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Offline DMarkwick

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DMSmokeEffects
« on: 06 Feb 2008, 17:13:46 »
OK I guess a lot of people might have heard of this already, but apart from general positive comments on my BIS thread I never really submitted it for a proper beta review. I work on it now & then so progress is generally slow, however it is in a state that can provide very interesting SP gameplay.

Description:
Provides destroyed vehicles with very large and realistic smoke effects (within the bounds of ArmA's particle system). Each vehicle will generate a smoke source, and each time some random parameters decide on the particular look of each smoke instance. It does not replace default smoke, rather it is an effect applied over default smoke. However the addon also tweaks default smoke to be more sympathetic to the addon. Building collapse effects are also substantially tweaked to give a much larger & longer lasting dust effect.
The main smoke effects themselves last for an average of three-quarters of an hour, long enough to give the battlefield some sense of history, especially as the smoke effects go through several phases of transaction, eventually smoldering down to almost nothing before petering out. Helicopters, aircraft and fuel trucks have a rather different look, I applied an animated dense black oily smoke to these vehicles.
As well as smoke, the current version (4.3a) adds new frag grenade effects and also gives smoke grenades actual AI viewblock abilities, allowing for a genuine reason to use them ingame.

Caveats:
Right now I would describe the addon as SP eye-candy, as it only adds smoke effects to local killed events on vehicles. However the config tweaks to the default effects are MP friendly. Also the smoke grenade viewblock functionality suffers from an ArmA bug. In ArmA currently, the "throw" action is not correctly captured as a global "fired" event, meaning that clients who throw smoke grenades will not successfully spawn a viewblock object. However, if a client fires a smokeshell from a grenadier weapon then it will have full MP viewblock functionality.
The ArmA particle scaling bug means that the effects look great at medium and long distance, but getting close will reveal the bug as the particles refuse to scale properly, and the particles will seem to "shrink". Nothing I can do about that I'm afraid.
There is an added "Wind info" action which will NOT be in the next version, it basically allows you to know the wind speed & direction. The indicated direction is the direction the wind is blowing TO.

Further details:
The smoke grenade viewblock can be most easily described by this simple illustration:

and the viewblock "capsule" will follow the wind direction also over it's lifetime, as I've noticed that wind direction & speed can change quite a bit even over a minute. I've found it to be very effective as a tactical aid.

The download can be gotten here:
http://dmarkwick64.googlepages.com/DMSmokeEffectsBeta4_3a.rar

Please note that Extended Event Handlers are required. This has become somewhat of a ubiquitous requirement for a lot of addons by now.

There is a "b" version, it's a total smoke viewblock addon (i.e. ALL smoke generates viewblocks) and is very heavy on the framerate, so I do not include it for the purposes of this beta review. The next version will also have the smoke grenade viewbock portion as a separate addon as I think it's important enough to warrant this.

I hope you enjoy it :)
some screenies:


« Last Edit: 06 Feb 2008, 21:33:24 by DMarkwick »

Offline Mandoble

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Re: DMSmokeEffects
« Reply #1 on: 06 Feb 2008, 18:03:49 »
Is there any particular and known problem to have this only for SP?

Offline DMarkwick

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Re: DMSmokeEffects
« Reply #2 on: 06 Feb 2008, 18:46:11 »
Nope. Just that the main part of the effects - the smoke effects - are localised to one machine. So if you see an AI tank go up, you will not see the smoke effects, but the server will. If your vehicle is destroyed, you will see the smoke effects - but noone else will. Depends on where the "killed" event happened. However all other effects are MP friendly.

Oh - and I forgot to mention that Solus' event handlers are required. I will add that to the OP.



#quote of previous post removed - bedges
« Last Edit: 06 Feb 2008, 19:52:31 by bedges »

Offline RubberKite

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Re: DMSmokeEffects
« Reply #3 on: 10 Feb 2008, 15:56:01 »
HI DMarkwick,  :good:

I really like your addon, and I ask you the same thing in the BI forum,

Can you add in your next version something to setup by config (also inside your config.cpp) file that the user can set for smoke duration?

I really like the feel that your smokes do... :cool2: ( not drugs I mean hehe only game smoke ) but in big Coop like Evolution, the residend smoke
will slow down the game, and his duration seems to be very long, some time a fireparticle rest in for a while and the general performance slow down a lot...

I don't want to remove your addon, and I don't want that the smoke duration is  changed for my personal request, I ask only the option to set its duration.

So we can setup :)

I use the 4.3b version ...


I ask u another question, how do I configure the server to add viewblock for AI, just run the 4.3a ?  It's work for Grenades trowed by human player and from AI ?

very thank from me and my italian coop friends :)

Offline DMarkwick

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Re: DMSmokeEffects
« Reply #4 on: 10 Feb 2008, 20:08:04 »
Hi Rubberkite, thanks for the report :)

IMO, for MP gameplay DMSMokeEffects is not suitable just yet. As described above only one machine will show any one smoke source, so most will be only on the server and not even visible to players.

Also, you're running 4.3b which is full viewblock, and WILL drag your FPS down serverside. 4.3b was only really an "extra" for those wishing to try it out and for me to get general feedback. 4.3a is what I generally recommend, and it includes smoke grenade viewblock.

However, watch this space carefully as I think I have implemented a fully MP DMSmokeEffects, I just need to do a few tests to see if all players see roughly the same thing then I can release it as a total mod smoke addon. (I call it a total mod addon because it will be a requirement for all players and the server to have it, and so will be suitable for total mods or private servers with identical installs on all machines.)

And yes - a config setup is one of the things I have planned eventually. It will include a smoke lifetime setting to allow for shorter lived smoke (both particle and source), and also a viewblock switch to enable or disable full viewblock.

Offline RubberKite

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Re: DMSmokeEffects
« Reply #5 on: 12 Feb 2008, 01:21:24 »
 :clap: :good: :yes: :D

Nice to hear I hope to see next version soon ....

I hope that also viewblock for trowed grenades works in sp & mp :)

so the definitive smoke is coming soon ...

Have a nice work
thank you!

by

Rubber