XWA Upgrade

Hi all,

Firstly I love all the work and dedication for this amazing classic space sim. I had many late nights wrestling with my crappy "Logic 3" joystick on X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance back in the 90s.

I dont mean this to sound critical, but after updating to most of the installers I think I prefer some of the more classic "firey" explosion effects when craft explode. Is there any way to have them return or can I re-install just that element locally? I like the current effect, but I think it could be accompanied by a companion explosion in line with what was there in stock XWA. Not suggesting the stock explosion effects were perfect, (they weren't) but I think I prefer that asthetic.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ben.

You can have two directories for XWA one with the original install and one with XWAU. Then you can copy Resdata/Explosions.dat from the original install to the XWAU directory. Just make sure you make a backup copy of your destination directory in case something goes wrong.

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried to do my own explosion effects and whilst they look ok in isolation, there are some scenarios where they just look odd, like when a large ship explodes.

Can I ask a question?

Do you (or anyone else) know what explosion effects are used in this video? They look pretty close to the stock effects in terms of style but they just seem more polished somehow?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NXD-RoqdVA

There is an explosion at 4:33 when he torpedos a Gunship FYI.

Thanks!

Ben.

ben1 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 22, 2020 7:53 pm

Do you (or anyone else) know what explosion effects are used in this video?

I believe that's the work of korekwerner, you can see more of his work in this thread:

https://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewt ... =1&t=12214

I'm not sure he has released those explosions to the public though.

Thanks for the reply.

Could you answer a few questions?

I have been messing around with the dat editor.

I think I have worked out how the explosion files 2000-2006 work. One question though, when a fighter explodes as well as an explosion.dat file, there is accompanied bright sparks and smoke etc. Can you tell me where to find the sparks?

Also in the dat editor, what is the difference between the formats, type 7, 23. 24, 25 etc. Also what is the offset please?

Thanks so much.

Ben.

ben1 wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 24, 2020 9:05 pm

Also in the dat editor, what is the difference between the formats, type 7, 23. 24, 25 etc.

Type 7 is 8bbp indexed bitmap compressed with transparency, type 23 is 32bpp alpha blended indexed bitmap compressed, type 24 is 32bpp alpha blended indexed bitmap uncompressed, type 25 is 32bpp ARGB uncompressed.

Compressed/uncompressed is how it's stored in the DAT file, whether or not spans are encoded or every individual pixel is defined. Type 25 was added via a hook, it's not vanilla.

Right, what JaggedFei said. I believe there's a Resdata\Sparks.dat that contains the sparks too.

Thanks again for all the answers.

Sorry for another question;

Is there any other way to increase the size of the explosions in game (like using a ini/cfg/hook file variable) or do you just have to increase the size of the PNGs? This is what I have done but it obviously increase the file size and isn’t really an efficient way of doing it when if there was another way?

Thanks.

I have made my own explosion visuals. What are the rules regarding sharing work or posting videos of work in terms of the assets used? I have basically just ripped a few GIF files, however the GIFs are not my own. I think the GIFs / PNG frames are available to buy if the work is deemed usable. What are the site rules please?

Thanks,

Ben.

Well of you are not legally allowed to share the art then I would ask you to not post them. Especially if they are normally only accessible via buying. That can quickly lead to bad consequences

Speaking of explosions, I'm working on adding Duke's explosions from: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsySzd to the game. This is how it looks:


To be fair, this is what I used to upgrade the DS2's core reactor explosion in XWAU 2020, so it's already there, but I'm now enabling it for regular explosions as well.

It looks spectacular.
It would be great to include it in the XWAU

Nice!

This is looking fantastic! Will we see it in the next XWAU patch?

Knarfe wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:26 pm

This is looking fantastic! Will we see it in the next XWAU patch?

This was released several months ago

But only for the Deathstar Core explosion (replaced with magapatch-update 1.0)?

Knarfe wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:18 am

But only for the Deathstar Core explosion (replaced with magapatch-update 1.0)?

Nope, everything's using the new explosions now. The Death Star's core only happens to be the most notorious example.