[gap]

Originally Posted by Kendras

Yes, ok, let's do that.

Main factors to play with are:

• Specular color (i.e. reflection brightness; black or a shade of gray close to the one used as Diffuse color=no reflections; white=bright reflections);
  
  
• Specular strenght (i.e. reflection intensity; 0 = no reflections, 255=very strong reflections)
  
  
• Glossiness (i.e. reflection sharpness; 0=completely blurred reflections, 255=very sharp reflections).

Both materials stored in the main unit and in the library file should be edited in a similar way (in both files, first 'empty' material=concrete, second empty material=metal).

Do you have time to mess with those settings?

Originally Posted by Kendras

Do you see any difference in game ? Not me

I do. Look at lantern's glass: when the light flare particle node has a 3d mesh attached, the glass becomes bright when the light is on. If the 3d model is removed, the glass stays unlit.

Originally Posted by Kendras

When France is occupied, France becomes a neutral country. But Germans can use all strategic devices they want, including lighthouses. So, we can consider them as German, and British airplanes will attack them.

Wouldn't be easier setting France as an Axis country during its occupation? Indeed, that would be in contrast with the official stance of Vichy France, but it would better reflect its actual relations with the other WWII contenders and, imho, gamewise it would be more appropriate

Originally Posted by Kendras

(Note : About the foam effect, I'm not sure that it's working smoothly. Sometimes, I notice an unexpected flickering effect. Could you check that attentively ?)

Yep, I noticed that. I am trying to track down the problem. It might be related with max number of particles / particle creation rate.
Talking about the same effect, I have some more remarks:

• I have moved the new particle generators and the related material to the Lighthouse_FX library file. For compatibility issues, I think it is better messing as little as possible with stock files which are altered by many mods.
  
  
• The main effect has two particle generators, one of them with an object particle item, the other with a bitmap particle item and the sound effect attached to it. Can you explain what each particle generator/particle is mean for? Couldn't you use just one particle generator with two array items (one for the object particle, and one for the bitmap particle?). Sorry for the many questions, but I am trying to learn
  
  
• In the Material dat, under the water spray texture, there was a fastparticle generator (which I moved in the Lighthouse_FX file together with the material/texture) having as parent the main node of the lighthouse unit. As far as I can judge, this configuration is a bit unusual. I have tried to remove the controller and/or to set the Parent Id field to 0, and the effect becomes buggy. Can you explain why you set the material/particle this way? Is there no way to link the FastParticleGenerator directly to the splash effect (as an object particle maybe), rather than linking it to the model through parent Id settings? I ask so because, if keep it like this, we will need as many copies of the controller as the lighthouses/rocks that we want to have splashes on them.
  
  
• It is me, or water splashes spawn on the wrong side relative to wave direction? After rotating splash effect's node by 180deg, splashes seem to be triggered on the correct side of the lighthouse. I am not sure though: it could be an optical illusion.
  
  
• Splashes spawn a bit too far from the concrete base. I have displaced effect's placement nodes in the lighthouse file so to form the vertices of a regular octagon having a circumradius of 5 m (moving them closer didn't work, as most of the times splash particles were triggered at once on all sides), and I have displaced particle generator's node by 1.5 m along its z axis, in the direction of the lighthouse center. Now splashes spawn directly against the walls of the lighthouse, rather than looking like water columns
  with a loose connection with the model.
  
  
• The texture used for the effect was quite poor. I have replaced it with a custom texture based on another texture I had created long ago for FX Update by TheDarkWraith (for SH5). Better resolution, a hint of blue in the RGB channel, and an actual water splash with a cloud of small water drops painted on the alpha channel. I think you will like it
  
  
• Even after bringing all the changes mentioned above, the effect still looks a bit monotonus. I think we should add some degree of randomness to its particles, and to make them affected by wind. The result we should aim for, is every splash being unique in appearance and, unlike now, not to look as the same texture reiterated n times.
  
  
• For the same reason as above, I think we should switch the two particles/particle generators that the effect is composed of, to use two different textures. That's why I asked what each of them is meant to represent