Blastcore: Phoenix 2

[bigpickle 0]

Yes any sub-effect thats deemed to be quite resource hungry will be able to be toned down via the ingame options menu, these will mostly include things like sparks, dirt & rocks some smoke will also be affected, after the rebuild there was some design changes on how the actual emitters are setup in the mod as i wanted to take full advantage of the ingame particle options.

There are now two of the same smoke or fire effects happening at the same time, so by lowering the particles in the options it will only use 1 and removes some excessive smoke and fire but will still look pretty decent, but at the highest level everything will be at full whack and i think most people will be able to play with it at this level. I have designed it so i can get the same result of a Normal & Lite versions.

Legend! Looking forward to trying out the new version, Thanks for all the hard work and effort mate.

[miketim 20]

Great news.

Keep up the great work. :)

Those bombs look spectacular... Boy I would love another vid :)

[Subscyed 10]

I feel very compelled to ask this question if it hasn't been asked yet:

With Phoenix, will smoke grenades see themselves as more dynamic?

To elaborate: Will they have animated textures and will the smoke cloud produced develop more naturally?

Many thanks in advance and I wish you the best of luck (& patience) with your mod, OS.

[tonic-_- 53]

Just wanted to stop by and say OS you sure have blown my mind, keep up the great work and I'm very excited for Blastcore: Phoenix. The GBU explosions were simply amazing and I must say I never thought I would see explosions some what close to real life in a video game, especially not ARMA!

[milosv123344 37]

Hi! Awesome mod, been using it since it came out on Arma 2, one of the things that made arma look REALLY bad were the effects, and i was thinking can arma AT ALL use animated effects like these:

(also look at few more videos to see the muzzle flashes from weapons)

Or even better, muzzle flashes like this would make the game THREE times more playable and awesome for me and i'm sure a lot more people:

So something like dynamic animated effects , i'm not sure whats the actual term for that, but still, since its just an image/gif/whatever, it should not take as much memory as an actual physical effects like what you are using, which gives you more space to add the missing effects, that would make the whole thing even better.

Keep it up :D

[andersson 285]

No please no. Leave obvious hollywood effects out, or to an optional pbo. Black powder are not used in modern guns.....

[mwnciboo 11]

Er Crazy Muzzle flash....NO - Real Soldiers put alot of effort into cleaning their weapons and ensuring there is no or minimal flash, sparks or even smoke. Smoke is unburnt fuel, you ideally want a clean burn in a weapon system that is lubricated, but not excessively so otherwise you get flames and all kinds of shennanigans, which gives away your position and invariable attracts fire.

If you want a Hollywood MOD make one, but Blastcore is about realism not "John Woo" or "Michael Bay" stylings.

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Er Crazy Muzzle flash....NO - Real Soldiers put alot of effort into cleaning their weapons and ensuring there is no or minimal flash, sparks or even smoke. Smoke is unburnt fuel, you ideally want a clean burn in a weapon system that is lubricated, but not excessively so otherwise you get flames and all kinds of shennanigans, which gives away your position and invariable attracts fire.

If you want a Hollywood MOD make one, but Blastcore is about realism not "John Woo" or "Michael Bay" stylings.

Yeah, besides, those videoeffects are pre-rendered. If you want anything like that in Arma you better make sure you got your CPU overclocked to 7Ghz and a quad Titan SLI setup to play it. Its just a little ridicilous.

[Tonci87 163]

There will be an ingame options menu? I like that. Can you already tell what will be adjustable?

[laxemann 1673]

There will be an ingame options menu? I like that. Can you already tell what will be adjustable?

He's talking about the regular effects option, I suppose.

[Tonci87 163]

Or he is making an options menu like some other mods (AGM, XMed, etc) have.

[heavygunner 179]

Or he is making an options menu like some other mods (AGM, XMed, etc) have.

I'm sure it's just the normal menu.

[gepanzert-faust 10]

Dear mod author :o

Any thoughts on which new effect we might get to see next?

I'd love to see your latest work with grenade, mortar and bullet-metal impacts.

Thanks and good luck finishing the next version of the mod :)

[miketim 20]

He said "the in game options menu"

99% sure he means the regular graphics one and that his stuff scales with the normal settings! not sure what else he could've meant.

[milosv123344 37]

No please no. Leave obvious hollywood effects out, or to an optional pbo. Black powder are not used in modern guns.....

Yeah because existing arma effects are awesome and are realistic..give me a break mister realism expert. Anyone knows firearms mostly put out smoke with exception every 2-4 random shots where a little bit of fire comes out, what you saw above in that video can also be applied to smoke. Watch the smoke puff in this video :

It was a valid suggestion because those types of gifs/3d image files should not take nearly as much memory as actual particles (which look like shit no matter what you do) since they are already rendered as an image, just need to be played in game.

[Dorak 11]

Yeah, besides, those videoeffects are pre-rendered. If you want anything like that in Arma you better make sure you got your CPU overclocked to 7Ghz and a quad Titan SLI setup to play it. Its just a little ridicilous.

ArmA 3 doesn't properly support SLI and scale like shit. PiP is also unusable in SLI.

Don't want to ruin your irony, but i found funny that even such a voluntary over the top example wouldn't be enough to make this fucking game runs smoothly.

[Opticalsnare 12]

Yea the regular options. Where it says low, med and high will control how much smoke, fire and other details is generated.

Btw the only changes made to the muzzle effects is that the smoke has been edited to be more optimized during full-auto where i saved 15fps. Other than that theres no more changes planned.

Animated textures are supported, but should only be used in as a smoke particle or small minor effects. Anything rather large like an entire explosion causes issues relating to the camera position and will look the same everytime more or less.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Opticalsnare

[miketim 20]

Yup sounds fine to me, no need for a special blast core menu

I am curious if this,addon affects muzzle smoke or how much dirt a gun kicks up or how,thick that dirt is etc

Sorry for commas, this iPad butchers my shit

[heavygunner 179]

Btw the only changes made to the muzzle effects is that the smoke has been edited to be more optimized during full-auto where i saved 15fps. Other than that theres no more changes planned.

Here OS already answered that question :)

[milosv123344 37]

Animated textures are supported, but should only be used in as a smoke particle or small minor effects. Anything rather large like an entire explosion causes issues relating to the camera position and will look the same everytime more or less.

Aaah animated textures, that was the term :) Still, awesome work. . Thanks :) If you played project reality ( the newest version), they have the best mixture of smoke and muzzle fire on their weapons, i was thinking something like that would be awesome in arma, but now i know it might not be as viable. Also i watched your explosions video, just amazing. Will there be any more showcase videos like the one with the plane and explosions?

[mwnciboo 11]

@milosv, mate your fascination with Muzzle flashes is a bit off from a Realism standpoint. Yes smoke does come out of a barrel but if it's well maintained and the ammunition is good it should be negligible. No Military Professional goes out into the field wanting to gift their life to the enemy, thats where hard won knowledge and "not the rule of cool" win the day. Muzzle flashes (like I post before) are a big sign saying "I'm here / Shoot here".

Watch some of the below video to see 0.50cals etc etc with Zero or no Muzzle flash! If you have visible flame coming out the end, you've either over oiled your weapon, or their is a problem with your weapon or Ammo. Very High speed Camera's can pick up flame but it should never be visible to the naked eye.

I'm not against what you want, but not in this particular Mod because I think you are at cross purposes with what BLASTCORE is trying to achieve and what they have added to ARMA in the past. Please don't get angry with me for pointing this fact out, I'm simply suggesting that your valid request is not a good fit for this MOD.

Edited August 27, 2014 by mwnciboo

[miketim 20]

I don't think blast core needs muzzle suff really, I would like to see guns kick up more dirt and dust, but this isn't a good idea because it's not environment dependent.

If only in map configs you could have like a value that multiples the amount of dirt guns kick up.

So a normal environment would be like1.0 and Afghanistan would be like1.7

Sad we can't ever really do that, maybe for arma 4 lol

[andersson 285]

mwnciboo, give mister hollywood expert a break :p ;)

[milosv123344 37]

@milosv, mate your fascination with Muzzle flashes is a bit off from a Realism standpoint. Yes smoke does come out of a barrel but if it's well maintained and the ammunition is good it should be negligible. No Military Professional goes out into the field wanting to gift their life to the enemy, thats where hard won knowledge and "not the rule of cool" win the day. Muzzle flashes (like I post before) are a big sign saying "I'm here / Shoot here".

I'm not against what you want, but not in this particular Mod because I think you are at cross purposes with what BLASTCORE is trying to achieve and what they have added to ARMA in the past. Please don't get angry with me for pointing this fact out, I'm simply suggesting that your valid request is not a good fit for this MOD.

Right, and thats ok, English is not my first language so by muzzle flashes i don't exactly mean the fire hollywood effects, just the muzzle firing effect and smooth transition between the shots as well as randomness in flames, it would greatly enhance the experience of an infantry soldier imho, as well as maybe dust progressively lifting around a squad firing. Like Operation Flashpoint saying goes, once you see the flash, its already too late. The effect i was hoping for was around 2:45 - 2:55:

I am not obsessed with muzzle flashes it was simply a little thing i wanted to suggest, among a million other ideas i have, i'm not a kid to get mad at anyone for disagreeing, it's his mod, believe me if i knew how to mod anything other than sound in arma and opening closing PBOs i would surely not even complain here i would go ahead and make the mod myself. The whole reason i suggested it here in the first place was that its an effects mod, a total effects overhaul mod right?

Edit - also a major part in realism is the recoil, which looks atrocious in arma 3, which has to work together with sound and the animation and the effects themselves for the ultimate experience. Arma 3 currently has none of those things that even resemble realism, not sure how many people would even bother with the vanilla game, if it wasn't for mods. The most proper recoil in arma (at least with the Blufor weapons), was in Arma 1(armed assault 2007) with ace mod.

Edited August 28, 2014 by milosv123344

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

I don't think blast core needs muzzle suff really, I would like to see guns kick up more dirt and dust, but this isn't a good idea because it's not environment dependent.

If only in map configs you could have like a value that multiples the amount of dirt guns kick up.

So a normal environment would be like1.0 and Afghanistan would be like1.7

Sad we can't ever really do that, maybe for arma 4 lol

I don't see why not, you can already check for worldNames, and there are certain ways to check the current surfaceType a player is standing on. No idea how accurate it actually is, I sometimes got it to return dirt or sand surfaces when actually standing on concrete/tarmac, but it should be doable.

You could toss in a check for the current rain/humidity values too.

Really looking forward to this release OS!

Keep up the good work!