Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell splash

To make water combat much more epic, it would help to have incredible effects to complement shooting.

Specifically having these visualizations would make the experience much more immersive:

• Fire and smoke coming out of cannons when firing
• Columns of water shooting up high in the sky when shells miss
• Persistant smoke remaining after firing

Here are some examples:

Simulated: Columns of water from cannons missing their target


Simulated: Shockwaves and smoke from cannon fire


Real: Close-up footage of cannon fire and smoke


Real: Distant footage of gunfire


Real: Footage from Iwo Jima, lots of shooting


If it looks like this from above, that would be awesome:

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Given that this is a super advanced future setting don't you think that the weapons on the ships may not be an old fashion combustion based gun and rather would be an advanced magnetic or gravitic accelerator (like a coil gun or some unknown technology)? Or possibly even some sort of "plasma", fusion, or energy gun? As cool as fire and smoke is, I am not certain that the weapons would produce it (except at impact with land or a target).

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

We could still have 'shockwaves' from ultrasonic projectiles passing low to the water, and have the ship rock side to side when they fire.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

This is what big battleships is all about.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

I know, but the old weapons just looked so much cooler. Let's shoot for awesome, not suspected futuristic realism.

Lasers look so simple, and don't give the oomph that projectiles, shockwaves and smoke do. You don't really feel any momentum with lasers and coil guns. It's not as believable. There are many units in Total Annihilation that fire old-school projectiles, and it looks great.

Watching the futuristic laser-like weapons in Supreme Commander doesn't have nearly the same stage presence as this stuff.

What does everyone else think?

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Watching the ocean ripple with lines everywhere as shells are exchanged would look amazing zoomed out.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

They did? The only thing close to an "old school projectile" in TA was the missiles, and even they were antimatter weapons. Direct fire weapons were either coilguns or weapons which fire magnetically accelerated slivers of antimatter. Indirect fire "plasma cannons" were actually time-frozen nuclear explosions, which is actually the only vaguely sensible description of a plasma cannon I've seen (which is saying something about how terrible the average video game depiction of plasma is, given how much space magic that involves). The lasers? Involved some kind of crazy space warping crap to focus all the energy of the beam onto a microscopic point of their targets' armour.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Stuff like this would be really cool but it isn't an absolute must. But if Uber has the time and money to make this happen then I say go ahead.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

You're getting too technical. The Big Berthas look like they're firing cannon balls or large shells, as well as tanks and artillery k-bots. The Samsons, missile trucks, Hawks, and rocket towers are all firing what look like missiles and rockets. Bombers would drop actual bombs.

It was pretty "old-school" for a lot of the units. For the units that didn't have old-school weapons, at least they had Star Wars style projectile lasers (blasters) rather than sissy Star Trek style beam weapons. I didn't like the weapons as much in Supreme Commander because of this, there were a lot of beam lasers and crappy lightning-bolt effects that just didn't resonate as much.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

The bottom one was used as a ref pic during SupCom.

Keep in mind we aren't going for realism, we're going for awesome.

<insert scathis>

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

While you're at it, make sure that splash damage (pun intended) doesn't destroy underwater submarines like it does in Supcom. If the subs take collateral damages, it should not be full damage, so that you can't annihilate sumarines with surface weapons by force firing on the water surface.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

I'd also like to point out, as noted way back when Supcom was developed, that 'realistic' future combat looks like crap. It was the reason they went with close range WWII dog-fighty style aircraft combat - modern air combat would be boring as hell to watch.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

If your 'realistic' future combat looks boring, it's only due to a distinct lack of imagination.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Supcom in general didn't look great in action. Most of the shots and impacts were bright, white, or too "fluffy" by which I mean they just looked like an effect, and not a forceful explosion. Barely any classic fiery explosions.

I remember people on the GPG forums rationalising this as "everything uses antimatter power so there isn't any smoke and flame explosions" but come on, that's not AWESOME[tm], that's just dull.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Yes. I started playing SC2 out of curiosity and while I actually like the game much more than I expected I would, the projectiles and explosions are nowhere near as good looking or fun as Zero-K. In ZK seeing a reaper track its turret towards your weaving glaive and changing course at the exact moment it fires so that its slow, large plasma shots glance past your fragile robot minion is half the fun (I know, cutting down on micro in PA, but regardless the shots in SC2 just don't carry that sense of menace, a big firefight looks like an exchange of party poppers or something).

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

So wait, a plane going at mach 3 and firing a single missile which causes a single small explosion in a crucial supply depot or whatever isn't boring?

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

I think that certain weapon types fit certain roles very well. With navy units, especially with the large guns of the bigger ships I totally agree that large projectile based weapon look the best. Whether this is a gun-powder based projectile, or a magnetically accelerated projectile (see a real life railgun projectile) these type of guns fit navy much better than lasers (beam or star wars style). I think beam weapons work better in a space setting.

The one thing I don't like about many projectile based weapons in RTS games is the slow speed at which the projectiles move. The shells fired from these large guns should move fast and hit hard. Obviously some compromises must be made for gameplay, if the shells moved at real life speeds you wouldn't be able to track it, but please no slow moving projectiles.

As for effects, I'd love to see more on hit effects as well. Projectiles (and explosives) should send chunks of armor flying off in all directions, beams (and other energy weapons) should scorch the surface, or burn holes in their targets. I'd love to see units look battered from taking hits rather than just have a health bar that drops as the only indication that a unit is getting damaged.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

Thanks for making my point.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

^^ Bump.

Re: Effects: Epic sea battles: Cannon fire+smoke, shell spla

I saw a documentary the other day whereby the DoD was testing out a railgun; the hypersonic projectile was definately affecting the air and grass/trees it was moving passed