Flammable steel drums cargo ready for testing:

http://www.mediafire.com/?07t2vih4jz4u4qt

They use the same mesh repeated 60 times. Each drum got individual damage boxes and collision spheres. New version of Zones.cfg (FXU compatible) included in the package. I didn't include neither normal/ambient occlusion maps, nor the controllers I mentioned in my previous post. For ease of testing, we will add them step by step.

Let me know if it is working as supposed :up:

Maybe you will make a custom mission also, to let me test it :)

Okay, I will modify the test mission made by Rongel, give me a few :up:

Okay, here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/?8j66tzl78f1indi

Enable it on top of OHII, Rongel's Cargo Test Mod, and my Additional SH5 Ship Cargo. All the ships in the convoy now should carry the new barrels.

Things you should check:

- if my new cargo works at all (you never know :rolleyes:);
- if it causes any lag;
- how good it looks and how well it fits the space on deck (if possible post a few screenies);
- ballistic tests: aim to the barrels with both deck and flak guns :arrgh!:

OK, thanks.. is it OK if I'll test it later this night or tomorrow morning? :06:

EDIT: at the same time will tie up all the boxes and spheres in the edited ship_cargo with the new zones..

Yes indeed, take your time mate :salute:

I did a small test with the barrels. So here is what I found:

-They explode in a nice way, good looking effect! :up:
-They did cause some lagging with my pc when exploding (i had disabled the red distress flare). I wonder will it increase when all the normal maps and other controllers are added to them? I think the lag wasn't that bad, but it would be nice if we could lower it than increase it.
-All the ships went down with one torpedo, the barrel explosions seemed to destroy the ships completely, so it might be too powerful now.

:yeah:

The way I have set them, they should trigger a cascade effect where fire spreads from barrel to barrel. Have you noticed it? And by the way, they shouldn't explode: I had set them to flammable, not explosive. Maybe I shoud set the destructible property of their zone to "no", or better, I should try messing with the ObjectRemains controller as suggested by TDW in this post: it would be cool if after being set on fire, flammable barrels changed their aspect rather than blowing up in the air :cool:

In other words, you are confirming indirectly that before being hit, my barrels don't cause any lag. This is good to know :up:

As for the cause of the lagging when they explode, I am sure I know why it happens: each barrel got its own damage box; when one barrel gets more than 10% damage, a fire effect is triggered; this, on turn, damages nearby barrels and sets them of fire (if they weren't already on fire), and so on. Now can you imagine the effect of 60 or more fire FX being played at once? There are several possible solutions for it:

• reducing the number of damage boxes, making each box to cover more than one barrel;
  
• setting new "spreding fire" effects, the way TDW did for FXU but with reduced damage and blast radius, and assigning them to the new zone definitions used for "multiple-mesh/multiple box cargo";
  
• increasing the HP damage percent that will trigger fires;
  
• increasing the HP of each barrel;
  
• decreasing their damage multiplier.

What do you think? I will try playing with the above factors, and I will post an update as soon as possible.

Answering your question on normal/AO maps and rendering controllers, for a start we should ask ourselves if they are really needed (how good the barrels looked during your test without that extra stuff?). Secondly, I don't think that bump maps and ambient occlusion maps will affect main memory that much, as GPU should deal with them. Shadow and reflection controllers could be a bit memory intensive though :hmm2:

This is related with the previous point: ship's hit points get depleted by the spreading fires. Possible solutions as above :03:

I'd rather do it myself. Reason being I have a very specific ID numbering system that I developed. By looking at one of my IDs I can tell what mod it belongs to, what controller it's using, what number of the item it is (if it belongs to a multiple items), what version it is, etc. Ever wondered why my ID's were so strange? Now you know why :D

Waiting for your updates then :D :up:

Just modified a steel drum, to look as it was set on fire:

http://img547.imageshack.us/img547/2819/zxki.jpg

I hope I can get it to show in game in place of destroyed drums. Fingers crossed :03:

ObjectRemains controller is your friend :yep:

@gap

Sorry, Gabriele :oops:, I wasn't be able to test something last couple of days.. does this last version still needs testing or you're working on a new one?

Gabriele!

I saw, you were (and maybe are) here :D

EDIT: I'm an Ocean Warrior too now :smug: :salute: