Dr Chris's Spiffy Particles

Discussion in 'Art' started by Chris0132', Sep 22, 2009.

  1. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    I reworked the entire particle set I made last time and as the last thread has about three versions in it, I figured a new one would be less confusing, they now use a new system developed by our team (me) of dedicated (whenever I feel like it) scientists (I can use the editor) for your particular pleasure. The new system allows for better looking bullets, greater visibility in first person, and smoke wakes for each projectile.

    The new version also includes impact effects, sparks and smoke make you feel like john woo is directing your gameplay experience.

    Eight out of ten of our test subjects (me, ten times) creamed their pants when they saw how awesome the effects were, if you do not experience a similar reaction we will adjust the statistics.

    Screenshots (new version is 90% more photogenic!)

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Unzip the following file to your empires directory, back up your particles folder if you want to change back.

    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1579090/filehost/particles_r7.zip

    R7, includes building smoke, for some reason my small smoke never shows up, can't remember if this is a bug or not, in the event that it starts showing up again I will complete the small smoke versions.

    I also need this performance testing, it lags like hell on tropicvendetta but so does everything including the map itself because tropicvendetta is a piece of shit, it should run fine on most maps, it runs on king and king is pretty resource intensive.


    Known issues:

    Impact smoke renders above muzzleflashes sometimes, I don't know why so it may take a while to fix.

    Particles are quite expensive, for most games in first person they should not be a problem at all, but I did notice a lot of slowdown when fighting two teams of DU APCs on tropicvendetta using an older version which had a lot less optimisation, so you may experience similar issues if your PC is a bit old or the map is a bit badly optimised.

    Enjoy.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2009
  2. LordDz

    LordDz Capitan Rainbow Flowers

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    Thank you!
     
  3. Dubee

    Dubee Grapehead

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    haha cool :D
     
  4. Dubee

    Dubee Grapehead

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    They look really cool but whenever I try to fire a weapon the whole game gets really choppy and laggy. Even with lowest settings my comp cant handle them.

    edit: I just took a backup from the SVN. But yeah, It works fine and looks really good when other people are shooting but whenever I was shooting it would get too choppy.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2009
  5. Empty

    Empty Member

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    The particles look like shitty pixie dust.
    And what are our bullets made of? Flint?

    I have to stand in for Chris in this thread, since he's not going to berate his own work.
     
  6. Demented

    Demented Member

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    1) The smoke trails look great... If only they were coming out of bolters.

    2) Sparks fly when hitting dirt.

    3) Your muzzle flash is (still) green. You also overdo the particle count for it, though only people with a crappy video card (*cough*Dubee*cough*) should notice.
     
  7. Empty

    Empty Member

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    There's nothing either of us can do with dirt making sparks, because a certain dev team r doin it rong.
     
  8. Dubee

    Dubee Grapehead

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    haha yeah and only 512 ram. :headshot:
     
  9. Headshotmaster

    Headshotmaster Member

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    The colors are pretty accurate for someone who's colorblind BAMM, GOT YA!






    but seriously, those are tight. Keep up the good work.
     
  10. Demented

    Demented Member

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    Then don't add sparks onto the bullet tracer! Well... You could keep them anyway. Just remember to put whiny gits like me on your ignore list while you do it.

    "The lowest child on the list will render above the rest, regardless of distance."
    -The VDC

    Though you probably already took that into account.
     
  11. Empty

    Empty Member

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    Guess who added that line to the wiki :]
     
  12. recon

    recon SM Support Dev

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    Nice particles ;)
     
  13. 0yv47

    0yv47 Member

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    so... will this 1 actually work? :P
     
  14. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Everything I release works assuming you aren't retarded.

    Yes I know everything makes sparks, yes I know it's not realistic, yes I know smoke trails don't actually happen, but if you don't like it you're welcome to fuck off and not use them. I like pyrotechnics, if you don't, that's your problem.

    The flashes shouldn't be green because I changed the colours and it should be yellow, the internal fire uses the default colour for the fire particle, which is the same particle used in tank explosions, so if it's green for some reason the devs made the standard fire particle green. If it's still green change it yourself.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2009
  15. Demented

    Demented Member

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    It's actually the muzzleflash_glow particles that are the problem. The sprite texture, 'particle_glow_10', is blue. It becomes green after the yellow is added.
     
  16. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    fffffff

    Well if it does that I can't fix it, because I can't tell what colour it is without the numerical representation.
     
  17. -=SIP=-

    -=SIP=- Member

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    Chris, just make a screenshot and check to color with photoshop or similar.
    (http://www.webdesign-city.de/farbtabelle_hexcode.html)

    But else I love every kind of eyecandy for Empires. We just have to pay attention, that it will not look like Warcraft sometime.
     
  18. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Perhaps I should rephrase.

    I can fix it but I'm not going to do all that in order to.
     
  19. Demented

    Demented Member

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    No worries.

    I replaced 'particle_glow_10' with 'particle_glow_01_add_nofog' and it looks fine to me. It's a similar texture, but white of course. (Most of the other glow sprites have some kind of opacity issue... They look like a big blotch of brownish orange instead of a yellow glow.)
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2009
  20. Empty

    Empty Member

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    Yes for some reason 90% of the glow textures don't have additive flags or the flags required for colour changes and alpha changes, for whatever reason.
     

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