Howdy all... Had a few questions regarding creating new effects, if its possible for this game and if so how would one go about doing so.

First off... for our Star Trek "mod" which currently is just an idea whilst we are waiting for the modding tools to come out, we're definitely gonna need a phaser beam effect. If it's not possible to make a consistent "beam" last for longer periods, then we'd have to make pulses that are a great distance in length, so as to not confuse the player from the "disruptor" type weapons.

Second... in Star Trek there are several ships that can "cloak" ie make themselves invisible to the opponent, such as the USS Defiant and virtually all Klingon and Romulan ships. Is cloaking something that is possible?

Third: Warp Effect... the original game "warps in" reinforcements through hyperspace. I was wondering if this effect can be modified to show a ship powering up it's engines and then "warping" away to a different location. Basically, giving the ship a lot higher speed then "impulse".

Thats all the "effects" requests that I can think of at this time. Also, if anyone knowledgeable in the scripting of the game is interested in joining a growing mod team whose intent is to create a Total Conversion of this great game, into the Star Trek genre please let us know, either by writing to us through these forums, or visiting our site:

http://www.dig-u.com).

Hmm.

Well, I have been fiddling with the weapon effects and bet the best way to do it is make it long and make it travel slow for the beam effect.

I guess we need to wait for tools to actually create our own.

I think to do the cloak you should have it read an invisible model and not show on the radar, but I don't know how to make that work.

For cloaking, why not fiddle around with the code for ships hidden inside nebulas??

To an enemy player a ship in a nebular doesn't show up on rader or visually.

Edit: and for the phasers, try fiddling around with tractor beam coding.

The X-wing has a lock S-foils ability. You can play with that to give your ship a higher speed and disable weapons fire etc.

I know there is a stealth value in the XML files. Setting up cloaking should not be that terribly difficult. As far as beam weapons, try using the special ability that Piet's special ISD has. It looks like a consistent beam, and should be a good template for phasers. As long as you are able to get that effect to work on a standard weapon, there ya go. Im working on something simmilar for ground battle for a Warhammer 40K mod to get Lasguns/Lascannons to look right. Same idea (one long beam), just a quick burst instead of >1sec sustained fire.