Experimenting with custom smoke effects

[Giovanni E 155]

So a while ago while screwing around with modtools i stumbled upon something that seems to control how smoke effects (or spawners) behave. Editing these parameters made me discover these things:

M_maxlifetime: controls how long the trail of smoke will be.

M_maxspawnangle: controls the grouping of the individual smoke puffs

M_maxstartspeed: i believe this controls the amount of smoke puffs spawned.

there are min and max values allowing for variation in the effect. i used the factory smoke large effect to test this.

At this point im stuck, i can edit the smoke effects without problem, however they just wont save, everytime the game is restarted they reset back to their default settings.

I tried to look into making a mod that saves them, but i lack the knowledge on how to do so. so i hope someone can help me figure this out or wants to pick this up.

Attached screenshots is were the prop effect parameters are located (default settings), and how the effect can look when you edit these.

[Badi_Dea 476]

That's so cool! yeah, it makes sense that alterations to the particle effect wouldn't save with the asset.

I've been curious about the smoke and steam particle effects for a while, they are almost (along with grass sprites) the only thing left in the game that still has that partial cartoony, obvious Unity stock look to it. Could really do with an overhaul.

The tricky part would be getting custom sprites to work - then we could have particle effects on par with SimCity 2013, those looked gorgeous.

Very nice find!

[Giovanni E 155]

On 2/13/2018 at 2:20 AM, Badi_Dea said:

That's so cool! yeah, it makes sense that alterations to the particle effect wouldn't save with the asset.

I've been curious about the smoke and steam particle effects for a while, they are almost (along with grass sprites) the only thing left in the game that still has that partial cartoony, obvious Unity stock look to it. Could really do with an overhaul.

The tricky part would be getting custom sprites to work - then we could have particle effects on par with SimCity 2013, those looked gorgeous.

Very nice find!

Thanks ! yea im not entirely sure how they work, tough ive seen and am practically able to replace the diffuse texture of the particles. (havent tried it yet) so thats deffinitly the next step.

For now i want to get them saveable and in the best case use them with acc3sviolation's vehicleffects mod so we can have decent length smoke plumes on buildings and large ships.

I will definitely be looking into giving them entirely different particles. Practically you'd only need a diffuse and an alpha texture, and a way to save them. (probably a mod that adds new particles) the tricky part in making them would be getting them look good as the particle is just based off a single puff of smoke. 

[Tim The Terrible 586]

@Badi_Dea I believe Ronyx69 knows how to replace them. Not sure if that included saving them.

 

[Acc3ssViolation 81]

Afaik, the editor just saves references to the effect in the asset (the string "Factory Smoke" in this case) instead of saving the entire thing which is why editing doesn't work. You'd have to somehow get a modified copy of the effect in the game and add that to the ship instead. Not sure what the best way to do that is though, maybe this code is useful to someone, it's how I made the diesel exhaust smoke using Factory Smoke Small as a template in Vehicle Effects. I'm interested to see if anyone has some good ideas on getting custom (particle) effects in the game in a way that's easy to edit.

[Giovanni E 155]

On 2/22/2018 at 10:08 AM, Acc3ssViolation said:

Afaik, the editor just saves references to the effect in the asset (the string "Factory Smoke" in this case) instead of saving the entire thing which is why editing doesn't work. You'd have to somehow get a modified copy of the effect in the game and add that to the ship instead. Not sure what the best way to do that is though, maybe this code is useful to someone, it's how I made the diesel exhaust smoke using Factory Smoke Small as a template in Vehicle Effects. I'm interested to see if anyone has some good ideas on getting custom (particle) effects in the game in a way that's easy to edit.

thats very intresting, would it perhaps be possible to add custom user made smoke effect to vehicle effects much like how a user can add custom sounds ? that was my original goal, so i could give ocean liners and large cargo steamers a much more realistic length smoke plume !

[Acc3ssViolation 81]

Adding basic support for custom particle effects the same way I did for sounds should be fairly easy, allowing you to just toss another xml file in there with a bunch of settings. I'm a bit on the fence about adding yet another xml file but whatever, it's the easiest option at this point.

[Natasha 0]

I change the smoke parameters and the smoke does not change and the mod gives the show watched field error. Help me.