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No Tracers


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I've been playing around with the special effects recently & I found, because gunfire doesn't kick up enough dust & debris, that the firefights just look terrible, & kinda absurd, without tracers.

I'm hoping to find a happy balance between immersion & believability...

 

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I feel what you're saying but tracers with every shot just didn't seem all that cool to me and since the AI isn't really all that accurate, I felt it was annoying actually seeing how inaccurate they were. the occasional tracer is okay but seeing nothing but tracers got annoying to me. I wish it did kick up more debris though.

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12 hours ago, Tashtego said:

I removed all the tracers except red, I find that seems to work better.

From what I can tell, only red (Western) & green (Syrian+Uncon) tracers are used in CMSF2... I also think that the heavier AKM rounds do seem to kick up more dust & debris.

Edited by 37mm
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Has anyone tried adding in numbered tracer files that are blank in order to show the effect of a tracer only being every 4th round or so? For example, if the red tracer is just called red.bmp, you could try adding red 2.bmp, red 3.bmp, red 4.bmp with the numbered files being a blank image. No idea if it would work but it might be worth a try.

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Tracers aren't 'just' tracers. They impart valuable information to the player. They give you information on the volume of fire, the velocity of the round being fired (the longer the tracer the higher the velocity), they tell you which of your units are doing the firing and which aren't. They even give hints about the round's caliber. Before CMFB Sturmtiger switched to firing a 3-D rocket model it was firing a 'tracer' that looked like a glowing yellow trash can - a very big and very short tracer.

A lot of players are in the habit of keeping their camera 20 feet up and 20 feet back while playing, That means the more subtle clues about whether a unit is engaging a target is lost

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18 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Has anyone tried adding in numbered tracer files that are blank in order to show the effect of a tracer only being every 4th round or so? For example, if the red tracer is just called red.bmp, you could try adding red 2.bmp, red 3.bmp, red 4.bmp with the numbered files being a blank image. No idea if it would work but it might be worth a try.

Yeah, it won't work. Effects won't use multiple textures like uniforms and vehicles as far as I remember. I tested that at some point, probably back when BN came out.

 

Mord.

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2 hours ago, MikeyD said:

Tracers aren't 'just' tracers. They impart valuable information to the player. They give you information on the volume of fire, the velocity of the round being fired (the longer the tracer the higher the velocity), they tell you which of your units are doing the firing and which aren't. They even give hints about the round's caliber. Before CMFB Sturmtiger switched to firing a 3-D rocket model it was firing a 'tracer' that looked like a glowing yellow trash can - a very big and very short tracer.

A lot of players are in the habit of keeping their camera 20 feet up and 20 feet back while playing, That means the more subtle clues about whether a unit is engaging a target is lost

I recall playing a bit of Silent Hunter 3 back in the day... and there was a small community of dedicated lunatics players who prefered to play multi-week long patrols in 1:1 real-time without Time compression.

Some people really do value immersion more than they do playability.

 

Myself, I'm just trying to make my action sequences look cool.

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2 hours ago, Mord said:

Yeah, it won't work. Effects won't use multiple textures like uniforms and vehicles as far as I remember. I tested that at some point, probably back when BN came out.

 

Mord.

Didn't the new engine changes make it so you can? I mean, if you tell us that you tried it back in 2011 then it doesn't seem very relevant, no offense intended.

Personally the overabundance of tracers, especially fired from small arms which aren't usually supposed to be using them is something that annoys me, but not enough to make me mod it out. Yet.

Edited by Frenchy56
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Best way to test it would be to double one of the tracers, like red, make one purple or something crazy and try it out. The only thing the new engine (as in newer than SF) added that SF didn't have, as far as I know, was the ability to have multiple vehicle textures. Other than that there hasn't been a lot of changes in that department. But I could be wrong. I usually just test these things once and then move on.

 

Mord.

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On ‎2‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 5:51 PM, 37mm said:

I recall playing a bit of Silent Hunter 3 back in the day... and there was a small community of dedicated lunatics players who prefered to play multi-week long patrols in 1:1 real-time without Time compression. Some people really do value immersion more than they do playability.

As a long-time member of the aforementioned club, I hereby give you and anyone reading this thread permission to use the 'lunatic' title.

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5 hours ago, General Jack Ripper said:
On ‎2‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 10:51 PM, 37mm said:

I recall playing a bit of Silent Hunter 3 back in the day... and there was a small community of dedicated lunatics players who prefered to play multi-week long patrols in 1:1 real-time without Time compression. Some people really do value immersion more than they do playability.

I always wondered how they handled the game while they slept. 

Mind you there are also those who play Grigsby's WITPAE on daily turns for the whole war. 

Edited by Erwin
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11 hours ago, General Jack Ripper said:

As a long-time member of the aforementioned club, I hereby give you and anyone reading this thread permission to use the 'lunatic' title. 

Erwin would like to know how you handled the game while you slept.

I have to admit I'm vaguely curious myself.

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18 hours ago, Erwin said:

I always wondered how they handled the game while they slept.

It depends on the person. Doing a 1:1 campaign doesn't mean you never shut the game off. It just means you never use time compression. I.E. if you have a three week course to reach your patrol area, it will take you three weeks in-game to get there. I would shut the game off when sleeping, or at work or school, but the moment I got home I turned it back on again.

It took me five years to go from September 1939 - July 1941, when I got sunk off the coast of Gibraltar.

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4 minutes ago, JohnO said:

Freaking awesome 37mm. When can we get our hands on the mod?

I've been watching videos of Abram tanks firing so there's that to do. Not all the tracers are done (though red & green for CMSF2 are), I'm still not happy with the explosions (I can see HerrToms problems with them).

I imagine i'll want to wash my hands of the project within a week or so.

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2 hours ago, 37mm said:

I've been watching videos of Abram tanks firing so there's that to do. Not all the tracers are done (though red & green for CMSF2 are), I'm still not happy with the explosions (I can see HerrToms problems with them).

I imagine i'll want to wash my hands of the project within a week or so.

Yeah, I never really got to where I wanted to get with FX modding myself. The system is surprisingly limited!

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