Cutscenes?

[SneaksieDave]

Not sure, a programmer would have to say. Whoever made the wavering lights (Ishtvan?): would this be adaptable to a particle emitter? It would probably just need a small, slow(ish) waver. It'd probably look good I'm guessing. Damn, if 'smoke' type particles weren't so expensive, it would probably look really sweet...

[Ishtvan]

It shouldn't be too difficult, although it gets complicated if it's all one entity and you want the light origin and the particle origin to move indepenent of eachother.

 

rand_osc.script is written to generally move the origin of any object in the same way that the lights move. There's a derived class rand_osc_light that instead sets the light origin (by overloading GetOscPosition and SetOscPosition methods in rand_osc.script). So all you have to do if you want to see how it looks on a candleflame is put in a candleflame, set "scriptobject" to "rand_osc".

 

If you just want to see how it will look for a candleflame without a light, set up the particle and set "scriptObject" to "rand_osc" and fill in the spawnargs for the random oscillator (frequency range x y z, etc) just like on the lights.

 

If you wanted to have a light that moves both the light and the particle flame independently, you'd have to create another script like rand_osc but with two movement loops, one for the light origin, one for the particle origin. Inbetween that, if you could get away with moving the particle flame in the same direction but some fraction of the distance the light moves, that would probably take less work.

[SneaksieDave]

A very quick mockup (just a particle) here:

http://208.49.149.118/thedarkmod/temp/candle.wmv

 

Not ideal, IMO, but it looks okay, and maybe a little better than current. On the other hand, I also passed the candle in front of a pool of water while doing this, so it picked up the non-depth-sorted (or whatever) game limitation/bug, and it does look nice with heat haze (jitter not really necessary in that case). Problem is, how to apply that to a particle. The old texture didn't do a very good job, and it's got the technical hurdles as described above and elsewhere (axis alignment, extra polys needed (less flexibility), repeating loop animation, looking ass).

[Springheel]

I think that's an improvement, actually. With the light moving in the same pattern, I think that would look pretty good.

[SneaksieDave]

Also, those were just quick values I threw in; they could be tweaked yet.

[AluminumHaste]

Also, those were just quick values I threw in; they could be tweaked yet.

 

Looks amazing, can't wait to test the new combat system too!!! <3