Um...

I have made ships with many engines before, but not 30. Let's see a screenshot of your CMP and your code...

Heres some shots:
didnt know if you wanted the utf ot the ini code, heres the utf, all of the engine branches look the same, ignore the "engineGlow01" at the end, it isnt in the finished project

the dots on the wings are the engine hardpoints


Edited by - Iokua on 5/24/2005 3:26:17 PM

Question, why would you need or want that many engines?

i wanted that many engines so i could have the effect of energy flowing off the wings, and the engine trails had the best effect. this is for a space-dwelling race for a huge mod i am working on, wich im starting to realize is bigger project than i anticipated.

if theres any else i can do to create that effect, that would work too.

Edited by - Iokua on 5/24/2005 3:24:46 PM

You can add the trails, with out adding the engines. I have added contrail to weapons point, with weapons there. Where you have multi trail coming from the ship.

[Good
nickname = gf1_package
category = ship
hull = gf1_hull
addon = ge_gf1_engine_01, internal, 1
addon = ge_fighter_power01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_scanner_01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_tractor_01, internal, 1
addon = shield01_mark01_lf, HpShield01, 1
addon = LargeWhiteSpecial, HpHeadlight, 1
addon = SlowSmallOrange, HpRunningLight01, 1
addon = SlowSmallOrange, HpRunningLight02, 1
addon = SlowSmallOrange, HpRunningLight05, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail01, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail02, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight01, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight02, 1
addon = contrail01, HpWeapon01,
addon = contrail01, HpWeapon02,
addon = contrail01, HpWeapon03,
addon = contrail01, HpWeapon04, ;adding them here does not efect the guns, but adds the effect. It can be added to a lot of hard points.

Edited by - Finalday on 5/24/2005 4:43:28 PM

I think that the num_exhaust_nozzles can only go up to 8. I did an experiment not very long ago with the Heavy Lifter (I have a neato custom version in the next version of the Toolkit), and I couldn't get more than 8 nozzles working. Which was a bummer, because it has 12 engine hardpoints.

That said... betcha a dollar or three that you can set up an engine_small_trail or engine_large_trail (better for your "dragons" because the LODs are longer w/o messing up anything else) as contrails... I dunno whether the contrails also have this limitation or not, but I'm guessing yes... but that'd give you 16.

If you're just using trails, not flames... you could use the bigger ones from the Freighters, etc., and end up with huge ones.

BUT but but but...

Trail FX are also the big long flame FX used when a ship's in Cruise. Personally, if I were you, I'd make your Dragons carefully scaled (heh, pun) so that they were either big enough to use 16 Freighter or 16 Fighter Trails... and do lots of playtesting and looking carefully from various angles to make sure it looked right.

If these are really "energy wings", though... I have a much better idea that will also be easier on everybody's framerate and won't involve pushing too many ALEs into too little room. It's super-simple:

Make your wings with some fancy DcDtOcOtEcEt textures (that'd be glowing, alpha-channel glow and alpha-channel transparency). You could so some really cool stuff with that ... that would be low-poly and pretty easy, and would look great from most aspect angles. It's really not very tricky to make glowing wings, like this ship I did:

Hey, the glowing wings texture idea is just the sorta thing i need, not nessisarily exactly what i first wanted, but i think i can work with that, thanx.....

i plan on posting the mod when its done.

If you lived in a world of zeros and ones, would you be a zero or The One?

It doesn't have to look like that. You can use alpha-channel stuff to fake up a lot've things. Take a look at how the asteroid Gas_Mine was made- it's really just a bunch of flat surfaces with a cloudlike alpha channel on each of them for transparency, to fake out viewers into thinking they're looking at something substantial. You could make "energy wings" with that technique that really looked quite cool, I suspect...