[REL] Air Trails

This is an effect client mod that gives air units a super colorful trail behind their path, it looks AMAZING on moon biomes because of sharp contrast!!!

There are two versions of this mod, rainbow colored trails and team colored trails to customize yourself.

Now on PAMM!
Team Colored Version Below




And the rainbow version below

Nice! Although I think after a while the multi-coloured-coloreyness of them might be a tad distracting?

Any chance you could try a more 'serious' version of this with shorter single coloured trails (e.g. grey or white, or possibly team coloured even?)...?

Haha yep I can do that. I thought someone might mention that xD

I forgot to thank @Alpha2546 for the rainbow key array, it introduced me to these kinds of effects

we need more rainbow lasers !

Update: Both versions' trails significantly shortened!

That looks really neat!
Now to up the ante, can you do the same thing for boats and add wakes?

there's probably a way I can make an effect that looks like a water trail but there's nothing I can do about animated waves xD

Updated to work with the latest PTE build and future stable build.

Update V3.0

• Added new trails to avengers

These effects are modified versions of the Uber cannon trail.
I will be working on better looking trails for air units also, and might even make separate trails for each air unit.

IF YOU'RE WONDERING ABOUT LAGGIN YER PC....

Don't worry about it. I tested this on an underclocked I5 running at 2.4 GHz, and it barely lagged with around 500 avengers.

Rainbow version

Team Colored Version

Update 4.0

• New sparkling effects for the trails of both air trails versions
• Brighter trails (might be too bright)
• Updated icons

Saw this mod in action on @elodea's stream the other day... looks great!

Thanks

I want to do more with the mod, but I'm afraid adding more pretty stuff will remove the subtle part about the mod.

I am planning on making different trails for T2 air though.

Can we have a version without the effect being applied to the avengers? Please.

Updated to version 4.5, which adds trails to the Pheonix fighter.

Hi there, what are the chances of you making a mod/changing the mod to give the aircraft 2 trails at the outside edges of the wings instead of one in the middle? Like real life jets.

I'm curious to see how that'd turn out

With regards to this, I already have a python script doing something similar to the ships (using mesh dimensions to specialise effect properties). Do you want the source for that Kiwi?

I'm worried if I install this, the pretty trails will be so mesmerising that I'll stop playing the game and just make my air units go around and around in pretty curves

That'd be pretty awesome, why not!

The rainbow version is pretty flamboyant, but i tried to make the team colored version much less distracting, and imo it's not distracting at all

The end distance also makes the trail disappear when you zoom out.

Umm, how proficient are you with python kiwi? Because if you want I can actually just make the script for you. I just looked at your source, and it would not be that much effort at all to convert it for you.

Just to give you an idea how the script will work:
- It reads all the game's base json files pertaining to aircraft (it filters the unit_list.json). The script also reads in the base effects file (so it's got a template in memory).
- First thing it does, is copy each aircraft's data (this way if there are any balance changes, the mod's aircraft json will automatically be updated, it also works with new aircraft introduced).
- Before writing out the copied json files, the script first adds the fx_offsets entry for you, so you don't need to do that yourself. In this case, instead of linking all aircraft to /pa/effects/specs/rainbow_trail.pfx, the script will link to a generated pfx file in the same dir as the aircraft. This way each aircraft can have a slightly modified version of the effect.

The script will read the dimensions of each craft and apply the wing tip trails that way.