NWNCX Suggestion - open "hard coded" visual effects to modification/addition

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Mine's undocumented right now but if I do make it more anybody-friendly, I'll put it up. Actually now that we're talking about it, maybe I should just mod the nwmax lightning crap....why didnt I think of that before? I'm much better at nwmax now than I was when I made the tileset and anatomy changes. Maybe I will just make a duplicator and modifier panel just for lightning?? Oh I could do a bit with a tool like that!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MerricksDad, 17 juillet 2012 - 11:23 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               ok so lightning birthrate needs to be a binary number +1 then or is screws up?? that makes sense then why 3 9 and 33 are good. huh

oh and let me appologize now for turning this forum into a lets talk about lightning emitters forum
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MerricksDad, 17 juillet 2012 - 11:22 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               @MerricksDad  - Some useful information here, I believe.  Also in the Omnibus.

Ok, just tried this on vim_rayodd and vim_raychain and it looks like regardless of subdivisions, NWMax is definitely borking the birthrate.

Solution(?) #1
If you do have an existing subdiv then change Lightning to Fountain, then back to Lightning.

If you do not have an existing subdiv then export the model and manually edit the birthrate to 9.

Solution(?) #2
OR you can also edit your aurora_helper_emitter.ms and change the line:
EmitParticlesRollout.spn_birthrate.enabled = false
to
EmitParticlesRollout.spn_birthrate.enabled = true

This will prevent the birthrate spinner from being grayed out when you select Lightning.  However, if there is a subdivision it will only calculate the birthrate when the type is switched to Lighting from, say, Fountain.

Since emitters are basically open ended, either of those solutions could cause problems.  Those are quick and dirty.  These have just been tested as a placeable but they should work as replacment beams as well.  I have to shuffle through my damned executables to find the right one to test with.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 17 juillet 2012 - 11:32 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Ok, just tried this on vim_rayodd and vim_raychain and it looks like regardless of subdivisions, NWMax is definitely borking the birthrate.

ok so the original nwmax emitter helper is having an issue with updating the value on the birthrate spinner because that spinner is disabled when lightning is enabled. the export script also does not calculate on the fly like it should and exports the lightningsubdiv entry and value instead, which I have to just assume NWN does not understand. So really the only thing needing changed is maybe the export script and to force it to recalc lightning birthrates on export.

One thing I forgot to mention is that NWN does not give a crap what the model base is named. I could name it jimbob01 and save it as vim_rayodd01 and make an entry for it and it works. I can also reuse vim_rayodd for its name and it will not override or otherwise screw up the original vim_rayodd if either are used at the same time.

I'm going to lose net for a few hours, but this is a great time to try a fire ray or finish my cold rays. Later guys
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Hot damn!  I was right. (kisses his notes)

Here is the beam model I used, my visualeffects.2da and the vfx_beams.2da from my testing:




There's nothing particularly special in that download.  I took a beam and slowly, slowly stripped parts away and then tested every little change and it turned out what I mentioned in my notes from a year ago was exactly what was going on.  Man I miss the Bioware export scripts when it comes to creating VFX.  Oh well.

If your existing beam has lightning with subdivisions then, after you've entered your subdivisions, change the Update type from Lightning to Fountain (or something else), then back to Lightning.  This should correctly update your birthrate.  Keep an eye on it, obviously.

If your existing beam has lightning without subdivisions, manually edit the file in a text editor and change the birthrate to 9.

Important: These issues have far less to do with beams than how NWMax handles lightning.  It's basically a coincidence (IMO) that these two things that NWMax is buggy about happen to be the two things beams are usually made of.  I don't think beams have to be lightning at all.  I believe Flame Lash is an example of this.

I need to play around with this a bit more to see if there are any other rough patches.  There's an Emitter Archive rollout in Vel's Tools which will probably be a nice way to get out base emitters to people showing different  "base" beams.  So if you're hot to play with this, get Vel's Tools installed and we could swap goodies with each other pretty easily.

Here's a bezier beam.  It's not lightning at all, but uses fountain updates instead.  It has no such problems that require editing the birthrate or subdivisions or any of that because those are specific to lightning.


Whoops, a subdivision/birthrate thingie might have snuck in there.  Definitely none below:


               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 18 juillet 2012 - 05:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Absolutely LOVE the new "more cow beam"! I am assuming that's also not a beam, but a fountain? My next step was to see if beams could use models instead of textures like other vfx. One thing I see lightning has over fountain beams is the lightningScale which sets the segments to variant lengths. Setting it to 1.0 seems to make the segment scale from 0 to 100% of its original size while 0 makes it always 100% of its size and looks blocky. See your "extremely simple" beam for blockiness. I don't believe we could duplicate the lightningScale effect with the bezier beam, but that is not to say the bezier beam is not a great starting point too, and one that does not need NWNCX.

So I was testing the binary numbers again last night. 0 really makes 0: the animation plays with 0 segments and does not crash. Didn't try 2 (2^0+1). 3 works fine especially for custom beam textures with stringiness in them and a high lightningScale. 5 is similar. 9 is good so long as the scale is also set higher, or the texture is not trans. 17 is getting better for electricity. 33 seems best for electricity and could use any lightningScale over about 0.2 and at least 0.1-0.5 lightningRadius. 65 is just overkill so I won't go any further, but there is no reason you couldn't and use a tiny round texture or maybe chain or a crystal and make it look good. Chain, now there is an idea I think diablo 3 already did. "Get over here!"

Ok so today, yes, testing model input in the texture field because for one fire beam I want a swirling circle intermittently around the length of the beam so I need something to orbit the particle. I'm pretty sure it would be easier to use an outside particle than try to animate lightning segments...

And about veltools. I have it installed but the emitter save and load is totally broken. Save never enables and load gives an error about being unable to convert a cone angle animator to a subanim, or something like that. I really need to get the omnibus package downloaded so I can just omniboogle this stuff.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Running into potential problem, but something probably easily fixable. beam 15 no matter what I do also casts a magic missile and often crashes. I counted the beam effects in NWscript and there are 20, so I think there are some other hardcoded beams in the machine we should determine first before adding to the beams.2da. The only one I am having issues with so far is 15, so progfx 615. I'm going to dig a bit and see if there is documentation on any off numbered beams around.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Do you mean beam 15 as listed in the vfx_beams.2da?  I haven't seen that problem here yet, if that's what you're talking about.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 18 juillet 2012 - 02:47 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               check to make sure I am not a complete idiot, but it appears that any bezier, gravity or lightning effect was already able to be applied as a beam which automatically changed the reference point to that of the target even before NWNCX let us modify beams.2da. Is that accurate? Because that's what I am seeing with an unpatched exe.

I am able to direct any of those types to the target using the EffectBeam function. ALL bezier, gravity or lightning effects in the model will point to the target, you cannot change that by adding reference points.

Likewise, you cannot redirect any hand oriented effects in a ray to alternate targets in NWNCX. Is this something we can change like the helmet fix? It would be nice if I could mix a self oriented bezier effect in with a target oriented beam without having to make multiple files.

Edit: of course that would make the content NWNCX compatible only
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MerricksDad, 18 juillet 2012 - 07:33 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
Do you mean beam 15 as listed in the vfx_beams.2da?  I haven't seen that problem here yet, if that's what you're talking about.

yup. I can substitute any effect into that slot and it will always also fire off a magic missile along with the beam fx. I checked to make sure it was not a slop in the spell script and there is nothing mentioning anything about the MM effect in the script.

Just thinking out loud here: The toolset has entries for silent versions and I wonder if silent rays are like ray X + an offset. I will have to test more...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MerricksDad, 18 juillet 2012 - 07:32 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

MerricksDad wrote...
but it appears that any bezier, gravity or lightning effect was already able to be applied as a beam which automatically changed the reference point to that of the target even before NWNCX let us modify beams.2da. Is that accurate

Correct.  NWNCX doesn't change the nature of beams, just provides more of them.

MerricksDat wrote...
The toolset has entries for silent versions and I wonder if silent rays are like ray X + an offset.

Sounds for beams are in the SoundDuration column of visualeffects.2da.  Silent versions of the same beams have no entry in the visualeffects.2da under the SoundDuration column, but still reference the same ProgFX number.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               ok, so I am an idiot. I got rid of the extra magic missile by removing some of the loads of crap from my override directory. I forgot I downloaded some old tests before NWNCX. So ignore all the MM mishaps.

Anyway, I got a few more beams played with today. Is the nwvault staff on vacation or do they just not update NW1 content as readily as the NW2 stuff?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

MerricksDad wrote...
Anyway, I got a few more beams played with today. Is the nwvault staff on vacation or do they just not update NW1 content as readily as the NW2 stuff?

I know Maximus has been busy lately and that Rolo Kipp has been lending a hand to help him get submissions approved.  However, Rolo hasn't been around (that I've seen) for about a week.  A bit uncharacteristic for him.  So it just might mean the Vault is getting a little backlogged if you've already submitted something.

If it's a matter of hosting, you could make a project here- just be sure and edit the permissions so that people can download your files.  Otherwise, contacting Maximus via the vault or PMing Rolo Kipp are two things that might be useful.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 18 juillet 2012 - 11:08 .