Modding Particle Sys.
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@Switch:
I think they got removed during the extensive db/3ddb cleaning.
Much better then, thanx!
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When plane explodes, we can skip the broken parts especially if they are mostly or completely removed. But instead of pieces we could make slower spiraling smoke trails effecteted by large gravity to push most in one direction. After detonation we could have these spirals life span for several seconds to simulate burning pieces falling down. The tail end of this trail could dissipate quickly as well.
This sounds easy but I failed in this several times.
Separate effects for water impacts then land impacts was another big job I didnāt figure out.
Bullets are programmed to know the difference with āhit waterā but bombs and missiles donāt as far as I could find.
I had some elaborate workarounds for that but they were not good either.
Some more random secondaries explosions for any bombed target was a good one I had for 4.32. It was easy to do and looked pretty good. Just a very small phosphorous type explosion 1 in 20 chance between 1 and 120 seconds after destruction. I forgot how this was done but could figure it out again if I had to.
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At least bullets water splash mod should be included to stock bms, Iāve added this to Ikaros and is absolutely gorgeous without any fps impact.
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When plane explodes, we can skip the broken parts especially if they are mostly or completely removed. But instead of pieces we could make slower spiraling smoke trails effecteted by large gravity to push most in one direction. After detonation we could have these spirals life span for several seconds to simulate burning pieces falling down. The tail end of this trail could dissipate quickly as well.
This sounds easy but I failed in this several times.
Yes I guess burning pieces can be done. Actually you can do it with PS.ini alone. Youāll have no real AC pieces but instead you can use some debris textures maybe, I rebuilt the FF PS.ini back in the days (I started my way as a PS dev in RV team and back then we worked with FF) and I remember now what you mean, I made some gear debris and some AC pieces flying, I remember that now But IMHO it would look odd now at 2017. I think what we need is real work on damage modeling to come close to modern sims/games.
If you want to improve this, I suggest you to create some burning parts from the main AC explosion effect that will generate some burning trails and will fade after some time or when hitting the ground (You can e.g make this selection random in PS IIRC, but not remember exactly, itās been a long time :))
Separate effects for water impacts then land impacts was another big job I didnāt figure out.
Well, depends to which effect you refer here, as not all effects behave the same, some are triggered by code (e.g a tank exploding will cause triggering of effects X, Y, a feature OTOH will generate A, B) and others by weapons. For weapons itās easy enough, see this example of _GP_250lb bomb:
id=_GP250lb visibledistance = 180000 lifespan=1 sound.group=GS_BOMBS sound.looped=0 addemitter emitter.id=shockring-medium emitter.mode=EMITONCE emitter.rate=1 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 -1 0 0 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 0 450 450 450 emitter.velocity = 50 addemitter emitter.id=exflash-small emitter.mode=EMITONCE emitter.rate=3 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 0 13 13 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 0 0 0 0 addemitter emitter.id=gp500-fire emitter.mode=EMITONCE emitter.rate=2 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 0 20 20 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 -5 50 50 -500 emitter.velocity=200 20 addemitter emitter.id=gp500-smoke-emitter emitter.mode=EMITONCE emitter.rate=1 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 0 20 20 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 0 450 450 500 emitter.velocity=160 20 addemitter emitter.id=$WATERTRAIL emitter.mode=[color]EMITONWATERIMPACT[/color] emitter.rate=1 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 0 20 20 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 -20 50 50 0 addemitter emitter.id=gp500-dust-emitter emitter.mode=[color]EMITONGROUNDIMPACT[/color] emitter.rate=1 emitter.domain=sphere 0 0 0 0 0 0 emitter.target=sphere 0 0 -20 50 50 50
The modes I marked in blue will decide that this emitter is only for water/ground. So e.g for any effect you can create a water impact emitter that will trigger whatever you want on waterā¦ take care though that EMITONCE/EMITPERSEC mean no distinction between water/ground, but you can mostly modify whatever you like for this.
Some more random secondaries explosions for any bombed target was a good one I had for 4.32. It was easy to do and looked pretty good. Just a very small phosphorous type explosion 1 in 20 chance between 1 and 120 seconds after destruction. I forgot how this was done but could figure it out again if I had to.
I spent LONG time back in the days to explore that stuff. There is an effect called $FEATURE_CHAIN_REACTION, that is an effect that the code is triggering for special features that have āCan explodeā flag set in the editor
For example if you take a fuel tank, you will see it has āCan explodeā flag set, and then if you bomb it in the sim and itās exploding, you can see after sometime other things start to explode near it, that is what the code is doing. -
Hi thanks for the post and for the video. As always, I apologize for the bad English. As soon as I have time and I have a moment, I try to study the video wellā¦ and write for the cockpit. I would not say a useless thing, I recognize that I know about this matter in the same quantity that a stone knows of it. I thought fragments are not important if they are in low resolution, can be simulate or used if they are mostly covered by smoke or other effects or, if the aircraft is completely destroyed, by flames and smoke, the effect of the flames on bms is really nice. I do not know if it is inherent in this post but in future, when fragments and other is done, and if it is possible, I thought bigger explosions and many fragments for tankers and large aircraftā¦ fuel o ammo depot with a lot of secondary explosions for burning munitions and or a bigger explosion if the plane has external fuel tanks or certain weapons. I see that thermonuclear explosions need to be retouched, if something can be done. They are very powerful but the graphic effect and the immersion does not make the idea of the terribile power of this weapon which can upset the whole area for a long time and with numerous dangerous effects after the initial explosionā¦
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Well for falling burning textures I donāt think it can be done by the ps alone.
I think itās triggered by the damaged or destroyed airplane model. Iirc there are no such models in the database, and they must be added in the correct model entry iirc.
Meaning burning parts of the f-16 must be in the destroyed model entry in LE.
And when the model is flagged destroyed then the ps takes the destroyed 3d model and renders it. Since the destroyed 3d model doesnāt existā¦ Nothing is displayed.
Finally if new hitboxes will be implemented as some screenshots shown in the past for future releases then those hitboxes should be connected with a series of damaged and destroyed models that should trigger ps effects.
This would require tons of work but the outcome will be superb!
Like vertical wing with medium damage and light smokeā¦ Or destroyed with much area missing and heavy smoke or fireā¦ And some parts of it falling from the sky.Ī£ĻĪ¬Ī»ĪøĪ·ĪŗĪµ Ī±ĻĻ ĻĪæ MI 5 Ī¼ĪæĻ ĻĻĪ·ĻĪ¹Ī¼ĪæĻĪæĪ¹ĻĪ½ĻĪ±Ļ Tapatalk
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I read that it will be a lot of work. As I imagined, beautiful things require work and time! If I can understand something or if I can help in any way who wants to work in this, I am available and I will continue to study on this, and try to be a bit more useful
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Iām in. We can all work on things for The PS. I plan to get back into it a bit more. We can ask I-Hawk himself for assistance here. His last post already brought me out of some rut I was in. On nuke I have some mods for that I will put together. But I went the other way. Instead of making them more, I made it less devistating. Like it will only destroy one town and not all from horizon to horizon. Also slowed and extended shockwave. Which would have looked nice if I could make it spawn in the right spot.
We could post ideas and finished mods here to brainstorm or get reaction to a mod.
@koaro just keep at studying the ps file and adjusting it. We can ask for advice here if we get stuck.
Cheers -
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I spent LONG time back in the days to explore that stuff. There is an effect called $FEATURE_CHAIN_REACTION, that is an effect that the code is triggering for special features that have āCan explodeā flag set in the editor
For example if you take a fuel tank, you will see it has āCan explodeā flag set, and then if you bomb it in the sim and itās exploding, you can see after sometime other things start to explode near it, that is what the code is doing.I-Hawkā so, since you spent a LONG time on it āback in the dayā, is the $FEATURE_CHAIN_REACTION a current feature in particle.sys? I ask because Iām also a strong proponent of occasional secondaries. IIRC, there seemed to be some secondary effects in prior versions, and they added a LOT to realism with little overall FPS hit. But I havenāt seen secondaries in years anymore. Just curious. Love to see secondaries come back.
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Secondaries r there, i-hawk made some in the new ps.ini version but I believe he made them as to display how it works and inspire someone to take it from thereā¦
Long time since then.
Also for the falling parts for damage will require the initial 3d model, one of the reasons saying that it would be superb if Mortesilās new tool could export a falcon 3d model in an editable format like fbx or whatever that will not require much time to start working on it for such projects.
For the destroyed ones itās a bit better, free 3d models could be used, but would require much more work, instead of using stock ones.
For current textures to up the res I could also help. I must dig to my libraries.Ī£ĻĪ¬Ī»ĪøĪ·ĪŗĪµ Ī±ĻĻ ĻĪæ MI 5 Ī¼ĪæĻ ĻĻĪ·ĻĪ¹Ī¼ĪæĻĪæĪ¹ĻĪ½ĻĪ±Ļ Tapatalk
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I-Hawkā so, since you spent a LONG time on it āback in the dayā, is the $FEATURE_CHAIN_REACTION a current feature in particle.sys? I ask because Iām also a strong proponent of occasional secondaries. IIRC, there seemed to be some secondary effects in prior versions, and they added a LOT to realism with little overall FPS hit. But I havenāt seen secondaries in years anymore. Just curious. Love to see secondaries come back.
It depends what you refer to by āSecondariesā. Chain reaction is working, you can try it easily by bombing some fuel tank with 1 bomb so only that will be destructed and then you can see after some time that some effects are triggered on it again and other features around it are getting damage from the secondaries.
From my experience with PS, there is simply no way to please everyone. Back in the days of RV I was a pure PS dev (Didnāt had code access at start) and I spent really 100s of hours tweaking many many effects, I actually redid almost the entire file. Now some effects I brought to BMS from there and some I improved here even more - FWIW I donāt know if everyone likes them or not, but I redid all weapons effects and features/vehicles explosion effects in BMS to be as close as I could to be similar to many RL explosions I saw in vids. Itās VERY HARD to get accurate effects that will make everyone happy, and also in RL many effects looks very different with different conditions (surface type, weather, more variaty of explosive materials that create different effects etc), so itās not easy to keep it nice for everyone to like.
PS is close to my heart and in my signature Iām a Particle system dev, even though I did a lot of other things since. These days and for sometime now Iām deep deep inside other stuff that should help the sim, but once this huge task is finished I sure intend to get deeper to improve PS and effects, there are many areas to improve there and now that Iām into some GFX code, I for sure will find how to make it better (Already have some ideas, just no time for it now).
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These secondary explosions on a oil tank farm are nice and easy to see. I might have used a line or two from this when I added it to units.
I remember line bombing a column of armored units and after they were destroyed there was a small chance their āammo or fuelā would explode. I reAlized it must be very rare when bombing lots of units at once. So if you hit a single unit with maverick chances are you wonāt see it. I found the old 4.32 I was messing with before and I am digging through it.
Unfortunately I was careless on how I modded this one and itās all mixed in with no explaining. Once I find it I will post that.
This is why itās important to personalize and sign stuff as you mod it.
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Regarding āsecondariesā, Souda AFB in Ikaros theater is full of GSEās, ground vehicles that are spread all over the base (although mostly around the main active āloopā). Each GSE model was specifically overviewed in the DB so to assign it as realistic values as possible, e.g. a fuel truck can smoke/burn/explode, while a ladder or a barrel will not trigger any ps effects. So, I am off for a mission, take off, then decided to drop a bomb on a specific vehicle on the loop to see the outcome. Vehicle destroyed and on fire, so Iāve continued my long mission for a fire range. Returning back after an hour or so MOST of the objects on the loop where on fire destroyed as of secondaries!!
Do we need some fire stations please in bms?
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there is a line for burning vehicles. if you add an explosion addemitter to it and a emiter.probability line to that. you can have random seeming burning vehicles explode. while burning. you can chose or make any explosion for this. i like using parts of one with burning white trails. would post pics but this is just off my memory right now.
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It depends what you refer to by āSecondariesā. Chain reaction is working, you can try it easily by bombing some fuel tank with 1 bomb so only that will be destructed and then you can see after some time that some effects are triggered on it again and other features around it are getting damage from the secondaries.
From my experience with PS, there is simply no way to please everyone. Back in the days of RV I was a pure PS dev (Didnāt had code access at start) and I spent really 100s of hours tweaking many many effects, I actually redid almost the entire file. Now some effects I brought to BMS from there and some I improved here even more - FWIW I donāt know if everyone likes them or not, but I redid all weapons effects and features/vehicles explosion effects in BMS to be as close as I could to be similar to many RL explosions I saw in vids. Itās VERY HARD to get accurate effects that will make everyone happy, and also in RL many effects looks very different with different conditions (surface type, weather, more variaty of explosive materials that create different effects etc), so itās not easy to keep it nice for everyone to like.
PS is close to my heart and in my signature Iām a Particle system dev, even though I did a lot of other things since. These days and for sometime now Iām deep deep inside other stuff that should help the sim, but once this huge task is finished I sure intend to get deeper to improve PS and effects, there are many areas to improve there and now that Iām into some GFX code, I for sure will find how to make it better (Already have some ideas, just no time for it now).
You might not āplease everyoneā, but your work on the PS these past years have, in my opinion, been amazing. Obvious and significant improvement since you started working on it. Iām just a āsecondary explosionā freak! lolol Thanks for your hard work.
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hmmm once youāll be there maybe consider and an effects randomizer?
Like as I know the effects are grouped. So they could be populated with variations and the randomizer pick one and render it. That way explosions will not be always the same.
I agree with SoBad the work is phenomenal. -
there is a line for burning vehicles. if you add an explosion addemitter to it and a emiter.probability line to that. you can have random seeming burning vehicles explode. while burning. you can chose or make any explosion for this. i like using parts of one with burning white trails. would post pics but this is just off my memory right now.
Ha right! emiter.probability - I coded that actually, and already forgot it exist :mrgreen:
You might not āplease everyoneā, but your work on the PS these past years have, in my opinion, been amazing. Obvious and significant improvement since you started working on it. Iām just a āsecondary explosionā freak! lolol Thanks for your hard work.
Thanx!
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hmmm once youāll be there maybe consider and an effects randomizer?
Like as I know the effects are grouped. So they could be populated with variations and the randomizer pick one and render it. That way explosions will not be always the same.
I agree with SoBad the work is phenomenal.Actually the PS code is full of randomizations
Not always easy to see but for example (And out of my head):
Feature burning effect is randomized - There are 4 types and 1 is chosen for every wake up for such effect
AC burning effect is randomized - There are at least 5 typesAnd there are moreā¦
But please pay attention! With emitter.probablity you can actually port the randomization functionality to the PS.ini, you donāt even need code anymore.
Example scenario:
Vehicle explodes and the code always call same $GROUND_VEHICLE_EXPLOSION or whatever it is called in the PS
Then in PS.ini you can create as many emitters called vehicle_explosion_effect1/2/3/4 as you like, and give each a different probability to wake up, this way you can basically customize almost anything -
WOWā¦