Artillery effect in No-Mans Land ? for effects guys

[+quack74 329]

This question is for anyone who knows how effect systems work. Could it be possible to create a randomly positioned artillery explosion effect that would emit from one stationary object like a truck exaust? Ex, if I placed a ground object, like oil drums (as the effect host) or anything else small, up and down the front lines it would constantly emit randomly placed artillery explosion effects or large Dirt Spikes at a radius of 50 to 100 meters (or more) and timing of 5 to 10 second intervals (or more). One could then place the object via the Terrains' Targets.INI to populate "No Mans Land". I could then constantly see, from the air, the effects of Artillery constantly pulverizing the lines. This is for First Eagles 2 so the effects.ini's are similiar if not the same. I've tried placing numbers of artillery positions but too many eat up frame rates. So if this could be done without all the ground objects it could create the effects of battle without the frame rate hits. If anyone has a desire to try this would be much appreciated.

[33LIMA 972]

I have no idea how to do this but it sounds like a great idea! The sight and sound of artillery fire is quite immersive in OFF.

 

The ideal tho is surely to have visible firing batteries, even if they have to be small batteries and scattered, and or have low-density particle effects, to avoid big FPS hits - say something comparable to Archie batteries. One of FE's immersive features is being able to see from the air the flash and smoke of firing AA guns and the same would be good for ground artillery. I very rarely see any kind of ground activity in FE campaigns and when I do it's usually tanks and some ground MG tracer fire, with just the occasional artillery strike. I have yet to see field guns firing, from the air (maybe I should sue 'next ground object' more often!). Visibly active artillery batteries are also good opportunity targets for 'armed recce' missions (or even just 'recce' ones, using screenshots to simulate taking pics perhaps) and if the campaign engine can recognise them as targets, also for 'strike' missions.

[+ojcar 157]

There are firing artillery batteries in the latest Armchair Aces (obviously they fire when there is a target). They are placed everywhere in the map, not only the frontline. This way the Artillery will fire against the tanks or infantry that have crossed the frontline (avoiding the "blitzkrieg effect" in some campaigns, with one or more units running like hell after breaking only the early frontline opposition).

 

Of course, these batteries are recognised as targets. Fly a two seater campaign and tell me...

 

You can add more artillery if you like

[33LIMA 972]

There are firing artillery batteries in the latest Armchair Aces (obviously they fire when there is a target). They are placed everywhere in the map, not only the frontline. This way the Artillery will fire against the tanks or infantry that have crossed the frontline (avoiding the "blitzkrieg effect" in some campaigns, with one or more units running like hell after breaking only the early frontline opposition).

 

Of course, these batteries are recognised as targets. Fly a two seater campaign and tell me...

 

You can add more artillery if you like

 

That is good to hear Ojcar. I have not flown many campaign missions over the last couple of weeks, it's time to start a new one!

 

Do you know if there is any way in campaigns of designating the area of No Man's Land as a target, or as a series of targets, for recce missions? The idea would be to cause 2-seaters flying such missions to appear often over the Lines. This would represent aircraft taking those strips of photos which they used to make up the photo-mosaics you see of the trench lines. It would also represent 2-seaters doing artillery observation work. Best if they could be made to fly up to the Lines at, say, 4-5000 feet, linger there a while, then fly away home, not just fly up to a certain spot and fly away again right away. Most 2-seaters in FE seem to be on deeper missions, often bombing or longer-range recce missions. this is fine but it would be realistic to see 2-seaters often hanging around over the Lines at medium altitudes, where they were a frequent target of enemy scouts/fighters in real life. In FE they would provide a similar target. Maybe this is already happening to an extent but I think it would be more realistic to see more 2-seaters on recce-type missions over the Lines.

[FrankTB 14]

I have used artillery batteries on the front lines in FE2 and SF2 just to liven up the scenery some what and it does that really well but have never really experienced any frame rate problems as yet as for the idea of random explosions and smoke etc you could maybe have word with Stary over at SF2 about it he would be the one who would probably know. I think it is a great idea if it is at all possible.

[SpinyNorman 1]

I don't know about emitters, but you could do it with guns I think, although long winded and not perfect.....

 

If you gave your said small object several invisible guns; with muzzle postions placed far enough away around it at 'random' spots. Then assign a new gun that has no bullet to each of them, each with a different slow rate of fire, and make the GunFireEffect whatever explosion you normally use (like TankGunEffects). Then in your said small objects file, make a weaponsystems and either get the object to target another ground object, or make it AAA so that it only starts exploding when a plane (or you) flies overhead.

So when your object 'opens fire' all the 'guns' (explosions) will go off at the same time, but if they all have different rates of fire then the explosions will quickly get out of sync, so just give the object a nice long burst amount.... Would that work? Haven't got loads of time to try it but might have to have a play...

 

Something I have found helps my frame rates with frontline explosions is find the gun your artillery is using and cut back the MaxVisibleDist, I have mine set at 3000.

 

Hope this helps! Either that or it's bonkers and I'm talking crazy.

[+quack74 329]

I have set up many Artillery positions all up and down the front on all three maps I use. Actually I have populated No-Mans Land with all kinds of ground objects. I just wanted to see big artillery explosions scattered about. I very rarely get any big explosions from the artillery fire because they don't aim well or reach far enough to hit the enemy lines. Adding too much does hit the frame rates though. Especially when there are too many hits and explosions.

[SpinyNorman 1]

Yeah I agree it does eat into frame rate. I've also scattered balloons along my front at lower altitudes (800m) and given them a silent and inaccurate artillery gun that rains down on targets opposite, that works quite well, gets explosions going off further behind the lines, alhtough too far away or too high and the bullet seems to 'time out' and not go off. What effect do you have as your artillery gun's ground hit explosion? I've found TankGunEffects using GroundHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect in the BulletObject.ini makes quite a nice explosion as your normal artillery round going off.

 

[TankGunEffects]

TracerEmitterName=

//GroundHitEffectName=TankGunGroundHitEffect

GroundHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect

GroundHitSoundName=Artillery.wav

WaterHitEffectName=LargeRocketWaterHitEffect

WaterHitSoundName=

ObjectHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect

ObjectHitSoundName=SmallExplosion.wav

ArmorHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect

ArmorHitSoundName=

AirBurstEffectName=FlakEffect

AirBurstSoundName=SmallExplosion

 

I like your thinking though quack, the artillery explosions are the most obvious component of a lively looking front, if you could just easily get random explosions going off and sprinkle a bunch of AAA machine gunners along the front it would be a quick and easy way to liven up no-mans land.

[gambit168 27]

gas clouds hugging the ground creeping over the opposing armies trenchline, would have been a fairly common site from the air, winchable balloons would be great also, I thought something like using the flak trucks as a starting point but instead of its gun going up and down, it could somehow link up with the balloon and send it up or down