Help with effects

[GreenGuy]

I know this is a kinda short topic but.

Does anybody know how to make render textures (smoke.tga, flame.tga, ring.tga, etc..) rise from the ground, when fired at the ground like it did in 1.1 and 1.2? I mean the effect will just kinda, flatten itself to fit in, instead of just going right through the ground. It's kinda hard to explain, does anybody know what I mean?

Because weapons like Acid Cloud look kinda stupid when the "Acid" just goes right through the ground, same with Solar Flare, when it's under a turret.

[General BlackDragon]

not sure...

you can try adding lines like the ones in the ground sprite texture (xplbulgnd) that make it START on the ground and go up.

[GreenGuy]

Doesn't work :/

Is this hardcoded into 1.1 and 1.2 somehow? Because it does this rise from the ground/flattening thing even with effects that were not changed from 1.2 to 1.3.

[TheJamsh]

Effect sprites have always clipped through the terrain since version 1.0, very few changes have been made to the particle system.

You can't do anything about it. Particles in BZ2 don't have any physical collisions or properties, even with geometry particles. The trick is to make your effects look good and work around it. The "draw_sprite" render base allows you to raise the texture above the terrain with spriteCenter.y =, but sprites cannot have any rotation, so they would look crap if you put a smoke texture on it.

I'm pretty certain that ALL modern games do exactly the same thing.

[GreenGuy]

Okay but, you should try putting a Solar Flare under a turret in 1.0-1.2 and then do it in 1.3 and you'll see what I mean. In the early versions the flame effect (xflmhit) will "flatten", but in 1.3 it will clip through the terrain. You can also try firing Plasma Stream on the ground, you will see what I mean.

I'm just asking if you could somehow bring this feature back? Is there a textfile somewhere where you can change it, or is it hardcoded or like a part of the new engine?

And how/why did you change this? Just asking.

[TheJamsh]

It would be hardcoded, and i'm 99.99999% certain that the particle system hasn't been changed.

If it has, the reasons why will be in the changelogs, I'd suggest searching through those.

[General BlackDragon]

I just woke up, so i may be foggy, but try using a sim_dust stimulate base.

[GreenGuy]

Doesn't work either.

Look, I'll just post some screenies to make it easier for you to see. Sorry for the huge size of them.

[TheJamsh]

Interesting. I have no idea why such a change was made. Probably so we had more control over effects.

Ask GSH in the beta part of the forum and show off these screenies. Who knows. I personally prefer the current system, it works just fine with my effects. Although a toggle would be great.

[Nielk1]

Check pb4a vs ta5 or pb5.1

I suspect the massive graphics recode.

Not sure of what a simple code-wise fix would be, if one exists.

[General BlackDragon]

Likely due to the DX9 conversion, hmmm

[GSH]

Do check whether particles are set to high in both builds. I vaguely remember various particle effects skipping terrain interactions if particles weren't set to high. Basically, terrain interaction costs CPU. We had to ship on a Pentium 166.

-- GSH

[Zax]

I confirm this as an issue even on high.

[TheJamsh]

Can I just say I far far far far prefer 1.3's behaviour. It means you have maximum control over the effect. I've put a lot of time and effort into my effects (most of you have probably seen them on youtube), I'd really rather not have to re-do all that again, and have my effects mysteriously start appearing high above ground...

If such a thing is 'fixed', I'd much prefer to see a flag for terrain interaction with particles, just sayin'

[Nielk1]

TJ, the issue looks pretty damn subtle for 'all my effects will be borked if fixed'.