Arioch wrote:You must be looking at a really old trailer, as I don't think that effect has been in the game for more than 5 years. Back when there was only one faction in the game (Ashdar), Sven had implemented some destroyed ship animations that he made himself. Once we started adding more ships, the effect was dropped (it was a lot of work for each ship, and I thought it looked terrible).
We'd like to implement damage skins at some point, but I don't think debris animations are worth the effort, as they don't really add anything to game-play, and it's hard to make them look like anything better than paper cutouts.
The trailer is from the Steam page. It is the last scene of the trailer starting at around: 1:20
Would you not reconsider implementing the feature? In my opinion it looks very well and gives a load of atmosphere to the battle.
Have never seen anything of this sort in similar games so when I saw the trailer I though that is really cool. Then didn't see it in the game but was looking out for it and then finally saw when fighting against Ashdar capital ship - apparently it is still there.
To cut down on the work involved and not clutter the map you could consider to create the shards from the existing art, cutting it to pieces and giving it damage texture. It could be shown in random occasions so that only around 20% of destroyed ships leave such a debris in average. Stations and planets could also leave debris like this if you would consider allowing us to destroy a planet within tactical combat
Generally I think that the meat of the game is the tactical combat so any innovations and artistic love is more then welcome
Regarding damage skin: I remember having seen this for the hard points when I started playing a couple of months ago. Maybe that was also only for the Ashdars? When a hard point has been destroyed, the art was showing a black destroyed mark. Needless to say, a great idea. By dynamically applying a random scorch mark on the hard points is very effective and looks great.
Really like the overall art and attention to detail (such as the tiny race logos on the hulls), hope you two will expand on the above. When I play the game I think on Freelancer. That game has also been cited many times to be more then a sum of it elements
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