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Starmade has some pretty nice shaders, and some not so nice shaders. The new texture pack is absolutely gorgeous, the normal, emissive and specular mapping are stunning.
However, Starmade’s presentation is not consistent. There are areas that need drastic improvement. Shield effects disappearing when you’re relatively far from the entity being hit, beams, missiles, and cannon fire are all 2d billboard effects that look like they were pulled from 1997.
This isn’t a suggestion, this is more of a guideline to how I believe effects should look once Schine get around to sprucing up the place.
BEAMS:
The big one. The one weapon that could look like the most intimidating thing this side of a black hole. And it a wobbly spaghetti strand.
Ever played Borderlands the Pre Sequel? You know the Eye of Helios? The giant purple glowing beam of destruction? That. Sustained, bloomy as f**k, and pulsating. This could be achieved by applying a variation of the fancy new thruster bloom over the beam, and saturating the colour, a LOT more. While we’re on this subject, let me just toot my own horn.
3D Beams
3D beams! I totally don’t know what i’m doing when I mod the game, and I can’t change the game code. So imagine what schine can achieve if they get the time to invest on effects.
CANNONS:
Pls. They’re just different flavoured tic-tacs. While they do scale with damage, they should also leave a trail relative to their damage, higher damage cannon fire should leave longer trails, and also be more saturated colour-wise. Higher damage rounds could also be pure white in the ‘core’ of the round with a pulsating color outline/effect. Even some screen space warping around the projectile would give a better visual representation of the power behind the round. Imagine a rapid firing titan cannon that looks like it’s warping time/gravity along the path of the rounds
MISSILES / EXPLOSIONS:
Everyone’s favourite flare trail!
Missiles are probably the most widely used weapon in Starmade. However they are a 2d sprite that makes it hard to judge how far away they actually are, they don’t have a physical ‘hit here’ point for PD. This is a bit more of a complicated solution - ideally i would use a low-poly model for missiles, however I do not believe with would be ideal for low-end PCs, especially with missile hell happening a lot in PVP. Some form of marker/object where the physical missile is would be ideal
If Schine were to use a 3d model, I would suggest having the tip and trail be coloured to the linked colour, and have the body be colored to correspond with the slave of the missile system - This would be to allow identification of missiles by players in a battle. Missile trails should be removed - they are incredibly performance intensive in large numbers. Instead use the thruster plume effect, or a billboard sprite where the engine/thrust would be.
Well that wraps this post up.
I haven’t touched particle effects in this post - as they’ve been on the backburner for literal years now. All of the suggestions above should be achievable with current effects and model support.
However, Starmade’s presentation is not consistent. There are areas that need drastic improvement. Shield effects disappearing when you’re relatively far from the entity being hit, beams, missiles, and cannon fire are all 2d billboard effects that look like they were pulled from 1997.
This isn’t a suggestion, this is more of a guideline to how I believe effects should look once Schine get around to sprucing up the place.
BEAMS:
The big one. The one weapon that could look like the most intimidating thing this side of a black hole. And it a wobbly spaghetti strand.
Ever played Borderlands the Pre Sequel? You know the Eye of Helios? The giant purple glowing beam of destruction? That. Sustained, bloomy as f**k, and pulsating. This could be achieved by applying a variation of the fancy new thruster bloom over the beam, and saturating the colour, a LOT more. While we’re on this subject, let me just toot my own horn.
3D Beams
3D beams! I totally don’t know what i’m doing when I mod the game, and I can’t change the game code. So imagine what schine can achieve if they get the time to invest on effects.
CANNONS:
Pls. They’re just different flavoured tic-tacs. While they do scale with damage, they should also leave a trail relative to their damage, higher damage cannon fire should leave longer trails, and also be more saturated colour-wise. Higher damage rounds could also be pure white in the ‘core’ of the round with a pulsating color outline/effect. Even some screen space warping around the projectile would give a better visual representation of the power behind the round. Imagine a rapid firing titan cannon that looks like it’s warping time/gravity along the path of the rounds
MISSILES / EXPLOSIONS:
Everyone’s favourite flare trail!
Missiles are probably the most widely used weapon in Starmade. However they are a 2d sprite that makes it hard to judge how far away they actually are, they don’t have a physical ‘hit here’ point for PD. This is a bit more of a complicated solution - ideally i would use a low-poly model for missiles, however I do not believe with would be ideal for low-end PCs, especially with missile hell happening a lot in PVP. Some form of marker/object where the physical missile is would be ideal
If Schine were to use a 3d model, I would suggest having the tip and trail be coloured to the linked colour, and have the body be colored to correspond with the slave of the missile system - This would be to allow identification of missiles by players in a battle. Missile trails should be removed - they are incredibly performance intensive in large numbers. Instead use the thruster plume effect, or a billboard sprite where the engine/thrust would be.
Well that wraps this post up.
I haven’t touched particle effects in this post - as they’ve been on the backburner for literal years now. All of the suggestions above should be achievable with current effects and model support.