 12km.
- Have added a NEW folder for a 7mm red tracer
- For gun projectiles faster than about 700m/s (muzzle velocity) a longer tracer is drawn; slower than this and a shorter tracer is drawn.
- All small calibre bullets (up to 8mm/.303) have had live time boosted to 4.1 seconds, unless already longer.
- All larger bullets and cannon shells have had live time boosted to 6.1 seconds, unless already longer, and unless of the AAA type with timed terminal burst (18 instances).
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Topic: As I gather up the stuff for the soon to be released v1.6 effects pack... (Read 1357 times)
