Check this out to get inspired on how to improve combat effects

[Max Bain]

I have played a lot of Infinity Battlescape in the last days and while this game has so far not much to offer except combat, combat is presented in a perfect way. The immersion is better than in any other space combat game I have played so far and I have played many of these games!

The sounds are awesome (big guns feel huge), the ships (even if there are only 6 playable right now) look cool and the effects are brilliant. Missile trails look cool with a lot of smoke, explosions are fun to watch and feel gigantic, impacts of weapons look great and everything creates an atmosphere like in a big star wars or battle star galactica battle. In a battle you see a lot of smoke which will be illuminated in different colors depending on the weapon effects. Ships will burn on impact areas and so on...

Have a look yourself:
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/ ... 1564411160

Maybe Egosoft can learn a bit from this game example to improve the combat visuals and sounds.
Keep in mind that the developement team behind this project is a hand full of people but you can see that they really love what they do.

And no, I dont want to compare both games because they are completely different. But IF X4 would look and feel like this game, I bet this game would be played 10 times more.

[linolafett]

Id love to have such massive effects in game, but sadly this is currently technically impossible for us to to.
We are currently very limited in the amount of particles we can show on screen and we also do not have particles being affected by lightsources.
These are two things which make this video look so much better.

[Max Bain]

Id love to have such massive effects in game, but sadly this is currently technically impossible for us to to.
We are currently very limited in the amount of particles we can show on screen and we also do not have particles being affected by lightsources.
These are two things which make this video look so much better.

Maybe this is something to consider for the future to change (if possible). A lot of smoke and nebulas in different light color looks really cool. Think of a group of ships coming out of a smoke cloud shooting lasers . But the rest other than the smoke looks great as well (look at these impacts and explosions).
And its not only the graphics that are great.. sounds (engines, weapons and hit sounds) are also very impressive.

Edit: one more thing that I think loos really cool are the way missiles are fired. In X4 we have only missile turrets that shoot in a straight line to the target (like a slow following projectile). In Infinity we have missile bays where the missiles come out straight and then align to the target. This looks more cinematic because it results in way more chaotic missile trails.

[Falcrack]

It's not just cinematic effects that make this look better. You could make X4 look so much better in a mere matter of minutes just by changing a few simple parameters, such as speed and range. I'm think mainly plasma weapons, which in vanilla X4, look stupid because of how slowly they fly. Also, they seem to miss more than 90% of the time, even against stationary targets.

Other things which would be possible to do are adding improved weapon impact effects.

Just look at the VRO mod for inspiration when it comes to improved combat weapon balance and visual effects. Nothing about the mod decreases performance, and yet when I experience fleet combat in X4 with the VRO mod, I am impressed, but when I experience fleet combat in vanilla X4, I am saddened.

[Max Bain]

It's not just cinematic effects that make this look better. You could make X4 look so much better in a mere matter of minutes just by changing a few simple parameters, such as speed and range. I'm think mainly plasma weapons, which in vanilla X4, look stupid because of how slowly they fly. Also, they seem to miss more than 90% of the time, even against stationary targets.

Other things which would be possible to do are adding improved weapon impact effects.

Just look at the VRO mod for inspiration when it comes to improved combat weapon balance and visual effects. Nothing about the mod decreases performance, and yet when I experience fleet combat in X4 with the VRO mod, I am impressed, but when I experience fleet combat in vanilla X4, I am saddened.

While I agree in this, I must say that a lot of things the VRO mod cant improve because of the engine.
But we should take what we can to make battles look more cinematic.

[Buzz2005]

that game

is it exclusively multi? I mean I will buy it anyway

[Max Bain]

that game

is it exclusively multi? I mean I will buy it anyway

I have to warn you.
I mean I recommend it if you love space battles, but the game is in early access, so there is not so much content or depth right now.
But it is really very very solid for an EA title. I havent found big bugs and only a few smaller ones (one crash so far). performance is good too.

You fight most of the time against AI ships (which is pretty cool) because it is not well known and people are missing a progress system and more content, but the future can be very very bright for this title. The combat mechanics are just awesome and even for this I would say that everyone should at least try it out for 2 hours in steam and then refund it (or stay with it like I did). The game engine and atmosphere are just great. It is missing a good tutorial.

[Skeeter]

Id love to have such massive effects in game, but sadly this is currently technically impossible for us to to.
We are currently very limited in the amount of particles we can show on screen and we also do not have particles being affected by lightsources.
These are two things which make this video look so much better.

Id love a detailed explanation as to why its impossible as vulkan is a top end latest api so should be capable from that, plus a bit of programming and a vfx artist and sound engineer and hopefully id have thought it was doable tho just needed to put the work in. Very interested to know why not tho if you have time to explain it lino.

[Kpla Keltak]

OMG..wish I hadn't looked now.
now we know what we are missing

[Commander_K]

plus a bit of programming

Yeah, easy peasy. They should be able to bang these changes to the engine in an afternoon or so. /s

Implementing engine features, and even more so for low-level graphic engines, is a very special skill set and I'm not sure Egosoft has the resources at hand to spend on this endeavor. In fact, if you look at their jobs page you will see that they in fact looking to hire to boost this capacity.

[nalim27]

Id love to have such massive effects in game, but sadly this is currently technically impossible for us to to.
We are currently very limited in the amount of particles we can show on screen and we also do not have particles being affected by lightsources.
These are two things which make this video look so much better.

Thats reminds me one video from Star citizen developers where they are said something that they had Particle system based on CPU. But is was very limiting. So the rewrite it into GPU bases particle system and now they can have much higher amount of particles in scene and even with geometry collions!
And performance is much better too.

Maybe a little suggestion for Egosoft developers?

BTW In OP post Infinitity Battlespace are using GPU computations a lot too - I know that they are using GPU for planet surface generation so you can seamlessly go from space 10 meter above any planetary surface .... and you will see many details and very good graphics. I'm not sure if their particle system is GPU based too.

Ah, I found that video ..... is it interesting for developers and nerds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-u2-xdq6eo

P.S: Please I hope you understand mine post. I know that egosoft do not have 400 developers like Star Citizen team. But maybe it is possible to buy some finishes GPU particle system? Or hire some team that have good experience with it?

[csaba]

I think a step in a good direction would be to tweak the M turrets on capital ships. They need an entirely different group than the M ships have with longer range, good speed and actual AA ability. It's already done with the M tracking turrets being unique to them so that cannot be an issue.

I guess flak (which they severely need) is not an option right now sadly because of the particle problems but there are some things that were done in XR better with almost the same engine. The standard turret (HIT/AM) could be a slower firing capital ship bolt variant with a bigger range. The hailstorm turret was way more scary than Shards and the Xenon long range AoE balls were devestating. The latter could be a replacement for either the L plasma or even the main weapons on destroyers.

Range is also an issue. Right now it's so low that cap ships have no first strike deterrent against fighters. Capital M turrets should be at least 6 km L's 8 km and main guns 10 km. M ship M turrets can stay the same range maybe rename them to S turrets as well as to not cause confusion.

Really something has to be done cause capital ships are a joke in this game (Not talking about OoS figths) except maybe the K and I which you cannot pilot anyway. As it stands for the 18 mill you'd equip a single destroyer you could buy 9 heavy fighters with quadruple the damage output.

[tomchk]

Id love to have such massive effects in game, but sadly this is currently technically impossible for us to to.
We are currently very limited in the amount of particles we can show on screen and we also do not have particles being affected by lightsources.
These are two things which make this video look so much better.

I would also really appreciate more explanation of why/how X4 cannot have improved effects. I'm not claiming you're wrong, but it's the one thing that most confuses me, and clearly I'm not alone in that.
For example, what causes this limit on the amount of particles shown on screen?

[Skeeter]

https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan ... ticles.cpp

Dunno if that helps get u around the low particles problem you said you have?

[linolafett]

Maybe i used the wrong wording for this, english is not my primary language, sorry. Its for me as an artist currently impossible to achieve this shown result.
I guess that with some work on the programming side of thing, we could move the particles to the gpu to have them be handled there.
This is currently not the case and therefore we can not have large amount of particles on screen.
We are aware of it for a longer time, its always a matter of available dev time.

[adeine]

I'd rather X4 wasn't this cartoony or over the top. The smoke lighting is neat, but you can tell they really fell in love with their effect and made what is essentially a fog machine simulator (kind of immersion breaking for anything set in space). Dial it down a notch or twenty

I like some of the sound design though, the hollow/tinny impacts on your hull and internal vibrations are more akin to what you'd expect.

[nalim27]

Maybe i used the wrong wording for this, english is not my primary language, sorry. Its for me as an artist currently impossible to achieve this shown result.
I guess that with some work on the programming side of thing, we could move the particles to the gpu to have them be handled there.
This is currently not the case and therefore we can not have large amount of particles on screen.
We are aware of it for a longer time, its always a matter of available dev time.

So I was right that current particle system in X:R and X4 is based on CPU? And therefore there is quite low limit on number of particles in scene (on screen)?

I'm just curious - what that limit currently is in X4 (I know it is not one hard number .... but it must be some range, for example 10 000 - 15 000 particles)?

[tomchk]

Maybe i used the wrong wording for this, english is not my primary language, sorry. Its for me as an artist currently impossible to achieve this shown result.
I guess that with some work on the programming side of thing, we could move the particles to the gpu to have them be handled there.
This is currently not the case and therefore we can not have large amount of particles on screen.
We are aware of it for a longer time, its always a matter of available dev time.

Oh yeah I totally hear you. These questions can be tough to answer even in one’s native language, I bet! Thanks for going through the trouble of answering all this in English!

It is good to hear that it’s possible you guys could move some things to the GPU. I know many of us complain about related issues (CPU bottlenecks, simplified effects, etc.) quite a lot, so I hope you can make this higher priority. I don’t think you need to get to the effects level of this video anytime soon (if ever), but I do think at least matching XR’s level would be a very good idea, especially in the shorter term.

[Axeface]

I'd rather X4 wasn't this cartoony or over the top. The smoke lighting is neat, but you can tell they really fell in love with their effect and made what is essentially a fog machine simulator (kind of immersion breaking for anything set in space). Dial it down a notch or twenty

I like some of the sound design though, the hollow/tinny impacts on your hull and internal vibrations are more akin to what you'd expect.

Im pretty sure prolonged space battles would actually look something like that. Matter and smoke from decompressions, released coolant etc would probably cover the area of a prolongued battle in 'mist'. Being able to 'see' how long a battles been raging, with crippled capital ships still fighting for their lives? Would be epic (Rebirth kinda does it already).

[tomchk]

Im pretty sure prolonged space battles would actually look something like that. Matter and smoke from decompressions, released coolant etc would probably cover the area of a prolongued battle in 'mist'. Being able to 'see' how long a battles been raging, with crippled capital ships still fighting for their lives? Would be epic (Rebirth kinda does it already).

Yeah, I think XR has such nice effects that it's the only standard X4 needs to meet regarding effects in the short term. Anyone that hasn't played it in awhile should try it or watch some capship combat videos. It's spectacular.