Mystery of the lagging starshells revealed!

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Originally Posted by Rongel

It's easy to make warships to fire these no-lag starshells, just modify the materials.dat file, I can do that, but the merchant starshells and distress flares come from TDW and their files need editing too, and also the new FX update zone file removes the starshells. So i'm not sure how to proceed...

I'm not that keen on modifying TDWs work, best situation would be that he does the changes. Can't remember what the modding etiquette says... Is it okay to make this kind of patch???

TDW's flares are about identical to stock starshell effects. He just copied the effects/materials into new files, introduced the difference between red and white flares, and changed the way they are used in game: white flares fired by invisible guns, red flares triggered by compartment damage. That's all.

The new materials are stored in TDW_FXU_Flares_Materials.DAT. I don't think that editing that file and releasing it as a FXU-compatible patch, would break any etiquette rule, especially if we consider that it contains stock effects essentially. On the contrary, you would infringe the rules if you took FXU, changed a few features of it, and released it as whole new mod of your own.