Oolite Bulletins

Has something changed with the ‘strike’ effect when hitting a target? I don’t seem to see any ‘splash’ with 1.74.
Especially at long range… in 1.73x you’d get that tiny little flash of a hit. I can’t verify this without re-installing 1.73x, which I’d rather not do. Has anyone else noticed (or should that be not noticed) this?

Or has my poor eyesight suddenly got much worse?

El Viejo wrote:

Has something changed with the ‘strike’ effect when hitting a target? I don’t seem to see any ‘splash’ with 1.74.
Especially at long range… in 1.73x you’d get that tiny little flash of a hit. I can’t verify this without re-installing 1.73x, which I’d rather not do. Has anyone else noticed (or should that be not noticed) this?

Or has my poor eyesight suddenly got much worse?

I thought the same until I played today. I think that when the target ship is far away, you can't see the flash. When its close up you can!

Would make sense really.

No 'splash' at close range either.

Thumbnails (pics taken with TAF at .25):

El Viejo wrote:

No 'splash' at close range either.

That's weird! I swear I saw 'splashes' during dogfighting today.

I think it might be only Griff's ships.
I removed that oxp for a quick test, and the 'splash' effect is there on Oolite ships and stations.

Maybe the changes to flashers have affected the laser hit effect too?
I can still see them in game, although shooting up a station only gives a small faint hit effect, when the police showed up soon afterwards i gave them a few laser hits too and the effect was much brighter on their ships, i couldn't grab a decent screen shot, as the pc i was playing on was struggling to do a decent frame rate but you can kind of see a red hit happening near the engines at the back there.
I also fired a few shots at a blackmonk monastery that i spawned nearby, i'd totally forgotten how heavily armed those things are had to make a run for it pretty sharpish

Been doing a little in-game testing… it’s not all of the Griff ships. So far, I get short range ‘splash’ effects on:
Dodo stations
Vipers
Adders
Boas

At long range, the ‘splash’ is barely visible, if at all.

As before, there is no ‘splash’ on Coriolis stations or the Python.
The Asp II is okay close up, but no ‘splash’ visible at long range, same with the Fer-de-Lance.
I’ll have to go into ‘privateer’ mode tonight and start attacking innocent traders and Vipers at long range.
I’m sure they’ll understand… it’s research.

Similar problem here, I'm afraid. The laser splash is really faint...invisible from any distance and barely visible when the target is really quite close. This seems to be the case for most/all the NPC ships. I'm (obviously) using Smivs'Shipset, not the inbuilt ships' textures.
The sound still changes when you're 'hitting' which is useful.
The other thing I've noticed is that the beacons seem to have lost their 'glow'. As I couldn't get these to work in my Shipset Supplement, I left them out (a project for Version 2), so I'm still using the standard ones.
I took a screenshot but can't post it as the screenshots have moved out of the 'Saves' folder and I haven't found them yet...when I do I'll post a pic. Does anyone know where they are now?

Smivs wrote:

I took a screenshot but can't post it as the screenshots have moved out of the 'Saves' folder and I haven't found them yet...when I do I'll post a pic. Does anyone know where they are now?

They should be in the saves folder... they are in mine.

El Viejo wrote:

Smivs wrote:

I took a screenshot but can't post it as the screenshots have moved out of the 'Saves' folder and I haven't found them yet...when I do I'll post a pic. Does anyone know where they are now?

They should be in the saves folder... they are in mine.

Oh, yes It fooled me by being up the top of the window 'cos it's a .png now!

This is the non-glowing beacon,



as seen on launching from a station. No flashes, nor glow

No light on this side of the planet. Note that station beacons do not carry flashers, only the witchpoint ones.

another_commander wrote:

No light on this side of the planet. Note that station beacons do not carry flashers, only the witchpoint ones.

OK, thanks...I never noticed that before

Smivs wrote:

another_commander wrote:

No light on this side of the planet. Note that station beacons do not carry flashers, only the witchpoint ones.

OK, thanks...I never noticed that before

The sun is at the opposite of the station in your screen shot. As A_C writes, there is now no sunlight on the beacon. This seems correct to me. In earlier versions it was actually wrong in this situation because station and buoy were still lit. The station will probably also look dark.
You will notice this effect probably in 5% of the systems now.

Griff wrote:

Maybe the changes to flashers have affected the laser hit effect too?

Yes, and several other related effects. All of them used to have constant brightness until some cutoff distance where they suddenly disappeared. Now they attenuate.

I’ll look into adjusting the attenuation of the laser hit effect.