So as the title says, I am interested in ideas how to achieve a true lightning effect for a beam-like weapon. The idea is to create something like a beam effect, but without the obvious tiling issues normal beams have which always results in some sort of a sine-wave appearance. So basically, irregular lightning beam.
I considered using a projectile weapon effect with seamless, randomly animated texture segments detached from the emitter and rigged so that they match up as the projectile travels (obviously very quickly), but that idea fell through as soon as I realized that the game engine erases travel particle effects on contact with the target.
Alternatively, I could use a really long texture for a beam effect, but that obviously has texture size problems as well as animation problems (it's static).
As far as I know, one cannot use texture animations for beam effects, right?
Which is the biggest problem with the whole idea, but I am hoping for some resident genius to come up with a nifty solution or suggestion!
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/177648
Would he mind if I necro his thread?
Not at all, since the thread is not dead.
It periodically comes alive when I post updates every few weeks, just like some weird alien creature from outer space. It can't really be killed.
It's not necro'd when you're a Technomage.
Another question: how come regular ParticleMesh shader no longer works? Some of my debris particle effects used that shader and all was fine before, now they simply no longer show up, ingame or in the PF.
I think KrdaxDrkrun has been busy with school the past couple of days. He'll be baaaahk!
HIHIIHHIHI
ParticleMesh NEVER worked to my knowledge...
I was busy with New Years and family and all sorts of stuff.... Sorry.
Brainstorming time...
Xerath from League of Legends has an Arcanopulse ability that looks very good, and I think that I can cobble together his textures in Particle Forge.
watch for the flashes of lightning that he fires across the screen
it's a bunch of projectiles that tile on top of each other, moving in different directions at once, if they started disappearing, I don't think that it would be that obvious as long as enough were tiled at once.
Yep, but you still have the issue that the Sins engine kills all particles related to the projectile travel effect as soon as the projectile "hits" the target. So you can't have a irregular beam effect, just a brief flash of lightning.
As for shaders, forgot that GS_Ship shader works just fine. Also a very nice way to display fully textured (normal mapped and all) particle meshes. Can't have partial transparency though, but oh well.
Actually, I had an idea...
Try long projectiles that aren't attached to the emitter, so they spawn with their own relative movement and direction and hopefully fade out before the projectile actually hits the target...
If you make the hit effect big enough, the disappearing travel effects aren't as obvious.
Yes, I am fully aware of 99% of PF1.1 and PF3's functionality. (PF3 actually worked on my old computer.)
If you have ANY questions about anything PF related, ask me.
-edit-
oops...
shaders too
That's it--keep making my brain hurt!
maybe combine the irregular beam, a muzzle particle that is nearly the duration of the beam, and make a lightning hit particle
Hmm, apparently ManSh00ter has solved at least his problem....
Darn he's good.
Thanks - the effect is achieved by using a very long tile beam texture with a high tiling speed and three closely spaced bursts set to synchronize the targeting spot. That way you get overlapping sine motions which help break up the obvious patterning when using just one burst.
Nice
I should try that...
Some day I might get around to trying a few of my ideas - I still would need an arc and not a beam, so that solution really doesn't work for me. The key may be in layered, angled missiles...
I'd say the three of you would be a perfect collaborative team.
Missiles can leave tiled trails if you are good at timing emitters, so I would try that.
I'm thinking of a little cluster of hardpoints that all fire to one target (so this wouldn't work for a larger Templar ship, or a Phantom ship that can target like 20 enemy ships..), and they fire in a very short burst, with a thick, layered trail of short-lived lightning particles that flicker. Something like the WE orb but not an orb. They'd have to travel extremely fast (ships have minimum of 15k range in this). I can't use photoshop for crap so I'd have to rip some more games to find suitable textures.
Why not just tile a trail of brightcenter.tga or cloud.dds from the sins files?
it looks good enough tiled...
Too low-res for the effect I'm after. Most of the existing textures in Black Sun are too low res as it is.
Amen brother....
sideways lightning wave travel particle. it's only 4 particles and uses a .texanim file.
weapon is a projectile traveling at 10,000 with rapid fire (0.5 seconds) and only a single burst.
Particle file: effect can be seen coming from front/back/top/bottom, inflates from 25/25 at 300/900 rate so a good lightning muzzle and hit would be needed as particle is highly visible only when half way to target.
Another Lightning Movie
watch in 720HD
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