Recognized Flare Block

[Ithirahad]

Pretty simple, basically a block with a transparent (or maybe PlexLight, like beacons) texture, which holds a missile effect inside it, including both the 'flare' particle and the trail. You could link it to any light source to change the color. Applications include funky engine glows and trails, trails on disintegrator missiles, weird spiral things using rail rotators, smoke trails for airplane-style space fighters, working nyan cats, and more! This block would also be toggleable by logic.

 

[friendofvampires]

that sounds.....pretty damn fancy, actually

 

[Kaamio]

Fancy is always fine. Given how thrusters are spammed at fairly random inside the hulls, this would certainly give a nice engine effect build option without making ships look silly.

edit: doesn't really use block ids, though there was one for every color but if you use linking to light it ought to be fine.

 

[Visitor]

I wouldn't mind it assuming that fancy particle effect wouldn't be too much system resource-demanding. Max limit of simultaenous effects like such and ability to turn them on/off both server and client-side would be of some importance, too, I think.

 

[Tydeth]

Instead of a new block ID, why not have the effects be linked to the beacon (which IIRC uses the sun/missile sprite already) as thus:

C on Beacon, V on an activation module; if Activation Module is on, the beacon will project a missile trail when the ship moves.

C on Beacon, V on any colored light block/rod; beacon uses that color instead of its default white.

Similar core mechanics as used on Rail Rotators and Weapons, respectively, may facilitate comparative ease of implementing. Doing it this way can also allow the two parts to be added and tested separately, in case one turns out to be more difficult than it appears.

 

[Ithirahad]

I wouldn't mind it assuming that fancy particle effect wouldn't be too much system resource-demanding. Max limit of simultaenous effects like such and ability to turn them on/off both server and client-side would be of some importance, too, I think.

Well, seeing as they use missile particles, yes, there would be a server-configureable limit to active flare blocks per ship to prevent people filling up missile render slots with them and making invisible missiles. (Not to mention tons of lag)

 

[Ithirahad]

Instead of a new block ID, why not have the effects be linked to the beacon (which IIRC uses the sun/missile sprite already) as thus:

C on Beacon, V on an activation module; if Activation Module is on, the beacon will project a missile trail when the ship moves.

C on Beacon, V on any colored light block/rod; beacon uses that color instead of its default white.

Similar core mechanics as used on Rail Rotators and Weapons, respectively, may facilitate comparative ease of implementing. Doing it this way can also allow the two parts to be added and tested separately, in case one turns out to be more difficult than it appears.

Complicated... I'd prefer a little more intuitiveness at the price of a single block ID, to this mess. I already mentioned the ability to link to a light source to change the color, but to me the flare block should be distinct from a beacon if the alternative is something weird like linking an activator, which I kind of hated for the speed controllers and would definitely not appreciate here.