Playing around with the drop command I was able to create a nice nuclear mushroom effect. It looks OK but it's still a beta. I'll improve the sound, camera work, and clean up the code.
http://www.soldbuysam.com/ofp/drop/plaznuke.zipuncompiled source. You'll notice if you compile and start a server the mushroom doesn't look right. There are differences between how it looks in the editor and how it looks running on a server. Will look into this...
more info below. will update as I figure more things out. Advice welcome and feel free to use any of this code just let lemme know if you've made a better mousetrap!
regards,
SSG Plazmoid
Several scripts are used to create the effects.
sounds:
alarm.ogg obtained from Charon's nuke scripts (was ABCAlarm.ogg). I trimmed the length and reduced the size considerably. original size: 450kb reduced size: 88kb
explosion.ogg obtained from Civilization III (was TacticalICBMBomb.wav). Converted to ogg. original size: 259kb reduced size: 33kb
nukemaster.sqs calls the various scripts at the right times and is itself called by a radio trigger. A target parameter is passed into nuclearmaster (I just used a unit named wa2 in my example). Additionally nukemaster creates the flash and whiteout effects. These concepts were obtained from Charon's nuclear blast.
nuclear_timer.sqs waits for a specified amount of time and then sets variable to a value. Parameters passed into the timer are [decimal seconds, string part] where seconds is the delay and part represents the variable to set. There are three possible values for part - "column", "top", "shaking".
nuclear_column.sqs creates the vertical shaft of the mushroom. This is accomplished by using the drop command in a loop and giving vertical velocity to the particles. I used two different commands, one for a smoke shaft and another for a fire shaft inside the smoke shaft.
nuclear_top.sqs creates the head of the mushroom. I used some simple trig and a loop incrementing by 10 degrees to create a torus (spelling?) which is a donut looking shape. I also gave the particles here a vertical velocity so it looks like the whole thing is slowly rising.
shaking.sqs creates a shaking effect. This script is based on code that was obtained from the tutorials sections authored by Drak.
Finally, vektorboson's drop tutorials helped me understand the drop command.