Just curious if it's possible to do a graphics mod to create impact effects from guns, like you would see from SNACs. Namely the purpose would to add small explosions (maybe some temporary particles too) on an unshielded hull from high refire, and bigger ones from low refire. The guns in this game feel somewhat unpowerful, partially due to the sounds effects, so it would be satisfying and visceral to see your particles ripping through the hull of the ship you're fighting. I'd see this kind of things as more of an add on than a main addition to the mod, for the reason that some peoples machines might not be able to handle the extra effects. If also possible to see these effects hitting your own ship that would be great too. If possible I'd be willing to design the FXes required for the weapons.
Guns generally already have impact effects. They're just fairly subtle in most cases.
One notable exception being the Mortar impact effect
Crossfire Mod has this with every fighter gun
Purple particles come off the hull on impact. Looks pretty amazing tbh
weapon_equip.ini:
[Munition] <- every gun (should have)/has this (theoretically two guns could use the same ammo, using the same effects for projectile, and impact as well as the same sound and some stats...)
munition_hit_effect = ..._impact
Those effects are defined in the effects.ini:
[Effect]
nickname = ..._impact
effect_type = EFT_WEAPON_IMPACT
vis_effect = ..._impact
Though they can be named whatever. This leads us to weapons_ale.ini:
[VisEffect]
nickname = ..._impact
alchemy = fx\weapons\....ale
effect_crc = ...
textures = ...
Aaaaand that's where I don't know anymore. Freelancer is quite discombobulated when it comes to ... anything modding related, actually. Everything tends to link all over the place before it at some point leaves the .ini files.
If you just want to reuse effects which already exist (we got some nice explosion effects around already), all you need to do is switch the munition_hit_effect to whatever you wish to use. I don't think they are any longer a victim of cheat detection, you should carefully test it first though. Preferable always test in singleplayer for crashes as well.
If you want to make your own effects for explosions ... good luck and have fun. I can't help you with that. I just know that there should not be a problem with implementing that into YOUR side of the game, as long as you don't go around touching weapon stats, ship stats, ship models or such.
Please leave that for the SWAG modpacks.
Somebody please replace every impact effect for every gun with the mortar visual and audio effects
Call it: the Michael Bay Effect mod
You can even add sounds to effects ... it can get quite ... funny. And loud.
That's pretty much how I made the Mini Razor impact effect - I used an effect that was never used anywhere and which was actually never intended as an explosion, but which actually looks quite great for that job and slapped a sound on it.
To test this I also made the MR (in singleplayer) fire at a 20.00 firerate at the time... teaches you the lesson of "never use loud and massive explosion sound effects for fast firing guns". Michael Bay would've definatly been proud.
I'll play around with swapping out hit effects, thanks for the responses guys. Hopefully I can post a video of a test soon.