Vega Strike Forums

Just was playing Halo, and noticed something-one of the big changes between Halo CE and Halo 2 was the explosions! The H:CE explosions didn't look at all realistic, whereas the H2 ones looked much more realistic.

I noticed that, in VS, the explosions don't look realistic at all-or even interesting looking. I was thinking we could create a somewhat more detailed explosion texture, for when a ship is killed.

Another thing-all ships die in one of two ways. After killing a dozen ships in a row, the repetitiveness starts to grow obvious. A few more explosion textures would be a good thing to have.

procedural explosions would be a better bet. based on where the explosion starts and the shape of the ship, plus the atmosphere of the ship (different atmospheres burn different colors)

Neskiairti wrote:procedural explosions would be a better bet. based on where the explosion starts and the shape of the ship, plus the atmosphere of the ship (different atmospheres burn different colors)

That would be a good longer term goal-for now, I'd be happy with half-a-dozen new explosion textures, especially for human ships. IMHO, the Aera and Rlaan explosions are passable, and (while they should be replaced), do not need to have a high priority.

Well the Rlaan and Aera explosion sprites are each 16 times the size (resolution area) of the one used for Human craft. So a serious upgrade is needed for the Human explosion to bring it up to par.

However, the idea of having multiple, slightly varied explosions for each type is not necessarily a good idea. The Rlaan explosion animation is 50x 512x512 frames, totaling 8 megabytes. Having many times that could eat a good chunk of the texture budget.

And 512x512 still looks low res in many situations, like capship explosions or close kills. So instead of more variations, it might pay more to have higher resolution explosions. After all, 1x 1024x1024 res sprite is the same cost as 4x 512x512 res sprite of slight variation. That means it can look just as good at half the distance, or twice the blast radius.


As for colors, those might be influenced less by how they burn with conventional fuels and conventional explosives (which could be rare in most VS ships) versus how reaction mass and reactor fuel gases react to electricity. Things like cherenkov radiation and "neon" lights might have more in common with exploding ships in VS than combustion and fireballs.

Just bumping the res up and up sounds like a bandaid to bad graphics.

Surely you need to make the explosions become combinations of explosions in order to increase the sense of scale? Or procedural explosions perhaps?

Throwing bigger textures at things is not always a good solution. Like you say, already up to 8mb for an explosion.

aye.. thats why i suggested it in the first place.. it may be a little more work, but there are not many good solutions to begin with..

the multiple explosions could work though.. like a ship blowing out section by section, or a few bits here and there.. before a single massive bloom filled detonation :p

It's simply a matter of coding manpower. Right now, there's much programming to be done on every front, and the folks making it happen don't have a great deal of free time to put towards it.

So there's a good chance either you charlieg and/or Neskairti will need to take on the project of implementing procedural or modular explosions or it could be years before someone else gets to it.

And if the later, then a content creator like myself might step up and render higher resolution explosion sprites in the shorter term. Like maybe after blender 2.5 stabilizes, with its impressive particle effects.

i wasnt offering.. I have 3 coding projects on my plate right now.. Just stating what should be done :p

now implementing blender like particle effect systems would be awesome XD

Could someone post an example of a sprite? I have some macros for POV-Ray on my hard drive, and could render some new sprites if they're suitable enough.