Several quick question ..... fire glow, elipse phaser, torp indicator

[NatsuKagura]

Hi guys, I have been wondering about this :

1- well... as u know, when our hull or shield is hit   by a beam weapon, we will see a glowing dot/circle at the point where the phaser beam make a contact with the hull/shield. The dot will remain glowing as long as they'r being hit.

Actually, I want to set the dot to glow   for a little longer on the damaged hull even after the beam fire is already stopped. I want to make an impression of burning fire explosion on the damaged hull.
(similar to what u see a burning miranda in the deep space nine episode : sacrifice of the angel, when a galor is firing in a cross fire position at a burning miranda class (perhaps) just before being hit by a pair of Galaxys)

Did anyone know which is the file that control them? Or how it's work? to work on hull only.... 

2- why I can't put an ellipse (on phaser properties) for the non federation ships? Or it just me? I have been trying to put on starbase & dominion ship, but somehow it doesn't work. I also have tried to place the phaser outside the hull to see if they are working but it still doesn't work. It just shooting like standard warbird's phaser.  

3- Is there anyway to make torpedo indicator on the tactical display to show the number of loaded torpedoes instead of the number of loaded torpedo launchers?
So when u use a warbird with 2 torpedo lunchers with 2 torpedoes salvo for each launchers then the indicator will show 4 dots instead of 2 dots.    

Thanks guys.... and happy new year 2011....

[Morgan]

1.  I don't think what you're proposing is possible within the confines of BC's engine.

2.  You can do it for non-Fed ships, it's just the MPE can take a while to master.  Even those with a lot of experience with it have to go by trial and error in most cases.  Non-Fed ships are the same as Fed's - they're a .NIF model with textures and hardpoint scripts, they have the same possibilities as Fed ships.

3.  That's a question for an experienced scripter to answer.  I'm split between the possibilities on that. 

[ACES_HIGH]

IIRC, you can increase the duration of NanoFX explosions in the NanoFX menu

[King Class Scout]

1. that appears on the shield, not on the actual model's hull.  and yes, you can increase it some.  try playing with the "glow decay time" setting

2. although Nero answered it, I will add that the KM version of the Ferengi Marauder was re-hardpointed to use ellipses.  I even had to go in and fix the ellipse shape so it looked better in game.

3. intriguing...if Sovereign ever pops up, the question could be put to him.  the only problem that i see is that some torpedo indicators are too close to each other or on top of each other in the icons to do it there, like is done with the shields.  it might make the screen too cluttered.

[Morgan]

1. that appears on the shield, not on the actual model's hull.  and yes, you can increase it some.  try playing with the "glow decay time" setting

That setting isn't used by BC.  It was another one of those things TG added in the hardpoint but never added the system to make use of it...

[Mario]

1. There are no methods exposed to scripters to modify this property so in short I will just say that it's hardcoded.
2. I believe it's been answered for you
3. Possible, but would require some *very* clever scripting and most of the issues would be related to the UI. You'd need to pretty much override the segment responsible for drawing the icons in the first place.

[NatsuKagura]

ah...thank you very much for the reply ,guys... 
It seems there is no exceptional condition in the making of elipse phaser on the model... hmmm I think it's better for me to try again about it, perhaps I missed something there.. ..
well, though I didn't understand some of the indicator yet, but I am quite familiar with MPE since I always use them to hardpoint my ship,so no worries.. ................. may be ...hics

For the torpedo indicator, it seem still a long way to go.... well never mind.. .. I though can decrease the number of tubes (to minimalize the risk of multiple subsystems being disabled simultanuously such as torpedo tubes on Galaxy class) and compensate it by increasing the number of loaded torpedoes on each tubes, however doing that will significantly decrease the number of tubes that can be fired during all torpedo-salvo. So I should reconsider this again; unless we can fire all of the loaded torpedoes from single tube during all torpedo-salvo. 

Ah... btw King, do u know how to use "glow decay" ? Somehow I can't notice any difference eventhough I have fill it with a different value? 

About Nano FX... hics... I didn't install it yet... hics.. .. I think I should start to use them right away... I heard there are soo many improvement when we'r using nano FX.... 

About the glow during hit...sorry to make u confuse.. .. I attach a picture here ... 
That's a glow at the end of the phaser fire... 
well... sometimes I can see the glow when it hit the hull, sometimes not, well I am not really sure, but... yes, mostly we see it during the shield hit.  ;)
Is there possible to make a new script to add such glow only when the beam fire is hit the hull not the shield, for an extended time after hit?

[Morgan]

Ah... btw King, do u know how to use "glow decay" ? Somehow I can't notice any difference eventhough I have fill it with a different value? 

It's like I said before, BC does NOT use that hardpoint setting.  TG put it there likely with the intention of adding the ability to mess with the shield glow decay rates, but never got around to it.  Stock BC is littered with this kind of stuff (the Borg Cube scripts being the most notorious example), apparently there were more featured planned but never made probably due to time constraints, funding issues, or some other reason.

[NatsuKagura]

oohh... unfortunately.... well... I just curious.. .. btw thanks Nero ...