The problem is, the visual FX for the cruise engine charging is not a seperate effect. In the engine_euip.ini, there is 3 FX settings: flame effect, trail effect for NPCs and trail effect for players. The flame effect combines it all, normal speed, cruise charge and cruise mode. As long as there is no way to edit ALEs, this will probably not be possible without a difficult workaround, of which I have no idea how to make it.

uggg thats rough i dont wanna here that lol, so far i am able to get the effect to begin as they show u the cut scene of you taking off, thats about it because thats when the engine are first fire off and so begins the engine effect. there has to be some more effects, like the cruise sparks, if you know what i mean as it draws power to power up, i was thinking to edit that would be perfect

Mess With the Best Die lIke the Rest
Check out my Freelancer Website FLPoliceclan.tripod.com
AIM SN - SuBZeRo69069 (feel free to IM me if you need any Modding help)

The problem is, the engine calls those sparks and all that from one single effect, the flame effect. You could try and look inot the ini file (don't know the exact name) in the folder where all the engine ALEs are, maybe there you can define stuff like that, although I wouldn't think so; but you shoul give it a try.

You can stack ALE effects on top of one another and created layered effects. That's how we do things like custom weapon FX and other stuff... it's not terribly hard.

For example, look at this customized ALE effect I created for Warriors of the Sky:

[VisEffect
nickname = ku_torpedo01_drive
alchemy = fx\weapons\ku_torpedo01.ale
effect_crc = -395611123
textures = fx\smoke.txm

If you compare this to the original, you can see I removed a lot've the textures, which has a considerable effect on how it looks. Here's the original:

[VisEffect
nickname = ku_torpedo01_drive
alchemy = fx\weapons\ku_torpedo01.ale
effect_crc = -395611123
textures = fx\smoke.txm
textures = fx\sarma.txm
textures = fx\lightbeam.txm
textures = fx\planetflare.txm

Sarma is a bit of a mystery to me. It shows up all over the place. But if you open up Sarma with UTF Edit, you won't see anything super-interesting- it's a very generic alpha-channel texturemap of a starburst. But this gets used for sparks and other FX, so I guess it's just a really useful thing that DA used again and again, rather than implementing custom textures for various events. Its creation date tells you volumes

And the effect_crc is also a bit mystifying... why do they need a CRC there at all, when they're refering to the discreet files and TXMs to apply? Baffling, but no doubt required.

What is a pain is that certain aspects of ALEs are hardcoded, or are universal. For example, you can't recode the length of time a particular type of ALE plays for a specific weapon, as in MUZZLE_FLASH events. Nor can you create a new event class... at least, I haven't been able to do so, and I tried...

But you can create new FX, no problem, and change the lineup to create all sorts've interesting FX.

well stacking is one thing, but id have to target the specific texture which is the paricles and layer the cloakin effect atop of it, i dont want it on all the time

Mess With the Best Die lIke the Rest
Check out my Freelancer Website FLPoliceclan.tripod.com
AIM SN - SuBZeRo69069 (feel free to IM me if you need any Modding help)