Changelog:

*** Vendetta 1.7.36

- New swarm missile trails
- Lua commands to get certain character info only return
valid info if the character is within radar range
- Added lua console_print() function to print output to the
console
- Exported pcall and xpcall

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VO is currently at version 1.7.36.1, but that was fixing some broken station interface stuff from the .36 update. No major changes worth a changelog note for 1.7.36.1.

Just an FYI, I will be tweaking the new swarm trail graphics, I didn't really get a chance to do so tonight. For the moment, I'm mostly concerned about them working properly, and they seem to be. They're also a hell of a lot faster than the old trails, which I hope has been noticed.

yeah .. especially at distance they are a lot better. They only kill my fps now when the whole screen is filled with trail, but I guess that's rare.

They just look weird. You basically fire a bunch of wimpy looking metal blobs and the trail follows them a second later, grows, get's denser till it's almost a solid tube.

From targets the perspective there are those tiny blobs homing in infront of that blue goo. which makes them really really hard to see.

From the on lookers perspective they are actually looking pretty cool though.

you should make the trails more thinner. And give different trail color between the locusts and chaos.

console_print('YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!')
pcall and xpcall, too? *does a little dance*

Can you tell I'm enthusiastic about Lua? ^.^

We were trying to fix a couple of visual artifacts with the trails, and need to keep tweaking. That's part of why there's such a long fade-in between the missile and the trail. Before there was none at all, and it looked a bit strange when the missile expired (hard-edged polygon in space). Anyway, like I said, not a lot of time for tweaking tonight, but we'll be continuing to do that.

Hmm, not enthusiastic about the new trails. The previous trails looked nice. These... look silly. The blue tube stays around for way too long, and you end up with stationary blue lines just hanging in space. They probably need to fade much quicker if nothing else.

Haven't noticed any performance difference, but then I've never had any performance problems with the old trails, even if firing multiple double swarms at Queens.

It's nice. I think the new trails are better, but need work.
Hopefully, someday, swarms will be exceptable in the War.
And L-mine.
I like the new changes, Inc, keep it up!

In the midst of your tweaks, I think something has to be done to make the actual warheads more visible. They are considerably more difficult to dodge now simply because you can't see where the actual missile is.

The old swarm trails were better. All see now are almost solid blue lines in space.

I'd have to agree with Bess. But some people couldn't run the old trails apparently...

But shouldn't it be possible to have the old swarms for people with a better GPU? There's no real advantage of one over the other except the speed/looks tradeoff?

the fade in between the missile and the trail is WAY too much, it should go almost immediatley to full strenght maybe a meter or two behind the missile and then fade out, the fade out rate isnt too bad since there are no air currents in space as space lacks air.

The old trails were a proof of concept and extremely inefficient, they will not be returning. The new trails will be tweaked and improved as we go forward.

Even if people with fast GPUs didn't find the old trails slow, the current usage is nothing compared to my intended density when I start using them as cap-vs-cap weapons. These are eventually going to be used more widely than just swarm missiles. I want a basic effect fast enough to have a hell of a lot of them onscreen. I know they visually need work, yes the fade in is too long, they stay around too long, etc etc, we were very tired last night and for the most part we just wanted to get the fundamental work out to be tested in production.

I'm glad they're working. We'll tweak them some more next week, and I'll look at improving the visibility of the missile as well.

Ok! I'll take my bitch post back then!

yea they are many many many times faster than the old ones

look... no hands has apoint.

Do they actually move faster then the old ones? I was at full turbo in a ship, (forgot which one), and fired. Usually i immediately over take my swarms, today i didn't. i had to work to catch up to them.

No, the actual swarm missiles themselves are exactly the same speed they always were. LNH was just referring to the rendering speed, not the meters-per-second speed.

A valid point inc , its the little bits of lag that add up to a lot of lag when there are a bigger group of players or npcs in a sector thats going to matter in the longer term .

Just a question what was wrong with the original swarm trails?