[WIP]Bigger Explosions

I love it when a plan comes together

I can't do many different effects, because there are:
- effect for t1 land unit
- effect for t2 land unit
they should be same effect with different size, because logic.

- effect for small land/orbital buildings
-effect for large land/orbital buildings
again, similar effect, different size BUT orbital also uses same effect, additional tweaks needed to make it look fine at orbit.

It's difficult to make effect that will work with 20 different units.

About size of explosions - yes, they are way too big. BUT most players play "moving icons simulator" so effects must be big to be visible from far away.

Well true, but some effects no matter the scale won't appear based on endDistance. Set the endDistance to a high number if you want to see the effects everywhere.

I think this is a bad idea because your PC will die, so endDistance is great for limiting render distance and reduing perfermance impacts on slower systems.

For example, the Locust effect is pretty expensive. Especially since it's an idle effect, and Locusts can be spammed easily. My PC lags with lots of locusts when zoomed up, but not when i'm zoomed out because of the render distance limit.

Sinse most of my effects are "take from here, put there" type of thing, but I never touch endDistance. My idea is to make effects big enough to be seen at icon simulator layer. Because vanilla explosions still work at this distance, but you don't see them because of their size.

New update is on pamm.

- First version of Helios explosion.
- Some tweaks to large building explosion: shokwave ring removed.
- Some tweaks to land units explosion: Sparks and flares removed, t2 units have a chance to emmit 2-4 debris pieces with some smoke.
- Air/Orbital custom effect removed.

Well if it's michael bay version if PA, why no lens flares?

Tactical lensflare missle!

(smoke tail is not that ugly and sharp when moving)

First, this is some awesome work Since you talk about feedback:
- I see that small units does a ball of flames that does a good job at prapagating lights when they blow up. But, the ball really looks like a ball Could it be more like a glowing sphere?
- The explosion for small units are sometimes a little big, (especially the fire ball) which make it harder to understand what's going on in the battlefield Maybe make the core explosion smaller
- The smoke is sometimes really cool, sometimes really thick where it could be a little more "transparent"
- Explosions appears in the air, not on the ground when you look a them with a perspective.

This is already making this game looking way more interactive!!!!

Missile update!

- 3 tactical missile types
- Orange - catapult, red - t2 sub, light blue - everything else.
- Custom effects for catapult and t2 sub missile explosions (missile explosions are WIP)
- I feel sick, so there may be bugs, I did not test everything.



Next update will have:

- wrekage smoke
- changes to building/unit explosions (thanks for feedback @DeathPhoenix2)
- Orbital battleship will drop down from the orbit
- And maybe new effect for nuke tank

Excellent work as usual. Only critique from my end is that I feel that the stingray, bluehawk and hornet missiles should have a trail that is a tad more noticeable.

Also out of curiosity is that your mod that changes the water or is that another mod?
I haven't gotten to play PA in quite a while so forgive my ignorance in this instance.

Water is changed by "Classic Water" mod.
I have some ideas about missile smoke trails, but they are more difficult to implement then changing some numbers in original effect.

@nicb1 @Alpha2546
Heu guys, how does this look?

I'm sorry, but the catapult lens flare looks bad and you should feel bad

It needs to be removed outright, not just made to appear later. Everything else looks awesome but the lens flare? Just why?

And how can I show that rocket's engine is working? And what about other tactical missiles' lens flares?

Mmmmh yeah, that lens flare is over the top

What do you mean show that the rocket's engines are working? Just have a smoke trail?

Others weren't as noticeable in the showcase vid, but yeah, they'll need changing as well.

I think its pretty neat to be honest. It just can have the extra polish. The detail of the coloured smoke popping in along the lensflare adds up too! Good stuff!

So basically the lens flare popping up in the middle is something pretty neat and gave me a cool idea about a projectile shot into the air and then firing its rocket (which is what you try to pass over me I think).

Things I would change to keep it that style. Remove the smoke effect when it goes upwards from the catapult. Then at the point that it turns to its target give it a quick bright flash and show up the lensflare. Ofcourse this is just an idea. If you got something else in mind or want to keep it like this then thats fine too ofcourse.

The lensflare might be too much at the moment yet its needs that brightness to get the OMG WHATS THAT MY EYES effect.

I recommend overlaying some lensflares on top of each other to get a good colour balance and to give you more control over altering the visual effect. What do I mean?

Basically you want a small hot (bright) lensflare to start with. Then on top of that you create a bigger one which is less bright and you can go on and on to get the desired looking flare you want. Normally changing alpha values does this however sometimes I think its needed to overlay some textures to make it look juicy and polished. Like the example below. I think the same could be applied in your case



For a pa example see the code snippet below. It basically creates a bright flash but with overlaying some of the textures to get the light rays, a hot white core and some outer soft glows.

Code:

{
        "spec" : {
            "shader" : "particle_add_soft",
            "red" : 5.0,
            "green" : 1,
            "blue" : 0.2,
            "alpha" : [[0, 0.25], [1, 0]],
            "cameraPush" : 0.5,
            "baseTexture" : "/pa/effects/textures/particles/softdot.papa",
            "dataChannelFormat" : "PositionAndColor"
            },
        "sizeX" : 18,
        "emissionBursts" : 1,
        "lifetime" : 0.17,
        "emitterLifetime" : 0.25,
        "endDistance" : -1,
        "bLoop": false
    },    {
        "spec" : {
            "shader" : "particle_add_soft",
            "red" : 5.0,
            "green" : 1.0,
            "blue" : 0.2,
            "alpha" : [[0, 0.15], [1, 0]],
            "cameraPush" : 0.5,
            "rotationRateMult": [[0,
            1],
            [1,
            0.1]],           
            "baseTexture": "/pa/effects/textures/particles/soft_flare.papa",
            "dataChannelFormat" : "PositionAndColor"
            },
        "sizeX" : 33,
        "emissionBursts" : 1,
        "lifetime" : 0.17,
        "emitterLifetime" : 0.25,
        "endDistance" : -1,
        "bLoop": false
    },    {
        "spec" : {
            "shader" : "particle_add_soft",
            "red" : 50.0,
            "green" : 10.0,
            "blue" : 3.0,
            "alpha" : [[0, 0.25], [1, 0]],
            "cameraPush" : 0.5,
            "baseTexture" : "/pa/effects/textures/particles/softdot.papa",
            "dataChannelFormat" : "PositionAndColor"
            },
        "sizeX" : 12,
        "emissionBursts" : 1,
        "lifetime" : 0.17,
        "emitterLifetime" : 0.25,
        "endDistance" : -1,
        "bLoop": false
        },  {
        "spec" : {
            "shader" : "particle_add_soft",
            "red" : 100.0,
            "green" : 5.0,
            "blue" : 1.0,
            "alpha" : [[0, 0.25], [1, 0]],
            "cameraPush" : 0.5,
            "baseTexture" : "/pa/effects/textures/particles/softdot.papa",
            "dataChannelFormat" : "PositionAndColor"
            },
        "sizeX" : 8.0,
        "emissionBursts" : 1,
        "lifetime" : 0.17,
        "emitterLifetime" : 0.25,
        "endDistance" : -1,
        "bLoop": false
        }, {
        "spec" : {
            "shader" : "particle_add_soft",
            "red" : 100.0,
            "green" : 5.0,
            "blue" : 1.0,
            "alpha" : [[0, 0.25], [1, 0]],
            "cameraPush" : 0.5,
            "baseTexture" : "/pa/effects/textures/particles/dot.papa",
            "dataChannelFormat" : "PositionAndColor"
            },
        "sizeX" : 5.0,
        "emissionBursts" : 1,
        "lifetime" : 0.12,
        "emitterLifetime": 0.20,
        "endDistance" : -1,
        "bLoop": false
        },

BTW I don't think the high colour values are correct in my example (dunno what the max is and I'm too lazy to recheck). It works though and I've used this for a lot of effects (leveler projectiles, cplosion, naval projectile grenadiers etc). Try removing one layer and you'll notice that it looks less good. Once you got something very satisfying you can use it on many different things in the future too.

One final tip is to always use the full RGB colour range. So if you want something red looking give red a value of 10, green a value of 1 and blue a value of 1 too after that just up alpha values. Pure red colours will get you the same look as the example in the picture (the first one left).

Non the less I think the lensflare is a very cool thing to add to a missiles trail (I haven't touched those cause I never had an idea what to add or how to spice it up). Just work on balancing the colours and brightness and you'll make some more amazing things.

Hope its useful.

Everything looks cool but I doubt anything will surpass my level of admirement for the new vanilla effects. The new vanilla effects are sublime.

Nop, it's gorgeous.
Feel proud of it. It really looks great. Don't know why he says that...

I'm not a fan of the new vanilla tactical missile effects either, but they don't have a silly 2D lens flare that looks the same from any angle. If you're going to do this, please put the projectile FX as a separate mod so that I can continue to use the mod without the unwanted projectile trails.

Why don't you mod it yourself???
That is what I do. In your awesome proyectiles i hated the artillery trails but modded it myself. Rather than ranting in others work