Custom effect links

[Slezar de Fanel]

ok, i did all the unpacking, converted the files. But now i have a problem.

1.) I want to create a custom hull damage effect. Similar to the one in BridgeCommander. So i located the damage.tex texture, altered it by size and color. Worked fine. But now my problem. Unlike the mesh and soundfiles, i cant find the script for this damage texture. Does anyone know, where the path for the textures of FX stuff are written down? The meshes contain the links for the textures and the tacticstypes.ini contains the paths to the meshs, but how about the effects? Where are the paths to the textures of FX stuff stored?

Edit: i found one single custom effect link in the mod folder

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NexusmodsSAMPLE 02  Everything Changeuniverseenginemod_ani.inicontains the following single line, wich is the path to the texture "photon.TEX" found in the modding texture folder

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Ani 40 "fxphoton" #BL_COLOR #APM_ONCE 16 4 4so can anybody point me in the direction of the file, that contains the rest of the effect links?

2.) Do the other nexus_##.DAT files store sth? Is there a way to unpack them? Except nexus_00.DAT and nexus_00.DAP i failed to unpack them.

Thx in advance

[Mularac]

I'm yet to found the specs of that link the cannon animations to their particles, but that doesn't mean that you can't create your own one

PS:About the other .dat files, they only contain the .bik of the Nexus movies, so don't even bother.

[Slezar de Fanel]

Basically i want to cast multiple textures above each other onto the hull when it gets hit by sth big. Some of texture-effects need to be glowing like sth is burning. I guess i need to try out all of the 300 fx entries to know, which one it is....... Basically it should be the first 5 since they are specifically for the hull. But they seem to be more like explosions rather then the dirty damage map. Ahhh, maybe tommorow....

[Mularac]

uhm... what you want to do seems to be rather tricky... I doubt that you'd be able to make a fresh one, only edit existing ones as all the effects we've been able to insert so far couldn't get attached to a ship's hull... and the black patter is generated by the engine, it's not a texture, or at least that's what I believe... I'm a programmer after all

[Arparso]

No, the black damage pattern is indeed a texture (damage.tex), but like almost every efx-related texture, it's use is hardcoded. You can add custom efx-textures to mod_ani.efx, so you can use them in efx.ini or mod_efx.ini or in a prt-file to add as a sprite to your weapon, explosion or whatever-effect, but I wouldn't know how to apply the texture to a model. You can replace damage.tex with your own damage texture, of course, but that's about it, I fear.

[Slezar de Fanel]

I take a look. But i guess alot of ppl tried it already, so i wont put too much effort in it.

EDIT:
Does anybody know any kind of other effect, that directly affects the hull texture? Try to remember, was there some special kind of moment in the games story, that used some wooohooo effect on a ship? anything would be useful