Smoke Effects beta 1

[dmarkwick 261]

As per my previous posts on the topic, here is the current beta test of the smoke effects I've been playing with.

Mirror:

armed-assault-zone.com

Readme:

Quote[/b] ]

DMs Smoke Effects

First off - let me say that DM does NOT mean deathmatch it's my online name. Unfortunate, but I'm not going to change it

This addon beta test is as a result of me solvng the mipmap not found error I was plagued with, basically the original texture is increased from 768x768 to 1024x1024, which solved the problem. Don't know why, but there you go. I stretched the original texture to size which means that one of the things I need to do is to re-render the images at their new size, however as an initial beta these ones are fine.

Basically the addon/mission is showcasing how I think battlefields should look, huge plumes of thick oily smoke much larger and much longer lasting than default smoke. Many will like it, many will not, but it's all OK because the intention is to make it a client-side eye-candy addon. I'd like for AI to be affected by smoke obscuration of objects but I suspect only the server can affect that, and what the server sees relative to what the player sees might not match up perfectly due to the random nature of the particles. I have done no testing whatsoever in MP yet, I wanted to get something visible to play with first

It will be a slow process for me, not only do I not have a lot of time but I'm new to ArmA modding. My mandate is make things as simple as absolutely possible, and the sript is definately as simple as possible there's hardly any code there in fact. I want great, large effects with as little overhead as possible (excuse the pun).

The addon is a combination of default smoke texture with new settings, and entirely new animated smoke effects done by me. This mission is deliberately intense with more armour than you would normally see so close to each other, but it's a good stress test.

Installation: extract the files somewhere and put the mission into MPMissions and the DMSmokeEffects addon into your ArmA\Addons folder. Or you can do the @DM mod thing, entirely up to you but the addon is texture only right now so there's no ill effects either way. As soon as I figure out how to make the smoke effects magically happen just by having the addon that will change.

Play: choose the Smoke Effects mission in your MP list. Play, observe, try not to leave the village as there's rather a lot going on. Try to let the scenario play out for at least 10 minutes so that you get the full range of smoke types on all wrecks.

The eventual plan is that the large smoke effects will burn continuously for at least an hour, possibly more, and the small smoldering smoke to last another few hours beyond that. This is designed for MFCTI + DAC missions eventually and that game takes around 4-5 hours to play out, and I want to see lots of indication where the DAC action is happening. (DAC = Dynamic AI Creator, the best addon ever for OFP IMO and soon to be released for ArmA.)

Problems: for some reason the animated smoke particles go "out of focus" or blurry now & then, no idea why but it's an ArmA thing. Zooming in usually snaps tham back in focus. Very large particles act starangely when getting close, zooming in or looking through optics, again it's an ArmA bug, one that I've reported. Also, the particles are not affected by distance so they always look as dark & sharp no matter how far away you are, which makes them look "pasted on". You won't see much of that in this mission but it's quite pronounced in larger missions. Again it's an ArmA bug, again I've reported it. The above problems are very likely the reason the default smoke is as weedy & pale as they are. I set the settings to look good at medium distances, i.e. the sort of distances you'll see here.

To do: redo the textures as mentioned above, cover all vehicle types with a range of different & randomised effects, add some more animated smoke & fire effetcs, extend the lives of the effects dramatically, destroy the effects objects as they eventually get to the end of their life (right now they burn indefinately), add code to handle when vehicles are fixed/removed/culled, have extra code to ramp down effects rather than simply cut one off & start another, and generally make it look great.

Kindest regards

DM

[Vibrant_Viper 0]

Ohh nice I will try it out for sure! If they are anything near what I saw in the demo video then its really good : )

[dmarkwick 261]

@ June 29 2007,18:33)]Ohh nice I will try it out for sure! If they are anything near what I saw in the demo video then its really good : )

LOL, the video was carefully chosen for it's best bits

Results vary from pretty good to pretty poor, post your results

[PaulHargreaves 0]

does anybody have any screenies to post ?

[dmarkwick 261]

does anybody have any screenies to post ?

[zootia 0]

Awesome stuff, but the tip could use some work. Theres a huge pillar of thick smoke and it just suddenly ends? Would be nice if you kinda dissipated the end part to make it look more natural.

[canis lupus 20]

they almost gave me goosebumps... great work you get a really great feeling of battle out of this

[dmarkwick 261]

Awesome stuff, but the tip could use some work. There a huge pillar of thick smoke and it just suddenly ends? Would be nice if you kinda dissipated the end part to make it look more natural.

The particles do fade to nothing at the top, but you might be experiencing one of two things:

not seeing the tip as it's obscured by lower particles

or

reaching ArmA's hardcoded particle limit, when it reaches this unknown (to me) number the oldest particles disappear.

[kroky 1]

I feel the smoke is exaggerated.

Definitely too much. While I think it's a good idea that the smoke stays a lot longer than in the original game, it's overdone concerning the thickness. There is a lot of smoke which is grey and transparent. Sometimes (means less than 50%) the smoke can be that black and thick.

So if you want to modify the smoke, please make it more variable.

[dmarkwick 261]

I feel the smoke is exaggerated.

Definitely too much. While I think it's a good idea that the smoke stays a lot longer than in the original game, it's overdone concerning the thickness. There is a lot of smoke which is grey and transparent. Sometimes (means less than 50%) the smoke can be that black and thick.

So if you want to modify the smoke, please make it more variable.

Eventually I'd like to have a range of smoke effects and apply them on a statistical basis, I tried the variation but it looks patchy, especially when you vary size as well as transparency. The vagaries of the random process throws up more bad looking effects than good looking effects, so I intend to have a library of effects that do not have much random variation to choose from.

[zootia 0]

I havent tried it on my game, I'm just making an observation from your youtube clip. The top just ends, no smooth dissipation.

[Psychonaut 0]

Is it right, that the new smoke just works with your included mission. I hoped, the addon would replace the BIS smoke, so that every mission could profit from the new one. But maybe (hopefully ) it´s just because of the Beta.

BTW: there some bugs like the blurry smoke, but i´ts really some eyecandy stuff. Keep on your good work

Just a suggestion: maybe you should half the size of the cloudlets esp. for the tanks. Now it looks a bit overdone.

[dmarkwick 261]

Is it right, that the new smoke just works with your included mission. I hoped, the addon would replace the BIS smoke, so that every mission could profit from the new one. But maybe (hopefully ) it´s just because of the Beta.

BTW: there some bugs like the blurry smoke, but i´ts really some eyecandy stuff. Keep on your good work

Just a suggestion: maybe you should half the size of the cloudlets esp. for the tanks. Now it looks a bit overdone.

True as it stands, but as soon as I work out how to get an addon to "magically" apply the effects just by having the addon, it'll happen (any help here would be appreciated )

Until then, you can make a huge trigger that covers the island (or at least the area of interest) with settings Anyone, Once, Present and put this line into the On Activation field:

{_x addEventHandler ["killed", {[_this select 0, _this select 1] execVM "DMSmokeEffects.sqf"}]} foreach thislist;

You'll also need the DMSmokeEffects.sqf file from the PBO which you can get by using any of the decompressors available.

That will do it. Unfortunately the large effects short duration will still be in effect, but the smaller smoldering effects will last forever.

[bravo 6 0]

do we have shadows using this smoke? does the smoke generates shadows in ground and objects?

[IronTiger 0]

How can i replace this with the Arma vanilla smoke?

i mean with that "create PBO" thing

[dmarkwick 261]

do we have shadows using this smoke? does the smoke generates shadows in ground and objects?

No, ArmA particles do not cast shadows.

However, rather cooly, they can receive them I've see helicopters cast shadows on smoke particles.

[dmarkwick 261]

How can i replace this with the Arma vanilla smoke?

i mean with that "create PBO" thing

Do you mean how can you lose the addon smoke and have the default one back? Lose the mission & addon. If you mean how can you replace default smoke with this one, well I posted that 4 posts back

[ck-claw 1]

Just tested !

Looking good!

[Col. Faulkner 0]

I don't think I'd replace all of the default smoke with this but

I can definitely see a use for it in particular applications. I'd

been wanting a good effect for the aftermath of an attack on

an oil-storage facility and it looks like this might do nicely.  

[Jack-UK 0]

yeah they are very nice, i love the 3d effect and how they are a deeper black.. i just think the smoke is a bit extreme for most of the explosions, but looks sweet, nice work!

[dmarkwick 261]

I don't think I'd replace all of the default smoke with this but

I can definitely see a use for it in particular applications. I'd

been wanting a good effect for the aftermath of an attack on

an oil-storage facility and it looks like this might do nicely.

Yeah for oil fires it's pretty good. Those oil pumps in the south of the island would be good candidates I think I might redo the render though, people are complaining about the poofy fading away effect at the edges of the particle. If I make the edges slightly less sharp and lose the edge pulsing, and *slightly* lighten the texture I think it would be better.

Still fiddling with the other settings though, the non-custom textures used for the tanks. At a great distance they look pretty poor (fat) and close up pretty thin, maybe more particles but smaller size. Balance & observation

Did anyone like the smoke AFTER the main plumes have gone?

[canis lupus 20]

I don't get the fade out problem, it looks perfectly great by me, the smoke just slowly thins out and gets smaller untill its gone...

[Psychonaut 0]

Placing an activator for every single mission is pretty much work to replace the vanilla BIS smoke. As far as i know a sloution would be to implement a config.cpp to your mod and change the eventhandlers for every unit to use your smoke. I did some config-editing once in OFP, but thats long ago and things got much more complicated in Arma. But there are a lot of code wizzards around here. I bet there is someone, who can help you creating something, which will be able to replace the vanilla BIS smoke (at least for singleplayer).

[dmarkwick 261]

Placing an activator for every single mission is pretty much work to replace the vanilla BIS smoke. As far as i know a sloution would be to implement a config.cpp to your mod and change the eventhandlers for every unit to use your smoke. I did some config-editing once in OFP, but thats long ago and things got much more complicated in Arma. But there are a lot of code wizzards around here. I bet there is someone, who can help you creating something, which will be able to replace the vanilla BIS smoke (at least for singleplayer).

Yeah, getting the SmokeEffects addon to "magically" work just by having the addon is the aim. I hope that people will be able to use it in any mission, on any server and see great effects even if the server does NOT run it. (Each player will se *slightly* different results.) If the server does run it I expect everyone will see the same results.

[Psychonaut 0]

I´ve tested the whole evening to get this stuff to run in every mission by editing the cfgVehicles.hpp and inserting eventhandlers, but it don´t work at all. I´m not really into this stuff and it´s a lot of trial and error. Maybe someone have the right idea, how a working eventhandler could look like and how to get a working .hpp file. It´s really frustrating to have this great addon and can´t use it in the campaign.

me think, editing OFP was much easier, wasn´t it.